Is the future Atheist?

[Daytripper]

Alright,

If you really want to go there, let's take a close look... and rip it apart properly.

''And God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.''

So not only were plants and trees created before the sun, they were also created before land life.

''Nearly all of the animal groups in existence today -- as well as many that no longer exist -- first appeared on Earth during this time. It was the Cambrian Period, and this time of tumultuous and colossal animal diversity is called the Cambrian Explosion.

Land plants evolved a little more quietly about 90 million years later, with trees evolving some 100 million years after the first land plants began to emerge from their oceanic origins.'' From ecology.com

And then:

''And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens." 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind''

''And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so''

So..First birds and ''sea monsters'' and then cattle and creeping things... It doesn't make any sense regardlesss of the dinosaurs, because birds evolved quite late. Now, I can refute a lot more of those statements but my screen keeps acting up.

[Daytripper]

Please don't bite my head off for reposting... Is there any way to fix my screen so i can post longer? I wanted to explain this properly.

''So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." ''

And then: Man is alone and such.

''So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; 22 and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.''

Why would man be alone if God created man, male and female on the sixth day.

[ratcharmer]

@Daytripper: It should give you a scroll bar once the text box fills. Other than that I dunno . . . what browser are you using?

The only other thing I wanted to comment on at the moment was that the whole argument against Genesis through what science has uncovered only applies to Biblical literalists, which, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I don't believe we have any strict Biblical literalists who are active on this section of the forum.

[Daytripper]

I'm on explorer, and whenever I type half a page or so, the page starts to jump up, making it impossible to see what I am typing.

I have not seen many literalists, however  ''johannhowitzer'' seemed to be defending ideas like: ''20.000 years ago there was no life'' and ''maybe some dinosaurs still were around a few thousand years ago.'' (Though I'm not sure he believes it)

So anyway I think I have disproven a literal version of Genesis, if only for the sake of the discussion. If you don't want me to do that, then simply stop defending such literal interpretations

[ratcharmer]

To quote Johanhowitzer's latest post:
"I was stating the literal Biblical perspective on the topic.  Do you want me to quote a religious website?  Razzen frazzen people still assuming I belong to a worldview I'm talking about..."

I think he was just trying to clarify what such people believe, not necessarily defend it. Only he can really say for certain what his goals were though.

Your computer problem sounds like something's wrong with the scroll functions . . . maybe try a different mouse?

[Ant-n-ero]

Hey guys, off topic, but sorta of really relavant...

you page jumps when you type lots, yes?
you see the text box? at the bottom, if you move your cursor the the very bottom of the typing text box, you should get the double arrows, click and drag downwards to expand your box down, then when you type it won't jump as there is enough room to type as well as view all that you have written

took me ages to figure out,no help from anyone, and I figured as it was really annoying I should help you (not that I wouldn't anyway ofc )
hope you get what I mean, shouldn't be too hard to figure out ^^

~~EDIT~~
and this allows you to write a page that is infinitely long without any kind of 'jumping around' (it just takes forever to scroll to the tops and bottom >_<)

[johannhowitzer]

Daytripper, ratcharmer hit the nail on the head.

[Belthus]

Getting back to the topic, here is data from the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf).

(http://imageplay.net/)

The 2008 findings confirm the conclusions we came to in our earlier studies that Americans are slowly becoming less Christian and that in recent decades the challenge to Christianity in American society does not come from other world religions or new religious movements (NRMs) but rather from a rejection of all organized religions. To illustrate the point, Table 1 shows that the non-theist and No Religion groups collectively known as "Nones" have gained almost 20 million adults since 1990 and risen from 8.2 to 15.0 percent of the total population. If we include those Americans who either don't know their religious identification (0.9 percent) or refuse to answer our key question (4.1 percent), and who tend to somewhat resemble "Nones" in their social profile and beliefs, we can observe that in 2008 one in five adults does not identify with a religion of any kind compared with one in ten in 1990.

There is no way to know the future. However, if this trend (and similar ones in Europe) continues, the nonreligious groups will gain ground at the expense of Christianity.

[johannhowitzer]

Percent-wise, yes, but not flat numbers.  Every row increases as you move to the right.

The "none" row sees a logarithmic decline in growth before and after the middle column.  "Total Christians" likewise slows in its descent.  I'd be interested to see the numbers for 2015... maybe my pendulum hypothesis will be confirmed?

[Belthus]

If you read my post on the second page (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,6543.msg89743#msg89743), you know that the decline in religious affiliation is a generational phenomenon. Each generation forms its attitudes in early adulthood, and those attitudes remain stable for the rest of the lifespan. So we can see larger proportions of each successive generation being nonreligious.



We have only one data point for the Millenial generation. However, the other four generations have a lot of time elapsed. Gen X is less religious than the Baby Boomers, who are less religious than the Silent Generation, who are slightly less religious than the Greatest Generation. No pendulum effect to be seen here.

[zuessoldier]

Well being an athiest myself i can say that no,at least not in america. Where I live there is great closemindedness. The people dont understand that in America accouding to the first ademendment you can say,build,or do what you want so long as it doesnt physically hurt another person. An example of this is the controverial mosque by the ground 0 site.It doesnt matter for several reasons other that the first admendment:
1. There is a strip club on ground 0
2. If the mustlims owned that land they could build a stature of the plane hijackers and a mural of all the victims burning in hell if they wanted.

[ratcharmer]

@Belthus:

Neat data, a couple of things I would point out.

1) Not affiliated with any religion is not the same as atheist. A recent survey at OSU found that more people in the present generation are trying to find their own way spiritually, without associating themselves to any religion. (It's late, I'll try to find the link in the morning)

2) That's only 4 generations. The "pendulum effect" being discussed could be over the course of centuries.

The note that people form their opinions fairly early on and stick to them is interesting though . . .