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View Full Version : Atheism on the rise? False. Atheism is declining worldwide and Islam is growing



SSHorror
03-05-2016, 07:31 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSqJo7OW1YU

While it seems that Christianity is declining in a few western countries with the non-religious on the rise, atheism isn't actually growing. Many of those who identify as "non-religious" are actually theists or even practice religion in some way still. Meanwhile, in East Asia (where atheism is prominent because of the communist atheist governments suppressing religious freedom and attempting to halt the practice of religion) we see that there's a huge growth of Christianity and that the atheism and non-religion there is expected to considerably decline in the next few years. Meanwhile Islam is expected to continue to grow in Europe.

These statistics come from The Pew Research Centre's research titled "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010 - 2050" and I thought it was worth sharing here. We often hear from atheist know-it-alls on the internet that "religion is dying" and will die in this lifetime to be replaced with a global atheism but these statistics show that they are living in a fantasy world. Theism is still the majority belief and next to it, religions are still going strong. The irony is that we see that atheism is declining from the minority it currently is which is contrary to the proclamations of many atheists.

When we examine history, we find that anti-theism and atheism aren't actually anything new. It existed in the time of the ancients with several ancient Greek philosophers engaging in debates about atheism. The arguments for atheism haven't changed since which might explain why atheism can't grow beyond being a minority. Back then it was a minority too and remains as such today.

What I find most amusing is the constant declaration from atheists that religion and indeed, belief in God is close to dying out and that this is imminent. It's amusing because this exact claim has been made since the Age of Enlightenment which was three centuries ago, with no statistics showing that this will ever come true. In his book "The Psychology of Atheism" the psychologist Miguel Farias notes that several surveys and statistics suggests that atheists "deconvert" from belief in religion or God as adolescences particularly when they are "emotionally volatile" and that their reasons for being atheist aren't normally rational but rather motivational. When we examine all the "great" arguments for atheism, we find that most of them centre upon emotional arguments for atheism (i.e "bad things happen, God doesn't stop them ergo there is no god"). This combined with the aforementioned research, simply reinforces a position long held by many philosophers that atheism is not rooted in reason as its adherents claim but rather it is rooted in emotion. Theism on the otherhand is rooted in reason with its arguments all mostly being philosophical that base themselves on what is observable and what follows a pattern (i.e First Cause argument, The Five Way, Prime Mover etc) and in fact, research conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago has even shown that many start to believe in God as they grow older and are more mentally mature which is in contrast to those who become atheist at young ages. http://www.norc.org/PDFs/Beliefs_about_God_Report.pdf

The final recourse atheists have for their atheism is to claim that "there is no evidence for God" citing absence of evidence, not aware of how this can be applied to atheism's position which demands that the universe came from nothing (something which is not testable by scientific method or observable) and also unaware of how such a belief can be applied to God. If the universe could come from nothing then why couldn't God to create the universe? We see that atheism's own position is rather self-destroying when its own logic can be used against it.
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