Suicides more likely to be atheists

The Gallup Poll also uses WHO data. Its the standard for suicide rates worldwide.

 

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What about them?

That doesn't solve the problems with them.

 

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They are asessing the effects of secular education on suicide ideation and the effects of decreasing religiosity on suicide.

Don't care, not when James quotes Gallup poll data and tells me to apologise for quoting a similar association derived from assumed religiosity or lack of based on same data. I was hardly presenting an original or radical idea.

 

Atheists harm themselves, theists harm others.

Are you sure you want to be making this point, S.A.M.? Why don't you put up some bar graphs on pedophiles?

 

Not if you factor in that atheists are more likely to condone abortion.

Besides, the fact that increased atheism leads to social disintegration is sufficient reason to avoid it.

Decay of religion in any society has a historical precedent for leading to its dissolution.

 

James has started a thread on it.

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=89038

 

I think it is evident from a cursory view of society where atheism is on the increase, that individualism takes precedence over community. Objectively, that would, over several generations lead to a breakdown in the ideals that sustain the family unit. Simply because individualism is not compatible with teamwork.

 

And doing it without controls or reliable data. Apparently they aren't even controlling for theism or accidental death or murder - researchers after your own heart.

But the point has been stipulated (your original point, about theism not religion): suppose suicide becomes more common as atheism increases, though still rare, of course. What do you conclude?

Do humans have to believe in a particular form of nonsense in order to be happy in a large society? And if so why?

This, for example, is silly:

As a quick perusal of some group like the Scotch Irish in America will show plainly, even extreme individualism is by no means incompatible with multigenerational family cohesion and loyalty. And it improves social teamwork, by improving flexibility in team formation - it creates the possibility of tight teamwork with nonfamily.

This failure to promote out-teaming, let's call it, may explain the difficulties faced by modern forms of government and civilization in the Muslim countries, eh?

Your problems with James, if any, don't fix the problems with such data.

 

Because the root of culture is apparently cult and a study of all nations of the past shows that to understand their social framework, you need to first study the particular form of nonsense they believe in.

As Will Durant says,

There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion

The decline in education, social institutions etc, has already begun.

 

The original topic was theism, SAM. Suicides among atheists.

Not to mention that Durant apparently skipped the smaller tribes, such as the Inuit, that appear to have little in the way of religion. Or perhaps he regarded them as not successful in their moral life - they did have a high rate of murder, and were famously open about sex.

But dropping the apparently flexible "atheist" issue, we have another source of dubious assumption. I wonder whether Durant is, as you often are, simply defining "moral life" and spiritual recognition as religion? If whenever one sees people inculcating morals and spiritual views, one sees a religion (and I would go along with that), then the consequent is assumed and the argument is over.

If they decline to the common levels of the fundamentalist theists of the earth, that would indeed be a mark against them.

That doesn't answer the question.

 

Please do tell.

 

Since the data consistently show increased atheism = increased incidence of suicide, for various reasons [acceptance, no religious stigma, blah blah), you are free to make the argument you want. Consistently one sees an increase in suicide and a decrease in birth rate in societies where atheism is on the increase.

Since I don't share your belief that deities and prayers can be athiestic, we will have to agree to disagree here. Its been noted that while rationalists [presumably an euphemism for athiests] consider religion as stagnation, historians point out that the decay of religion in society is a consistent marker of the decline of that nation. Now you may consider atheism to be a religion, I don't, so we've reached an impasse here.

 

"Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies"

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

 

Nope.

Suicide rates do not correlate positively with secularity. Life expectancies correlate positively with secularity, and suicide rates correlate positively with life expectancies.

http://www.211bigbend.org/hotlines/suicide/SuicideandtheElderly.pdf

“Suicide rate among elderly rises as people live longer.”

http://www.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Health/health26.htm

 

And chocolates are more likely to cause car accidents. Yeah, so what?

 

My data was restricted to young men or adolescents.

But the elderly suicide is interesting from the POV of breakdown of the family unit in athiest societies. Did your grandmother live with you?