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[EveryZig]

If people knew more about heaven, they might not think it so great. In the bible, heaven is described as you and everyone else, and 4 giant creatures with eyes covering both the inside and outside of their body, all praising God's glory for eternity without rest.

Except you are constantly high enough to enjoy it anyway, because Yahweh is a hell of a drug. 

[MaximumZero]

Re: Death as an atheist

So, this was part of an email I sent out earlier on the subject. Thinking about what's going to happen to my body after I die always kind of makes me feel better.

I'm sure that during your quest to sate your knowledge of the world, you've come across Lavoisier's Law of Conservation of Mass. If not: It simply means that matter cannot be created or destroyed. Given that, and the fact that we are made of particles that are made of matter, one could quickly come to an interesting conclusion: that, as unscientific as this sounds, we really do (kind of) get to live forever. You see, when our bodies die, and we are no longer conscious, the atoms and molecules that make us up still exist. The water that makes up roughly 70% of our bodies will return to the Earth, and we will become the fog, the mist, the rain, and eventually the oceans. That other 30% or so will return to the soil and enrich it. We feed the plants that grow above our bones with our flesh, and they feed the animals, and so on and so forth. I'm sure you've seen the Lion King. This cycle will continue on for billions of years, until the sun strips our atoms and molecules away from the planet and tosses them into space, where the building blocks that were once us will spend the rest of eternity among the stars, where they were created. One day, our particles may rain down upon another planet, and seed that planet with the building blocks of life, if there isn't already life there, and if there is, we simply enter the natural cycle of nearly infinite life once more.

I get asked every once in a while whether I believe in anything after death. Most people are confused when I say, "Yes, I do," even though I'm a rather loud atheist. That said, I believe in the universe both before life and after death, and I get excited and awed to think that the tiniest bits that make up me were once part of a star, and that one day, they may be again.

[Siquo]

I exchange matter all the time, so what makes me me, is not the lego bricks, but the pattern in which they are arranged (referring "where did the house go"). Even that pattern changes all the time, I'm not the person I was 10 minutes ago, and the one that I am now, will be gone 10 minutes from now.

[10ebbor10]

It tries to provide a system of morals, a way of life based on it's holy books, often with varying degrees of succes and useability depending on intrepretations.

Aside from issues you might raise with about the quality of religions morality, there is a fairly major question of how many people actually follow religion this way. In the U.S. at least, when you actually study people's religion-based views they are quite definitely influenced by religion's fact-claims.
My perception is probably exaggerating things, but it annoys me how sophisticated religions tend to withdraw into a shell of metaphor and vagueness when challenged but scuttle about making fact-claims the moment you turn your back.

Both studies are based on thousand people of a 300 million population. I have my questions about their statistical correctness.

Also, in the first study you study, you could argue that there might be confusing concerning the question. (In particular, the meaning of believe and angels). I don't believe in winged androgynous humanoids flying around, but I might still believe in Angels. (As soon as I remember what those symbolized again).

The second study is better supported, especially because it's a combination of studies since 1982. However, do note the country in which it was held. Creationism is rarely a problem outside the US, though it's spreading. (Which is AFAIK, a bad thing). This problem with highly religious people in the US has existed since the founding of the colonies, since those were the places were all European states exported their religious nutjobs too.

[Grek]

The interesting thing about statistics is that it doesn't matter how big your sample is as a fraction of the population, only in absolute terms. A sample of 30 out of 300 is just as good as a sample of 30 out of 300 thousand or 30 out of 300 million. What you should actually be concerned about is systematic biases like only asking in the South or only polling people that use the internet or whatever. Neither of which seems to be the case.

[10ebbor10]

The interesting thing about statistics is that it doesn't matter how big your sample is as a fraction of the population, only in absolute terms. A sample of 30 out of 300 is just as good as a sample of 30 out of 300 thousand or 30 out of 300 million. What you should actually be concerned about is systematic biases like only asking in the South or only polling people that use the internet or whatever. Neither of which seems to be the case.

Not really, the accuracy tremendously drops.

Let's use a silly example. There are 30 cards in a hat, and a randomly pick 2. (Meaning I examine 6% of the total card population). Now, assuming half the cards are red, the other halfs blue. The chance that I get an accurate statistic (Ie, 1 red, 1 blue) is only 25%. For the others, the enquiry will not be representative of the population.

Also, there's systematic bias. It's a telephone enquiry, meaning it only asks people who posses landlines.

[Reelya]

Not really, the accuracy tremendously drops.

Let's use a silly example. There are 30 cards in a hat, and a randomly pick 2. (Meaning I examine 6% of the total card population). Now, assuming half the cards are red, the other halfs blue. The chance that I get an accurate statistic (Ie, 1 red, 1 blue) is only 25%. For the others, the enquiry will not be representative of the population.

Actually it's 50% chance of drawing a red+blue, 25% both red, 25% both blue.

The important point though is that those chances would be EXACTLY THE SAME if you were drawing from a set of 30 million rather than 30, proving that sample size matters, and total population size does not - as long as you have a representative sample.

What you actually showed there was that the "30 cards total" played no part whatsoever in the accuracy in determining the average from 2 cards. The 30 played no part in the calculation.

This is college Statistics 101.

[Leafsnail]

Also, there's systematic bias. It's a telephone enquiry, meaning it only asks people who posses landlines.

So people who adhere to religions in the way you suggest are less likely to possess landlines because...?

[10ebbor10]

Also, there's systematic bias. It's a telephone enquiry, meaning it only asks people who posses landlines.

So people who adhere to religions in the way you suggest are less likely to possess landlines because...?

Other enquiries have shown that a large part of the younger population doesn't use landlines, preferring mobiles and stuff.

This might influence statistics, or it might not. Can't know it untill we get a proper enquiry. And even then, the US is not representative for the rest of the world.

[Leafsnail]

So because that study isn't perfect (although the bias you identify couldn't change the result by more than a few percentage points even if young people are massively non-creationist for some reason) you're going to just completely ignore it and continue projecting your own beliefs onto the rest of the world?  I don't see how you can criticize someone else's data while not providing any of your own.

[Reelya]

This race is superior is a very strong argument. You're ridiculizing it, but psychological experiments have been done, and found out just what horrible things you can let people do if you control their main influence of information. Hitler controlled radio, television, everything. What he didn't control where the churches, who went against it as much as they could. (Read, didn't openly support him. Most priests aren't crazy.)

Sorry buddy but you're babbling crap now:

http://atheism.about.com/od/adolfhitlernazigermany/tp/NaziChristiansGermany.htm

American Christians seem to be completely unaware of the degree to which Christians in Germany threw their support behind Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. If they did, they might be less likely to pretend that the crimes of Hitler and the Nazis can be traced to atheism or secularism. They might also be less likely to do so much to transform their own Christianity into an American echo of Germany's extreme nationalistic Christianity.

It's extremely well-established. You know, he had both the Lutherans AND the catholic churches on side?

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3164219?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21101493591327

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Isn't there are commandment against lying?

[Micro102]

Regarding the whole sample of a population thing, when you select cards from a hat in comparison to asking people, you don't ask the same person twice, so when you select a card, you remove it. The smaller the actual population, the more of an effect removing that card has on the next card you will pick. So yes, the maximum population size does matter.

[Reelya]

Not to computing an average, because you aggregate all cards removed. Have you actually studied statistics? Because what you just said is a load of shit.

The problem you have with your theory is that people ARE NOT CARDS. Cards are all unique by design, so removing a 6 of hearts, means no other 6 of hearts can exist. Whereas in a "real world" random deck there may be multiple of the same card - uniqueness of data points is not guaranteed.

[Helgoland]

Sorry buddy but you're babbling crap now:

Right back at you, fella: I'm German and a catholic; while it's true that a large part of the official churches (just like most of the population) supported or at least tolerated Hitler, there was some significant resistance from the religious side: Just google "Bekennende Kirche" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, does that ring a bell? "Von guten Mächten treu und still umgeben", 'surrounded by good forces, loyal and silent', is a song he wrote during his last days in concentration camp) or "Graf von Galen" (a catholic bishop in the north of Germany; he prevented the deportation of the disabled (although not that of the jews) and openly preached against the Nazis; the only reason they didn't deport him was that there would've been a giant rebellion in the area).

Black and white thinking on both the religious and the atheist side is, to put it simply, disgusting. A fundamentalist atheist is no better than an evangelical christion protesting against gays in the military or teaching the theory of evolution in school. Hooray for agnosticism!

Isn't there are commandment against lying?

Now that's just polemics. "RELIGIONS HEV KILLED MNAY PEOPEL!" is on the same argumentative niveau, though I admit your spelling is better

[Reelya]

I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing his blanket statement that the churches solely opposed hitler.

You're talking apples and oranges. Try and learn logic:

The negation of "all churches opposed hitler" is NOT "all churches supported hitler"

The negation is "not all churches opposed hitler", which is completely different.

Now that's just polemics. "RELIGIONS HEV KILLED MNAY PEOPEL!" is on the same argumentative niveau, though I admit your spelling is better

Ahh ok on top of mangling basic logic, you're now using straw-man and putting words in my mouth which are not in any way supported by what i wrote. Good values you have there.