Because most religious myths are pretty absurd and it's become less and less difficult to admit it without persecution.
One of Dawkins' theses is that many Christians just identify as such because "Christian" has historically meant "good" or "normal" in many communities. In these communities to introduce yourself as a Christian gets a slight nod and the conversation moves on but saying you are an atheist (or otherwise) makes it "a thing."
I remember growing up Catholic and hearing news that some friends admitted to being atheists. This had the same feel as hearing friends had admitted to being thieves, liars, or cheats. Lots of whispering, rumors, and altogether reprehensible behavior for such a stupid thing. It had less to do with disagreements about true, deep belief in an all powerful deity and more about saying "we are not part of the team" and being tarnished by admitting such.
“Love each other” is almost certainly not the main idea of Christianity (rule? perhaps). The main idea of Christianity is that you are inherently in a state of sinning, and that Christ has sacrificed himself to atone for your sins: if you accept Him, you will be forgiven your sins and accepted into the Heavenly Kingdom. If you do not believe in (or know of) Him, you will burn for eternity in the pit of sulfur.
I think there is 2 things:
1) really great book with really great ideas about love, forgiveness and dominating of wisdom (new Testament);
2) greedy clergy which are trying to "explain" that book in dimension they want, to get frightened people and control them, like old shamans. Not all of them are greedy, but still it's my opinion.
Myths are stories, events, and characters people believe in. "Love each other" is not any of these things.
The myths I'm referring to are the ones involving virgin births, resurrections, and hilariously human-like deities who rule over mankind like invisible sky wizards.
Start with Yusaf's story regarding Abraham - it would be difficult for an educated, critical-minded person to believe or respect the narrative when it doesn't even have a good moral to back it up. Many stories from the various holy books fail to show the actions of an all seeing, all knowing creator – by today’s standards it would come across as a creepy psychopath with magical powers.
Combine education with technological advancement, better medicine, better understanding of the mind, and the simple notion that you don't require a supernatural sky-policeman to be a loving, caring, empathetic individual leaves religion looking a bit impractical.
I'm a bit sad that none of these quotes include, "Because there's no evidence." I wonder if this is because none of the people interviewed said it, or because it didn't make a good quote.
As a student you don't get to see much evidence of the validity of what you're being taught. Sure you can do some experiments, but you have to trust most of what you learn from the high-priests of education. I'd say that for a good chunk of education the material has to be taken on trust of authority. It's not really functional to prove everything from first principles, especially before you know the subject!
Of course, once you get to a certain level you can prove all the bits of science you want to prove and you can challenge a religious person to prove the validity their teaching (and see how far you get) but by then I'd imagine the individual has made up their mind one way or the other on religion.
I'd put more credence in the "the penalties for speaking out are much lower" suggestion.
I don't think one needs an advanced knowledge of theology (or science) to reject religion: most of it just isn't relevant to the fundamental question "what makes us think God even exists, anyway?"
And more to the point, while I only have a general knowledge of physics, I can Google "how do we know atoms exist" and get a pretty convincing answer, and I can search for good arguments saying atoms don't exist and come up empty. None of this is first-hand proof, of course - but it would be pretty compelling evidence. Can the same be said for theism?
I suppose it's only natural. Us religious folk have had thousands of years of practice with people being religious for the wrong reasons. Now you atheists finally get a chance to experience people being atheists for the wrong reasons.
Atheism isn't a religion. There is no "wrong reason" to be an atheist. If a guy on the street concludes there is no god, whether he got there by reading a textbook or personal whimsy has no bearing on my own absence of belief. It doesn't matter.
I'm a free agent, homie. There's no "you guys." There's no atheist sewing circle. Whether or not other people believe is irrelevant to me, so long as they don't try to foist their beliefs on me or make children stupid.
Religion is a social phenomenon. It is the codified, formalised expression of a given group's customs and rules (which is why writing it down and letting people outside a narrow priesthood have access to it is generally a disaster - it makes it very hard for the religion to change as the culture does, because there's always someone ready to take the words seriously). Successful religions tend to be those with a significant social aspect. Even churches that are nominally the same religion often have deep divides across the social groups.
With the opportunities young people have now to explore beyond their immediate group, both physically and mentally, it's hardly surprising that religion won't take.
It bothers me when people say that science conflicts with religion. It certainly conflicts with specific religious dogmas, such as young-earth creationism, but the frontiers of science fall well short of proving or disproving the existence of any possible deity.
If you go strictly by evidence, agnosticism is a tenable position, but both theism and atheism require leaps of faith beyond scientific fact. As such, atheists who claim science is on their side bother me almost as much as young-earth creationists.
Atheism requires no leap of faith. You can not believe in a god, and operate your life as such, while still acknowledging that you have no proof that there is not god. Nearly every single self described atheist has this position.
On the other than, people who claim to be somehow neither atheist nor theist are being intellectually dishonest to both themselves and everyone else. You operate your life under one of these assumptions.
edit: and for reference, you can either be an agnostic atheist, gnostic atheist, agnostic theist, or gnostic theist. These cover all possibilities as the concepts are defined.
> you can either be an agnostic atheist, gnostic atheist, agnostic theist, or gnostic theist
I have a TV. I don't know how it works. Some people say it's because of electrical waves in the air (whatever that is), others say its because there are small people in the box acting things out for me.
I don't care, and have no opinion on the subject.
Being this form of agnostic (being intellectually honest with yourself to say you don't have an informed opinion either way) is valid.
It's pretty straightforward to check if there are people in your TV box or not. Doesn't sound like a reasonable (or valid) position.
What about Santa or the Spaghetti Monster? Do we have to be (or claim to be) agnostics about everything we can't prove it doesn't exist? There's no need to prove these things because there's no good reason to believe otherwise. And no, just feeling you're right and visions don't count.
TLDR: Burden of proof is on religious people, not on atheists. Thus, agnosticism seems like an unnecessary compromise.
Unless somebody managed to prove/disprove the existence of God while I wasn't looking, being an atheist or theist requires you to make an assumption in the absence of hard data.
You claim that we operate under a strictly Boolean assumption that god either does exist or does not exist, with "I don't know" being incompatible for some reason. What is that reason? Do you have an argument supporting this claim?
I think it's less the case that science conflicts with religion (since as science grows, religion can continue to shrink; there's no clear point at which we will say, “Welp, looks like the religion is all gone now”), but rather that maintaining a scientific worldview conflicts with religion.
This worldview is what allows us to temporarily reject, for instance, premises which are brought up in poor faith, or premises for which there is no clear need. For instance, if in the course of a lie, a lier accidentally says something true, we still reserve our credence for when someone else more likely to be telling the truth says so.
Or, if you have a mathematical theory which is not disproved by anything, we wait until it appears to be implied by some other believed-in theory before accepting it a “fact”. If a theory does not appear to have arisen as a result of other true things, than it may still be true, but we don't need to accept it as such until it seems necessary.
So: The pragmatic worldview necessitated for getting anything done in science tends to lead to atheism.
-In science, the ideal is that credibility is no substitute for data and logic. That's not always true in practice, especially when the media gets involved.
-Premises for which there are no clear need are pursued ardently. "Need" is often rather late to the party, and it frequently never shows up at all.
-Theories always remain theories, but become "accepted" once enough tests that could disprove them fail to do so. Even accepted theories are continually tested as new tests are developed.
-Belief is irrelevant.
-If a theory reduces down to another theory, it isn't really a new theory at all.
I'm not sure if your conclusion has anything to do with your arguments either.
For what its worth, I've always felt that, for those of us in scientific fields, what is known is miniscule compared to what is unknown, and we're free to believe whatever the heck we want about the unknown so long as we're willing to react logically when some beloved part of our unknown universe becomes known to conflict with what we believe. If you're an agoraphobe, faith can fill in the vast empty spaces where fact and logic have not yet taken us. It's those who put faith first that we must beware of! They often speak of science in similar language as you, as if it were merely another religion with a different set of beliefs, and therefore what you believe is merely a difference of opinion!
I watched a Jodi Beggs Ted Talk this morning "Context is King" she discussed how the human mind will attempt to alter its perception of its environment until things make sense. This altering is far less possible the more we make sense of the world and universe in which we live.
My guess is that now we've answered and explained scientifically much more of those questions which religion generally sought to explain, we're much less susceptible to fairy tales.
Young people today have more access to information (via the internet) than ever before. Live in isolation you can be brainwashed to believe almost anything. Live in a connected world where you can inform yourself, you make up your own mind, typically (hopefully) based on reason and logic.
One of Dawkins' theses is that many Christians just identify as such because "Christian" has historically meant "good" or "normal" in many communities. In these communities to introduce yourself as a Christian gets a slight nod and the conversation moves on but saying you are an atheist (or otherwise) makes it "a thing."
I remember growing up Catholic and hearing news that some friends admitted to being atheists. This had the same feel as hearing friends had admitted to being thieves, liars, or cheats. Lots of whispering, rumors, and altogether reprehensible behavior for such a stupid thing. It had less to do with disagreements about true, deep belief in an all powerful deity and more about saying "we are not part of the team" and being tarnished by admitting such.