Atheism -- consequences on culture and aggregate human society

[Col. Tartleton]

That's so trivial to do, that, I can only account for intellectual laziness as the reason why the question got asked in the first place. All of the articles I listed are news, meaning they're a new change from what had been in place before. Just take the items I listed and make an inverse of them:

1) 50 years ago, statistics for theft and dishonesty have never been this high.

Crime rates back in the day were pretty bad. Especially violent crime.

2) 50 years ago, old comic-book superheroes, on whom young boys modeled their traits, virtue, and character, had, and I quote, "old fashioned ideals of courage and patriotism, backed by a deep virtue and unshakable code."

People still have those traits. So do the comic book characters. But they've also decided that it wouldn't hurt to tell more realistic accounts of what life might be like in those exotic scenarios.

3) 50 years ago, Fiction, and literature, had wholesome values and was dominated by clean optimism.

That's true. But I'd argue this is more of an identity issue. The cultural and sexual revolutions changed society. In some ways for the worse, in some ways for the better. We're in a bit of a funk currently. When we get out of it the grass will look greener, the sky will look bluer, and breasts will be bigger.

4) 50 years ago, out of wedlock births have never been this high.

Yep. But not an atheism issue.

5) 50 years ago, writers and thinkers didn't produce articles for popular consumption, trying to dismantle marriage and show it to be lacking benefits.

Free speech is good.

6) 50 years ago, girls were not engaged in pornography and lesbianism.

You're wrong. But it was rarer. You can argue there's a lot more porn out there now. Porn is not new. And lesbians are normal.

7) 50 years ago, motherhood and breastfeeding were championed and not viewed as 'creepy'.

That's probably just a phase. I think the problem is that we've over sexualized the breast. In which context breastfeeding seems profane when it's not. If it's a perverse thing, it's because of a culture of conservatives telling women to cover them.

8) 50 years ago, Norman Rockwell (and other classic art) was hanging on a wall inside almost every house, room, office (in the US).

You'd like my friend's house. His dad is a bear of a man and the house of full of that Norman Rockwell Americana.

9) 50 years ago, writers and thinkers didn't produce articles meant for popular consumption, trying to dismantle and disprove the very idea of monogamy.

Yeah but 50 years ago we were sexually harassing and screwing with every secretary with a scrap of feminine ambition.

10) 50 years ago, the NHS did not allow less 'valuable', 'less potentially useful' people to die.

In America we've got a much better system, given we iron out the kinks and don't ruin it.

Maybe Britain is in decline. Pretty much every bad thing you can think of, which I can agree is bad, is way down compared to 1960 in the US.

I think you're dramatically underestimating how modern 1962 was. The only difference was that sexism and racism were the overt norm and people actually smoked and drank more than they do now, and they were passing doobies and shooting the bull, and shtupped other guys' wives.

Leave the 1950-60's romanticism for an alcoholic, stogie champing, preppy, misogynistic, racist, son of a like me. From the Kerouac Beatniks to the Wallstreet Preps I'd be getting my rocks off in a tall glass of scotch. I'm old fashioned. I just want to jitterbug with hot chicks if you know what I'm saying.

[Blau&Gruen]

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739 (book III, part I, section I).

[John F. Kennedy]

I'm sorry to say but the problems with society are not due to religion or lack thereof, but personal choices. You can argue that religion instills moral values, but when you get down to it it's still a personal choice to do something, just influenced.

One can be Atheist and be twenty times more moral than any clergyman. Just because you are an Atheist does not mean you have to act immoral, it's all a personal choice. You choose to return wallets, only you choose to return wallets, and you don't have to be religious to do so.

Arguments like these always make me cringe a little at the notion.

[IronBrig4]

I'm a PhD student in European history, and one of my research projects is reading London Times issues from 1785 to 1816. Many of those articles concern local crime. For an age of "flourishing Christianity" it sure had a lot of sadistic murderers, highwaymen, and petty thieves.

Crime rates are much more dependent on economic conditions than church attendance. Look at the Deep South. It is one of the most deeply religious areas in the US, but the persistent poverty in that region (along with some other factors) means it also has the highest crime rate.

[Lord of Lost Socks]

Back in the 1960s Times Square was dominated with wholesome porn theaters. Nowadays it's full of commercials and kids stores. I blame atheism.

[basics]

" I'm sorry to say but the problems with society are not due to religion or lack thereof, but personal choices. You can argue that religion instills moral values, but when you get down to it it's still a personal choice to do something, just influenced."

John F. Kennedy,

Aye, each one follows the lusts of his or her heart and who is anyone to argue with that? Each one has turned away from God's word in some manner and we now discuss why society is breaking down into a free-for-all that the most on these threads are quite content with. The thing is staring us in the face but where is the problem many ask?

The problem is when fathers seem happy that their girls get pregnant, behave with no respect for themselves, yet they see no problem. When parents screw around teaching their offspring that that is an OK thing. When lives are ruined by drugs being part of everyday life. When people cannot differenciate between what is their's to have or not have. When no means yes to men. These are the things that are problematic to a contented society or were then but not now so it seems.

And the very day Noah finished the Ark and entered it, people were then going about their lives not knowing that when its door was shut, their doom was certain. Just so as man today or tomorrow goes about his life, the door will be shut as the heavens roar to announce that great day of the Lord. On that day the sounds of moaning will be heard even to heaven itself when reality sets in. Together they had rejected God and together they have to face Him. Will that be OK?

[IronBrig4]

The purpose in this thread is not to get into the metaphysical. But there is substantial evidence to completely capsize the OP's ludicrous point that secular societies are somehow destroying morality and social order. There are more rights and freedoms for more people, and societies are much more inclusive than in a religious, God-fearing 1950s and 60s. A simpler time that never even existed.




Images like these were fairly common throughout the US during this "golden age." Even in regions where segregation was not on the books. As an aside, can you guess which three countries still had official race segregation in the 1930s? They were Nazi Germany (no surprise there), the Union of South Africa (apartheid), and the devoted, churchgoing, virtuous United States.

Those golden days never existed in the first place, so there's nothing to destroy. There has always been bigotry, hate, and immorality. And it doesn't matter how often you go to church. Church-affiliated individuals and groups have, indeed, often been behind those negative elements. But if you view things through nostalgia glasses you'll find that your memory is very selective. I suppose when we're old codgers we'll think the 90s and 00s were another perfect, simpler time. We'll remember the Dot-com boom, how computers and video games became so much cooler, and the end of the Cold War, but we'll probably forget about post-9/11 paranoia and how it soon became impossible to find decent work that wasn't relocated to India.

[Tankbuster]

Sig,

So those "morals" are absolute... because you say so?

Those pathetic examples violate those morals... because you say so?

And everyone who disagrees with you must be a nihilistic materialist.

Given that, apparently, every other Christian in the history of the world has been entirely wrong on at least some issues concerning slavery, women's rights, democracy and race equality, I'm pretty sure that 50 years from now Christians everywhere will have accepted everything Sig now campaigns against, and pretend it was all their idea

How we'll laugh.

[Lazarus]

Well, lets address the obvious (to me) one. What's wrong with Lesbians? I'm not trying to be funny, or sexist, or anything like that. I'm sure the rate of men kissing men has gone up too, so it's equally applicable. Why is a rise in homosexuality (or far more likely, the more open expression of homosexuality) a bad thing? What's wrong with it? What in everything that's ever existed ever suggests that Heterosexuality is superior in any way? And no, don't just tell me my moral compass is broken - because my compass has never been stronger. Don't tell me "we need heterosexuals to keep the race going" because thats toff. We only need some to keep us going - and humanity doesn't even need to keep going. We would just like it to. Either way, girls kissing girls are not thinning us out of existence and it's not bad, and furthermore, atheism is not responsible for their behavior.

[IronBrig4]

And here's some food for thought. Mad Men is mostly true. It's a disturbingly accurate portrayal of office life in the 1960s.

[Claudius Gothicus]

If anything all the consecuences in the ''change of morals and norms'' that Sig has named can be easily summed up by a bunch of concepts that people like Durkheim or Weber designed like a century or so ago:

-The rationalization of public spheres: economic production, administrative descisions, scientific proceedure, legal relations. Basically descisions and operations have been rationalized in the sense of ''adapting the means to the ends and empirically controlling the outcomes''. Godly traditionalism has no place in instrumentality.

-The triumph of ''Urban Culture'' over ''Rural Culture'', the urban or ''bourgoise'' ideas of efficiency, expediency, legality and political accountability trampled the arbitrary domination and traditionalist nature of the Rural world during the XIX century.

-The disintegration of Religious Institutions which was not inspired by militant atheism(remember that only a few revolutionaries in the French Revolution were actual atheists) but indirectly by the struggles these institutions faced within the societies they used to dominate. The power struggle is better demonstrated by the French Revolution and the Secularization of Latin America, the Church(especifically) engaged herself in the political exchange and lost quite a lot in the gamble.

-The demographic boom, the industrial revolution and the subsecuent reform of labor relations brought a whole new ''complexity arranged'' society that could not be easily explained by Religion and god's will.

[Mangalore]

I'm a PhD student in European history, and one of my research projects is reading London Times issues from 1785 to 1816. Many of those articles concern local crime. For an age of "flourishing Christianity" it sure had a lot of sadistic murderers, highwaymen, and petty thieves.

...

I also don't get where he got that from. Back in the day statistics were more crap but the overall trend has been that violent crime has in general dropped in the past 50 years in the developed world. All of which has more to do with economic situations (stark income inequality in industrializing countries, communism and socialism were not fancy ideas the worker class came up with because things were jolly.) than any invisible morale compasses with or without beards.

[Phier]

I also don't get where he got that from. Back in the day statistics were more crap but the overall trend has been that violent crime has in general dropped in the past 50 years in the developed world. All of which has more to do with economic situations (stark income inequality in industrializing countries, communism and socialism were not fancy ideas the worker class came up with because things were jolly.) than any invisible morale compasses with or without beards.

I'd think a more professional police force is really more to credit. It was a difficult transition from a pastoral existence back to an urban one in terms of policing.

[SigniferOne]

Images like these were fairly common throughout the US during this "golden age."

That's plainly retarded. They were limited to a few states in the South, and a sporadic appearance even there. Nice atheism, reason and fact based as always

[IronBrig4]

That's plainly retarded. They were limited to a few states in the South, and a sporadic appearance even there. Nice atheism, reason and fact based as always

Actually no. In those new Levittown type communities (mostly in the Northeast), there was a lot of unofficial race segregation between those white picket fences. That picture with the sign saying "We want white tenants in our white community" is actually from Detroit. They were far from sporadic, as Jim Crow was enshrined in Southern states' laws from the end of Reconstruction until Brown v. Board. While the attacks on black students and Civil Rights workers were limited to the American South (and a little in the rural Midwest) you still had unofficial racism throughout the country. And don't get me started on how West Coasters routinely treated Asian immigrants until the 1940s.

And would you believe that I'm not atheist? I've got my religion, but I choose to not take those last few steps over to Crazyville. I've lived in many different countries and have realized there are people of many different faiths (or no faith). If you want to get along in the world as a decent human being, then it's best to coexist. Everybody wins. I think John Stuart Mill said it best when he stated the notion that you have a duty to your religion is the basis of most bigotry.

[Cahoma]

That's plainly retarded. They were limited to a few states in the South, and a sporadic appearance even there. Nice atheism, reason and fact based as always

There were definitely more of them than there are now.

With the same reasoning you use, I get to blame atheism. Yay!

[justicar5]

That's so trivial to do, that, I can only account for intellectual laziness as the reason why the question got asked in the first place. All of the articles I listed are news, meaning they're a new change from what had been in place before. Just take the items I listed and make an inverse of them:

1) 50 years ago, statistics for theft and dishonesty have never been this high.

2) 50 years ago, old comic-book superheroes, on whom young boys modeled their traits, virtue, and character, had, and I quote, "old fashioned ideals of courage and patriotism, backed by a deep virtue and unshakable code."


3) 50 years ago, Fiction, and literature, had wholesome values and was dominated by clean optimism.


4) 50 years ago, out of wedlock births have never been this high.

5) 50 years ago, writers and thinkers didn't produce articles for popular consumption, trying to dismantle marriage and show it to be lacking benefits.

6) 50 years ago, girls were not engaged in pornography and lesbianism.

7) 50 years ago, motherhood and breastfeeding were championed and not viewed as 'creepy'.

8) 50 years ago, Norman Rockwell (and other classic art) was hanging on a wall inside almost every house, room, office (in the US).

9) 50 years ago, writers and thinkers didn't produce articles meant for popular consumption, trying to dismantle and disprove the very idea of monogamy.

10) 50 years ago, the NHS did not allow less 'valuable', 'less potentially useful' people to die.

1) Reported crimes maybe, but all that lovely rape and abuse in marriage wasn't a crime then. (Due to the bible)

2) And where two dimensional and uninteresting as a result, reading like propaganda pieces of no artistic value

3)Ever heard of H G Wells? Kurt Vonnegut? Frank Herbert? Sven Hassel? Nevil Shute? George R Stewart? Richard Matheson? Pierre Boule? Fiction has never been universally optimistic.

4) And?

5)And? If you religion of hatred and murder is allowed to call for death and destruction as much as it does any legal opposition is justified

6)Pornography you may have a point. However loving whomever you love in an adult consensual relationship is far better than the bare foot pregnant and beaten model of the bible.

7) Breast feeding in public was illegal. (Indecent exposure)

8) Subjective, I think rockwell is over rated for instance he gets demolished by some of the artists on deviantart, let alone professional illustrators

9)And?

10)They do not do that now. That is a slander. Your precious private insurance firms do it every day however, they are up to their necks in blood and filth.

[Phier]

10)They do not do that now. That is a slander.

You are sure about that?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/el...te-orders.html

[justicar5]

You are sure about that?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/el...te-orders.html

Daily Telegraph. propaganda rag of the Barclay Brothers? The same brothers who are intent on undermining democracy and seizing control of the Isle of Sark via black mail and intimidation to make there own tax haven?

[John F. Kennedy]

That's plainly retarded. They were limited to a few states in the South, and a sporadic appearance even there. Nice atheism, reason and fact based as always

I'm sorry but you're statement is plainly retarded. It was not limited to "a few" Southern states, nor were the events "sporadic". I'd dare say that we only know of about 15% of the hate that went on during those times.

Also, those Southern states are by far the most religious states in the entire Union. If I were to use your logic, I'd have to say religious societies are breeding grounds for hate and ignorance.




Oh wait.