Do numbers lie?

B

BicPen

Registered Member
I see a lot of people here who believes in Yahweh and they think they have him all figured out. And I see a lot of atheists here who dismiss him.

According to statistics Christianity comes in with 2.1 participants, and Atheist with 1.1
So I have a question for the atheists: In the time we live in, if you only look at the biggest religious group, how can the number of the irrational believers be double the number rational thinkers? Surely there must be a reason for those numbers. would you suggest that 2.1 billion people blew exactly the same fuse to believe in the same god or how did that rumor start?
 
BicPen said:
I see a lot of people here who believes in Yahweh and they think they have him all figured out. And I see a lot of atheists here who dismiss him.

According to statistics Christianity comes in with 2.1 participants, and Atheist with 1.1 So I have a question for the atheists: In the time we live in, if you only look at the biggest religious group, how can the number of the irrational believers be double the number rational thinkers? Surely there must be a reason for those numbers. would you suggest that 2.1 billion people blew exactly the same fuse to believe in the same god or how did that rumor start?
Click to expand...

*************
M*W: Where did you find these statistics?

The differences in numbers between christians and atheists
are the result of christians being brainwashed and atheists using the logic and reason of their own minds to rationalize their position on religion.

BTW, where are your numbers for non-christians? They totally outweigh christians between 67-75% Christians in the world number 25-33% (give or take a few million who claim to be christians but don't practice their faith). Christianity is dying worldwide, so the numbers, they will be a'changin.
 
people only think what they think because of what they're used to. if there is a god, and he has a sense of humor, he'd be looking down at all of us and laughing at all the irrational and extraneous theories and beliefs we come up with.

we are all wrong, deal with it--that's why we take a leap of faith and thats why we also question it. can't have one side without the other.
 
Medicine Woman said:
*************
M*W: Where did you find these statistics?

The differences in numbers between christians and atheists
are the result of christians being brainwashed and atheists using the logic and reason of their own minds to rationalize their position on religion.

BTW, where are your numbers for non-christians? They totally outweigh christians between 67-75% Christians in the world number 25-33% (give or take a few million who claim to be christians but don't practice their faith). Christianity is dying worldwide, so the numbers, they will be a'changin.
Click to expand...


Don't dismiss the obvious like Christians always do. It is obvious that there must be a valid reason why there are so many religious people with such specific believes.Like where does the bible fit in? Who wrote it and why?
 
BicPen said:
So I have a question for the atheists: In the time we live in, if you only look at the biggest religious group, how can the number of the irrational believers be double the number rational thinkers?
Click to expand...

A lot of the premise in the question is not correct. Atheists can hold irrational beliefs just like theists. My observation is that atheists tend to wield evidence-based thinking more than theists.

If the question were refactored to ask something along the lines of, 'how come there are more theists than atheists?' then you have a good question. Part of theism is religion and that is a complex method of human relationship. All the participants of a religion share resources and act as a unified power. Atheism has no religion counterpart and has been divided as a result in terms of resources and power. From a survival standpoint, theism therefore promotes survival much better than atheism and has historically been a better choice for very long time... to the point where humans are probably genetically inclined to 'believe' because that was historically a necessary trait. This is why there are more theists.

Now we're in a time where education, separation of church and state, religious diversity, anti-religious descrimination law, etc. have an infrastructure to persist and grow. This has been reducing and diluting the power of theism, but its still in its infancy; hence, it will be a while before atheism becomes dominant (I suspect it will require a non-magical religion counterpart to really take a foothold).
 
Like where does the bible fit in? Who wrote it and why?
Click to expand...

My personal opinion on this after reading the bible is that the majority of the told testament was written down after the return from Babylon for nationalistic purposes.

I'm sure portions of it pre-existed in some form or another, but each was likely altered at this time to fit the nationalistic need of the recently freed jewish peoples. Hence the focus on the early hebrews being slaves, etc...

Also, it seems likely that even the earlier portions of the bible were written for reasons of nationalism. The Books of the Law being found in the temple by... forget his name.. starts with a J. This was a few generations after Solomon...
Anyway.
Up until this time, apparently, the hebrew people hadn't been following the torah... it had to be 'discovered'.

The New Testament, of course, was written a few centuries after the time it purports to write about, and was written to again provide a framework for a new form of nationalism. But, nationalism no longer works as the word has spread beyond the borders of any one nation and now reaches out to an arbitrary class of people called 'Christians'.


It's all about control and motivation from cover to cover.
Fragments of truth buried in mountains of embellishment and spin.


As to numbers.
They don't need to lie.
Whoever presents the numbers in an ordered presentation is quite capable of doing all the lying necessary.
 
So I have a question for the atheists: In the time we live in, if you only look at the biggest religious group, how can the number of the irrational believers be double the number rational thinkers?
Click to expand...

First; welcome to sciforums! I'ts been noted that I'm one rude sob, so bare with me! k!

When an argument comes from ignorance, that is the apparently fallacy of religious nutters. Cause their lack of evidence of their claims. This is called
Argumentum ad Ignorantiam-An appeal to ignorance is an argument for or against a proposition on the basis of a lack of evidence against or for it. If there is positive evidence for the conclusion, then of course we have other reasons for accepting it, but a lack of evidence by itself is no evidence.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html

And since you make the assumption that there's so many Christians here, that their argument is valid. Again this is a logical fallacy red herring:
This is the most general fallacy of irrelevance. Any argument in which the premisses are logically unrelated to the conclusion commits this fallacy. and the sub fallacy of Argument by Consensus.

What that well means is that your argument is moot, fallacious, and the point you want to make, is that if there's so many beliers in the world, perhaps they are right, and we atheists, since we number in less are wrong.

Fallacies been noted!
 
Last edited:
Self-consciousness is communal consciousness; it is dependent on the fact of otherness. Mechanism does not and cannot account for this sense of otherness. “The observer cannot be the thing observed; evaluation demands some degree of transcendence of [or separation from] the thing which is evaluated.” If consciousness were unapart from matter, it would be a mechanism; it would be unable to entertain concepts of truth, goodness and beauty—none of which are inherent in either physics or chemistry. Believing that the problem of consciousness is, or can be, resolved through science is not evidence-based thinking. Consciousness is not now, nor is it ever likely to ever be, explained in terms of matter. A hundred or a thousand years from now, it is far more likely that matter will be explained in terms of consciousness rather than the other way around. This will (I hope) thoroughly dismantle the traditionalized and dogmatized religions that I adamantly oppose notwithstanding my theistic point of view.
 
Godless, thanx for your warm welcome :)

Godless said:
What that well means is that your argument is moot, fallacious, and the point you want to make, is that if there's so many beliers in the world, perhaps they are right, and we atheists, since we number in less are wrong.
Click to expand...

And thank you for your much needed explanation as I only have English as a second language... so please bare with ME ;)

I would like to point out that no instant I argued that "perhaps they are right". What I am trying to argue is that a certain amount of ignorance is to be found at both Christians and Atheists (a bit more at Christians of course)

What i would like to get at is that we shouldn't dismiss the bible entirely. Are you familiar with writer Alan F. Alford and his book Gods of the new millennium? He proposes the possibility of flesh and blood gods...Aliens if you will. He supports his theory with discoveries made over the last hundred years, of tens of thousands of clay tablets excavated in ancient mesopotamia (Iraq) dating back to 6,000 years ago.

"These clay tablets contain a wealth of information from the earliest civilisations, all of which believed in a bewildering variety of different gods. As a result of linguistic studies, it is now widely recognised that the original source of these ancient tablets (which I will call texts ) were the Sumerian accounts, dating from the beginning of that civilisation in approximately 3800 BC. The existence of that civilisation, the existence of thousands of clay tablets and their translation is not in dispute. Thanks to these archaeological and linguistic studies." - Alan F. Alford
 
If you recall the bell curve, most of the population is not that bright.

Never forget the bell curve when you think about trends. ;)
 
So I have a question for the atheists: In the time we live in, if you only look at the biggest religious group, how can the number of the irrational believers be double the number rational thinkers? Surely there must be a reason for those numbers. would you suggest that 2.1 billion people blew exactly the same fuse to believe in the same god or how did that rumor start?
Click to expand...

I would find it somewhat of relevance to quote a Dire Straits line:

"First came the churches, then came the schools.." (Telegraph Road)

Since time immemorial people have 'taught', (indoctrinated), others into believing these things. While we might now have some freedom of belief - the same was not true throughout large portions of history. As a result it has become so entrenched in society that people just go along with it as default. You'll find a large portion of those 'christians' are merely christian by name and don't probably even have much of an opinion as to whether there is a god or not. They're like branded cattle, (as I suppose we all are in our own ways).

There are two main ways that a person becomes religious:

1) They were raised into it

2) They had some 'life changing' event occur that made believing in gods essential to their own wellbeing. Born agains will regale you with stories of how they were on the edge of death when 'god came to them'. Being under such emotional trauma, (be it a car crash or a spiralling alcohol problem), the brain gives these people what they need - an addiction that isn't in and of itself harmful.

This is why there are so many religious people. Whether a god exists or not is of little to no relevance. A theist doesn't search for evidence to support his god, he just believes it. A child born and raised into theism doesn't check for evidence to support existence of his god, he just believes it.

It fills a part of life that most people seemingly need.
 
This just proves what I have been saying: most people are idiots...

P.S.: ...including the OP, who applied to the opinion of majority, which is a common logical fallacy...
 
And thank you for your much needed explanation as I only have English as a second language... so please bare with ME
Click to expand...

That's ok, however these fallacies have nothing to do with your use of the English language, they are "logical fallacies"

I would like to point out that no instant I argued that "perhaps they are right". What I am trying to argue is that a certain amount of ignorance is to be found at both Christians and Atheists (a bit more at Christians of course)
Click to expand...

I don't think ignorance is really the issue. The issue is acceptance of unsupportable claims, ignorance is simply not knowing something, however accepting assertions without one shred of evidence is plainly irrational. Atheists sometimes do support claims with no evidence or very little supportive evidence, or disputable evidence..However the only thing in common is that atheists don't accept religious dogma. Other than that we are plainly original people, some fascists, some liberals, some democrats, conservatives, what ever, the only commonality is our lack of faith in religious rhetoric.

What i would like to get at is that we shouldn't dismiss the bible entirely.
Click to expand...

I think we know the bible more than some theists, we certainly read it more often it appears, so we are not dismissing it, we are critically examining it's content, and making objective, rational, and logical decisions to dismiss the dogma of religion. It is said in some circles, "the bible is an atheist best weapon" ;)

Are you familiar with writer Alan F. Alford and his book Gods of the new millennium? He proposes the possibility of flesh and blood gods...Aliens if you will. He supports his theory with discoveries made over the last hundred years, of tens of thousands of clay tablets excavated in ancient mesopotamia (Iraq) dating back to 6,000 years ago.
Click to expand...

Can't say I'm familiar with Alan's work, but it sounds to me very unlikely.

These clay tablets contain a wealth of information from the earliest civilisations, all of which believed in a bewildering variety of different gods. As a result of linguistic studies, it is now widely recognised that the original source of these ancient tablets (which I will call texts ) were the Sumerian accounts, dating from the beginning of that civilisation in approximately 3800 BC. The existence of that civilisation, the existence of thousands of clay tablets and their translation is not in dispute. Thanks to these archaeological and linguistic studies." - Alan F. Alford
Click to expand...

interesting, got a link?
 
Self-consciousness is communal consciousness; it is dependent on the fact of otherness. Mechanism does not and cannot account for this sense of otherness. “The observer cannot be the thing observed; evaluation demands some degree of transcendence of [or separation from] the thing which is evaluated.”
Click to expand...

Very good, now take that statement above and apply it to god! How can an entity manifest it self consciously out of nothing, and deem itself a god of some sort, if the only consciousness in existence is it of in it self? ;)

If consciousness were unapart from matter, it would be a mechanism; it would be unable to entertain concepts of truth, goodness and beauty—none of which are inherent in either physics or chemistry.
Click to expand...

Right you are, apply that analogy to god as well!

Believing that the problem of consciousness is, or can be, resolved through science is not evidence-based thinking. Consciousness is not now, nor is it ever likely to ever be, explained in terms of matter.
Click to expand...

I never considered consciousness a problem! However explaining it, is simple process of critical investigation of the evolution of mind. Consciousness as we know it today is very different from primitive consciousness of ancient humans, complex societies arose, making our consciousness expand to what it is today, in order to survive amongst other societies and trade goods or what not. Basically you need a bit more education and critical thinking about the process of mental evolution! This is a good book I picked once on the subject, it's theoretical of course, but since you are inquiring if consciousness could ever be explained, before claiming that it will never possibly be explained you should understand and familiarize your self with what we do already know, or theorize:
http://www.julianjaynes.org/bicameralmind.php

This will (I hope) thoroughly dismantle the traditionalized and dogmatized religions that I adamantly oppose notwithstanding my theistic point of view.
Click to expand...

Stick around here long enough and you'd be an atheist all over again. At least this time with a bit more critical thinking! :p
 
Not a chance, Godless

Not a chance, Godles. Ever hear of the Integrated Theory of Intelligence? You can get the e-book free online. Uh...don't bother if science isn't your bag.
 
No matter how many people believe a foolish idea, it is still a foolish idea. One does not find truth by counting votes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top