Are atheists on the rise, or just more vocal?

Is it me or are atheists on the rise? Or is it just easier to find them due to the Internet? It certainty easier to express you non-beliefs than it was when I was a kid.

Where are we going from here? Are we going to start seeing greater numbers of non-believers?

Also, why don’t we ever hold charity events? Or even hold events? I know we aren’t a religion, but shouldn’t we be active in some way to help educate people?

What country are you talking about?

If the US, I think it’s both. Just look at polling trends for the former.

US

We do!

Foundation Beyond Belief

I’m calling all of the above.

The first factor is the internet and the prevalence of open forums. Religion has a lot of ideas that cannot stand up under the light of open scrutiny and investigation. In open society (hell, even places like facebook), a non-religious person offering skepticism to religious claims, even blatantly false ones, will get shunned for it. In most newer religions (Mormonism, Scientology) and fundamentalist places (Middle east for islam, parts of the USA for Christianity), they will be completely removed from the community. You often have to hide the fact that you’re an atheist, leading to similar problems to that which gays had: open up about your faith to the wrong person, and you’re in deep shit (case in point: Damon Fowler, who had the gall to demand that his school not allocate government money to religious ceremonies, and was in response not only openly mocked, but thrown out of his house by his parents).
The internet removes that problem, and also makes the whole process somewhat anonymous. It makes social coercion more and more of a non-issue. This leads to more people able to point out the inconsistencies and the absurd lack of evidence of religion, and more people deconverting, opening their eyes, and realizing that religion isn’t the way forwards.

I see the rise in outspoken atheists as a direct result of the Dover PA trial where creationists tried to push their agenda on everyone. They pushed, atheists saw a need to push back.

Creationists should have paid more attention to a lesson taught in science classes: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Atheists are not the only ones opposed to Creationism. Plenty of religious people oppose it also. My Christian sister-in-law took her kids out of a homeschool program when the teacher badmouthed evolution.

It’s been a several hundreds year old process. You know, the Enlightenment and everything.

It’s taking longer than we thought?

Atheists are getting uppity because of the internet. Someone like myself, who would never ever admit to non-belief in polite company, can openly talk about my missing “fear of God” without fear of being shunned socially. This is not to say that I have been ostracized for my non-belief but every time someone finds out that I don’t believe in God I have to do the whole “no, I am not an amoral killing machine” talk, which some folks have a hard time accepting.

On the internet you are going to encounter more atheists than you would walking down the street. But I also think non-belief is on the rise. It’s just taking longer than we thought.

[edit] Damn, ** Jas09 **beat me to the phrase “It’s just taking longer than we thought”

waaaay longer!

I don’t know about trends in the United States, but it’s certainly true that worldwide, fifty or so years ago, there were a lot of countries where atheism was official state policy and religious belief and practice was illegal or heavily frowned upon. In recent years most of those countries have either ceased existing or changed their policies. As far as I know, North Korea is the only country where all religious practice is still illegal.

Most religious practices. KJI devotion is a religion.

Not sure atheists should really be the face of the defense of science. As an atheist my interest in science is separate from my interest in metaphysics. The philosophy of atheism shouldn’t try to include elements of science as it is merely the acknowledgement that there is nothing outside of science and so atheism is an admission of nothingness, not an assertion of science. Of course reilgion is a science of sorts, just bad science without good evidence or testability. Of course atheism has a strong relationship to science since it’s basically saying: “I will not accept anything about the universe as plausible if it is not rooted in the rules of science.” Again though it doesn’t actually have any of those things within it, it has nothing within it.

The other reason not to do so as an atheist is because it causes science to suffer for the benefit of atheism. Many people will oppose the theory in defense of their religion if atheism is included, where they wouldn’t otherwise. Some few might abandon their religion and atheists that are already atheists might become stronger in their convictions. I do not see this as necessary for the advancement of atheism. Using science as a prop for discussion can be used without picking specific fights that are vulnerable to abandonment by society.

And ya more of us in the USA per capita and more vocal, still darned unpopular to non-atheists. As has been mentioned the internet is likely the major cause.

One of the best things about being an atheist is having no requirement to rope in converts.

If you believe that religion hampers humanity the only reason not to try to convert people is fear or apathy. I have no problem with the latter but the former is pretty pathetic and I think the major reason atheists don’t.

I think that there have always been a very large proportion of atheists. It’s just that in many times and places (in particular, the past century in the US) most of them won’t admit it, often not even to themselves. Even if they do believe in something, it’s often not something remotely close to anything that warrants the label “God”.

Now, for whatever reason, the culture is changing, and a lot of those folks are now admitting their nonbelief. But I don’t think there are really all that many more of them than ever.

Well, that’s a rather large if you start with there. I would guess that the majority of atheists don’t believe that mere theism hampers humanity in any significant way. Some obviously do, and they tend to be the more evangelical (and vocal) kind.

I realize there are sensible Christians, but atheists are the subject of the thread. But kudos to your sister-in-law. It probably took some courage for her to do that. It would be kind of cool to see Christians speak out more often against their extremist brethren.

well that’s why I included it. I don’t think theism is particularly worse than anything else and in it’s absence the various pseudo theisms would probably become more pronounced and zealous causing similar problems. (capitalism, marxism, socialism, monarchy ect). I do think there is possible benefit and little drawback, certainly I don’t think the world is better with all the religions and I’d rather have more in common on the subject than less. If atheism were the overwhelming philosophy in my country or most other countries or at least not so reviled I wouldn’t be that into promoting it but as it is now atheists could certainly use a public relations campaign.