Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Videos of Why Atheism is Awesome!


Here are some of my more favorite and some of my more recent videos I've found with the topic. Most are short, if interested I'd recommend coming back when you have time to watch them, or to 'fav' them on youtube to watch later. These videos help to explain why being an atheism is not only awesome, but hip!

Here's the link to the first one cause embedding is disabled, it's from that survey where atheists and agnostics did best.

And then an interesting statistical video from a while back.


A personal favorite. This has been taken down and reposted in the last two years so if it doesn't show up just Google the title (Atheist Statistics) and hopefully you'll find it.


Now I will state why these videos show that atheism is awesome:
Vid #1 - We are smarter than all religious people in every way.
Vid #2 - We're growing quickly.
Vid #3 - Simply cause the video used ''Clubbed to Death'' as the 'soundtrack.'

I'm so hoping that someone comments on how ridiculous and stupid I am and my logic is messed up. Cause then they have no knack for understanding sarcasm, or any patience to read the rest of this post.

I'd like to make some comments on what these videos actually tell us. First, the religious survey is definitely an interesting find. But it really shouldn't be that surprising. In a related video Penn Jillette points out that atheists just tend to be smarter, this has been proven in many surveys, the last video said 39 out of 43 studies done in the last few decades. As atheists or agnostics tend to be smarter we can assume they would also be above average for religious knowledge, as this survey proves.

But not only that, generally those who doubt the existence of a personal God do so because they have studied religions. The non-religious generally have a wide knowledge of other religions because before they stopped believing they generally had a desire to really know the truth and studied the hell out of the world religions, or at least their own, before realizing that they are all, for the most part, very similar in the area of 'faith.' It shouldn't come as a surprise that not only would they know their former religion very well, but some basic things about many other religions. The first video also answers as to why most Americans simply don't know much period. Not necessarily a religious issue, at least in the world arena, but most likely an American cultural phenomena.

The second video does a good job of showing how Christianity (over 70% of the American population at least 2 years ago) is shrinking and how the non-religious population is growing. This indicates people losing faith. You can't say people are becoming non-religious because Christianity is shrinking, or that atheism is literally growing because more people report being non-religious. These statistics alone could be answered for by population changes or movements. But put together they show a decent connection between the two.


The third video is very good. It has changed in minor ways over the years, usually with more concise wording and updated statistics. I actually used this video in a paper and therefore looked up a lot of the studies and searched for correlating studies. I can back up nearly all the statistics given. It would seem that studies average out to about 20% of 19-30 year-old persons being non-religious, and for teens to be around 25%. And this is only in America! The prison statistics are also true, and as far as I know it was an anonymous study so they should be representative. However there is the chance that someone would lie to fit in with a prison gang, or that maybe atheist criminals are generally smarter and less likely to get caught. I don't know if this actually hurts any claims by atheists that we're better than the average religious person.

What these videos are not saying is that atheism will take over. Most studies say that America will reach 25% secular/non-religious within 15-20 years but level out. Atheism doesn't mean solving the worlds problems, countries with high levels of atheism do have crime rates, just much lower than highly religious countries, and generally much less amounts of serious crimes, such as rape or murder. It isn't saying that religion makes you dumb either, though I think in some cases it does. It also isn't saying that atheism actually is 'hip' but this could be possible. So maybe atheism is the new 'emo.' Let's all be different by being and dressing the same! Kind of.

Lastly, these videos don't "prove" atheism is right. Most atheists acknowledge a level of agnosticism, so most don't even say atheism is 100% correct anyways. But often atheists are condemned for being more 'dogmatic' than theists. Well, atheists are more dogmatic than agnostics, but not in any way more than the average theists. Also, atheism has a way of de-converting even people who don't want to be atheists, so I think it has such a strong foothold that often people will doubt their former God more than they had believed in him/her.

2 comments:

  1. First of all, love the sandwich pic above. Next--
    most of the so-called agnostics I know are either mentally too lazy to explore their own basis for belief/unbelief, and/or they are a bit too socially insecure to acknowledge their own atheism. I've heard alot of them use that pathetic argument, "Well, you can't prove it either way." This makes them seem to feel they've scored some kind of intellectual point, when in fact there is no good reason for me to have to prove that a magical undying wizard in the sky that grants wishes exists. The burden of proof is on believers. and so far, they haven't come up with anything solid.
    That "can't prove" statement is right up there in stupidity with the commonly used phrase "humane slaughter."
    Now, eat what you want, believe what you want, but don't go around pretending that just because a large number of people use a phrase/share a belief, that gives said phrase or belief validity. What the hell would Humane Slaughter be, just tell me... a lamb comes up to you and begs to be dismembered and eaten? Would that make it okay?
    anyway...

    Keep blogging, jdog-- you're not alone. You may want to visit the lovely blog called The Friendly Atheist sometime for ideas, if you haven't already. I'll be back to read your vents and explorations.

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  2. I had a big old debate with a friend the other day about whether or not I am atheist. He says I'm not because I do not insist that there is absolutely, definitely nothing like god.

    But 'agnostic' seems too wishy-washy for me, because I strongly suspect that there is no god, and my studies so far have shown that this is indeed likely.

    And frankly, nobody but us heathens know the difference between "atheist agnosticism," "strong" vs. "weak" atheism, etc.

    So define the word as you like. To me, it seems that there is probably no god. I'm not neutral on the issue, so "atheist" seems to be the most natural and concise way of putting it.

    By the way, I heart you, j-dog!

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