What on earth are you on about?
Where did I say, or imply, that atheism is a religion or faith, or not evidence-based?
Here:
... a proselytising atheist, you have to believe that religion is in principle harmful, absence of religion is in principle beneficial, and that therefore society will necessarily be improved if you can convert everyone to your opinion. [snip] So, proselytising atheism must remain a matter of faith, which is exactly what proselytising atheist scientists have to deny.
I don't think it's so difficult to see why many atheists dislike the missionary mindset.
While you say atheism is the absence of religion and seem to think its fine in one sense,
you use "proselytizing" and other religious terminology as if promoting science or concluding religion does more harm than good and working against it is just promoting one's beliefs like god believers promote their beliefs. It is not the same. Is teaching critical thinking and not sidestepping its application when it comes to god beliefs, proselytizing? Is Randi a proselytizer against psychics? Maybe you think so given your use of the word to describe yourself on the subject of socialism. I took you to be describing a dogmatic promotion rather than just a passionate promotion.
My post (which you plainly did not bother to read properly before launching into your standard harangue) was not about whether atheism is scientifically correct, but whether there is evidence-based justification for the belief that it would necessarily (or probably) lead to a more rational, prosperous, peaceful and educated world, and should therefore be aggressively promoted. I specifically pointed out that these are not at all the same question. I don't think that's off-topic, as my objection (apparently shared by many others) to Dawkins's position on atheism vs religion is that he consistently conflates the two questions.
You think I didn't read your post because I see something different in it than you think is there. But it comes down to a difference in philosophy here. I do not view Dawkins as proselytizing. I think that is absurd. What is wrong with promoting science and critical thinking? It is offensive to god believers? It is moving too quickly? We should all take the, I"m OK, you're OK position?
So what about the evidence? That's a fair point. But you are wrong that there is none.
First, there is plenty of evidence that morals are not based in religion. They evolved as a natural process. There have been long debates on this issue in other threads and I have posted much evidence that morals exist in other species including non-human primates. The idea people are moral because of god beliefs or fear of hell is the thing that is not supportable with any evidence. Are you expecting atheists to start an anarchy movement anytime soon?
So my position is there is no evidence we need god beliefs to have any of the things you have listed. Whether or not the world would be better, I base on other criteria. Would we have world peace without religion. That's unlikely. But would we be worse off? I don't think so and I will address your concern about social behavior later in this post. So what other benefits would there be by ridding the world of god beliefs? We would move forward as a society. As a human species we would move past our ignorant days of believing rituals and magic would change the weather and heal the sick.
All one has to do to see that this is beneficial progress for humanity is to compare us today with us of 10,000 years ago. Science is progressive. It is successful. Belief in rituals and magic is regressive and unsuccessful. Maybe you don't want to move forward for fear of hurting people's feelings, but I want to move forward because I see incredible benefits coming from our having moved from magical thinking to critical thinking. We now know how to systematically observe the Universe and we know better rules for drawing conclusions so we don't make mistakes like thinking a prayer ritual healed someone. We can find something that really does heal a person.
Ask yourself - what kind of 'evidence' are you expecting? Where are the controlled studies? The point is that the evidence can only come from social experiments that have not yet been performed. At the very least you would need to take two societies with similar characteristics and histories that have diverged in that one has become primarily atheist while the other hasn't (but not in any other significant way), study them for several generations and perform suitable measurements and statistics on some relevant quantities (intelligence, health, happiness, crime, violence and the like).
Broaden your perspective here and look for other evidence besides randomized controlled trials.
1) Atheists provide evidence god beliefs are not necessary. We will behave the same with or without god beliefs for the most part. Your concern cited below that social behavior is better when people belong to churches is not supported by the evidence. Just look at the Benny Hinns and the Jimmy/Tammy Bakers and the Jerry Falwells of the religious community. And look at the recent humanist movements and the social movements from the 60s-70s. God beliefs didn't make the former examples moral and god beliefs weren't needed for the latter examples. I think you will find the behaviors are going to be what they are based on social evolution more than religion. People who want to belong to a group will belong to a group. People who worship consumerism will do so whether they belong to a church or not.
2) You can weigh the benefits and cost of religion without RCTs. At the least you should conclude it's certainly worth a try going without, but I suggest a different evidential model. Look at history and anthropology. I think there is enough evidence there to suggest that societies which progress toward less religion on the whole lose some of the bigotry and divisions that religion promotes.
There are too many confounding variables to say something else isn't the cause, but at least you can see losing god beliefs doesn't cause harm.
3) Look for benefits beyond the ones you've listed. I like to think the collective mind of humanity is maturing. That is the benefit I see in calling god beliefs what they are, woo.
Now, I believe that any social question can (and should) be tackled in a scientific way up to a point. It would be interesting to know, for example, whether religion increases or decreases the probability that a person will hold irrational beliefs in psychics, aliens, homeopathy, conspiracy theories etc. I suspect there isn't a general answer, and we can usefully investigate the interactions between the various social and personal factors involved. We can make some progress in these and related matters, but that still leaves an enormous part of the key question (whether or how society will be improved by universal atheism) that we can't hope to settle by evidence. We have to use our judgement, and the less judgement can rely on evidence the more it approximates faith.
You get to both ends by the same means. In other words, promoting critical thinking is the means. You are taking the ends, a lack of god beliefs, and suggesting that is the means to a different end, losing other irrational beliefs. I suggest it is harder to teach critical thinking if you ignore the lack of it needed to have god beliefs.
Most of us manage to accept that unpalatable truth. For instance, I am a convinced, committed and to a limited extent proselytising socialist (and I have been taken aback by the irrational and fanatical belief in the free market shown by some US 'skeptics' here). But I have to recognise that my belief (or faith, if you prefer) that a planned, socialist economy can solve deep social problems that are intractable under capitalism, without introducing worse ones, can't be tested before the fact. (Also, it's a good idea to be aware in advance of the pitfalls, such as the danger of a dictatorship arising in a centralised economy.) The analogy is quite a close one, because capitalism as an economic system can be studied scientifically and found to be fundamentally flawed, but no amount of economic evidence can enable us to predict the social consequences of such a profound transformation of economic relationships.
Laissez faire aka Libertarian economics is an extreme and I fail to see why so many skeptics think it would be successful. I think a number of things are better managed economically as community services rather than as private services. But I would prefer regulated capitalism, not full socialism. .... [/side track]
What 'evidence' we have on the improvement of society by the abandonment of religion is not too encouraging so far. In the UK organised religion has ceased to have any real significance for most people, but it hasn't been replaced by humanism, as the atheist movement of the early and mid 20th century hoped and expected. Instead we have a gang culture, racism, mindless consumerism and an explosion of new age nonsense. However, I don't conclude too much from that, because it's early days yet.
You ignore the things in the UK which are humanist in nature, mainly the socialism like universal health care. As far as the gangs and what you seem to be describing as the loss of a sense of community which a religion might provide, it is hard to determine cause or effect and what else may be more or less important. I think sometimes one is really only seeing the illusion of selective memory.
For example, when people claim behavior was better in the past in the US, Jon Stewart would say, "You mean in the days when we had slavery or the days we had lynchings in the South?" I think you should take that evidence based approach, which we both agree on BTW, and see if the data supports your assessment that things have really deteriorated in your local society as much as you think they have. Seems to me racism was alive and well in pretty much all of England's past.
I am perfectly willing to debate these issues with you, but would you kindly address yourself to what I actually said, not to some bizarre distortion or fantasy.
Like I said, you used the words then objected to my reaction to them. What did you expect when you spoke of proselytizing atheists and their faith? That I would not take that description of atheists but rather see passionate atheists as religious and less passionate atheists as reasonable?
That doesn't mean I think anyone need be rude aggressive idiots when it comes to addressing god beliefs. But it does mean I agree it is time to call a spade a spade. I do think it is time to take a stand (a personal one in my case) and say faith based beliefs are no different from any other woo. You cannot distinguish between non-evidence based beliefs and faith based beliefs. The guy who has faith in homeopathy is no different from the guy who has faith in gods. So by definition, atheists promoting critical thinking and not sidestepping the god issues are not proselytizing their faith. They recognize that you cannot ignore the fact critical thinkers need a blind spot if they are going to maintain god beliefs.
