@edgarblythe,
9 Atheism in the public school classrooms
Many atheist activists use science as a façade by which to smuggle atheism into our public classrooms (science and otherwise).
This is accomplished by various methods; from making atheistic statements in textbooks that have nothing to do with science, to attempts to dictate the rules of academia, including the blacklisting of those who disagree with certain theories which are considered orthodox, to co-opting the entire educational apparatus in order to infuse atheism (in the form of humanism or … —a rose by any other name).
Member of the National Academy of Sciences and Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, Philip S. Skell, warns students not to voice their doubts about Darwinism due to fear of being blacklisted and risking their grades and/or careers.78
Let us consider a few examples:
In their textbook Biology: Discovering Life (2nd ed., Heath & Co., 1994, p. 161) Joseph Levine and Kenneth Miller wrote (incidentally this is the same Kenneth Miller79 who in 1994 could not find any embryological images more recent than the fraudulent 1866 drawings of Ernst Haeckel—128 years of unnoticed scientific progress):
“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomenon are its by-products … In Darwin’s world we are not helpless prisoners of a static world order, but, rather, masters of our own fate … And from a strictly scientific point of view rejecting biological evolution is no different from rejecting other natural phenomenon [sic] such as electricity and gravity.”
How, exactly, does this have anything to do with students learning biology?
Neil Campbell and Jane Reece made the following logical blunder whilst, for some odd reason, arguing against design in their textbook Biology (6th ed., San Francisco, CA: Pearson Education, Inc., 2002, pp. 438-439):
“Surely, the best way to construct the infrastructure of a bat’s wing is not also the best way to build a whale’s flipper. Such anatomical peculiarities make no sense if the structures are uniquely engineered and unrelated … . A more likely explanation is that … all mammals [descended] from a common ancestor … The historical constraints of this retrofitting are evident in anatomical imperfections. For example, the human knee joint and spine were derived from ancestral structures that supported four-legged mammals. Almost none of us will reach old age without experiencing knee or back problems. If these structures had first taken form specifically to support our bipedal posture, we would expect them to be less subject to injury.”
Is my car really not intelligently engineered because it requires maintenance and it falls apart as it ages? Ironically, the human knee is actually a wonderful example of intelligent design,80 as is the human spine, and evolutionary ideas about back pain resulted in treatments that made problems worse.81
In his textbook Evolutionary Biology (3rd ed., Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 1998, p. 5), Douglas Futuyma wrote,
“By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
Thus according to this worldview philosophy masquerading as biology, studying bio-organisms logically and scientifically leads to the conclusion that God is irrelevant.
PZ Myers (atheist, biologist and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota) was asked, “What’s most important to you: advancing atheism or advancing the public understanding of science—or are they kind of one and the same to for you?” His answer was, “They are inseparable.”82 What might this tell us about the manner in which he teaches biology? Indeed, one evolutionist, Bora Zivkovic, has even explicitly declared that it’s OK to deceive students as long as they end up believing in evolution.83,84
Neil deGrasse Tyson (director of the Hayden Planetarium) appears to consider science to be a missionary field whereby he seeks converts,
“I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t. That’s really what we’ve got to address here … if you can’t convert our colleagues, why do you have any hope that you’re going to convert the public?”85
In Humanism: A New Religion, Charles Francis Potter wrote,
“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”86
In A Religion for a New Age, John J. Dunphy wrote:
“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects what theologians call divinity in every human being.
“These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level—preschool day care center or large state university.
“The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.
It will undoubtedly be a long, arduous, painful struggle replete with much sorrow and many tears, but humanism will emerge triumphant. It must if the family of humankind is to survive.”87
G. Richard Bozarth wrote,
“And how does a god die? Quite simply because all his religionists have been converted to another religion, and there is no one left to make children believe they need him. Finally, it is irresistible—we must ask how we can kill the god of Christianity. We need only insure that our schools teach only secular knowledge; that they teach children to constantly examine and question all theories and truths put before them in any form … If we could achieve this, God would indeed be shortly due for a funeral service.”88
The Sunday Times reported the following proselytizing attempts:
“RICHARD DAWKINS, the Oxford University professor and campaigning atheist, is planning to take his fight against God into the classroom by flooding schools with anti-religious literature.
He is setting up a charity that will subsidise books, pamphlets and DVDs attacking the ‘educational scandal’ of theories such as creationism while promoting rational and scientific thought.
The foundation will also attempt to divert donations from the hands of ‘missionaries’ and church-based charities.”89
Richard Dawkins favors “charities free of ‘church contamination’.”
Since any successful proselytizing crusade needs an evil against which to rail, Richard Dawkins has identified the evil ones as non-atheist scientists and creationists. He correlates creationism with Nazism and any evolutionist who is not as zealous as he for Darwinism, he sees as creationist appeasers, whom he correlates with Adolf Hitler. He refers to these evolutionary heretics as “the Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists”90 (Neville Chamberlain had attempted to appease Hitler). This is again ironic, because historians recognize that evolution inspired Hitler’s views and Hitler sought to destroy the Christian church.91 It’s also ironic because the Church has tried to appease evolutionists with the same dismal results.92
Some have even co-opted science and evolution so that it is not merely method and theory but that which seeks to answer deep philosophical questions. When Stephen Jay Gould (the late teacher of biology, geology and history of science at Harvard University) was asked, “Why is your work so popular?” he responded by stating,
“Evolution is one of those subjects. It attempts, insofar as science can, to answer the questions of what our life means, and why we are here, and where we came from, and who we are related to, and what has happened through time, and what has been the history of this planet. These are questions that all thinking people have to ponder.”93
Michael Shermer stated,
“Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. And Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.”94
Richard Dawkins made similar claims whilst lecturing to children during his “Royal Institution Christmas Lectures” aka “The Royal Institution Lectures for Children” Episode 1, “Waking up in the Universe” (video) when he stated:
“So where does life come from? What is it? Why are we here? What are we for? What is the meaning of life? There’s a conventional wisdom which says that science has nothing to say about such questions. Well all I can say is that if science has nothing to say, it’s certain that no other discipline can say anything at all. But in fact, of course, science has a great deal to say about such questions. And that’s what these five lectures are going to be about. Life grows up in the Universe by gradual degrees: evolution. And we grow up in our understanding of our origins and our meaning.”
During his 1991 “Christmas Lectures for Young People”, which one may imagine was occasion to speak of the glories of Christ’s birth, Richard Dawkins told the young people:
“We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA … It is every living object’s sole reason for living.”95
With regards to this and various other considerations; is it any wonder that Stephen Jay Gould wrote,
“ … our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method’, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology … The myth of a separate mode based on rigorous objectivity and arcane, largely mathematical knowledge, vouchsafed only to the initiated, may provide some immediate benefits in bamboozling a public to regard us as a new priesthood … the myth of an arcane and enlightened priesthood of scientists … ”96
Is it any wonder that Michael Denton has observed:
“Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century. Like the Genesis based cosmology which it replaced, and like the creation myths of ancient man, it satisfies the same deep psychological need for an all embracing explanation for the origin of the world which has motivated all the cosmogenic myth makers of the past, from the shamans of primitive peoples to the ideologues of the medieval church.”97
In light of these grand perceptions, perhaps the greatest oddity in considering atheism’s attempts to co-opt science is that atheists take science, a methodology which is meant to dissect the functions of nature, often by reductionist means, and somehow turn this into a worldview. Thus, atheists end up viewing humans, life in general, the earth, the galaxy and—the entire universe and everything in it—as the results of a long sequence of accidents. Yet, this is because they have chosen to view the universe and everything in it through a lens (science) that was never meant to be used for the purpose of worldview formation. Science is not a worldview; it is a method of discovering things about the natural world. It is no wonder that their worldview is myopic.
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10 Atheism as “scientific” story telling
Richard Dawkins claimed that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”.98
The way that he, and many others, seem to apply this sentiment is that as long as he can make up stories about how things may have, could have, or (perhaps according to his worldview) should have, happened which are materialistic and make no reference to God whatsoever, he is satisfied. As will be shown below, by “story telling” I mean both the concept of narrative and also employing wild guesses as theory.
Whilst interviewing Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Miller asked him, “to give a summary of the most persuasive version”. The response was, in part,
“Um, there’s got to be a series of advantages all the way in the feather. If you can’t think of one then that’s your problem, not natural selection’s problem. Natural selection, um, well, I suppose that is a sort of matter of faith on my, on my part since the theory is so coherent and so powerful.”99
He explains miracle claims as “luck” and then applies luck to the origin of life,
“Chance, luck, coincidence, miracle … events that we commonly call miracles are not supernatural, but are part of a spectrum of more-or-less improbable natural events. A miracle, in other words, if it occurs at all, is a tremendous stroke of luck.”100
“It is as though, in our theory of how we came to exist, we are allowed to postulate a certain ration of luck.”101
While discussing theories of how bats and birds evolved flight, Richard Dawkins employs the following terms, “ … guess … might have … could be … guess … Perhaps … perhaps … The beauty of this theory is … the evolutionary story.”102
As to how the bee evolved the “dance” that it performs when it communicates to other bees that food has been found (and in which direction and how far it is), Richard Dawkins employs the terms, “plausible … suggests … would have … Perhaps … plausible … plausibility … plausible … might have … would have … It is not difficult to imagine … probably … plausible … plausible … plausible.”103
And concludes, “The story as I have told it … may not actually be the right one. But something a bit like it surely did happen.”104
In discussing his computer generated Biomorphs, Richard Dawkins concluded,
“ … when we are prevented from making a journey in reality, the imagination is not a bad substitute. For those, like me, who are not mathematicians, the computer can be a powerful friend to the imagination. Like mathematics, it doesn’t only stretch the imagination. It also disciplines and controls it.”105
Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall wrote:
“ … science is storytelling, albeit of a very special kind.”106 [italics in original]
Franklin M. Harold (Emeritus Professor of biochemistry at Colorado State University) wrote,
“ … we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”107
Glynn Isaac wrote:
“If any of the rest of the scientific community is inclined to snigger at the embarrassment of paleoanthropologists over all this [the identification of theory as narrative], pause and reflect. I bet that the same basic findings would apply to the origin of mammals, or of flowering plants, or of life … or even the big bang and the cosmos.”108
Richard Lewontin “does acknowledge that scientists inescapably rely on ‘rhetorical’ proofs (authority, tradition) for most of what they care about; they depend on theoretical assumptions unprovable by hard science, and their promises are often absurdly overblown … Only the most simple-minded and philosophically naive scientist, of whom there are many, thinks that science is characterized entirely by hard inference and mathematical proofs based on indisputable data.”109
Misia Landau has detected narratives parading as scientific theory. Following are some of her observations:
“Scientists are generally aware of the influence of theory on observation. Seldom do they recognize, however, that many scientific theories are essentially narratives … they may be unaware of the narrative presuppositions which inform their science … Multiple interpretations and ambiguity are no strangers to readers of evolutionary biology … by comparing the narrative ‘roles’ played by fossils, scientists may become more explicit about the subjective—and often highly imaginative—ways in which they reconstruct human ancestors.”110
“Metaphors cast powerful spells not only in everyday life but also in science … When Stern and Sussman say that ‘A. afarensis had traveled well down the road toward fulltime bipedality,’ not only do they speak in metaphor, they also tell a story.”111
“Paleoanthropologic literature is ‘thick with interpretation not about what the fossils look like but also about what they mean.’112
“the idealized image that scientists project of what they do: that elusive ‘objective search for the truth’.”113
“People always come up to me after my talk and say, ‘You should take a look at our science, I’m sure it’s going on there too.’ And this is from physicists, ecologists, even biochemists—all kinds of scientists.”114
“we can rephrase the question to ask whether there is any way to present an evolutionary or historical account that does not involve storytelling … Rather than avoid them, scientists might use them as they are used in literature, as a means of discovery and experimentation. Treating scientific theories as fictions may even be a way of arriving at new theories … In science, too, telling new stories will require skill as well as imagination.”115
Science journalist Roger Lewin wrote the following in quoting John Durant,
“Could it be that, like ‘primitive’ myths, theories of human evolution reinforce the value-system of their creators by reflecting historically their image of themselves and of the society in which they live?’…This is precisely what we would expect of a scientific myth.”116
Roger Lewin also notes that some of the greats of paleoanthropology in the 1920s and 1930s:
“considered themselves to have written scientific analyses of human evolution, they had in fact been telling stories. Scientific stories, to be sure, but stories nevertheless.”117
“paleoanthropology alone among all the sciences operates within the fourth dimension, with humanity’s self-image invisibly but constantly influencing the profession’s ethos.”118
“Clifford Jolly, a British researcher at New York University, proposed the new hypothesis in a new classic paper in 1970, titled simply, ‘The Seed Eaters’. The term ‘classic’ is used here, as in most fields of science, to mean that the paper is almost certainly wrong in every detail, except one: its underlying philosophy.”119
“The epic nature of much of this writing is evident from the tone of the language once one has been alerted to it.”120
So the atheists’ origins myth, evolution, is not really hard science at all, but some observations mixed with imaginative story telling.
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11 Atheism and physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and societal health
Taking into consideration just about any and every form of health: mental, emotional, physical and even societal, theists are healthier and happier than atheists (and, as we saw above, more charitable).
Taking into consideration just about any and every form of health: mental, emotional, physical and even societal, theists are healthier and happier than atheists (and, as we saw above, more charitable).
Many studies are cited as evidence in the next section.
11.1 Atheism and charity
The year 2008 and 2009 presented interesting examples of atheist concepts of “charity” (more accurately “donations”). Atheists in both the USA and London collected hundreds of thousands of dollars/pounds during a time of developing worldwide recession, not in order to help anyone in need, but in order to purchase bus ads and billboards to advertise just how clever they consider themselves.121
Very informative studies have been conducted in the area of charity; one particularly interesting one was conducted by a Syracuse University Professor of Public Administration (Ph.D. in economics). The study was reported upon as follows:
“ … values advocated by conservatives—from church attendance and two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services—make conservatives more generous than liberals. When it comes to helping the needy, Brooks[ 122 ] writes: ‘For too long, liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice’ … secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone’s tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don’t provide them with enough money … liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood. Harvey Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard University and 2004 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, does not know Brooks personally but has read the book. ‘His main finding is quite startling, that the people who talk the most about caring actually fork over the least,’ he said. ‘But beyond this finding I thought his analysis was extremely good, especially for an economist. He thinks very well about the reason for this and reflects about politics and morals in a way most economists do their best to avoid.’”123
Another report states:
“In 2000, religious people gave about three and a half times as much as secular people … religious conservatives are far more charitable than secular liberals, and that those who support the idea that government should redistribute income are among the least likely to dig into their own wallets to help others … religious people are more likely than the nonreligious to volunteer for secular charitable activities, give blood, and return money when they are accidentally given too much change. ‘There is not one measurably significant way I have ever found in which religious people are not more charitable than nonreligious people,’ Mr. Brooks says.
“Byron R. Johnson, a sociology professor and co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, says he recently gathered data that show similar results—such as high levels of civic engagement among religious people—while assembling a report on faith in America that was released in September [2006].
‘It was not surprising to me that the lil ol’ farmer in South Dakota outgave people in San Francisco’ …
households headed by a conservative give roughly 30 percent more to charity each year than households headed by a liberal, despite the fact that the liberal families on average earn slightly more …
“Most of the difference in giving among conservatives and liberals gets back to religion. Religious liberals give nearly as much as religious conservatives, Mr. Brooks found. And secular conservatives are even less generous than secular liberals … religious people, on average, give 54 percent more per year than secular people to human-welfare charities.”124
The Barna Group reported the following about atheists and agnostics:
“They are less likely than active-faith Americans to … volunteer to help a non-church-related non-profit … to describe themselves as ‘active in the community’ … and to personally help or serve a homeless or poor person …The typical no-faith American donated just $200 in 2006, which is more than seven times less than the amount contributed by the prototypical active-faith adult ($1500). Even when church-based giving is subtracted from the equation, active-faith adults donated twice as many dollars last year as did atheists and agnostics. In fact, while just 7% of active-faith adults failed to contribute any personal funds in 2006, that compares with 22% among the no-faith adults … atheists and agnostics were more likely than were Christians to be focused on … acquiring wealth …
[Barna Group President, David Kinnaman, stated] ‘Proponents of secularism suggest that rejecting faith is a simple and intelligent response to what we know today. Yet, most of the Americans who overtly reject faith harbor doubts about whether they are correct in doing so. Many of the most ardent critics of Christianity claim that compassion and generosity do not hinge on faith; yet those who divorce themselves from spiritual commitment are significantly less likely to help others.’”125
11.2 Atheism and suicide
“Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation. Unaffiliated subjects were younger, less often married, less often had children, and had less contact with family members.
“Furthermore, subjects with no religious affiliation perceived fewer reasons for living, particularly fewer moral objections to suicide. In terms of clinical characteristics, religiously unaffiliated subjects had more lifetime impulsivity, aggression, and past substance use disorder. No differences in the level of subjective and objective depression, hopelessness, or stressful life events were found.”126
11.3 Adult mortality
“Religious attendance is associated with U.S. adult mortality in a graded fashion: People who never attend exhibit 1.87 times the risk of death in the follow-up period compared with people who attend more than once a week. This translates into a seven-year difference in life expectancy at age 20 between those who never attend and those who attend more than once a week.
“Health selectivity is responsible for a portion of the religious attendance effect: People who do not attend church or religious services are also more likely to be unhealthy and, consequently, to die.
However, religious attendance also works through increased social ties and behavioral factors to decrease the risks of death. And although the magnitude of the association between religious attendance and mortality varies by cause of death, the direction of the association is consistent across causes.”127
“ … those [Mexican Americans aged 65 and older] who attend church once per week exhibit a 32% reduction in the risk of mortality as compared with those who never attend religious services. Moreover, the benefits of weekly attendance persist with controls for sociodemographic characteristics, cardiovascular health, activities of daily living, cognitive functioning, physical mobility and functioning, social support, health behaviors, mental health, and subjective health … Our findings suggest that weekly church attendance may reduce the risk of mortality among older Mexican Americans.”128
“In a nationwide cohort of Americans, predominantly Christians, analyses demonstrated a lower risk of death independent of confounders among those reporting religious attendance at least weekly compared to never.”129
11.4 Cause of death
“After adjusting for age and sex, infrequent (never or less than weekly) attenders had significantly higher rates of circulatory, cancer, digestive, and respiratory mortality (p < 0.05), but not mortality due to external causes. Differences in cancer mortality were explained by prior health status. Associations with other outcomes were weakened but not eliminated by including health behaviors and prior health status. In fully adjusted models, infrequent attenders had significantly or marginally significantly higher rates of death from circulatory … mortality … .These results are consistent with the view that religious involvement, like high socioeconomic status, is a general protective factor that promotes health through a variety of causal pathways.”130
11.5 Attitudes towards abortion
Photo wikipedia
Peter Singer
Atheist bioethicist, Peter Singer, is too humane to eat a hamburger and advocates giving rights to great apes, but has no qualms about infanticide.
In “ … an effort to determine changes occurring between 1968 and 1978 in the percentage who approved of legal abortion in Canada under 6 possible conditions of pregnancy” agnostic/atheist students were amongst the least likely to draw a distinction between the following conditions under which abortion would be considered, “1st set of conditions (harm to mother’s health, possible child deformity, pregnancy from rape) … 2nd set of conditions (out-of-wedlock pregnancy, economic inability to support child, unwanted child).”131
11.6 Christmas and happiness
“Religious people are happier than those without spirituality in their life, says psychologist Dr Stephen Joseph from the University of Warwick, and those who celebrate the original, Christian, meaning of Christmas are, on the whole, happier than those who primarily celebrate the festive season with consumer gifts. Research entitled ‘Religiosity and its association with happiness, purpose in life, and self-actualisation’ published in Mental Health, Religion and Culture reveals a positive relation between religiosity and happiness …
“Dr Stephen Joseph, from the University of Warwick, said: ‘Religious people seem to have a greater purpose in life, which is why they are happier. Looking at the research evidence, it seems that those who celebrate the Christian meaning of Christmas are on the whole likely to be happier. Research shows that too much materialism in our lives can be terrible for happiness.’ …
“Results showed that religious people are happier, and that the relation between religiosity and happiness is, in part, related to a sense of purpose in life.”132
11.7 Atheism and superstition
The Wall Street Journal provided the following report:
“From Hollywood to the academy, atheists are convinced that a decline in traditional religious belief would lead to a smarter, more scientifically literate and even more civilized populace. The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith—it’s what the empirical data tell us.
“‘What Americans Really Believe,’ a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians …
“While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things [dreams foretelling future, existence of Atlantis, haunting, necromancy, Bigfoot and Nessie], only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did … In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the possibility of communicating with people who are dead.
“This is not a new finding. In his 1983 book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, skeptic and science writer Martin Gardner cited the decline of traditional religious belief among the better educated as one of the causes for an increase in pseudoscience, cults and superstition. He referenced a 1980 study published in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer that showed irreligious college students to be by far the most likely to embrace paranormal beliefs, while born-again Christian college students were the least likely.
“Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn’t. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.”133
Interestingly, they further note,
“We can’t even count on self-described atheists to be strict rationalists. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s monumental ‘U.S. Religious Landscape Survey’ that was issued in June, 21% of self-proclaimed atheists believe in either a personal God or an impersonal force. Ten percent of atheists pray at least weekly and 12% believe in heaven.”
This seems rather bizarre, but many people who claim to believe in and even worship god(s) actually do not. For example, the spirituality expressed in the New Age movement is very much based on the interaction with impersonal “energy” which is known as ki, chi, prana, etc. New Agers are not as likely to refer to God in the traditional theistic manner but to “the universe”, “the life force”, our “higher selves”, “ascended masters”, etc. It may also be noteworthy that pantheism has, as far back as 1900 AD, been considered “a polite form of atheism” (as per Ernst Haeckel in “Monism” from his The Riddle of the Universe).
An earlier study published in Skeptical Inquirer of all places134 concluded that Bible-believers are the ones “who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today.”135
11.8 Atheism and society
Atheists claim that atheist (secularist) societies are superior in every way. Let us consider two such claims which made quite a splash on the internet:
One was touted by Ruth Gledhill in The Times of London article, Societies worse off when they have God on their side. She was writing a summary of the study in the Journal of Religion and Society by Gregory S. Paul entitled, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies.”136
Statistician, Scott Gilbreath, notes in his From our bulging How not to do statistics file that,
“ … the [Journal] article does not say what Ms Gledhill reports … Ruth Gledhill’s news report in the Times misrepresents the content of Mr Paul’s study.”
What then of the actual contents? Gilbreath wrote:
“The plan of the study is to gather and compare data for countries he refers to variously as ‘prosperous developed democracies’ and ‘developing democracies’. The definition of these terms is never discussed … Eighteen countries are included for data comparison; among those omitted without clear explanation are: Italy, Greece, Finland, Luxembourg, and Belgium.
“Why are these left out? He mentions in passing that ‘[t]he especially low rates [of homicide] in the more Catholic European states are statistical noise due to yearly fluctuations incidental to this sample’, but no statistical evidence corroborating this assertion is provided …
“Mr Paul’s sample frame appears arbitrary. Obviously, in a sample of eighteen observations, inclusion or exclusion of only one or two observations can make a big difference in the results … At best, this is very sloppy statistical practice. If one were suspicious, one might point out that this makes cooking the results child’s play.”
Gilbreath further wrote about who Gregory S. Paul is. It turns out that he is a “freelance paleontologist, author and illustrator” whom the Council for Secular Humanism recommends for debates with young-earth creationists. Gary Bouma, Professor of Sociology at Monash University in Melbourne, stated that Gregory S. Paul,
“ … doesn’t stick to his field of palaeontology, he goes into the field of what I would call sociology without preparation or evidence or discipline and make some assertions about it.”137
Furthermore, George Gallup noted,
“In order for the author’s bold claims against religious commitment contributing to society to hold true, he would have to refute the hundreds of volumes that have proven otherwise. From discussions on parenting and fatherhood, to mental and physical health, the weight of empirical evidence is against Paul’s assertions: religious commitment has notably positive effects on the individual and collective levels of human society.”
Particularly captivating is Gregory Rodriguez’s Los Angeles Times article about a study conducted by Northwestern University that “starts to provide data and insight” about “why humans believe. The study, by psychology professor Dan P. McAdams and researcher Michelle Albaugh, was aimed at finding out about the religious sources of political leanings.” While the study itself is fascinating, Gregory Rodriguez’s media-based conclusions are noteworthy:
“The fury of the debate between faith and atheism leaves little room for an inquiry as to why 90% of Americans say they believe in God or a supreme being and more than 40% say they attend religious services each week … The study analyzes the results mostly in terms of political divisions … The political findings are intriguing, but not nearly as interesting as the way the question and the answers it elicited get at deeper, core issues. It appears that we do believe out of need, but it’s not, as Marx suggested, primarily because of material deprivation. Instead, it looks as if faith answers fear, and many different kinds of fear, which we can begin to delineate in some detail … ”138
one need only look at the quality of life of people who have lived or live in states based on atheism to see that atheism is no basis for a just, caring, prosperous, secure society.
At the time of the writing, Rodriguez stated that “90% of Americans say they believe in God or a supreme being.” Now let us consider upon what, surely massive, sample group the study was based: the Los Angeles Times stated that the researchers “interviewed 128 devout Christians in and around Chicago.” North Western University actually states, “The Northwestern University study sample included 128 highly religious and politically active Americans who attend church regularly.”
Not only does the sample group represent a stunningly insignificant percentage of the population (or of the 90%), but it is a sample from a very limited locality. Certainly, “we learn a whole lot more if we just keep asking ourselves—in as many new ways as possible—why it is that so many of us feel compelled to pray.” And let us not forget to ask, “Why it is that so many of us feel compelled not to pray.” The previously mentioned Prof. Paul Vitz has provided some fascinating answers in his book, Faith of the Fatherless.
The article on the North Western University’s News and Information website is even blunter in its conclusions,
“Political conservatives operate out of a fear of chaos and absence of order while political liberals operate out of a fear of emptiness, a new Northwestern University study soon to be published in the Journal of Research in Personality finds.”
This framing, which appears to be the basic conclusion of the “study,” is a first-rate non sequitur: as Rodriguez puts it, “they asked their subjects to describe what their lives and the world would be like if they did not have faith” (whatever “faith” means here). Apparently, political conservatives think that it would result in lives/a world of chaos and absence of order and political liberals conceive operating out of a fear of emptiness. Yet, just because people believe chaos would result does not mean that this is why they have “faith.” Do we really know how “Political conservatives operate” based on 128 Chicagoans? One can perhaps come to various conclusions as to what it says about North Western University, the Los Angeles Times and perhaps a bit about the media and academia in general.
However, one need only look at the quality of life of people who have lived or live in states based on atheism to see that atheism is no basis for a just, caring, prosperous, secure society. Think about the various staunchly atheistic Communist states, such as Albania, Soviet Russia, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, etc. Or we could think of Nazi Germany. See below for more on the fruits of atheism in political systems.
11.9 Atheism and honesty
Atheism has no moral imperative for honesty so it is not surprising that atheists figure prominently in fraud and deception, although it is difficult to find statistics on this issue.
There are many examples just in the history of the promotion of evolution. A particularly notorious example is that of Ernst Haeckel, a “free thinker” (atheist) who fraudulently doctored drawings of embryos of various creatures to make them look almost identical and then claimed that this was evidence for evolution. He made at least two other fraudulent claims regarding the origin of life and a non-existent ape-man. He helped lay the foundations for Nazism in Germany.139
Staff of Creation Ministries International had their reputations sullied by a deeply dishonest campaign conducted by an Australian Humanist of the Year.
11.10 Incarceration
Vox Day wrote:
“I previously referenced the number of atheists being held by the prison system of England and Wales, where it is customary to record the religion of the prison population as part of the Inmate Information System. In the year 2000, there were 38,531 Christians of twenty-one different varieties imprisoned for their crimes, compared to only 122 atheists and sixty-two agnostics. As Europe in general and the United Kingdom in particular have become increasingly post-Christian, this would appear to be a damning piece of evidence proving the fundamentally criminal nature of theists while demonstrating that atheists are indeed more moral despite their lack of a sky god holding them to account.”140
“ … there also happened to be another 20,639 prisoners, 31.6 percent of the total prison population, who possessed ‘no religion’. And this was not simply a case of people falling through the cracks or refusing to provide an answer; the Inmate Information System is specific enough to distinguish between Druids, Scientologists, and Zoroastrians as well as between the Celestial Church of God, the Welsh Independent church, and the Non-Conformist church. It also features separate categories for ‘other Christian religion’, ‘other non-Christian religion’, and ‘not known’. At only two-tenths of a percent of the prison population, High Church atheists are, as previously suggested, extremely law-abiding. But when one compares the 31.6 percent of imprisoned no-religionists to the 15.1 percent of Britons who checked ‘none’ or wrote in Jedi Knight, agnostic, atheist, or heathen in the 2001 national survey, it becomes clear that their Low Church counterparts are nearly four times more likely to be convicted and jailed for committing a crime than a Christian.”141
His footnote states, “3.84 times more likely, to be precise. Census, April 2001, Office for National Statistics.”
11.11 Atheism, marriage and divorce
Michael Caputo, on Atheism and Divorce wrote:
“Very little else has produced as much euphoria in atheists than Christian researcher, George Barna’s announcement that Born Again and other Christians have a very high rate of divorce, while atheists have the lowest rate. Atheist web sites immediately announced the glorious news worldwide. The divorce rates they published were the following: Jews: 30%; Born Again Christians: 27%; other Christians: 24%; atheists only 21% ...
“Was George Barna quoted correctly?… Yet the survey found that the percentage of atheists and agnostics who have been married and divorced is 37%—very similar to the numbers for the born again population. [ref] [emphasis in original]
“The sample used by Barna was a bit less than 4000. Atheists and agnostics make up about 10% of the American population (2% being atheists). That means that about 400 of the people sampled were atheists/agnostics (About 80 being atheists). This is hardly a sufficient sample to reach any reliable conclusion …
“According to Barna, ‘Forty-two percent of adults who associate with a faith other than Christianity had co-habited, while atheists were the most likely to do so (51%).
“It is critical to stress that it is a well known fact that cohabiters experience a very high number of ‘breakups’ before getting married. ‘Millions of people … believe that cohabitation is a prelude to marriage. And for many, it is. However, Smock reports that 45% of cohabitations break up with no marriage. Another 10% continue cohabiting.’ [ref]
“Barna did not include this enlightening fact in his research. Thus, if 21% of atheists divorce after marriage, and 45 % break up once or more before marriage, what we have is the astounding rate of about 66% of atheist couples experiencing ‘at least’ one break up. If, however, the number is 37%, then we have a shocking figure of 82% …
“What needs mentioning is the fact that many atheists do not cohabit as a prelude to marriage. They in fact see cohabitation as ‘equivalent’ to any marriage relationship … These break ups were not included in the Barna research …
“The appellation ‘Christian’ a Christian does not make. There are great numbers of people in this world who call themselves ‘Christians’ but have never internalized the teachings of Jesus Christ …
“Recently the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has published its mammoth study on Religion in America based on 35,000 interviews. The results are quite enlightening in further elucidating the topic of atheism and divorce. According to the Pew Forum a whopping 37% of atheists never marry as opposed to 19% of the American population, 17% of Protestants and 17% of Catholics.(9) How enlightening… Not only do atheists cohabit and break up in very large numbers, they also do not marry in very large numbers.”142 [all emphasis by Caputo]
Vox Day further notes:
“the 2001 ARIS study … a much larger study that reaches precisely the opposite conclusion … according to ARIS 2001 more than half of all atheists and agnostics don’t get married … If one correctly excludes the never-married from the calculation, then atheists are 58.7 percent more likely to get divorced than Pentecostals and Baptists, the two born-again Christian groups with the highest rate of divorce, and more than twice as likely to get divorced than Christians in general.”143
