UK scientists are ‘significantly less religious’ than Brits in general

[bilby]

800 Hindu scientists (59%) in India + 40 Christian scientists (27%) in the UK = 840
556 atheist scientists (41%) in India + 108 atheist scientists (73%) in the UK = 664

Now. Do atheist scientists outnumber theist scientists?

Who the fuck cares? That's not the question under discussion. The question is 'are scientists more or less likely than the general public to be atheists'?

Hint for bilby

Show

840>664

You really aren't cut out for the whole 'thinking' thing, are you?

Where the FUCK do you get these figures? '800 Hindu scientists in India' is very clearly nonsense. There are probably that many at the University of Mumbai alone, depending in exactly what criterion you choose to define someone as a 'scientist'.

Why do you only consider India and the UK? You have already been told that this cherry picking is unacceptable.

What, in the name of fuck, do you think you are doing here?


Theist scientists almost certainly outnumber atheist scientists - but that was never the question at issue.

The proportion of scientists who are atheists is greater than the proportion of non-scientists who are atheists. That's the claim being made. The mathematics to prove this claim are fairly simple; But they do not entail selecting just two countries and ignoring the rest of the world.

And they certainly don't entail the bizarre idea that your argument is supported by the fact that eight hundred and forty is greater than six hundred and sixty four.

And even if you do select just your preferred two nations, we can clearly see that there is no way for the statment that 'scientists are more likely than the general public to be atheists' to be false, either in India, or in the UK, or in the two countries combined.

And it's irrelevant to the value of theism anyway. Even if it wasn't true, it would in no way support theism of any kind. And for that matter, the fact that it is true in no way supports atheism. Atheism is demonstrably true, as a consequence of the Standard Model of particle physics, and it was therefore true long before anyone was an atheist, and will remain true even if every person on Earth were to convert to your favourite sect.

You are fractally wrong here. At every level, your position is laughably irrational and unsupported by facts or logic.

 

[Lion IRC]

Theist scientists almost certainly outnumber atheist scientists

Yep. Most scientists are theists. That's what I've been saying.
Smart folks those scientists

 

[bilby]

Theist scientists almost certainly outnumber atheist scientists

Yep. Most scientists are theists. That's what I've been saying.

And not one person has said otherwise.

Smart folks those scientists

Smart enough not to claim victory in an argument against nobody.


However you have also been saying that the proportion of theist scientists is greater than the proportion of theists in the general population.

And about that, you remain wrong. Despite having stated an undisputed and unrelated fact.

I bet you are ever so proud of yourself.

 

[Lion IRC]

For accuracy...

Lion IRC

My point is that if you add up the number of ALL the scientists in the world - not just the UK, France, Germany - and divide them into theist vs atheist, I think you will find the ratio is similar to the general population.

bilby"s ventriloquism sock puppet

the proportion of theist scientists is greater than the proportion of theists in the general population.

 

[bilby]

For accuracy...

Lion IRC

My point is that if you add up the number of ALL the scientists in the world - not just the UK, France, Germany - and divide them into theist vs atheist, I think you will find the ratio is similar to the general population.

bilby"s ventriloquism sock puppet

the proportion of theist scientists is greater than the proportion of theists in the general population.

They are just rewordings of the same claim.

You say that the ratios are similar, or that they show scientists favour theism in some locations in sufficient numbers to offset the opposite trend seen in the rest of the world; I say that the ratios are not similar - that the ratio of theists vs atheists is significantly higher in the general population worldwide than it is amongst scientists.

You have not, as yet, supported in any way your claim that the ratios are similar. Instead you have made a bizarre and nonsensical argument that appears to attempt to address some uncontested question about absolute numbers, while ignoring the ratios.

And I am confident that you cannot support your claim. I am even confident that a competent person could not.

 

[lpetrich]

In religion and atheism, there is a big ambiguity in some religious traditions, because in some traditions, one can be an atheist without any contradiction. One can be a Jewish atheist, a Hindu atheist, a Buddhist atheist, etc. In the Greco-Roman world, some philosophers were more-or-less Hellenic-pagan atheists and Roman-pagan ones. Unfortunately, there does not seem much of a recognized social niche for Christian atheists or Muslim atheists.

 

[bigfield]

For accuracy...

Lion IRC

My point is that if you add up the number of ALL the scientists in the world - not just the UK, France, Germany - and divide them into theist vs atheist, I think you will find the ratio is similar to the general population.

bilby"s ventriloquism sock puppet

the proportion of theist scientists is greater than the proportion of theists in the general population.

As it turns out, you are most likely wrong.

It's very helpful because it shows that if 59% of scientists in a huge populatIon like India are 'religious' then, numerically, they could arguably swamp the number of atheist scientists in a smaller country like the UK.

Which means...what, exactly?

It doesn't support your claim that, "if you add up the number of ALL the scientists in the world - not just the UK, France, Germany - and divide them into theist vs atheist, I think you will find the ratio is similar to the general population." Because India's general population is also far greater and far more religious than the UK's.

I'm curious as to how you think your argument makes the least bit of sense.

 

[Politesse]

IUnfortunately, there does not seem much of a recognized social niche for Christian atheists or Muslim atheists.

Well, there's John Shelby Spong and his followers. Popular enough, when he was in frequent publication.

 

[southernhybrid]

Christian atheists would feel comfortable in a UU fellowship. I'd try one but the closest one is in Macon, an hour away from me. At my age, I want everything to be in the neighborhood and I really don't want to join the Methodist church on my corner. I'm sure there are lovely people there and they do an awful lot of charity work in my community, but I would have to pretend and I'm not very good at that. The atheist Christians that I've met were in the closet regarding their atheism, when they were at their churches.

 

[lpetrich]

IUnfortunately, there does not seem much of a recognized social niche for Christian atheists or Muslim atheists.

Well, there's John Shelby Spong and his followers. Popular enough, when he was in frequent publication.

How was he an atheist? Or an agnostic or a metaphysical naturalist or something like that.

Christian atheists would feel comfortable in a UU fellowship. I'd try one but the closest one is in Macon, an hour away from me. At my age, I want everything to be in the neighborhood and I really don't want to join the Methodist church on my corner. I'm sure there are lovely people there and they do an awful lot of charity work in my community, but I would have to pretend and I'm not very good at that. The atheist Christians that I've met were in the closet regarding their atheism, when they were at their churches.

That's the sort of thing that I meant by there not being much of a social niche for Xian atheists.