The Four Horsemen (and other notable atheists)

YouTube video

So now that I've angered some and intrigued a few, let's get started.

This thread is a discussion about notable atheist figures; their ideas, debates, books, discussions, quotes, positions, etc. This is different than my "Atheism" thread, in that it's not my personal ideas, but others'. It also covers a societal phenomenon, of which the "Horsemen" are figureheads, not just the ideas themselves.

For the record, I tend to see the characterization of this as a "movement" as being absurd. There's no centralized power or communications structure. At best there are regional groups and fractious attempts to begin such a movement, with almost no success. Therefore, talking about "the movement" in abstract terms is largely fruitless. It exists only as a convenient term that encompasses many thinkers, individual arguments, and smaller movements.

Here's the wiki, which is actually a nice summation of prominent publications and other voices in the field:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism

My personal favorites are Penn Jillette (not mentioned in the wiki, but I doubt he'd mind the association), and Michael Shermer (editor-in-chief of Skeptic Magazine and head of The Skeptics Society).

One can scarcely mention, say, Richard Dawkins without derailing other threads. And a thread specifically about the demographic he's the figurehead of...well...let's just try not to get banned, eh? At the very least, let's play the "no ad hominem" game, like you play "the quiet game" with kids to try to get them to shut up. The first poster to attack the people involved instead of the ideas, loses.

And if anyone has an afternoon to kill and wants to watch some awesome debates, just go to Youtube and find a bunch of Christopher Hitchens debates. I won't spam them here, but there are numerous gems.

{edit} a decent list of them: https://www.learnoutloud.com/content/blog/archives/2011/12/hitchens_debates.html

tl;dr looks like spam, k.

Spoiler:
👆

That collage of them has to be one of my favorite images, because the quotes are just so damn good.

Yeah, it's a cool image.

They really do compliment each other well - both in expertise and approach to the subject. Much as I dislike "packaging" atheism as a movement or coherent worldview, the Four Horsemen - and others like them - never cease to enthrall me with their efforts.

A good friend of mine's father is in the same field(s) of philosophy as Dennett (and, to a lesser extent, Harris), and they're competing voices on many subjects (see my Moral Responsibility thread in the Philosophy forum). So I run in at least one circle that's more critical of him than the others. But he's still fascinating. A lot of "philosophy of the mind" research and articles that I've been exposed to have come from Dennett's writing and recommendations.

Originally posted by Digi

the wiki ... is actually a nice summation ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism

Wiki's 1st paragraph is as follows:

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New Atheism is a social and political movement in favour of atheism and secularism promoted by a collection of modern atheist writers who have advocated the view that "religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."[1] There is uncertainty about how much influence the movement has had on religious demographics, but the increase in atheist groups, student societies, publications and public appearances has coincided with the non-religious being the largest growing demographic, closely followed by Islam and evangelicalism in the US and UK
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Question:

If all three demographics (New Atheism, Islam AND evangelicalism) are growing, exactly which demographic is shrinking?

Are the numbers coming from those who were formerly Catholic?

Originally posted by bluewaterrider
Wiki's 1st paragraph is as follows:

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[b]New Atheism is a social and political movement in favour of atheism and secularism promoted by a collection of modern atheist writers who have advocated the view that "religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."[1] There is uncertainty about how much influence the movement has had on religious demographics, but the increase in atheist groups, student societies, publications and public appearances has coincided with the non-religious being the largest growing demographic, closely followed by Islam and evangelicalism in the US and UK
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Question:

If all three demographics (New Atheism, Islam AND evangelicalism) are growing, exactly which demographic is shrinking?

Are the numbers coming from those who were formerly Catholic? [/B]

Considering the population is still growing, none of those three have to shrink for the others to grow at quicker rate. There are also dozens of other religions out there that could shrink or grow.

Originally posted by bluewaterrider
Wiki's 1st paragraph is as follows:

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[b]New Atheism is a social and political movement in favour of atheism and secularism promoted by a collection of modern atheist writers who have advocated the view that "religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."[1] There is uncertainty about how much influence the movement has had on religious demographics, but the increase in atheist groups, student societies, publications and public appearances has coincided with the non-religious being the largest growing demographic, closely followed by Islam and evangelicalism in the US and UK
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Question:

If all three demographics (New Atheism, Islam AND evangelicalism) are growing, exactly which demographic is shrinking?

Are the numbers coming from those who were formerly Catholic? [/B]

What Lek said is a possibility. But Wiki cites sources for most information, and this is no exception. I'd encourage you to follow the source listed in the link to the original documentation.

Originally posted by Digi
What Lek said is a possibility. But Wiki cites sources for most information, and this is no exception. I'd encourage you to follow the source listed in the link to the original documentation.

The data they referenced was incomplete, somewhat contradictory, and a little hard to understand. They mentioned the U.S. but gave no source I could find.
For the UK, they had the following:

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Christianity remained the largest group; 59% (33.2 million). This is down 13 percentage points since 2001 when 72% (37.3 million). It is the only group to have experienced a decrease in numbers between 2001 and 2011 despite population growth. The second largest response category in 2011 was no religion. This increased 10 percentage points. Interestingly, Christianity is not down everywhere. Newham, Haringey, Brent, Boston and Lambeth have all shown increases in the Christian population.
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http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/dec/11/census-2011-religion-race-education

I'm fairly certain the missing U.S. information would provide the increase in evangelicals. England doesn't seem to be the place to search for that.
The survey provided suggests either the Catholic or Anglican church then, from what I can gather ...

Originally posted by bluewaterrider
The data they referenced was incomplete, somewhat contradictory, and a little hard to understand. They mentioned the U.S. but gave no source I could find.
For the UK, they had the following:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christianity remained the largest group; 59% (33.2 million). This is down 13 percentage points since 2001 when 72% (37.3 million). [b]It is the only group to have experienced a decrease in numbers between 2001 and 2011 despite population growth. The second largest response category in 2011 was no religion. This increased 10 percentage points. Interestingly, Christianity is not down everywhere. Newham, Haringey, Brent, Boston and Lambeth have all shown increases in the Christian population.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/dec/11/census-2011-religion-race-education

I'm fairly certain the missing U.S. information would provide the increase in evangelicals. England doesn't seem to be the place to search for that.
The survey provided suggests either the Catholic or Anglican church then, from what I can gather ... [/B]

Ok.

They reference population growth, so it's probably like Lek said.

I wish I could remember who I heard say it, but there's a decent chance it was one of these four. Anyway, it was (paraphrased):

"In the US, it seems God always wants something that's in line with conservative political values of the era. That's more than coincidental."

The next time you hear anyone - anyone - talking about God's Plan or God's ideas, or even God's love, consider the source. Not just political but social and secular. What is the motivation for ascribing such characteristics to an unknowable being? And how would that message have changed throughout history? It really lends an impermanence to scriptural interpretation, and makes a mockery of the "No True Scotsman" arguments that are often leveled against more hateful theists.

I have it from a reliable source than 3 of the 4 so called Horsemen can't even ride a horse!

Originally posted by Bardock42
I have it from a reliable source than 3 of the 4 so called Horsemen can't even ride a horse!

Heresy!

Also, why is BWR pretending like only three schools of thought exist?

Originally posted by Stealth Moose
Heresy!

Also, why is BWR pretending like only three schools of thought exist?

3? He must be expanding his horizons. Plus, why would he care about this thread?

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
3? He must be expanding his horizons. Plus, why would he care about this thread?

I'm ok with non-atheists being involved in the thread. I just don't want to go down fruitless tangents.

Originally posted by Stealth Moose
Heresy!

Also, why is BWR pretending like only three schools of thought exist?

I'm not sure if it's simple curiosity, or if he's working toward a "this is biased" angle. My reason for posting the wiki article had nothing to do with such minutia, though, so I'm trying to let him do his own digging.

Originally posted by Digi
I'm ok with non-atheists being involved in the thread. I just don't want to go down fruitless tangents...

BWR = fruitless tangents. 😉

What I mean is that I would be surprised if he has read anything by the four people at the start of the thread.

We know he's cherry-picked quotes. He tried pulling me into a Dawkins debate recently. These guys all say enough stuff, and they're all so uncompromising, that finding quotes to use against them isn't hard. They're not saints (pun intended). One popular tactic is to take their arguments against fundamentalism, and paint them as strawman arguments. That's stupid, because they're talking about actual atrocities that exist. The fact that less moderate religious beliefs exist doesn't invalidate arguments specifically pointed at fundamentalism.

But the much harder task is to tackle the heart of their arguments instead of the isolated quotes. I've heard a ton of character assassination against all four of these guys, but far fewer attempts at going point by point through their atheist rationale to see if it holds up. In nearly every case, when challenged, they have held strong against empirical and logical scrutiny.

The reason why you won't see a well-thought out and point-by-point rebuttal is because none really exists. When the opposition accepts evidence on the merit of "I want to believe; therefore, it is true and I will use confirmation bias to support my stance", there simply is no reasoning with them.

So, I've seen some buzz on Youtube from Christian and other Theist apologists that Sam Harris "lost" a debate with William Lane Craig.

I haven't had the time to see the video, but can anyone else tell me why people would say that? (Aside from the obvious biases--for instance there are people who think that Depak Chopra "beat" Harris in their famous debate, even though Chopra didn't make a single point of his stick.)

Originally posted by Stealth Moose
The reason why you won't see a well-thought out and point-by-point rebuttal is because none really exists. When the opposition accepts evidence on the merit of "I want to believe; therefore, it is true and I will use confirmation bias to support my stance", there simply is no reasoning with them.

It's the central conceit of nearly all theistic beliefs: belief without evidence, and often in the face of it. There's a reason the memeplexes [sic?] that are religious institutions often come packaged with the idea - explicit or implicit - that faith is a virtue and is often an even greater virtue in the face of contradicting evidence. It's a philosophical survival mechanism.

That people will not accept this is baffling. I'd actually be much more ok with someone who admitted all of this and still decided to believe. Imparting this understanding, bridging the gap with believers to where they realize this truth, is perhaps the primary struggle of any atheistic argument.

...

On a semi-related note, Dawkins gave us the idea of memes, which have been co-opted by the internet to denote stupid formula jokes. But as originally conceived, the study of memes is utterly fascinating, and goes a long way to explaining how religions exist in their current form.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
So, I've seen some buzz on Youtube from Christian and other Theist apologists that Sam Harris "lost" a debate with William Lane Craig.

I haven't had the time to see the video, but can anyone else tell me why people would say that? (Aside from the obvious biases--for instance there are people who think that Depak Chopra "beat" Harris in their famous debate, even though Chopra didn't make a single point of his stick.)

Haven't seen it. I find it unlikely, given Harris's eloquence and experience, but I've seen solid atheist thinkers get destroyed in debate before only because their approach doesn't lend itself to public debate.

Ken Ham "beat" Bill Nye recently according to some Christians too, though. I'd take any chatter with a heavy grain of salt.