http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... ty/276584/

When a Christian foundation interviewed college nonbelievers about how and why they left religion, surprising themes emerged.

"Church became all about ceremony, handholding, and kumbaya," Phil said with a look of disgust. "I missed my old youth pastor. He actually knew the Bible."

I have known a lot of atheists. The late Christopher Hitchens was a friend with whom I debated, road tripped, and even had a lengthy private Bible study. I have moderated Richard Dawkins and, on occasion, clashed with him. And I have listened for hours to the (often unsettling) arguments of Peter Singer and a whole host of others like him. These men are some of the public faces of the so-called "New Atheism," and when Christians think about the subject -- if they think about it at all -- it is this sort of atheist who comes to mind: men whose unbelief is, as Dawkins once proudly put it, "militant." But Phil, the atheist college student who had come to my office to share his story, was of an altogether different sort.

Phil was in my office as part of a project that began last year. Over the course of my career, I have met many students like Phil. It has been my privilege to address college students all over the world, usually as one defending the Christian worldview. These events typically attract large numbers of atheists. I like that. I find talking to people who disagree with me much more stimulating than those gatherings that feel a bit too much like a political party convention, and the exchanges with these students are mostly thoughtful and respectful. At some point, I like to ask them a sincere question:

What led you to become an atheist?

[...]

Phil's story, while unique in its parts, was on the whole typical of the stories we would hear from students across the country. Slowly, a composite sketch of American college-aged atheists began to emerge and it would challenge all that we thought we knew about this demographic. Here is what we learned:

They had attended church

Most of our participants had not chosen their worldview from ideologically neutral positions at all, but in reaction to Christianity. Not Islam. Not Buddhism. Christianity.

The mission and message of their churches was vague

These students heard plenty of messages encouraging "social justice," community involvement, and "being good," but they seldom saw the relationship between that message, Jesus Christ, and the Bible. Listen to Stephanie, a student at Northwestern: "The connection between Jesus and a person's life was not clear." This is an incisive critique. She seems to have intuitively understood that the church does not exist simply to address social ills, but to proclaim the teachings of its founder, Jesus Christ, and their relevance to the world. Since Stephanie did not see that connection, she saw little incentive to stay. We would hear this again.

etc etc.

I thought it was an interesting perspective.

If you've known a lot of atheists and actually debated some of the more famous then the demographic shouldn't consist of anything unusual I would think.

Have you ever kept track of how many debates you've actually won? Especially when up against the big guns. In the few I've attended or witnessed, it seems that the demeanor of atheist debaters is one of placidity whereas theists tend to become agitated quite easily. As for me, my signature says it all.

petwo wrote:If you've known a lot of atheists and actually debated some of the more famous then the demographic shouldn't consist of anything unusual I would think.

Have you ever kept track of how many debates you've actually won? Especially when up against the big guns. In the few I've attended or witnessed, it seems that the demeanor of atheist debaters is one of placidity whereas theists tend to become agitated quite easily. As for me, my signature says it all.

Let me make it clear: I'm not religious, and to the extent that I'm a theist, I think at best "deist" would be accurate to describe a rough outline of my thinking about the world.

I do love having debates, but I've never had anything like a "formal" one over a specific assertion or whatever, and as such the "win" condition is ambiguous.

I have two favorite religious people to chew stuff over with; one who is very calm, and one who is easily agitated. I've also attended a largely non-religious current events and philosophy discussion group, and they seemed pretty evenly divided between people who are easily agitated and people who are chill.

I for one am invariably chill, but I try to conduct myself in a way that keeps easily agitated people calm and interested; I like keeping people in a discussion/debate.

Deist as in creator without interaction. How would you know those things about the deity when it's just a belief? I notice most god beliefs contain codicils. Why can't just you just believe there's a god and be done about it?

petwo wrote:Deist as in creator without interaction. How would you know those things about the deity when it's just a belief? I notice most god beliefs contain codicils. Why can't just you just believe there's a god and be done about it?

I don't think I made any claims to knowledge about deities.

I think that to the extent that the universe is created, if it's created, there's no apparent compelling evidence for interference in the day-to-day goings-on of reality.

Loren Michael wrote:

petwo wrote:Deist as in creator without interaction. How would you know those things about the deity when it's just a belief? I notice most god beliefs contain codicils. Why can't just you just believe there's a god and be done about it?

I don't think I made any claims to knowledge about deities.

I think that to the extent that the universe is created, if it's created, there's no apparent compelling evidence for interference in the day-to-day goings-on of reality.

Sorry if I was misunderstood. I should have said how would anyone know things about a deity when it's just a belief.

The claims I'm referring to are the attachments, such as non-interfering, to a belief in a god or whatever you want to call a Supreme Being. As a deist do you not focus on some type of special relationship between a god and its universe? In many cases people see this as direct fact when all along it's merely speculation on top of more speculation. Is there a theist religion that prefaces their belief with the statement, "This is only a guess but..."?

petwo wrote:As a deist do you not focus on some type of special relationship between a god and its universe?

No; that's why I chose the word deist. My understanding is that it implies a lack of any special relationship.

Loren Michael wrote:

petwo wrote:As a deist do you not focus on some type of special relationship between a god and its universe?

No; that's why I chose the word deist. My understanding is that it implies a lack of any special relationship.

So you believe there is a god but other than that, there's nothing anyone can say about it? I think I understand where you're at, it's just that I always thought Deism was a little more than that. No problem.

Inevitably you must get asked why you think a god exists. Basically, is all you can answer be, 'I just do''?

petwo wrote:

Loren Michael wrote:

petwo wrote:As a deist do you not focus on some type of special relationship between a god and its universe?

No; that's why I chose the word deist. My understanding is that it implies a lack of any special relationship.

So you believe there is a god but other than that, there's nothing anyone can say about it? I think I understand where you're at, it's just that I always thought Deism was a little more than that. No problem.

Inevitably you must get asked why you think a god exists. Basically, is all you can answer be, 'I just do''?

I wouldn't even say that I believe there's a god; I think that the idea that the universe was created, if that's an accurate way to put it, is somewhat compelling.

As for why, call it aesthetics.

Loren Michael wrote:I wouldn't even say that I believe there's a god; I think that the idea that the universe was created, if that's an accurate way to put it, is somewhat compelling.
As for why, call it aesthetics.

Might want to rid yourself of the term deist, even if it's only figurative.

Actually you and I think alike somewhat. I will not consider anything I believe in as fact and I can't understand why so many do.

I myself am a teenager and I come from a religious background and I'm currently questioning spirituality vs. atheism. (Just a little background)

Debates will usually have the religious side becoming aggravated and impatient simply because religion isn't backed up by much, and they need to realize that it is a matter of faith for them. Religious debaters are also more likely to be people who feel strongly about their beleif and use more of what they feel rather than atheists who strongly rely on logic. Not that christians are illogical, but typically a christian will lack logic because religion is an alternative to logic in many ways. I'm massively turned off by strongly religious people today, because of their lack of analytic thought and effort towards seeing from other people's view. A strong reliance on belief over logic has also breed ignorance which is another reason debaters might become flustered when they are forced to deal with things they chose to ignore. there is much that the human race is unaware of as a whole and i personally think that there is room for a deity or higher power intertwined with the world we live in.

Leviticus wrote:there is much that the human race is unaware of as a whole and i personally think that there is room for a deity or higher power intertwined with the world we live in.

Aye, there's room for a deity there for those who want to put it there. But is there a need for it. That's the question I would be asking.

Personally I don't see the need. The sun still shines and the grass still grows regardless.

Loren Michael wrote:http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/listening-to-young-atheists-lessons-for-a-stronger-christianity/276584/

[i]When a Christian foundation interviewed college nonbelievers about how and why they left religion, surprising themes emerged.

Apart from someone who was never indoctrinated with religious ideas to begin with, it seems to me that a failure of religion to satisfy an inquiring mind would be an extremely obvious explanation. Is it really news to Christians to be told, "Your ideas suck, and I don't believe you?" I guess that the "you're just an atheist cuz ur mad @ God/church/society" hand-wave is so prevalent, that yes, maybe it is news....

Loren Michael, is the compelling creation idea you entertain the possibility of .. the deity/creator/aesthetic thing .. is it akin to Intelligent Design?

Charlou wrote:Loren Michael, is the compelling creation idea you entertain the possibility of .. the deity/creator/aesthetic thing .. is it akin to Intelligent Design?

I didn't intend for this thread to be about me; there's more than enough things to chew on in the link.

But no, I don't recognize any evidence for a creating [edit:] or designing thing.

Leviticus wrote:Debates will usually have the religious side becoming aggravated and impatient simply because religion isn't backed up by much,

I think that may be true some of the time, but I think a lot of "debates" are often little more than an exchange of zingers, which are intended to signal to a crowd or show the other person to be stupid or unreasonable, sometimes regardless of said person's input. They often have the effect of winding people up, and I think they're often used with that intent.

The difficulty with the religious is that they have often built up emotional dependence on the idea of religion. When someone else loses faith they look for emotional reasons, rather than the reality that there was no rational reason to develop faith in the first place.

I think the single most important point the religious fail to recognise is that the desire to believe something, or how comfortable one is believing something (especially when surrounded by like-minded individuals) has absolutely no effect on reality whatsoever. Every belief system that they think is nonsense is supported by the same emotional connection and crowd comfort that reinforces their own belief. They just can't see it from the inside.

If faith is based on emotional support, it had no validity to begin with, no more so than any discredited cult based on the same thing.

This guy thinks the churches have let people down in causing them to lose interest in religion, but what has really happened is that the people have realised their belief is based on a vacuum. They have residual fondness for the belief, but they do not see reality to ground the belief, not because the churches failed to provide it, but because it does not exist, and the churches failed to generate enough smoke and bluster to deflect questioners from that reality.

zulumoose wrote:The difficulty with the religious is that they have often built up emotional dependence on the idea of religion. When someone else loses faith they look for emotional reasons, rather than the reality that there was no rational reason to develop faith in the first place.

I think the single most important point the religious fail to recognise is that the desire to believe something, or how comfortable one is believing something (especially when surrounded by like-minded individuals) has absolutely no effect on reality whatsoever. Every belief system that they think is nonsense is supported by the same emotional connection and crowd comfort that reinforces their own belief. They just can't see it from the inside.

This seems similar to how we form emotional attachments to countries and political parties and ideologies and role models and other such things.

I assume there are a reasonably large number of factors that motivate emotional attachments to beliefs and such; I assume one of the stronger ones is the community that one has in regards to that thing. As you say, it's the crowd comfort. Religion tends to be a social thing, so that social aspect is going to come up a lot.

I don't think I'd say that "the desire to believe something, or how comfortable one is believing something has absolutely no effect on reality whatsoever" is something that religious people fail to realize. I think people are inclined not notice that social-need/attachment-to-a-notion phenomenon in themselves. People are very good at self-delusion.

I don't think I'd say that "the desire to believe something, or how comfortable one is believing something has absolutely no effect on reality whatsoever" is something that religious people fail to realize. I think people are inclined not notice that social-need/attachment-to-a-notion phenomenon in themselves. People are very good at self-delusion

Ok let me rephrase that, "the desire to believe something, or how comfortable one is believing something, is absolutely no indicator of reality whatsoever", and religious people especially, fail to understand the significance of that.

Fair enough.