Why do you think atheists are abundant on the Internet?

[BrotherRool]

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Ah well when I say atheist I basically mean not Christian (other other minority faith). A secular person who hasn't really thought about it one way or the other I would classify as atheist. You dont have to do anything or believe anything to be an atheist, you just have to refrain from actively believing in God.
As for "militant atheists", well these people form a subset of convicted and vocal atheists, however I don't think you need to be in anyway convicted or vocal to be atheist.

Okay that's pretty cool. I'd tend to label most people agnostic that you label atheist because there is a large difference between not believing in something and believing in something not. (incidentally nitpick here, atheists who say it's not a belief because 'if someone showed them proof they'd believe in a God and until then they won't' Yes that's good of you, but that's the same for everyone else. That's pretty much a definition of the word proof. If someone proved to me God didn't exist, I'd stop believing in him. But since I'm confident he exists, I'm confident you will never be able to come up with that proof. I suspect most atheists who make the statement don't believe proof will be presented or else they would be agnostic.
* An addition to that is that, since ultimately all non-mathematical proof is ultimately subjective proving something to yourself is very different from proving it to someone else)

And I feel confident in those categories because my agnostic friends have a very different view point from my atheist friends. (And I tend to find it's much much cooler to talk religion with atheist friends because rivalry can be fun and the debate is stimultating whereas it can be harder to gell when someone dismisses something you hold central to your entire existence as something they can't really be bothered to think about)

And I'm guessing from the style of the OP and the thread that we're very much more talking about what I would classify as atheist. I suspect we're talking about all the cartoons and take that headlines and humour articles etc and people who respond to religious debates or enjoy calling religion outdated and so on than the people who just don't hold an opinion. At least most people here having been talking about vocal minorities and so on.


Incidentally I finally have something to contribute. As far as webcomics go, mocking God gets a good reaction and is a reflection of the fact that a lot of webcomic authors are pretty inciteful and good at looking at the world and breaking down what it means. They get used to seeing punchlines in things and it leads them to ask really good questions, but all the same it's hard to find the answers and so on it can leave an atheistic impression. It's really cool to see and the number of webcomics I've seen that have touched on issues so big that the big man himself devoted chapters to them, it's pretty inspiring. (Although my favourite one I'm afraid is a little less virtuous of me and it's when Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal decided to be edgy and shocking and said 'Real questions are like; Which one of your _dead_ wives will you sleep with in heaven' when 2000 years ago some people tried to trip Jesus up with the exact same question and he just replied 'Guys, do you really know nothing of heaven?')

Whereas I think a Christian webcomic wouldn't be so good. I think far from liking it, I might become a bit uncomfortable about a webcomic that openly mocks people, because it;s not so loving is it? And it would probably annoy the neutrals too, because it would feel like an attack on them in a way that attacking God doesn't. So that's why webcomics tend to be more atheist than christian

 

[thylasos]

No, just kids who think they're being original by insulting religious people, rather than simply holding views about religious institutions and forming their own opinion on what they think the situation is, viz the supernatural or lack thereof.

That said, I can entirely understand a lot of it. It's just not well-considered. Or well-mannered, often.

 

[BlueMage]

I dream of a day when religious belief is something confined to personal dwellings. What a person believes is theirs to follow, and I'm not going to take that away from them. But forcing me to accept it as well, when my own eyes and ears defy what you want me to believe? That I cannot accept.

I'd like to think that, when we can no longer blame things on God/s or be thankful for things to God/s, we as a species will have to realise that we have control of our own destinies, frightening as that may be, and that we control the outcome. There is no-one that is going to save us, unless we save ourselves.

There needs to be an end to magical thinking.

 

[uguito-93]

I don't really think that its atheists being abundant as much as its everyone being abundant. My guess as to why they might standout more is that there's a lot of them trying to show everyone how much more intelligent they are than the religious.

(Sorry if that in no way reflects who you are, I'm mostly referring to the smug "intellectuals" who thrive on attention)

 

[Fluffythepoo]

Who needs technology when you have Jesus?

 

[emeraldrafael]

Cause most religious people nowadays are "casual" in that if they are they dont usually go to church or dont hype up anything or relate it to a bible verse as a be all end all answer. So you'd never know if someone was religious or not just cause they wont say.

Atheists though like to be loud about it and use the internet to launch most of their opinions cause in the real world, they're so much fewer and farther between that if they did against religion they'd be persecuted.

i guess theres nothing wrong with an atheist that wants to be that way since its your choice to be bothered by them by clicking and looking at what they're saying, but they're nto much different then the religious that they like to make fun of/accuse of being evil/etc.

 

[Rule Britannia]

On topic
my GUESS is that atheists are proud of themselves for not following a religion and so what better place to make fun of/argue with religious people than over the internet?

Off topic but still kinda on topic

I'm agnostic so there you go, I don't go yelling at people calling them dumb if they believe in god and stuff. Let people do what they wanna do, not any of my business . (unless you shove it down my throat then I'll argue )

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

They aren't.
They just go where you go,
Places of somewhat higher intelligence, anywhere else, like public, they'll get lynched by the general populice with rageface's.

 

[funnydude6556]

I don't think it matters, you got ignorant athiests and ignorant religious people such as the women preaching about the tsunami being the wraith of god (because now god likes killing people despite appreantly saying he hates it in the bible)

I'm ok with athiests but I hate the ones like Richard Dawkins who talk like their better then religious people and writing books about us like we're the reason everything bad happens.

 

[Nergy]

You'd be surprised how many people BECAME atheists because of the internet. You're exposed to so much information than given out by any religious works alone.

A lot of people came to the internet to debate with atheists and ended up becoming one themselves because they realised their faith didn't hope up to the scrutiny.

 

[viking97]

i don't think they are, its just that the sort of people who are posting on threads and such are more likely to be atheists.correlation, not causation of course.

that would be an interesting survey actually. how often do you participate in forum/video comments/wiki editing? what is your religious affiliation?

 

[I Have No Idea]

Except one side of this destructive coin has no atrocities of genocide or worse under its belt.

What you're doing is holding an entire population responsible for the actions of a few crazy people. The Germans weren't at fault for the Holocaust, right? The Nazi Party was. So should we blame the Germans for killing millions of Jews? Of course not. You wouldn't want everybody to say all atheists are all angry, hurtful people because a few atheists go berserk over any mention of religion, right?

Also this side allows arguments to be formed completely before fighting them.

I see that as really just a veiled statement of "We have science, you don't."

 

[Nergy]

I don't think it matters, you got ignorant athiests and ignorant religious people such as the women preaching about the tsunami being the wraith of god (because now god likes killing people despite appreantly saying he hates it in the bible)

I'm ok with athiests but I hate the ones like Richard Dawkins who talk like their better then religious people and writing books about us like we're the reason everything bad happens.

I wouldn't judge Richard Dawkins so harshly, he's one of the calmer atheists. Actually read "The God Delusion". It isn't as "RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE SILLY" as you seem to think it is.

 

[Korolev]

Well, it's due to the fact that

1) On the internet, people are much more likely to express their views. If you are walking to work, you're not going to stop on the street corner and bellow "I AM AN ATHEIST" to the crowds walking past. People generally don't talk about religion in real life. On the internet, however, there are entire topics, forums, websites devoted to talking about religion or the lack of religion, and so you'll find more people talking about it, because they are directly asked about their opinion on religion. It's as simple as that. There are just as many atheists in real life as there are on the internet, but you'll never know that because people often don't announce their belief in public. I know I don't loudly proclaim my lack of religion whenever I buy a cup of coffee or when I'm standing in line at a post-office. But I often do express my lack of religion on the internet, because very often I see discussions on religion on the internet, whereas I don't in real life.

2) People are still afraid of saying they are an atheist. In some countries, you can still BE KILLED if you admit you are an atheist (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc) and in many countries (Some parts of Israel (but not all, there are a lot of nice, secular Jews, but stay away from the orthodox areas because those guys are crazy), Jordan, Iraq, Syria and even once-secular Turkey) you can be seriously harassed and discriminated against. It's not so bad in Australia, where 1/4 people are not religious at all, and 1/5 openly declare themselves to have no real religion, or in the UK where religion is no longer taken seriously by a majority of the public, but in the US, you can still face very bad personal retaliation for being an atheist. Many parents will entirely disavow their kids if they say they don't believe in God, employers will pass over you for promotion, and many members of the community will look at you funny.

3) Younger people are more likely to be atheist and the younger you are the more likely you are to use technology. This generation of youth are the most atheistic in the world, and it's thanks to much wider education and tolerance of competing views. In the old days, while there were atheists, they were mostly confined to university professors and people who had studied science in depth. The majority of people born before 1960 had no real access to a good college education or exposure to competing views. It's no wonder that they grew up religious. But now, thanks to things like the internet, ebooks, freer and better education (at least at universities) and more freedom of speech, there is a growing number of atheists, and they mostly tend to be young people - and what do young people do? They go on the internet.

Religion thrived in a world where "YOU MUST OBEY YOUR PARENTS! YOU MUST BELIEVE AS YOUR PARENTS DO! DO NOT EXPRESS CONTRARY VIEWS! DO NOT THINK OUTSIDE ZE BOX! IN ZE BOX THINKING IS ZE ONLY THINKING ALLOWED! NEW THINKING IST VERBOTEN!" (my apologies to people from Former East Germany). Ever wondered why the most religious communities were communities that were isolated or rural or poor in the US? It's because in those areas, there is a lack of new migrants, new ideas, new paradigms. But if you go to the cities, if you go to the more populated areas of the US, you find more diversity, more tolerance for different views and a much freer, better flow of new ideas and information and discussion.

So that's why you find more atheists on the internet: Atheists are younger, and younger people are more likely to use it, there is less potential for discrimination, and people on the internet are just much more likely to enter into discussions on this subject.

 

[sir.rutthed]

I guarantee half the internet atheists go to church with mommy and daddy every Sunday. There's a lot of them who are posers because being atheist is so edgy and cool. It's that simple.

 

[walrusaurus]

I don't think there are any more atheists on the internet than there are in real life. They're just much more open about it on the internet, due to the freedom from judgement/stigma/persecution/spaghetti-bombing that atheists often encounter irl.

 

[Continuity]

I think you're slightly confused about the terminology here. Atheist means someone who purposefully believes that God/a god/gods DON'T exist. Whereas what your talking about is more of agnostic, where you just haven't given thought to it and don't care whether there is or isn't.

Fair enough, I was simply thinking atheist = non-theist. However i'm not sure I would categorise these people as agnostic either as that implies consideration and, well, that they actually give the question any importance at all which I think most don't.
Perhaps just plain "secular"? though i'm still not sure that I wouldn't just default these people to atheist anyway, as lets face it they've all heard of God and religion and have all decided not to care, implying that they dont believe there is a God (if the did believe there was a God would they care so little about the subject?).

I guess the question becomes does not believing in the existence of God amount to the same thing as disbelieving in the existence of God, and if there is a difference is it actually important in any way?

 

[Alphonse_Lamperouge]

oh this could get controversial. seems like the general feeling of this thread is that atheists are a bunch of obnoxious, young bigots. where is the love and goodwill?

I think it's because they both draw the "intellectual" crowd.

my opinion, and please try and keep an open mind here, is that its just so hard to find common ground with Christians these days. if i try it in the real world, i'm likely to get burned at the stake (metaphoricly speaking). really, believe what you like, but isn't it 2011? cant we admit some of your belief's are well...lets say ''outdated''.

case in point, there is a woman in one of my university classes. she is Christian, (she feels the need to remind us of this every few lectures) and very outspoken. as our bud gigastrike pointed out, yeah i like to think im an intelligent being, without being ironic. so, when this lady flat out denies the existence of dinosaurs, its hard to not scoff at her. i mean really, we KNOW the world is over 6000 years old, your seriously telling me every academic mind of the last 400 years is wrong and part of a conspiracy?

the Vatican bit the bullet over the whole ''the world is flat, here be dragons thing'', cant we amend this too?

id just like to add this isn't an attack on Christianity, just something i find frustrating in my own life that i thought relevant. In my country, its really just Christians and Atheists, if i lived elsewhere i sure id find fault with that country's established religion.

 

[BeaSk8r117]

Well, atheism is rejecting God, and promoting science, and computers are products of science, so therefore Christians believe that computers are the Devil's work?
IDK, really. I'm an atheist, I think that it's a *little* bit mother fucking impossible that 1 being made so much in so little time. But, then again, the big bang is a weird theory too. Maybe the universe was always here?...
OH FUCK MY BRAIN HURTS NOW.