Why The Dude Converted

[Subfallen]

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Subfallen, The numbers I have always heard batted around were:

40% - Theists
40% - Athiests
20% - Agnostics

I'm curious where you got the 90% athiest figure?


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LOL, yes I suppose it's just a coincidence that >90% of scientists are atheists.

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I have no idea who "batted" those numbers around for you. As I posted earlier in this very thread:

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E.g. the '97 Nature survey of the US National Academy of Science gave a 93% atheist figure.

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And, again, the more prestigious the qualifications you demand of your sampled scientists, the fewer will be theists.

[AJackson]

Good post.

My background is similar to yours and so was my 'conversion'. In the end, and it was years of study and thought, I found that there was no evidence for God's existence, so it came down to probability. Is it more or less likely that everything we see happened by chance or that there exists an omnipotent being who one day decided to create all this?

Seemed pretty clear cut to me.

There could well be god like entities out there just like there could be unicorns, elves and big foot. In my view, if they are out there, they are absent from our daily lives and if they wish for me to believe in them, then need to take a moment and let me know

It's weird, after I became an atheist I found I was a much better person. Instead of my morality coming from an outside source and me following through fear of punishment, my moral code comes from within and I take a lot of pride in being known as a man of my word and someone who can be trusted with anything.

[LouBlue]

Thanks. I think I missed your original post, or just missed the reference. May be the same survey we're talking about.

"60% responded, a figure considered high for any surveys. Of those, 40% expressed belief in a deity, while nearly 45% did not. Larson's survey also discovered that physicists were less likely to have such faith, while mathematicians were significantly more likely to believe in a supreme being, as defined by Leuba."

I think the numbers you are referring to may have been when asked about their belief in a "personal" god:

"When queried about belief in "personal god," only 7% responded in the affirmative, while 72.2% expressed "personal disbelief," and 20.8% expressed "doubt or agnosticism."

Those quotes above are pulled off the page you linked to...

So, we're looking at similar numbers. ... About 40% of scientists believe that God exists, but only about a quarter of them believe in a personal god, if I'm reading that correctly.

HERE is a more recent survey that's interesting. I'm not familiar with The Chronicle of Higher Education, but here's the article from the link:

Many Academic Scientists Consider Themselves 'Spiritual,' Survey Finds
By THOMAS BARTLETT
A survey of scientists at elite universities shows that most consider themselves "spiritual," and many say that their faith influences their interactions with students and colleagues.
More than 1,600 professors of natural and social sciences answered questions about their religious and spiritual beliefs. The findings belie the stereotype that all scientists are atheists, according to Elaine Howard Ecklund, the study's author and an assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
"These scientists are less religious than the general public, but they are a whole lot more interested in spirituality than I thought they would be," said Ms. Ecklund.
Particularly surprising to Ms. Ecklund was that 66 percent of natural scientists think of themselves as spiritual (as do 69 percent of social scientists). Even among scientists who are atheists, 22 percent say they consider themselves spiritual.
Ms. Ecklund concludes that, for many scientists, spirituality has replaced religion. The distinction between the two concepts, in the view of some of the scientists surveyed, is that religion is more "judgmental" or controlling, whereas spirituality is more "flexible and personal."
Survey respondents noted that students bring up religious topics in academic settings. Some science professors prefer to suppress such discussions, but others indicated that they want more resources available to help them learn how to discuss religion in the classroom. "Scientists said to me, 'Science is at stake if we don't learn how to deal with these issues,'" Ms. Ecklund said.





[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Subfallen, The numbers I have always heard batted around were:

40% - Theists
40% - Athiests
20% - Agnostics

I'm curious where you got the 90% athiest figure?


[ QUOTE ]


LOL, yes I suppose it's just a coincidence that >90% of scientists are atheists.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

I have no idea who "batted" those numbers around for you. As I posted earlier in this very thread:

[ QUOTE ]
E.g. the '97 Nature survey of the US National Academy of Science gave a 93% atheist figure.

[/ QUOTE ]
And, again, the more prestigious the qualifications you demand of your sampled scientists, the fewer will be theists.

[/ QUOTE ]

[LouBlue]

If we're both referring to the Nature survey, which it sounds like we are, then the numbers have stayed pretty constant in the 80 years between the original survey and the one in 97. I found this quote when I did a Google search:

In the US, according to a survey published in Nature in 1997, four out of 10 scientists believe in God. Just over 45% said they did not believe, and 14.5% described themselves as doubters or agnostics. This ratio of believers to non-believers had not changed in 80 years.

[LouBlue]

Not that this proves anything really. You can find plenty of Atheists who will point to the survey and say that it proves that if you're smart you're more likely not to believe in God. On the other hand, theists will point to the same survey and argue just the opposite.

I have read in a number of places that the existence of God can't really be addressed by science. I'll go see if I can dig up some quotes to that effect. It's 1 a.m. here. Gonna head to bed.

[ConstantineX]

Just because there is evidence on both sides of the issue doesn't mean they should be equally weighted. You see this sort of fallcious argument in the global warming debate, as well. There is a plethora of literature showing that scientists are more likely to be atheist than not.

[Subfallen]

Yeah, I admit I tend to use a religious definition of theism...that is, theism as part of a theological system that assumes a personal God. (Not to mention, a general monopoly on truth!)

When you start playing with non-dogmatic ideas like "spirituality" you're definitely going to see broader interest. But a traditionally religious person would not consider these semi-mystical beliefs as efficacious to salvation; and thus not functionally different than atheism.

[ConstantineX]

By the way, the differences in statistics comes from measuring a broader group of people. The scientists in the survey Subfallen refers to are in the National Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious institutions a scientist can get elected to. Yours is a broader survey.

[bernie]

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It's weird, after I became an atheist I found I was a much better person. Instead of my morality coming from an outside source and me following through fear of punishment, my moral code comes from within and I take a lot of pride in being known as a man of my word and someone who can be trusted with anything.

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This is sorta the question I was asking Dude as far as feeling more free thought-wise.

This is how I felt when/while I was deciding my path. Of course, not everyone who's in a religion is that judgemental, many are cool anyways, but I found I could really spot the hypocrisies/hangups in alot of them.

b

[LouBlue]

Well, the one he quoted indicated that 40% believe that God exists, 45% believe there is no god, and 15% say that they aren't sure ... Essentially the same numbers as the survey when it was done 80 years earlier.

There's a common saying, "Seeing is believing." In the gospel of John, it sort of gets turned on its head. It doesn't explicitly say it, but teaches that believing is seeing.

An example of that is when some people came to him and said basically, "Show us a miracle, so we can believe..." However, the context was that he had just performed a miracle.

My point, which I may not be making well, is that we all do that to some degree. We make up our mind on something, then we look at the facts in a way that justifies our decision. Dude, for example, had never deeply questioned his faith before. When he did, he made a decision that there is no god. Having made that decision, everything he looks at points to the logic behind his decision.

On the other hand, there's a guy who goes by Rick_Bays on Full Contact Poker's forum who's an exceptionally articulate defender of his Christian faith. The interesting thing about him is that he didn't grow up in the church but became a Christian and later in life had some sort of crisis of faith that eventually led him to an even stronger faith.

Either one now looks at the world from a certain perspective. They *believe* certain things to be true, and they *see* things based on what they believe.

Dude may have been open minded at one point in time, but he's not now. He has made his decision and now is headed down the path he has chosen.

Despite what any of us want to say, we can't be completely open minded. There are some who are, and they don't get much accomplished, because they have terribly difficult times making decisions about anything.


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By the way, the differences in statistics comes from measuring a broader group of people. The scientists in the survey Subfallen refers to are in the National Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious institutions a scientist can get elected to. Yours is a broader survey.

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