Increasing Number of Atheists

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In an all out balls to the wall war, we would win. We have enough nukes to vaporize the Chinese nation. But we would be beat up pretty badly ourselves. It would not be a walk-over. Fortunately we are good for Chinese business and they will indenture our labor through debt and we will willingly submit to this humiliation.

ruveyn

In a non nuclear war it would be interesting, as long as we could keep the war short, I think the U.S. would win, but if China was to develop their military, there would be no stopping them, they out number by us than more than 4 to 1, they have the most productive population in the world. Their economy is on the up and up and people are for the most part proud to call themselves Chinese.

... or isolation, ostracism, and ridicule.

How can religionists "shame" someone into joining (or coming back) when there are many other non-religious groups and individuals that will take them in and treat them well? Why do religionists treat people badly when treating them nicely will (at least) make them less hostile?

It used to be (back in my day, my parents' day, my grandparents' day, et cetera) that a person who left the church would be treated as a stranger, or cut off from the rest of the family, even if the rebel remained in the same house as the believers. I think that this was significant only because people were less mobile, had little social communication outside of the family, and relied on family and friends from church for their social interactions and even their jobs. Now, with the Internet, a person who is cutt off from his or her family can just log on to Facebook or their favorite special-interest website (like WrongPlanet) and have as much social interaction as they want.

Last edited by Fnord on 30 Jul 2011, 11:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

i am rather sure that this never is used as an argument by any atheist on the surface of this planet...






ponder about why......

nope... both descended from a common ancestor.

Are you saying that the presumed common ancestor would not be classified with monkeys by a knowledgeable taxonomist,

Or

Are you saying that the average anglophone, coming face to face with the presumed common ancestor, would not label it a monkey?

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The distinction between tech talk and normal speech is important.

Well, there goes the discussion.

nope... i would call it (as the rest of the scientific world) call it either anthropoid, anthropoidal or apelike or anthropomorphic, anthropomorphous or humanlike


or primate... or hominidae

For US to get away with nuking China without a giantic backslash , the world image of China would have to be as bad as imperial Japan back in the 1940s. I also guess China would have allies like Russia during this hypothetical war that is unlikely to happen when you consider that powers no longer go to war. They do economical warfare and China is winning there.

We are not about to go to war against a nation that is willing to buy our worthless bonds. The Chinese are keeping our heads above water.

ruveyn

Actually, it seems to break down like this, according to Business Insider:

Source: "Who Owns America?" (<-- Link)

I think it has to do with the success of people like Dawkins and Hawking mostly. People have been conditioned to think science proves religion wrong. Which of course isn't true, but I think the fact science can to some extent explain a Godless universe, that makes the option more appealing.

I read somewhere that Darwin didn't disprove God, he just proved that there didn't HAVE to be a God.

Reading something "somewhere" proves nothing.

And it is more than just Dawkins and Darwin, it is a "Who's Who" of the literary, musical, and scientific communities that has contributed to the current decline of "The Church Generic".

> Lists of Notable Atheists < (<-- Link)

Samples from the lists include...

Authors:
- Douglas Adams
- Isaac Asimov
- Sir Arthur C. Clarke
- Robert Heinlein
- H.P. Lovecraft
- W. Somerset Maugham
- Arthur Miller
- Joyce Carol Oates
- George Orwell
- Terry Pratchett
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Kurt Vonnegut

Musicians:
- David Gilmor (Pink Floyd)
- Roy Harper (Pink Floyd)
- John Lennon (Beatles)
- Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam)
- Frank Zappa (F.Z. & The Mothers of Invention)

So ... if "The Church Generic" were to ban secular literature and music, then it might stand a chance of suppressing free thought.

Atheism is really about abandoning the structures of the past - or at least the formal books/dogmas that we've had for several thousand years - in order to get a keener sense of focus and objectivity.

To me it could be a permanent direction or just a temporary one, depending on what we find out along the way. As of right now though its inherently - by those who assert it the right way - a push for society-wide objectivity. From this standpoint also, if widely, the so-called 'supernatural' loses its veil of charlatans and we can from there much more steadily discern what of it is real and what isn't. Additionally, again if done right, we'll have much better logical and gut/intuitive understandings of how cause and effect, action and consequence work and what broader measures or interactions with that reality can be enacted to make the world a better place.

^ This.

I look forward to the day when people will not be judged by which religion they follow, but by the quality of their work ethic, by their community spirit, and by their ableness and willingness to use reason and logic (not superstition) in the course of making decisions for themselves and others.

We may have a numeric advantage over China in terms of numbers of nukes, but that doesn't mean that we'd 'win.' You only need enough nukes to blanket a country once; more than that and you're wasting your bombs. China has enough nukes to cause the US a world of hurt - to, effectively, destroy our country - before their country is reduced to dust - assuming that we or they were stupid enough to start a nuclear war in the first place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s ... estruction