From a recent article in The New Yorker:
After making allowances for countries that have, or recently have had, an officially imposed atheist ideology, in which there might be some social pressure to deny belief in God, one can venture conservative estimates of the number of unbelievers in the world today. Reviewing a large number of studies among some fifty countries, Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College, in Claremont, California, puts the figure at between five hundred million and seven hundred and fifty million. This excludes such highly populated places as Brazil, Iran, Indonesia, and Nigeria, for which information is lacking or patchy. Even the low estimate of five hundred million would make unbelief the fourth-largest persuasion in the world, after Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. It is also by far the youngest, with no significant presence in the West before the eighteenth century. Who can say what the landscape will look like once unbelief has enjoyed a past as long as Islam’s—let alone as long as Christianity’s? God is assuredly not on the side of the unbelievers, but history may yet be.
western whites actually can’t keep consumption patterns static and not have kids and magically ease pollution and suchlike. extremely radical notions of what constitutes a good standard of living will pretty much have to be adopted by everyone whether they have kids or not. instead, everyone wants to fistfight over why can’t brown people live like middle class americans now that they have some disposable income to throw around.
but then again, the entire dynamics of that whole situation is something quite beyond the scope of what originated this discussion.
i want to hear some atheists tell me about the incontrovertible proof that memes exist. according to their own standards for god-beings, memes fall into that category (of unprovable by mortal standards thingy). and yet, and yet memes are not accorded the same kind of dismissive vitriol. curious, that.
also, to return to easter island, you’ve got alternate theories that fit the evidence better than diamond’s suppositions, but because the cool kids in anthropology haven’t YET sided with the disputers (and keep in mind there is no telling how the easter island theorising one way or another will shake out 50 or 100 years from now), you’re going to say diamond’s explanation is the only ‘correct’ one. that’s faith, by many standards.
the religiosity displayed by people claiming areligiousness is kinda interesting to observe.
i wish, i wish, i wish there were subthreading….
You’re right. Magic won’t do it. Technology will. Gas getting pricey, here’s ethanol. Cars not efficient enough, Toyota and GM both have hybrid systems. Emmisions too high? Anyone can buy a SULEV (Super low emissions vehicle) if they’ll pay the premium. The list goes on.
Belief in a scientific theory is similar to religion to an extent, you are taking on faith what a “more qualified” member of the field says about a scenario and relying on their and others judgements. However beyond that superficial level I would say that belief in science is different to religion given that proof in science is very fluid (what is right today may be wrong tomorrow) and science requires proof to be true, for scientific methods to really hold there must be a way to disprove the theory, most of the Abrahamic religions I have looked at really have no way to disprove them, thus requiring true belief.
Overpopulation is a problem, overconsumption is a problem. America isn’t over populated, it does overconsume, Britain is overpopulated and overconsumes, China and India are both overpopulated. What we really need to do is solve both problems, or at least work on clean energy since getting the “global south” up to the same standard of living as your average american will likely kill us before we equalise the playing fields.
That’s not really true. You’re free to learn the science and judge for yourself. I’m pretty well informed about the examples I cited. If you’re numerate you can learn what’s going on there in a few years. Less if you’re extra smart and have nothing else to do. More if you’ve got a life.
Science does require some basic faith. It has faith in a rational world. You have to have faith that your senses (or tools) aren’t deceiving you. You have to have faith that cause and effect will continue to hold, e.g. that gravity won’t change for no reason tomorrow. Those ‘faiths’ are required to walk across the room. How do you know an evil genius isn’t deceiving you to hide the alligator pit? How do you know that your body won’t suddenly stop being able to breath air? etc etc.
also, to return to easter island, you’ve got alternate theories that fit the evidence better than diamond’s suppositions, but because the cool kids in anthropology haven’t YET sided with the disputers (and keep in mind there is no telling how the easter island theorising one way or another will shake out 50 or 100 years from now), you’re going to say diamond’s explanation is the only ‘correct’ one. that’s faith, by many standards.
Dude, I don’t want to be disrespectful, but that is just plain dumb. Yes, I will trust what the anthropological community sees as the most likely explanation NOW. Should the consensus change over the coming decades, my opinion will undoubtedly change as well. It seems to me that it is just stupid to dismiss the expert consensus in favor of what they might think in 50 or 100 years. For all we know, there will be strong evidence of broom-shaped aliens as the cause of the decline of the Rapanui or evidence that the Rapanui simply decided to stop reproducing and doom themselves to extinction. However, there is no evidence for either of those theories and the current consensus (as far as I can tell from the searches I’ve done) agrees with the theory that Diamond has made so famous, finds Peiser to be an unqualified hack and has serious questions about the work of Hunt and Lipo.
There is no doubt that the scientific community is wrong about a good number of theories currently held as the most likely possibility. That is part of what science is all about – using the available evidence to formulate a theory of the most likely scenario. As more evidence comes to light, or when a theory that better fits the evidence is discovered, consensus changes and we work off the hypothesis that the current theory is correct. At the same time, we are aware that we may still be incorrect.
a person,
I guess that the thing that is just pissing me off about your comments is not that you disagree with the theory propounded by Diamond, but the insulting way in which you interact with those who find it the most likely possibility. That and your lies about this theory being “well and thoroughly debunked.”
It is possible to have a good faith disagreement about this theory (or anything else) without being a liar or an asshole or both. It might have actually been fun to have an honest discussion/debate about the evidence and the best explanation for that evidence. Oh, well.
instead, everyone wants to fistfight over why can’t brown people live like middle class americans now that they have some disposable income to throw around.
Who is this “everyone?” I certainly haven’t seen that in this thread. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen an awful lot of people – certainly enough to invalidate your “everyone” – talk extensively about Americans reducing their consumption.
It’s completely off topic but think about what the world will look like when China and India start to produce like the US, Europe, and Japan. Their industry gave us the Car, the TV, golden rice and Hollywood Japanese competition gave us better cars (Even the domestics are making very reliable vehicles today) DVDs and video games.
China and India are huge. Their professionals aren’t as productive as their western counterparts yet (on average) but they will be soon. What will the world look like when there are tens of millions of new people making new things or making old things better and less expensive?
That’s the flip side to the developing world. Yes, they’re going to consume more. But they’re also going to produce more. They won’t be a source for just ‘cheap labor’ for long.
My bet is that desalinization and recycling are going to be some big breakthroughs from China and India.
“I guess that the thing that is just pissing me off about your comments is not that you disagree with the theory propounded by Diamond, but the insulting way in which you interact with those who find it the most likely possibility. ”
Agreed. Person, you’ve been excessively insulting on this and other threads. This is a warning.
China and India are huge. Their professionals aren’t as productive as their western counterparts yet (on average) but they will be soon…
They won’t be a source for just ‘cheap labor’ for long.
Yep. This is already happening. Where things like help desk support were being outsourced to India for the past decade, they’re now starting to go to Vietnam and Thailand. Indian labor has just gotten too expensive.
anthropologists have been very wrong about a lot of things, or at least guilty of twisting evidence to fit a viewpoint they were bent on promoting. a classic example is that many anthropologists and archaeologists held that ancient primitive people were less violent or non-violent, even when there was plenty of evidence that they were finding human-killing implements. but they had an viewpoint predetermined of peacelike ancient humans to promote, so they arranged their theories around an idea of the evidence available that was misleading at best.
diamond’s theory looks like it ought to make sense. this is one of the appeals of a just-so story– it seems just so, so plausible and just right somehow. and most just-so stories turn out to be not quite correct or flatly wrong.
if i am disagreeing in some manner that is unapproved, it is because the just-so story has gained a little too much credence in discourse. see also: freakonomics, which doesn’t quite suffer from just-so syndrome, but is an example of related mindsets.
a person, you could reasonably ask if the word “meme” and the associated memes help us to understand the world better. You cannot reasonably ask for “proof that memes exist” — this seems vaguely worded at best. The phenomena that people like to call memes clearly do exist, e.g. the words you’re using to make these bizarre comparisons.
we should currenty be operating below replacement level,
This sounds like something from a corporate mission statement. I assume it’s meant to be a euphemism for “breed less”, although certainly if we invested less money in saving lives we’d lose more people and thus drop below replacement level.
And yes, in addition to racism there’s a healthy scoop of classism in there.
if we invested less money in saving lives we’d lose more people and thus drop below replacement level.
Save the environment, repeal helmet and seatbelt laws! End food safety regulation and cancel Medicaid!
It’s for Gaia.
Muhahaha… yes we are coming!
Maybe your town will be next. ;)
Atheists are cruel to lil puppies and don`t send Valentine Cards.
Some of us don`t even listen to country music.
And we dont like hash browns for breakfast.
How evil can one get?
Atheism is literally the lack of belief in gods. It is not the belief that there are no gods. The latter is contingent upon the former, which represents the ‘default’ atheist position. ‘Weak’ atheism does not need to be prefixed or qualified as such. (Perhaps a term such as ‘affirmative atheism’ could be adopted for the rare beast that is currently referred to as ‘strong atheism’?)
There is significant, though not total, overlap between ‘weak atheism’ and agnostic atheism, since lacking knowledge and lacking a belief to be based on that knowledge would tend to aggregate together. Gnostic atheism could refer to the affirmative position that one ‘knows’ that gods can’t exist.
In any case, I have referred to gods in the plural because in the event that gods exist, the comparable probabilities between there being only one versus there being more than one ( one / infinity versus infinity minus one / infinity ) basically correspond to zero and one, respectively. Unless theists can offer us a good reason to believe that there are some limiting factors to believe that the number would be naturally constrained, in which case we should then be debating validity of those factors.
“if the overwhelming majority of atheists are in countries where nobody’s having kids and where the new population is coming mainly from deeply religious people who ARE having kids, then atheism can hardly be said to be gaining footholds, you know?”
But as soon as the deeply religious countries learn how to read, they join the ranks of the godless. So everything balances out.
Not literally, sylphhead, but the crazier Christian sects in America do have trouble keeping children as they mature.
words aren’t memes as Dawkins defines them, actually. and as he defines them, they are subject to any standard of proof that one would impose on other belief-based concepts. not withstanding the fact that his own definitions are sufficiently fuzzy as to call the entire concept of ‘memes’ into thorough question.
the arrogance and classism in the statement about ‘deeply religious’ countries and the one about ‘crazier Christian sects’ is pretty massive. Muslim countries have women who can read and are quite proud to claim their religious belief in large numbers. i mean, snark is snark and the idea (very classist and racist) that religion is only for dumb people who must be taught the ‘better’ (godless, somewhat less often ‘self-created’ religions such as neopaganism and whiteified versions of Eastern religions) way is an extremely tiring one to see constantly pushed as the only correct way to view the situation (as the subtext ever goes).
It was intellectual thought steeped in religious traditions that brought about the very Enlightenment and progressive thinking that has led people to believe they are beyond tradition and can junk it all with no consequence. Or worse still, consume it like so much ‘product’, mixing and matching in any random fashion with no regard to context or cultures they appropriate from.
Jamila Akil, you’re engaging in an either/or fallacy. Things aren’t necessarily so black and white. And the majority of the world does indeed value having children; the fact that the world’s population has skyrocketed in the past hundred years is proof that people do not consider children to be a bad thing. There are still many cultures out there where having many children is considered to be beneficial. We are most definitely not on the edge of extinction just yet.
A person, I’m not trying to respond to your comment personally so much as to make the point that both sides, theistic and atheistic, ascribe to each other certain behaviors that they personally never do. It always astounds me that people never seem to realize that human behavior is the same regardless of beliefs or culture (meaning that you will always have both theists and atheists who lie, cheat, steal, kill, etc.). Human behavior doesn’t necessarily change with the religion or absence thereof.
“Not literally, sylphhead, but the crazier Christian sects in America do have trouble keeping children as they mature.”
One doesn’t dissect snark, hf. ;)
“the arrogance and classism in the statement about ‘deeply religious’ countries and the one about ‘crazier Christian sects’ is pretty massive.”
Where would it lie on the arrogance scale with believing that everyone who doesn’t agree with you (where ‘everyone’ includes entire cultures, ethnic groups, and social classes within countries) is going to be damned for eternity and it’s up to the enlightened such as you to correct them of their faulty ways?
“the idea […] that religion is only for dumb people who must be taught the ‘better’ ”
Yeah, because those damn neopagans and buddhists keep on coming to my doorstep during mealtime, kicking my flyers and denting my mailbox.
Oh, wait.
“Or worse still, consume it like so much ‘product’, mixing and matching in any random fashion with no regard to context or cultures they appropriate from.”
I’m not sure where this is coming from as far as the thread goes, but as far as Christianity goes, it has been one of the worst offenders. Tell me, has the camel gone through the eye of the needle yet? Oh right. That darn gate.
Just consider for a moment how true your own statement has been to the history of Christianity, there.