Tuesday, July 12, 2016

The summer of 2016: A BAD summer for atheism

The Christian evangelist Ray Comfort is releasing his video The Atheist Delusion this summer.  Judging from his previous videos and the amount of views they received, The Atheist Delusion video will receive millions of views.

Below is the official trailer for the video which was recently uploaded to YouTube.

The summer of 2016: It's going to be a very BAD summer for stubborn militant atheists. 


Will 21st century cultural/ideological convergence grind down atheism at an accelerating pace?

Earlier in the day, I created a post entitled Ideological convergence will grind down atheism in the 21st century which cited the work of various scholars.  If you haven't done so already, please read that article before reading the remainder of this article.

Question: Will the pace of cultural/ideological convergence grind down atheism at an accelerated rate in the 21st century?

Consider:

1.  In 2011, the American Spectator declared:
The report estimates about 80,000 new Christians every day, 79,000 new Muslims every day, and 300 fewer atheists every day. These atheists are presumably disproportionately represented in the West, while religion is thriving in the Global South, where charismatic Christianity is exploding."
Now I don't know if the number of atheists is decreasing in absolute number due the explosive growth of Christianity in China and the existence of state atheism in China, but as a percentage of the world's population atheism is seeing a decline. See:  Growth of Christianity in China and Desecularization

 2.  The American sociologist and author Peter L. Berger introduced the concept of desecularization in 1999.  According to Berger, "One can say with some confidence that modern Pentecostalism must be the fastest growing religion in human history."

Phillip Jenkins published the book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.

Chuck Colson, citing the work of Jenkins, writes:

As Penn State professor Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, predictions like Huntingtons betray an ignorance of the explosive growth of Christianity outside of the West.

For instance, in 1900, there were approximately 10 million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million. By 2025, conservative estimates see that number rising to 633 million. Those same estimates put the number of Christians in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million and in Asia at 460 million.

According to Jenkins, the percentage of the worlds population that is, at least by name, Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.

3.  If the religious and/or religious immigrants and their descendants continue to grow in secular places like Europe and China, they will have more power to influence the media (who are dependent on advertisers so they will not want to offend the religious)  and government as far as religious freedom.

Conclusion:

So given the much higher daily increase of the religious per day in the world, I would argue and their attendant growing influence on media, government, etc., I would argue that pace of global desecularization and the expected desecularization of the Western World in the 21st century would happen at an increasing rate during the 21st century

For more information, please see:

Growth of global desecularization

Acceleration of 21st century desecularization



Eric Kaufmann: Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

Ideological convergence will grind down atheism in the 21st century

Samuel P. Huntington founded Foreign Policy magazine. In the early 1990s Huntington advanced the idea of a coming intensification of  a "clash of civilizations".

Hutington's magazine Foreign Policy  pointed out in 2013 that the world is seeing more of a convergence of civilizations rather than a clash of civilizations.  Of course, clashes are occurring such as Muslim terrorism in Paris, etc.  On the other hand, there is far less Christian fundamentalist violence. In fact, it is rare.

Religious fundamentalists set up barriers to assimilation in terms of irreligious beliefs (religious schools, etc.) which the  religious demographic/political scholar Eric Kaufmann and other scholars point out (see:Religious immigrants to Europe resistant to secularization  and   Eric Kaufmann - Religion, Demography and Politics in the 21st Century).  That is why many European religious immigrants are not assimilating (see: Religious immigrants to Europe resistant to secularization).

Given the assertiveness/aggressiveness of many Muslims and multiculturalism, public schools in Britain are very reluctant to challenge the creationist beliefs of Muslim children which is highly upsetting to Richard Dawkins (see: Richard Dawkins: Muslim parents 'import creationism' into schools). 

In 2009, The Guardian declared:
Mass migration has led to a rise in creationist beliefs across Europe, according to a British scientist.
Michael Reiss, who is a professor of education at the Institute of Education in London and an Anglican priest, said the evolution-creationism debate could no longer be thought of as something that happened elsewhere and that more and more people in the UK did not accept evolution.

Reiss told the Guardian that countries with a higher proportion of Muslims or fundamentalist Christians in their population were more likely to reject evolution. He added: "What the Turks believe today is what the Germans and British believe tomorrow. It is because of the mass movement of people between countries.
"These things can no longer be thought of as occurring in other countries. In London, where I work, there are increasingly quite large numbers of highly intelligent 16, 17 and 18-year-olds doing Advanced Level biology who do not accept evolution. That's either because they come from a fundamentalist Christian background or from Muslim backgrounds.

Johns Hopkins University Press reported in 2014: "Over the past forty years, creationism has spread swiftly among European Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims, even as anti-creationists sought to smother its flames."

On the other hand, in the United States, the children of atheists have the lowest retention rate of all religious/irreligious groupings as atheists are far less likely to set up barriers to prevent assimilation (See: Retention rates - American atheism ). For example, I have never seen a private atheist school for children. There are no atheist radio stations playing years worth of atheist songs.Very few atheist households subscribe to atheist television channels.

American atheist children adopting religious belief does not bode well  for irreligion in secular Europe which is seeing a flood of religious immigrants with higher birth rates. 

Next, English is widely spoken around the world.

Look at the convergence of people significantly less interested in atheism/atheist in these geographic regions:

Google trends: Term atheist:
Google trends: Term atheism:
 On December 23, 2012, Professor Eric Kaufmann who teaches at Birbeck College, University of London wrote:
I argue that 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious. On the other hand, the secular West and East Asia has very low fertility and a rapidly aging population... In the coming decades, the developed world's demand for workers to pay its pensions and work in its service sector will soar alongside the booming supply of young people in the third world. Ergo, we can expect significant immigration to the secular West which will import religious revival on the back of ethnic change. In addition, those with religious beliefs tend to have higher birth rates than the secular population, with fundamentalists having far larger families. The epicentre of these trends will be in immigration gateway cities like New York (a third white), Amsterdam (half Dutch), Los Angeles (28% white), and London, 45% white British.

At a conference Kaufmann said of religious demographic projections concerning the 21st century:
 Part of the reason I think demography is very important, at least if we are going to speak about the future, is that it is the most predictable of the social sciences.

...if you look at a population and its age structure now. You can tell a lot about the future. ...So by looking at the relative age structure of different populations you can already say a lot about the future...
...Religious fundamentalism is going to be on the increase in the future and not just out there in the developing world..., but in the developed world as well.
The religious, particularly religious fundamentalist have higher birth rates than the irreligious and atheists/agnostics have sub-replacement fertility (see: Atheism and fertility rates ). Atheism/agnosticism are expected to decline in the 21st century in terms of their global market share and fertility is playing a leading role although not the sole role (see:  Causes of desecularization ).

According to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary's Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which has made projections up to the year of 2050, the percentage of the global population that are evangelical Christians/pentecostals is expected to increase (see: Growth of evangelical Christianity).

Kaufmann told a secular audience in Australia: "The trends that are happening worldwide inevitably in an age of globalization are going to affect us."
 .
The fertility rates of various worldviews, globalization and ideological convergence  will grind down atheism in the 21 century.  On the other hand, biblical Christianity will prosper globally and will see a rise in irreligious areas of the world China/Europe (see: Desecularization  and Asian atheism  and European atheism and 21st century decline).

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks declared: "...the 17th century was the beginning of an age of secularization which has lasted four centuries until now; the 21st century is exactly the opposite, it's the beginning of an age of desecularization. Religion is seizing power; they're not yielding power."

If you are a militant atheist, consider this:

Ideological convergence has already ground away the vast bulk of Western World atheists. Now most self-professed atheists in the West are atheist poseurs who claim  atheism is merely a lack of belief in God/gods despite that fact that encyclopedias of philosophy define atheism as the denial of the existence of God (see: Definition of atheism)  In short, most self-professed Western atheists are agnostics.

Agnostics outnumber atheists in the world. So given ideological convergence it is more likely that atheists would become agnostics than vice versa (In addition,  you have the tug of theistic believers on atheists). And that is exactly what has happened. How much easier will it be to assimilate bunch of agnostic fence-sitters into believers in God? Surrounded by a growing theistic society, more and more agnostics will become theists. As alluded to above, religious demographers are expecting agnostics to decline as a percentage of the world's population in the 21st century.  

To see the followup article, please see:  Will 21st century cultural/ideological convergence grind down atheism at an accelerating pace?



Eric Kaufmann: Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

Monday, July 11, 2016

2016: More BAD news for American atheists

New Atheism books started being published in 2004. The 2004 publication of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris was joined over the next few years by a series of books by other New Atheism authors. The New Atheism books had far higher sales than the vast majority of books about atheism.

Below is a graph of Google searches for the word "atheism" from Google trends and please allow a brief time for the graph to load. Please notice that there are less Google searches for the term atheism than in January of 2004. Also, notice the lowest previous point on the Google trends graph was July of 2006 and now it is even lower.

YouTube atheist Thunderf00t said about the atheist movement after Reason Rally 2016 had a very low turnout: :
I'm not sure there is anything in this movement worth saving. Hitchens is dead. Dawkins simply doesn't have the energy for this sort of thing anymore. Harris went his own way. And Dennett just kind of blended into the background. So what do you think when the largest gathering of the nonreligious in history pulls in... I don't know. Maybe 2,000 people. Is there anything worth saving?





There is some controversy within atheism circles whether of not atheists should call themselves atheists due to the bad reputation of atheism/atheists. New atheist Sam Harris said concerning the label of atheist, "It's right next to child molester as a designation."

Some atheists use euphemisms for the word atheist in public when people ask them what their religion is (rationalist, nonbeliever, etc.). And at the poorly attended Reason Rally 2016, atheist David Silverman (who is president of the American Atheist organization) had atheists/agnostics repeatedly yell the word "atheist" (see the video below). Notice all the empty chairs in the video.

There are more Google USA searches for the word "atheist" than in January of 2004 according to Google trends, but the bad news for atheists is that the general trend is currently downwards despite some atheist activists encouraging people to call themselves atheists (allow a brief time for the graph to load).

Friday, July 8, 2016

Creationist Ken Ham vs. atheist and evolutionist PZ Myers

Quote of atheist  and evolutionist PZ Myers:
Ken Ham is bragging about his web traffic, and it’s rather pathetic.

Oooh. Millions are big numbers. But just to put it all into perspective, some random low-ranking non-entity of a godless college professor in the most rural part of Minnesota gets about 25-30 million visits per year, and yeah, it’s growing every year. And his site links regularly to AiG, meaning a lot of the visitors to Ham’s precious empire are there to laugh at him.

Alexa ranking of Freethoughtblogs which is owned by PZ Myers



Alexa ranking of Answers in Genesis website


Ken Ham's website (the Answers In Genesis Website)  now has a greater Alexa ranking than PZ Myer's website.

If only PZ Myers didn't think he was random and there was a special purpose in his life. Then he might be more purposeful and intelligent in his web marketing strategies.

If only some atheist in the past built an enormous wooden structure in the past that PZ Myers could replicate and draw enormous crowds with. But atheism is boring and always will be.

 Ark Encounter video


Saturday, July 2, 2016

Kicking atheism, agnosticism and evolutionism when they are down. Why its time to crush godlessness like an aluminum can



 Is it time to kick atheism, agnosticism when they are down?

Agnosticism is actually more prevalent than atheism although atheism gets more press.

So how is agnosticism doing in the world?

How is atheism doing in the world right now?

How is evolutionism doing in the world right now?

How is Jesus doing in the world right now? Is Jesus triumphing like he always does?

Is it time to ramp up creationist fundraising/outreach and crush godlessness like an aluminum can?

In 2015, Pew Research indicated in their report The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050 that agnostics and atheists “will make up a declining share of the world’s total population.”

The Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary estimated that agnostics made up 9.5% of the global population in 2015. CSGC projects that agnosticism will be 8.71% of the global population in 2025 and 7.19% of the global population in 2050

Atheism is in decline worldwide, with the number of atheists falling from 4.5% of the world’s population in 1970 to 2.0% in 2010 and projected to drop to 1.8% by 2020, according to a new report by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass.

 The prominent historian Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, indicates that he believes Christianity faces a "bright future" worldwide. According to MacCulloch, "Christianity, the world's largest religion, is rapidly expanding – by all indications, its future is very bright."

Professor Phillip Jenkins published the book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.

Chuck Colson, citing the work of Jenkins, writes:
As Penn State professor Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, predictions like Huntingtons betray an ignorance of the explosive growth of Christianity outside of the West.

For instance, in 1900, there were approximately 10 million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million. By 2025, conservative estimates see that number rising to 633 million. Those same estimates put the number of Christians in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million and in Asia at 460 million.

According to Jenkins, the percentage of the worlds population that is, at least by name, Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today
Professor Eric Kaufmann told a secular audience in Australia: "The trends that are happening worldwide inevitably in an age of globalization are going to affect us."

The main ideological supply line of atheism/agnosticism is Darwinism. And Darwinism is vulnerable. Johns Hopkins University Press reported in 2014: "Over the past forty years, creationism has spread swiftly among European Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims, even as anti-creationists sought to smother its flames."

General Douglas MacArthur declared: "The history of war proves that nine out of ten times an army has been destroyed because its supply lines have been cut off...”

Answers In Genesis has put a lot of effort into fundraising. However, I think there is room for a lot of improvement for other creationist ministries.  And its very doable. It just a matter of time before they do it - especially when Christendom sees the success of the combined effects of the Answers In Genesis website, the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.  I think Answers In Genesis is going to have a lot of forward momentum post Ark Encounter. Furthermore, and more importantly, evangelical Christianity is a fast growing and very evangelistic religion in the world and most evangelicals are staunch creationists. And global creationism is on the rise.

So is it time for Christendom to ramp up creationist fundraising and outreach and crush godlessness like an aluminum can?

Please look at the Google trends graph below after it finishes loading.



Atheists, agnostics and evolutionists.. Get ready. It's coming! The negative isms of atheism, agnosticism, Darwinism and evolutionism will be crushed like an aluminum can just other negative isms in history.

By the way, can you satisfactorily answer the 15 questions for evolutionists AFTER clicking on the links for the supporting articles and videos on the page so you make an informed answer?  I don't think you can! Click on the 15 questions for evolutionists HERE.

Gallup reports American belief in God rose recently. And 5 other reasons why New Atheism was merely a fad with minimal effects.

Recently,  I said the effects of New Atheism on the USA may be over by about 2021 which is about 5 years. It now appears as if it may only take about 3 years or even less.

I say this for 6 reasons.

1.  Correlation does not equal causation. I read that some irreligion trends were occurring even before the New Atheism appeared on the scene. So the effects of the New Atheism movement may have been minimal. In addition, read this article American faith: A work in progress which is skeptical that the New Atheism had much of an impact:

2.  New Atheism appears to be gobbled up by feminism/SJWism ("social justice warriorism")/political correctness within atheism as this story indicates: The Collapse of New Atheism.

Feminism has an element of trendiness too as this roller coaster Google trends graph helps show, but feminism did help to largely kill off New Atheism.  In addition, political pendulums do have a tendency to swing back and forth in the United States and there does appear to be a growing backlash against "political correctness" and right-wing candidates are gaining traction in many elections around the world.

On the other hand, different brands of atheism are often reactionary to various types of theism/politics so perhaps SJW has some legs for awhile. But given the roller coaster nature of feminism in society and the fickleness of the fairer sex, I have my doubts about feminism/SJW type atheism lasting.  I think it is largely a fad. 

3. Economic instability increases religiosity and the global/U.S. economy seems fragile right now.

4. Furthermore, there are some powerful global trends in terms of a global resurgence of religion and in an age of globalization, this could certainly have an effect on the United States,

5.  The New Atheism caused a surge of anti-atheism defenses of Christianity being published in print and on the internet.  Now it seems as if Answers In Genesis may see a big surge in publicity due to their Ark Encounter exhibit which is an impressive and fairly close replication of Noah's Ark (It does have a restaurant in it which I doubt Noah had). And I am not sure if the Amish who helped built the Ark Encounter used the mysterious wood of gopher wood! 

I liken the New Atheism inspired Christian anti-atheism works to be similar to the United States battle with Japan in WWII. They intellectually conquered a lot of islands on the way to "Japan"/atheism, but the "mainland" of ideological underpinnings of modern day atheism/agnosticism is Darwinism.

(Perhaps, it might be better said that Christians reconquered many islands on the way to "Japan/atheism" as the Christian vs. atheism battle is a battle that has been going on the West for about 400 years. Admittedly, new arguments do come forth.  Although the New Atheism brand of atheism was largely a marketing tactic as much of it was not new.)

Darwinism is intellectually bankrupt as these 15 questions for evolutionists help show.  Creationist have a lot of excellent content at this point. If they just amped up its distribution into the marketplace of ideas, I think this would have an effect.

Consider:

 Johns Hopkins University Press reported in 2014: "Over the past forty years, creationism has spread swiftly among European Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims, even as anti-creationists sought to smother its flames."

 On February 24, 2015, the Science Nordic website declared:
Creationism, the belief that a god -- not evolution -- shaped life on Earth, is ... spreading in the very stronghold of evolution, Europe. That’s the conclusion of five years of research that’s been put into new book on creationism. The book details how creationism is on the march throughout most of Europe.
"Creationism is most dominant in Eastern Europe and Turkey, but even some schools in the Netherlands are teaching creationism," says one of the book’s authors Hans Henrik Hjermitslev, University College South Denmark. "Politicians in some German federal states are advocating that schools use creationist books alongside those about evolutionary theory in their lessons. This kind of struggle is going on on a small scale in many places."...

"Over the last ten years we’ve seen the emergence of big-city creationism. London is a good example," says Kjærgaar.

Here, noticeably more young people have been signed up to various local and religious groups.
"And this doesn't just apply to young Muslims as many people might think. Christian groups are also recruiting young people...

Creationism has particularly been on the rise in step with the internet, which according to Peter Kjærgaard has made it much easier for people to become activists..

 Darwinism has public schools supporting it. On the other hand, homeschooling and the use of vouchers for private religious schools  is increasing and many people are becoming dissatisfied with the quality of public schools. Given aging populations in the West and accompanying tight government budgets, privatization  of  public schools (which is more economical) could gain further traction though increased use of homeschooling vouchers, etc.  Necessity is often the mother of invention so societies may become less reliant on the public school model of education.


6. The percentage of Americans who say they believe in God has recently seen an uptick according to a recent report by the Gallup organization, but perhaps this is a sampling error as Gallup says "the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level."