Leaning Towards Atheism

I am not going to say whether or not I am atheist or theist, but I think a fundamental part of our society has changed. Recently I have noticed that people have started to lean more towards atheism than christianity in several settings. I am currently in college, so my main source of experience is in a collegiate setting, but I have noticed that many people have began to equate greater intellect with atheism. It is interesting to watch christians because many of them will just drop their religion at the drop of a hat because they feel like they are doing the "smart" thing. I guess people believing or not believing in something for a stupid reason is not a new development or anything, but I just think it is funny, based on American history, that we have now evolved to this stage. In this case many christians are trying to fit in so they just drop christianity so they can seem like the smart, or dominant, people. FYI I go to a fairly liberal university, I am not sure if conservative universities are like this at all.

P.S. I am a psych major, so I this is my area of study.

I am not going to say whether or not I am atheist or theist, but I think a fundamental part of our society has changed. Recently I have noticed that people have started to lean more towards atheism than christianity in several settings. I am currently in college, so my main source of experience is in a collegiate setting, but I have noticed that many people have began to equate greater intellect with atheism. It is interesting to watch christians because many of them will just drop their religion at the drop of a hat because they feel like they are doing the "smart" thing. I guess people believing or not believing in something for a stupid reason is not a new development or anything, but I just think it is funny, based on American history, that we have now evolved to this stage. In this case many christians are trying to fit in so they just drop christianity so they can seem like the smart, or dominant, people. FYI I go to a fairly liberal university, I am not sure if conservative universities are like this at all.

P.S. I am a psych major, so I this is my area of study.

Here's my two cents. Atheism and true religion are closer than one might expect. Much of religious belief is idolatry in my book. If God is nothing but a proposition, then what's all the fuss about?
Apophatic theology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am not going to say whether or not I am atheist or theist, but I think a fundamental part of our society has changed. Recently I have noticed that people have started to lean more towards atheism than christianity in several settings. I am currently in college, so my main source of experience is in a collegiate setting, but I have noticed that many people have began to equate greater intellect with atheism. It is interesting to watch christians because many of them will just drop their religion at the drop of a hat because they feel like they are doing the "smart" thing. I guess people believing or not believing in something for a stupid reason is not a new development or anything, but I just think it is funny, based on American history, that we have now evolved to this stage. In this case many christians are trying to fit in so they just drop christianity so they can seem like the smart, or dominant, people. FYI I go to a fairly liberal university, I am not sure if conservative universities are like this at all.

P.S. I am a psych major, so I this is my area of study.

As with Christians, there are going to be atheists who 'believe in it because that's what my religion/ideology tells me to believe'. There could be a correlation between intellect and atheism, though that doesn't mean atheism implies intelligence.

This article may be helpful: Times Higher Education - High IQ turns academics into atheists

It is interesting to watch christians because many of them will just drop their religion at the drop of a hat because they feel like they are doing the "smart" thing.

I guess people believing or not believing in something for a stupid reason is not a new development or anything...

In this case many christians are trying to fit in so they just drop christianity so they can seem like the smart, or dominant, people.

"correlate" is a better word.

Here is some data.

Intelligence & Religion

---------- Post added 06-05-2010 at 02:17 PM ----------



What does it even mean to say that atheism implies intelligence? :surrender:

Why can't it be because they've examined the evidence and found that there is no reason to believe in Christianity or God?

Leaning Towards Atheism is a Natural progression towards the Natural belief in our very Humanity

inotherwords

Humanity becomes , as it should be , our focal point

it is the growth of Humanity , the maturity of Humanity , the intelligence of Humanity , which leads to the progress of thought or thinking along these lines

Well the point of this post was not to say that atheists are necessarily more intelligent, but to show a trend that I have noticed. There are actually starting to be people switching to atheism based on the fact that they want to fit in and seem "intelligent." This is an interesting development because it shows that atheismm has spread to the point that people are joining it without thinking, not that everyone who becomes atheist has not thought about it. Its funny because religions in the world all have a pattern:
1. Someone writes or "finds" a scripture or belief system
2. Starts to preach it
3. People start to truly believe and follow what the people are preaching
4. the religion gets so big that people start to convert to it not because they believe in it, but because it will give them friends and something to talk about in their spare time, i. e. how they saw the light(even though they really have not.) The religion has to get fairly big for this step to happen.
5. The religion gets so big that there is a backlash and people start to convert away from it
Im am not saying that there are not differences in this pattern between religions, but this is the main, general one.
Christianity is a good example of this pattern. According to the bible and later history we have the pattern of the growth of christianity is similar to this.
Well, it looks like atheism is now also falling into this pattern, which I find as an interesting development.

---------- Post added 06-05-2010 at 10:46 AM ----------


I am not saying that every person who becomes atheist has not thought about it. I know for a fact that most of them have, I just also know many who converted to atheism on a fly without thinking about it.

On this thread, correlation is being equivocated with causation. People are looking at statistics and trying to say something about them. I am sure there are whole textbooks dedicated to making it clear that these two are not even remotely similar (and maybe a case could even be made against causality).

Regardless, I'll cite some history: Kepler was an astrologer, Newton was an alchemist and into black magic, even Einstein was asked to be the President of Israel. So, I am not sure what higher intelligence people are recognizing...

Oh, and Jesus was raised a Jew.