@Starman. I answered all of your points. You did not like my answers so you restated your questions without answering my points. But I am happy to work at your speed. Here they are again:
Staarman: Faith is waning in places where people are best educated and informed such as western Europe and the northeast US. Given rapid communication etc it's only a matter of time before people everywhere else wise up too.
Looking at the US this is objectively untrue. Five of the 10 most educated states have average or higher church attendance.
Now I am not going to publish a wall of text here but what you are asserting is simply untrue. Your fundamental mistake is to equate church attendance with faith and faith with religiosity. They are not the same thing. Here are some facts for you to ponder. (I am not going to write a book so if you want to disbelieve my sources you are free to do so. Check Wiki and argue with them.)
A Pew Center study about religion and education around the world in 2016, found that Jews are most educated religious group around in the world with an average of 13.4 years of schooling;[6] Jews also have the highest number of graduate and post-graduate degrees per capita (61%)....
Christians ranked as the second most educated religious group around in the world with an average of 9.3 years of schooling,[6] Christians were also found to have the second highest number of graduate and post-graduate degrees per capita while in absolute numbers ranked in the first place (220 million)....
The religiously unaffiliated—which includes atheists, agnostics and those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular”—ranked as the third educated religious group with an average of 8.8 years of schooling,[6] and around 16% of unaffiliated have graduate and post-graduate degrees.
I will try to use easier words for our atheist friends.
Statistical analysis of Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 65.4% of Nobel laureates were Christians, over 20% were Jewish and 10.5% were atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers.[9] According to a study that was done by University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1998, 60% of Nobel prize laureates in physics from 1901 to 1990 had a Christian background.[10] Since 1901-2013, 22% of all Nobel prizes have been awarded to Jews.[11]
According to the General Social Survey, which has collected data on Americans since 1972, people who are educated often are more religious by various measures. For instance, as of 2010 sociologist Philip Schwadel found that with each additional year of education: the likelihood of attending religious services increased 15%, the likelihood of reading the Bible at least occasionally increased by 9%. The likelihood of switching to a mainline Protestant denomination increased by 13%.[16] On belief in God or a higher power, Schwadel said, “With more years of education, you aren’t relatively more likely to say, ‘I don’t believe in God...But you are relatively more likely to say, ‘I believe in a higher power.’”[16]
Starman tried to say: As, in certain parts of the world, is the faith of Atheism.
It's not based on "faith" but knowledge, which shows "god" is superfluous, as well as unverified.
This shows very shallow thinking. Why?
Atheism is certainly based upon faith. All science can provide is the knowledge that there is no evidence of God at this point. That is OK. Can you think of any scientific discoveries that one could say the same about a couple of decades ago? I can.
But the second part of your statement is particularly thoughtless. You said..."It's not based on "faith" but knowledge, which shows "god" is superfluous." God is far from superfluous. He/She/Them are perhaps the most powerful forces of human interaction known since sex. Even if the Christian God did not exist in any verifiable form, "He" is immensely powerful in your life. Faith in God influences virtually every facet of your social interaction. A scientist would not dismiss something of such observable effect as "superfluous". All science is not physics.
No, I meant that collectively, scientific knowledge renders "god" unnecessary. Btw a 1998 NATURE poll indicated 90% of top scientists reject "god."
Well shit poll is shit. There is much better data.
Those in the social sciences are more likely to believe in God and attend religious services than researchers in the natural sciences, the study found.
The opposite had been expected.
Nearly 38 percent of natural scientists -- people in disciplines like physics, chemistry and biology -- said they do not believe in God. Only 31 percent of the social scientists do not believe.
In the new study, Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund surveyed 1,646 faculty members at elite research universities, asking 36 questions about belief and spiritual practices.
"Based on previous research, we thought that social scientists would be less likely to practice religion than natural scientists are, but our data showed just the opposite," Ecklund said.
Some stand-out stats: 41 percent of the biologists don't believe, while that figure is just 27 percent among political scientists.
In separate work at the University of Chicago, released in June, 76 percent of doctors said they believed in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife.
"Now we must examine the nature of these differences," Ecklund said today. "Many scientists see themselves as having a spirituality not attached to a particular religious tradition. Some scientists who don't believe in God see themselves as very spiritual people. They have a way outside of themselves that they use to understand the meaning of life."
Ecklund and colleagues are now conducting longer interviews with some of the participants to try and figure it all out.
Seems like your numbers were off by....well.....a bunch.
There are lots of studies like this. The point ought to be that the way the questions are phrased (as in all surveys) will illicit different responses. For example. If you asked me this question: Do you believe in the Bible in its entirety? I would answer, no. That does not make me an atheist.
The burden of proof is on the holy joes. And as Atkins and others have noted, there is no need to invoke "god" all the way back to the start of the Universe. "We have tracked the infinitely lazy creator all the way back to his lair. He is of course not there."
This is a monumentally stupid idea but understandable based upon your ignorance of the subject.
The burden of proof is on the holy joes.
No it isn't. We "Holy Joes" are not trying to prove anything. No need to. For most of us the search for proof is not only irrelevant, it is a waste of time. Some would say apostasy.
"We have tracked the infinitely lazy creator all the way back to his lair. He is of course not there.
This is a statement of faith. Certainly not one any real scientist would want to have to prove. And remember. Science is about evidence AND the lack thereof.
And what specific unexplained phenomenon requires the "god" explanation??
Again. You are endlessly ignoring the social sciences.
But you see, there is rarely settled truth. Of course you do not know "the truth" though you know some things that are probably pretty well proved for the time being.
:lol: The one most urgently in need of help is the person who thinks he regularly communicates with something he's never seen....
Help with what? It is very hard to assert any kind of pathology when the odd people out are the ones who do not do this. People who do NOT communicate with something they have never seen are and always have been a very tiny minority.
Marx lived back in the 19th century, long before the scientific and technological advances that can really finish off the holy bs. Marx couldn't have foreseen the conquest of aging that modern advances can probably bring about in this century or soon afterwards. If religion has waned this much among the most sophisticated even now, future advances will kill it for sure.
I will set aside the fact that you obviously know little about Marx and simply state that the your conclusion is demonstrably false. Marx would not even recognize most of the technology we take for granted today. And religious observation is not falling in the presence of this technology. It is growing in many places including some quite scientifically and technologically advanced. So your whole overriding premise is demonstrably false. Scientific knowledge has not been shown to destroy religious belief. In most cases it just modifies it.
Right for the time being. And as I've said, in the best educated areas are a harbinger of the future.
Demonstrable belief in God is situational. It is no surprise to anyone that the wealthiest among us do not feel the need for help. The Bible speaks to this time and again. Happy people do not go to shrinks as frequently as unhappy ones do. I am surprised that you can't see what is obvious to the meanest of understanding. No doubt you do not understand the old saying, "there are no atheists in foxholes".