1-on-1 debate: Christianity has more adherents than Atheism.

[CrazyAnglican]

Okay guys. I really didn't think this was debatable, but seeing the continuation of Christianity debate thread I see that it is. So here goes, Who is up for this debate. The first person to respond is my opponent. I'll start a new thread with the poll (if you do not want a poll tell me when you respond and I'll delete it). I figured this was better than calling you Anglican's esteemed opponent in a poll I'll begin, you begin. I'll rebut, you rebut. One thing that I forgot to mention in the parley thread : rebuttals are only for refuting what the other guy said, not for introducing new ideas. Essentially make all of your points in the first post.
Umm. Gives you quite an advantage. Oh well I got to choose the topic on this one, so I guess it evens out, .......... hopefully I suggest that we alternate on this between rounds, if we go to additional rounds.

[juggernaut17]

This can not be argued. Christianity controls 33% of the world population. But what could be debated is whether their are more Athiests than "true" christians. Meaning those that actually practice and follow the religion, not people who are christian just because their parents are and so on.

[CrazyAnglican]

Hi juggernaut, I agree that it seems to be arguing a fact. I just saw a whole thing on another thread where this is exactly what was being argued. I really don't see that I can argue your point either. How can I define a good Christian and what evidence could I possibly use to identify the their numbers, to make this argument. I agree that mine is not subjective enough, but yours is way too subjective.


How about a compromise? I'll change it to "Nonpracticing Christians can be reasonably considered to be atheists", if I get to open first and rebut last (this is truer to debate format anyway).

[juggernaut17]

sounds good. Let me see what you got.

[gethine]

sorry to butt in, but to atheists 'adhere' to their non-believe, don't they just kinda - not believe?

[Syzygy]

sorry to butt in, but to atheists 'adhere' to their non-believe, don't they just kinda - not believe?

Some don't believe and some don't believe try and convince others not to believe.

So I suppose those who preach not-believing in anything adhere to it?

[juggernaut17]

Athiesm is a belief all in its own.

[gethine]

Athiesm is a belief all in its own.

not to me - i just don't believe

[Anarkistsdream]

Athiesm is a belief all in its own.

not to me - i just don't believe

The decision to not decide is still a decision...

Your logic fails you.

[gethine]

not necessarily - you have to choose to believe, and therefore you are by default an atheist without making a conscious choice.

[Anarkistsdream]

not necessarily - you have to choose to believe, and therefore you are by default an atheist without making a conscious choice.

But you have been educated... Therefore, you have had the ability to choose... A baby does not... A person over the age of 4 or 5 does... So, if you STILL choose to not believe, you have made a choice.

[CrazyAnglican]

sounds good. Let me see what you got.

Great I look forward to it. I'll start the thread today but will not open until tomorrow. There is no rush, you can open and rebut whenever. Please make it two posts, so I know when you have rebutted.

[CrazyAnglican]

not necessarily - you have to choose to believe, and therefore you are by default an atheist without making a conscious choice.

Certainly another debatable topic if you care to open a thread

[gethine]

didn't mean to hi-jack! sorry

[Stopper]

not necessarily - you have to choose to believe, and therefore you are by default an atheist without making a conscious choice.

But you have been educated... Therefore, you have had the ability to choose... A baby does not... A person over the age of 4 or 5 does... So, if you STILL choose to not believe, you have made a choice.

Well, I don't think that to label atheism as a belief system is very useful. After all, most people don't believe in the tooth fairy, but we don't call them a-toothy-fairyists. Most people don't believe in Santa Claus, and while they may be wrong, we don't label them a-Santa-Clausists. And so on, and so forth.

The idea of "atheism" only exists because there is a "theism" to begin with. If religions just disappeared overnight, we wouldn't call everyone atheist. It isn't a belief. It's nothing.

[Anarkistsdream]

not necessarily - you have to choose to believe, and therefore you are by default an atheist without making a conscious choice.

But you have been educated... Therefore, you have had the ability to choose... A baby does not... A person over the age of 4 or 5 does... So, if you STILL choose to not believe, you have made a choice.

Well, I don't think that to label atheism as a belief system is very useful. After all, most people don't believe in the tooth fairy, but we don't call them a-toothy-fairyists. Most people don't believe in Santa Claus, and while they may be wrong, we don't label them a-Santa-Clausists. And so on, and so forth.

The idea of "atheism" only exists because there is a "theism" to begin with. If religions just disappeared overnight, we wouldn't call everyone atheist. It isn't a belief. It's nothing.

Maybe in reference to other things... But when speaking of religion, an ateist is someone who denies the existance of God...

Therefore, they have made a concious decision to say they don't believe in an all-powerful being.

[Guiscard]

Interesting debate really. I thought I'd bring over some of the responses from the previous thread to save us hashing them out again (must be noted this was more an argument that there were more than census information suggested rather than truly more than christianity):


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In attack:

OK then, what source are you quoting from that proves there are billions of atheists around the world? Since everyone always wants me to document my beliefs I should be able to ask the same of you. The last estimate I saw said there were roughly 6.5 billion people on the earth total and I would think the majority of them are either Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish (Judaism), or another major religion.

Okay I'd like to chime in here. Where are all of these billions of silent atheists? The University of New York did a random sampling survey (a pretty valid test considering the subject matter) of 50,000 people. Their findings were that 76.5 % of Americans were Christians. It also stated that while 14.5 % considered themselves "Not religious" only 0.4% identified themselves as atheist.

http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research ... ndings.htm

I understand the U.S. is not the world. There have been some ABC News peices done on the explosion of Christianity in Africa. The third biggest single church in the world is in Nigeria now and brings in 50,000 members a month, according to that news source.

Also the Anglican CHurch is growing in Southern and Eastern Asia. Korean Baptist churches are not that uncommon a sight around my hometown either. I just don't see atheists as the silent majority.

There are NOT billions of atheists in the world, and anyone who tells others they are xian is not an athiest IMHO.

However, there are more Athists than jews, according to one source:
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

which surprises most people.

It's unreasopnable to assume that non chruchgoers are atheists, that's not allowed any more than assuming that all students at religious schools are xian.

I agree that you should remember that america isnt the entire world, but the real point is that there are bugger all jews and hindus, and that most xians are anglican or catholic and are a direct result of colonial conquest (see Australia, South America, phillipines, east timor etc).

That doesn't detract from the numbers, but when you or your family is sick or starving and men with guns direct you to food, medicine and xinaity, there is a human instinct to go with the flow...


This carries on to other generations. IOW, religion is first and foremost a cultural thing. (duh.)

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Then some responses:

Well, it very much depends on who you define as being a Christian. A great many people will define themselves as Christian simply because they were baptised as Christian.

They then have absolutely nothing to do with Christianity for the rest of their lives, except the odd funeral and wedding. This behaviour seems to be common throughout Europe, East Asia and a great deal of the USA. Personally, I'd say that that kind of behaviour would be tantamount to a kind of atheism, regardless of what the person themselves professed themselves to be.

Because if a person does nothing to demonstrate any kind of belief in Christianity, then what meaning can that belief have? Of course, Islam has some answers to that, but luckily, not many people on this forum are Muslim.

I've long held that the majority of the world's population can safely be regarded as atheist, just by their behaviour. It matters bugger-all if a person writes down on a census form that they are "Christian", if they then ignore absolutely all the precepts of Christianity in the rest of their lives, which is what the overwhelming majority of these so-called "Christians" do.

If you extend the definition of a "Christian" to absolutely anyone who professes to be one, then the description itself loses all meaning.

I could call myself a "Jedi Knight", but given that I don't even know what a "Jedi" is, I think most people would quickly disregard that definition of myself. There's no reason why you can't do the same with "Christians", "Muslims" and "Jews".

Incidentally, I think much the same thing when it comes to the "socialists", "anarchists" and "patriots" etc etc, that I come across all the time.

Just what I was about to say really. If you look at collectable and verifiable census information, sure Atheism doesn't rank in the billions worldwide (although the figure differs wildly). The actions and beliefs of those who claim to be religious on a census form often, however, entirely contradict the box they ticked. My mother ticks the 'Church of England' box because she was christened, went to a C of E school and was married in a church. Her family are Christian. She, however, doesn't believe in God whatsoever. People often see religion as a cultural thing. Traditional Roman Catholic families may very well contain generations of Atheists but they'll tick the Catholic box because that's there family culture. Although there is no accurate way of gauging that percentage, there are plenty of cases which indicate this trend. Whilst I was simply googling for figures I quickly came across this article here which describes a conservative scholar who recently 'came out' as an theist. She says that 'I was unaware of the depth of commitment to the idea that religion is the source of values and that conservatism and religion are inseparably linked.' because religious belief is so ingrained into certain societies people will claim to be Christian no matter what their actual beliefs (or lack of). Do you seriously think countries like Saudi who claim 96-98% Muslim do not contain a significant number of atheists? Religion is a cultural label people will give themselves even if they are very much atheistic.

I agree with this - BTW, I'm not saying that labelling societies or communities as "Christian" and "Muslim" isn't a useful thing to do sometimes from a cultural point of view. Regardless of my own personal beliefs, I dare say it's useful sometimes to describe me as "Christian" or even "Catholic", because I'm bound to have many values and customs which I will have picked up from Christianity/Catholicism, even when I'm not aware of it. These will sometimes set me apart from Muslims/Protestants/whoever - although I can't think of any good examples off-hand - so the distinction is not entirely useless.

But my original point was addressing someone who talked about the personal beliefs of people in the world, and that, as I see it, is a separate matter from culture. Actually, we could go on about this 'til the cows come home, because the question of whether someone is genuinely Christian is a more complicated one than it might appear at first sight - and that's even long before you get into denominational differences.

Still, I say the majority of the world can be best described as "atheist". Most pursuits in life are minority pursuits, and religion isn't any different.

[Stopper]

Maybe in reference to other things... But when speaking of religion, an ateist is someone who denies the existance of God...

Therefore, they have made a concious decision to say they don't believe in an all-powerful being.

Taking a conscious decision not to believe something still doesn't mean that you have to be defined by that non-belief, though. Your decision not to believe does not in itself amount to a belief.

Oh, and incidentally, an atheist doesn't have to deny the existence of god(s). The acceptance of the lack of proof of god(s), and therefore their probable non-existence, is atheism.

[Guiscard]

...

Lets try and keep this on topic... The thread was made so we don't go off on tangents so much and actually produce a meaningful debate. Feel free to make another thread about whether atheism can be considered a belief.

[Anarkistsdream]

Maybe in reference to other things... But when speaking of religion, an ateist is someone who denies the existance of God...

Therefore, they have made a concious decision to say they don't believe in an all-powerful being.

Taking a conscious decision not to believe something still doesn't mean that you have to be defined by that non-belief, though. Your decision not to believe does not in itself amount to a belief.

Oh, and incidentally, an atheist doesn't have to deny the existence of god(s). The acceptance of the lack of proof of god(s), and therefore their probable non-existence, is atheism.

Good argument.... I will agree that you are correct... But I will also say that my PERSONAL definition is what I have stated above... While yours is textbook, it is not the way I choose to perceive the definition of the word...

[CrazyAnglican]

Umm guys. You do realize that this isn't the debate thread.......right? This debate actually begins between Juggernaut and me......tomorrow.



Some great points.....really. I'm impressed, or at least I will be when you take a Christian on one on one to test your assertions. Can you make an argument without relying on others for help according to the rules provided? If not, then by all means keep blathering on

[MeDeFe]

If this is about personal definitions it's useless anyway.

But A-dream, what WOULD you call someone who just accepts the lack of proof and concludes that god most likely doesn't exist in the same way as green men on Mars and the Tooth Fairy don't exist?

[Anarkistsdream]

If this is about personal definitions it's useless anyway.

But A-dream, what WOULD you call someone who just accepts the lack of proof and concludes that god most likely doesn't exist in the same way as green men on Mars and the Tooth Fairy don't exist?

I would call them an atheist...

That is my point. You have made a decision to believe there is no God.

I do not believe in the one almighty Christian god, but I do believe in higher powers. So, in that regards, I would be considered pagan or agnostic.

It's just a label. I don't understand why it's such a big deal.

[Stopper]

It's just a label. I don't understand why it's such a big deal.

Because certain people would like to have "atheism" generally accepted as another belief system, which would then make the state of being an atheist similar to the state of being Christian - i.e. a belief that is adopted on no rational grounds.

But atheism itself isn't a positive belief. Atheists will almost certainly believe in other things - they may be humanists, communists, whatever, but atheism in itself isn't a belief system. I wouldn't primarily define myself, or anyone else, as being an atheist, because it says next to nothing about the person.

Umm guys. You do realize that this isn't the debate thread.......right? This debate actually begins between Juggernaut and me......tomorrow.

I haven't read the above, but I get the feeling that you're saying something which is relevant to me. I'll read it tomorrow when I get the chance.

[heavycola]

What relevance does the original question have to anything though?