Posted by Hemant Mehta in Retired Marquette University professor Robert F. Boyd wrote a fantastic editorial last week. It needs to be read. Read it here. Some excerpts:
The most recent bogeyman is the atheist. You know who he is — the secularist who wants a wall of separation between church and state, the elitist scientist who believes in evolution and not creationism, and the pagan who not only promotes pornography and abortion but also has created a social climate reprehensible to all Christian values.
I’ve never met anyone who promoted abortion… but the point is made.
Christians in this country believe that unless God is at the center of national life we will be forever exposed to crime, poverty, warfare and disease… Countries regarded as secular or whose populations have by choice abandoned religion have been compared with those who are considered religious. Studies have demonstrated that when one measures life expectancy, literacy, income and education, nations whose populations are religious do poorly as compared to the more nonreligious ones. In addition, studies of non-African countries reveal that nations with the highest rate of homicide are religious.
The boldfaced words above are my own addition. It’s an important point to make. Sam Harris makes a similar point in Letter to a Christian Nation
Perhaps someday the atheist may be able to come out of the closet. Maybe, but if he is a male who is an atheist and a homosexual, don’t hold your breath. And if she’s a woman, forget it.
Gaytheists everywhere maintain some hope…
(Thanks to Jeff Wismer for the link)
[tags]Marquette University, Robert F. Boyd, atheist, evolution, creationism, pagan, pornography, abortion, Christian, God, Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, gaytheist[/tags]
you have to be careful though about what causes what, when it comes to the issue of religiosity being correlated with things like crime, lower literacy, and stuff. sure, i haven’t studied all the trends, but i would bet that the direction of causation here isn’t the same every time.
it could still be that poor circumstances in a society just lead to more people in the society wanting to believe in something: that something being religion or religious ideas… when people are in bad circumstances, maybe they want hope from sources like faith.
btw, hi hemant– uic represent! ha. right.
Dr. Michael Shermer has studied it and there is a direct correlation to those problems and religiousity. It’s not a direct confirmation they cause it but it sure is correlated.
[...] …is gaytheist, or gay atheist (coined over at The Friendly Atheist). I’m seriously not sure why I find this so funny. Perhaps because it’s an example (though definitely a tongue-in-cheek one — I do get the joke) of our obsessive need to label ourselves past any point of actual utility. Perhaps because it makes me think that English is becoming like German, and pretty soon I’ll be able to create every new word I’ve always wanted by simply smooshing some suitably descriptive phrase together. Or perhaps it’s just because “gaytheist” is fun to say out loud. Try it. [...]