Atheist movie coming out in New York and Los Angeles

[Gustaf]

Dibble, am I to understand that everyone who disagrees with you on everything need to be educated to see the light, or is it only those who disagree with you on religion?

See, I do think that you mean well with your beliefs, I just don't think they're very realistic. Most people find the beliefs of other people to range from misinformed to stupid to insane (as long as they're not identical with their own). And most people hold such beliefs themselves.

If we are to get along in the world, we need to accept these differences and not try to get everyone to conform to a specific mindset. Because in most cases they don't do all that much active harm.

Some people believe in God, some in class warfare and some in a completely unfettered free market. Some are afraid of flying, some like Pokemon. Some like rap and others like heavy metal. Some people can't watch black-and-white movies or movies with subtitles because they are boring. There is plenty of idiocy in the world according to most people.

[Gustaf]

Dibble, am I to understand that everyone who disagrees with you on everything need to be educated to see the light, or is it only those who disagree with you on religion?

Everything? No. Only religion? No. It depends on a number of different factors:

1. How much I care about the issue.
2. The degree am I certain I'm right about my positions on the issue.
3. The degree to which the issue in question is fact based vs opinion based.

For instance, I used to be very passionately against government run healthcare. Not so much any more. After debating and debating my certainty level isn't the same, and I accept that there are problems with both systems. The problems are not necessarily objectively worse in one system compared to another, and whether one feels that the problem in one system are worse than in another is opinion based. I haven't necessarily changed my opinion, but I no longer feel the need to get involved in long, drawn out debates on the subject.

Is that helpful?

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I'm aware that most people have beliefs that aren't founded in reality, and I don't discount myself from being part of that group.

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I disagree - acceptance in all cases is not what we need. Tolerance however is often necessary. Again, I'm not advocating forcing anyone to change their mind, I'm advocating peacefully debating the issue.

But you still haven't shown that the difference between secularism and religiosity has anything to do with how intolerant a government or society will be of other belief systems.

Again, before I continue any further, could you answer this question?

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I didn't say all cases, I said most cases. I think actively promoting one's views, shoving them down peoples' throats is generally speaking a bad idea. Certain religious people can at least claim that they have to because people will go to hell if they fail. But atheists don't really have any particularly good reason to do so, even given their own beliefs.

As to the discussion at hand, from what I recall of opinion polls made in Europe, religious people are more tolerant than non-religious people (except for when it comes to homosexuals, for obvious reasons).

[Gustaf]

I didn't say all cases, I said most cases.

Err, sorry, when I said "all cases" I was referring to the cases you were talking about for acceptance, not the cases in which harm is done.

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Promotion of views and shoving them down people's throats are not necessarily the same thing. A free society ought to encourage people to promote and state their views so that healthy debate can occur.

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Atheists have plenty of good reasons to promote their views, you just may not particularly agree with those reasons. I think this article explains how many atheists generally feel about the subject, if you're interested:

http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismquestions/a/PromoteAtheism.htm

And if you've got 15 minutes, this video also might give some perspective:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAuFJKQh83Y

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I can't seem to find those polls - I would be interested in seeing them if you can find them.

On that note, I know that some comparisons of living standards show that countries that are less religious tend to be better off. (your own country being reported as the least religious)

http://www.gadling.com/2007/08/23/least-religious-countries/
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html

Oh, I'm for free debate, it's more a question of how one should use it. That is, this is not a legal issue but a more personal one. Deep-seated beliefs wher nothing can  be proven and where being proven right has no obvious benefits aren't really good subjects for debate, imo. Let's put it this way - you discussing the existence of God with an evangelical, with both of you trying to convince the other that you're right is unlikely to lead to either of you changing your mind. It's more likely to lead to you both nudging a bit closer to wanting to kill the other guy. Therefore I think it's better to just accept the difference there and move on. Focus on issues where progress can be made.

I didn't have 15 minutes (I'm at work) but I did read the article. That's all very well, but it seems to me that he precisely does not come to promoting atheism in the way we're talking about here. It's always a good idea to promote open and critical thinking. That's not what, say, this movie seems to eb about or instance.

As regards the empirics, this is something we read as handouts in high school - so I'm afraid I have no links to offer. If you don't want to believe me, I guess I can understand that. It was Europe based so I think it might have been a Eurostat thing, although I'm noit entirely sure.

Finally, of course secularism is linked to general progress, that is a well-known fact. That kind of data might be over-aggreageted though. I recall that when the former Swedish government tried to take credit for on esuch study showing Sweeds as the happiest people in the world, it was pointed out that religion was one of the few significant explanatory variables for happiness (with money being the other, IIRC).

That is, even though secular societies do better than religious ones, religious people within those societies tend to be happier.

My conclusion from this is that atheists definitely ought to fight vigorously for religious freedom (or the freedom to be non-religious) and safe-guard the secular aspects of society. But to go on beyond that and fight religion as a phenomenon in civil society is something that I view as a bad approach.

[Gustaf]

As to the discussion at hand, from what I recall of opinion polls made in Europe, religious people are more tolerant than non-religious people (except for when it comes to homosexuals, for obvious reasons).

You probably should back that up. I think some EU surveys can be found on Eurostat(?)/European Social Survey. In any event there is the government sponsored British Social Attitudes Survey running from 1980 and the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (who seem to make their results more public) The SSAS reports every 4 years on Attitudes to Discrimination with surveys in 2002, 2006 and 2010. The 2010 data has still to be released.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/205755/0054714.pdf

In order to define 'religious' and 'non religious' it split the data into those 'Who attended religious services at least once a week' (229 from the sample) and Those who attended 'practically never/no religion' (955 of the sample)

On a sample question; 'Would be “unhappy”/ “very unhappy” if lose relativemarried/long-termr’ship with…'

The response to each of the options was as follows - 'Religious' v 'Non Religious'

Someone who had a sex change operation 58-46
Asylum seeker 33-38
Gypsy Traveller 41-34
Same sex 52-27
Muslim 29-23
Hindu 26-17
Learning Disability 21-14
Black/Asian 13-19
Chinese 12-9
Jewish 11-10

With the exception of 'asylum seeker' and 'black/asian' those who are religious score lower on the SSAS 'attitudes to discrimination' than those who are 'non religious'. The differences on most (with exception of same sex) are not vast; but they are there. There's alot of other information in the sub sets.

EDIT

Just for comparison the 2002 survey report used the figures in a different way and gave a breakdown by religion (as people who vonsider themselves religious may not attend any services)

Male same-sex relationships 'always wrong'

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 39%, Roman Catholic 29%, No Religion 20%

Would 'mind inter-racial marriage'

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 23%, Roman Catholic 15%, No Religion 12%

Ethnic minorities 'take jobs'

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 23%, Roman Catholic 14%, No Religion 10%

A mans job is to earn money, a woman's is to be at home

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 15%, Roman Catholic 14%, No Religion 8%

Scotland should 'do all it can to eliminate predjudice'

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 64%, Roman Catholic 71%, No Religion 72%

As I said to Dibble, I never saw these electronically and it's been over 5 years, but I think it might have been a eurostat one.. I can't swear on what categories were included - it sort of make sense that religious people might be more negative to other religious people but that might not have been included in the poll I read. I remember it had ethnic minorities and the poll you cite seem to indicate that religious people might be more tolerant towards ethnic minorities.

[Gustaf]

As I said to Dibble, I never saw these electronically and it's been over 5 years, but I think it might have been a eurostat one.. I can't swear on what categories were included - it sort of make sense that religious people might be more negative to other religious people but that might not have been included in the poll I read. I remember it had ethnic minorities and the poll you cite seem to indicate that religious people might be more tolerant towards ethnic minorities.

I don't understand where you are coming from.

What I posted was two surveys where the metadata had been measured by 'religious attendance; and by 'self identified religion' for government monitoring purposes. In most of the examples those who attended religious services regularly and/or adhered to a religion held less socially progressive/tolerant positions than those who were not religious. And Scotland is a broadly secular society. So 23% of people who were of the Church of Scotland stated they had a problem with interracial marriage but only 12% of those who had no religious faith had a similar problem.

I just tried to explain where much of that difference might stem from. The second poll you cite seems to be a more unambigious refutation of what I said though, that's true. It's hard to compare since I don't remember the details of how religion was defined in the poll I saw, for instance.