Perchance

These are generalizations, I think, and too often the only way to realize they are is to put them both together and see how they defy and contradict and support each other. I have heard people make these statements- usually, the first one, which is the basis of a lot of "eat well before you have a test" advice- with complete complacency, not expecting to be defied, contradicted, or asked for statistics. Together, or qualified by words like "some," "most," "many," "might," they can serve a purpose. Quoted separately, they can easily give the impression that the person quoting them believes in them implicitly and believes them true for all other people, which can start an argument- but doesn't nearly often enough.

I would hope I'm not saying that! However, acceptance of such a thing relies on a bunch of questions I would want answered first:

1) Who is corroborating these results? Did it only happen once? Are they people who have started out unbiased, or did they "want" to find out that atheists have "bad" relationships with their fathers?

2) What would be considered a "statistically significant percentage," and why?

3) What does "broken father-relationship" mean? I've heard it used in many different contexts, from one in which a father is present but "emotionally" absent, to one in which he is physically abusive, to one in which he is gone entirely, sometimes before his children are even born.

4) Since I tend to be a cynic, I would probably question why people want to find this out. Is it because they automatically assume that a "trauma" of some sort is necessary to "drive" a child into atheism? Is it because they want to stop it? And why posit that broken father-relationships are bad things in any case? In the case of a man who would NOT have been a good father, because of emotional instability, history of abuse, or other reasons, then not having a "father figure" around could actually be good.

I think I'm still having a problem with the language. I wish there were more neutral and less value-laden terms than things like "broken," "good," and "drive" to discuss this. For example, something that didn't assume the nuclear family was a plus and the father is automatically needed. Perhaps if it were rephrased, I would see it more clearly.

Exactly. But scientists also need to be capable of repeating those results. That's why I would want to look at more than one study, done by more than one group.

Another point. I don't know that "science," per se, can say anything about religious belief or lack of it. It can study the brain during moments of religious ecstasy; it can excavate religious artifacts; it can make predictions that a person will act a certain way because of a certain religious belief or lack of it. But they are predictions, not prophecies.

Again, I'm afraid that if one study- and it tends to be one, sensational study that gets taken up and exaggerated for at least a little while- decides "atheists are this way" (or, for that matter, "religious people are this way") it will turn into a convenient generalization to hang things on. "Oh, poor atheists... no fathers... we must help them...." Or "Poor theists... none of them have any reasoning ability... we must help them..."

Some people want to use conclusions like this to further their own point of view, rather than simply to acquire knowledge.

-Perchance.

[ June 11, 2002: Message edited by: Perchance ]</p>

Tusitala

This sounds suspiciously like the church playing the 'we need to get back to GOD and good Xtian family values' card.

For the record, my dad was a piss-poor role model during my formulative chidhood years, but I loved him all the same.

When I left school, I worked in the same profession, joined the same club, drank beer the same with him and his mates, played the same sport with him, and enjoyed the same hobbies as him. I guess I was making up for lost time. Some may say that this was not a healthy relationship, but I discovered that he loved me and was very proud of me. I took it bad when he died.

I don't know if he was an atheist, but he read a lot and was a fan of Desmond Morris.

How do I rate myself as a father? - Piss-poor. What do my kids think? - When they were young, they probably envied the relationships between their friends and their dads. Now they're grown up, they think we're both pretty cool as parents.

Chip off the ol' block,
Tusi

Undercurrent

I'm guessing that D. James Kennedy means to slur women who down submit to their husbands as much as he means to slur atheists by his remarks.

m.

Aethernaut

How could a bad father cause atheism when every human on earth is born atheist? I think Kennedy's been smoking the god-crack again.

-SK

never been there

If we really want to know, we should spread the argument over this topic, and Barna Research (www.barna.org) will do a proper survey!

tommyc

Ok, a comment not based on fact, just on my opinion:

I think the reason for a little anger over the subject, is that to me I see a few points that are surreptitiously being made, and I think that some people who didn't consider the argument carefully, may subconsiously read into it the following conclusions:

1. A bad father will produce Atheist Childern.

2. All Atheists had bad fathers.

3. If you are an atheist, it is because you had a bad father.

I know those second two points aren't mentioned, but surely this is a very loaded subject, which would certainly put the seed of the second two points into peoples minds.

babelfish

Right on, Tom.

Just because Vitz doesn't come right out and say these things, doesn't mean that the reader isn't being subtly led to conclude that those poor atheists got that way because of their lousy fathers.

I mean, just look at the atheists he uses as anecdotal evidence....sheesh!

DougI

Paul Vitz's work isn't done on scholarship, just mere musings. Although he claims in his book to have done experimental research all he has done is read excerpts from biographies and assumed bad fathers were the cause of an Atheist's Atheism. When I talked with him he simply assumed I hated my father because I am an Atheist.

Some examples of people in his "case studies" includes James Bond (yes, 007), and your typical Atheist Hugh Hefner.

So we should assume that Timothy McVeigh, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Goebbels, Son of Sam Horowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Osama Bin Laden, etc. all had good fathers because they are all religious. What Vitz does is dismiss and demean a person's own intellectual and philosophical journeys for truth and place it into the category of bad parenting. Then again, Vitz simply defines Atheism as not going to church, not praying all the time, not reading your Bible on a daily basis and not believing in a monotheistic god. His work is so utterly poor it could only be published by a Xian publishing company and it will only be believed by a Xian audience, certainly not an academic one.

CX

Actually when my dad was a complete shitheel selfish arrogant alcoholic womanizer I was a believer more or less. After he straightened up and became a good person I became an atheist. &lt;sarcasm&gt;Obviously it is therefore good fathers that cause atheism. I am living proof of that.&lt;/sarcasm&gt;

NOGO

They always try to understand why... as if it is abnormal to be a non-believer.

One Baptists wanted to know if the teaching of evolution made me an atheist.

I told me that when I was in school they did not teach evolution so that did not do it. What did is the reading of the Bible. He found that hard to believe so I showed him.