Rising Disasters

[Kitsune]

I was discussing with a co-worker who is strongly religious.

He does not believe that Armageddon has a fixed time but does believe earth quakes, wars, and other disasters are on the rise.

Most of what I have read indicates that it is mostly that our recording methods have gotten better as well as simply more people living on the planet.

Does anyone know how to go further with the argument?

[Kanastrous]

Ask him to provide you with the statistical data upon which he's basing his assertion that earthquakes, wars, and other disasters are on the rise.

[Kitsune]

I am a bit more concerned about this guy that most. He seems to be a nice guy although he would not accept my answer of why I wish he would not pray for me.

What the concern with him is that he has a degree in teaching and is trying to get a full time teaching position (likely in history or the social sciences) and I am trying to make sure that his religious views are not pumped into his teaching....

[Kanastrous]

Unless you're in a supervisory position over him, I don't know how you could accomplish that...

...maybe not even then.

[Grog]

So what if disasters are on the rise. This means nothing except that disasters are on the rise. I'm no geologist but changes in tectonic activity don't seem impossible to me, global warming is/will probably causing/cause other types of disasters and lack of resources brings war etc. Really changes in the rate of disasters seams far from impossible to me and has probably happened many times before in history and he really should bring some statistics if he claims one is happening now (even tough it really have no implications except that there is more disasters).

[Kitsune]

Unless you're in a supervisory position over him, I don't know how you could accomplish that...

...maybe not even then.

I am not trying to force him on anything but just simply trying to get him to see why he is incorrect.

[Zixinus]

Show him proof to that Armageddon is a fucking fairy tale for the oppressed Christians that lived under one of the most motherfucking (literally) bloody emperors in Roman history. It's not exactly rocket science. The descriptions, the names, the locations are all more consistent with that idea.

[Sikon]

There would seem to be a whole lot more wrong with his views than a perception of rising disaster rates alone, but let's focus on that.

The rate of deaths from war, famine, pestilence, earthquakes, etc. is not increasing if adjusted for population, sometimes even decreasing in absolute terms.

War? Proportionally fewer people die from war in the modern era than in the past. When the U.S. loses 4000 people in Iraq, that's of course undesirable and should be avoided, yet proportionally to the 300 million population it is 0.1% as much as if a tribe of 75 people lost a single individual.

As horrible as the level of death and destruction was in WWII, roughly around 60 million total (counting all deaths, mostly civilians), it was still not more than around 3% of the world population of the time. Over the past six decades since then, there hasn't been as major of a war, obviously. Yet one random example of the death rates from primitive warfare before civilization is 20% of men on average dying in intertribal violence.

The modern world may seem more dangerous, but, in practice, one's chance of being killed by another person during one's lifetime is around an order of magnitude less. Maybe a WWIII with all-out NBC usage could have changed that, but one is looking here at what historically has and is happening.

Death rates from war worldwide were not only far lower in the second half of the 20th century than the first but also have mostly shown a trend of decrease almost every single decade in the past several decades, as shown here. Actually, that's in absolute terms, not adjusted for population, so the proportional death rate would be declining even faster by far.

Disease? Health has improved on average over the decades, as illustrated by average world life expectancy going from about 45 years in 1950 to 58 years in 1970, to 67 years in 2005 (graph). It's higher in industrialized countries, up to 80 years in some, while less in others, but more countries have become more developed over the decades.

Famine? Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the total populations of the countries in which famine was reported decreased from 700 to 800 million to well under 200 million, as illustrated here and discussed here. The number dying from starvation is far less, on the order of two hundred thousand per year, since the former is talking about the total population of countries in which there is famine. Though still hundreds of millions of people, the percentage of the world's population undernourished has decreased over time from 36% in 1970 to 26% in 1980 and 20% in 1990.



Natural disasters? Hurricanes? There were more hurricanes for a period of a few years, but, overall, looking at the graph here for the whole Atlantic region, the number since then has gone down again, going up and down over the past hundred years with not much of a clear trend. Earthquakes? The total number detected per year has increased, but, as described here, that's due to improved seismological tools being able to detect weaker earthquakes, as the number of big, harmful earthquakes shows no such trend.

People sometimes think things are worse because they hear about them more. Want to convince the average person things are going poorly? Report mostly bad news. Want to convince them things are going well? Report mostly good news. Every year there is a bunch of multi-billion-dollar losses from some events in the $70000 billion/year world economy (and a bunch of multi-billion dollar gains from other sources), millions of deaths (and millions of births), etc. It doesn't even occur to many people to look up average figures to see the overall trends over the decades.

[Darth Onasi]

Point out that people were convinced that natural disasters and wars were on the rise in the year 1000, and that Armageddon was just around the corner.

[Darth Wong]

Ask him why God is a better explanation for these disasters than the explanations that science has produced. Then ask him why humanity has achieved a record population if we're being crushed by a mounting tide of apocalyptic disasters.

[FSTargetDrone]

I am a bit more concerned about this guy that most. He seems to be a nice guy although he would not accept my answer of why I wish he would not pray for me.

What do you care if he prays for you? As long as he's not doing it during work, what does it matter? As long as it doesn't interfere with your job, ignore him. You aren't in a church or a class on philosophy with this clown. It's a workplace. You aren't being paid to listen to sermons. If it's becoming problematic enough to be a hassle, tell management about it.

And once again, as an aside, well, it must just be me and my situation, but I am always amazed when someone here describes having conversations about religion with co-workers and the like, especially when said co-workers try to convert.

[Kitsune]

It does not interfere with work and I do enjoy debating with him. Just trying to find where to go from here on one specific subject.

My objection to his praying for me is philosophical. How would he likely react to someone praying to Satan to have him go to Satan instead of Jesus?

[Darth Wong]

I find debates with people like that to be frustrating if only because I find that I have to repeat myself just so he doesn't forget that I am, in fact, an atheist. I've lost count of the number of times, when dealing with these types, that I have to remind them of really basic things like "Remember, I don't believe in him" or "Remember, I don't believe in the authority of the Bible". It's annoying to have to constantly remind the other person of what your actual position is.

[Kanastrous]

My objection to his praying for me is philosophical. How would he likely react to someone praying to Satan to have him go to Satan instead of Jesus?

Doesn't objecting to prayer suggest that in some way you might recognize some kind of effect, associated with prayer?

Seems like that could be taken as support for the prayerful person's belief that their prayers actually mean something.

I mean, if all he's accomplishing is mumbling to himself, really, who cares whether you're included in the mumbling or not?

[Darth Wong]

My objection to his praying for me is philosophical. How would he likely react to someone praying to Satan to have him go to Satan instead of Jesus?

Doesn't objecting to prayer suggest that in some way you might recognize some kind of effect, associated with prayer?

No. It might just mean that you find it offensive. If I found out that a neo-Nazi group was meeting every week and praying that Hitler would give me guidance, I would not recognize the power of that prayer, but I would sure as hell find it offensive.

Seems like that could be taken as support for the prayerful person's belief that their prayers actually mean something.

I mean, if all he's accomplishing is mumbling to himself, really, who cares whether you're included in the mumbling or not?

People aren't allowed to take offense at other peoples' obnoxious behaviour without somehow lending credence to the other peoples' belief systems? I don't see how that follows at all. Besides, he's not just praying, is he? He's making a point of telling you that he's praying for you, which means he's deliberately confronting you with the fact. Which, in turn, means he's trying to make a point.

When someone says "I will pray for you", what he's saying is "You deserve eternal suffering and damnation, and I will pray that Lord Almighty Jebus turns you from the evil, evil path that you are on, you terrible terrible man."

[Kanastrous]

When someone says "I will pray for you", what he's saying is "You deserve eternal suffering and damnation, and I will pray that Lord Almighty Jebus turns you from the evil, evil path that you are on, you terrible terrible man."

Okay.

Since that's all pretty much just the contents of his own fetid imagination, I don't perceive any effect, or cause for concern.

[Darth Wong]

When someone says "I will pray for you", what he's saying is "You deserve eternal suffering and damnation, and I will pray that Lord Almighty Jebus turns you from the evil, evil path that you are on, you terrible terrible man."

Okay.

Since that's all pretty much just the contents of his own fetid imagination, I don't perceive any effect, or cause for concern.

It's as much cause for "concern" as someone telling you to fuck off. It may not harm you in any real sense, but you have every right to take offense. Are you trying to be dense here?

[discordian_saint]

If he doesn't get the hint about you not subscribing to his superhero crutch then if I were you I would seriously re-evaluate dealing with him. It is very likely that if you make it plain your not on the Kool-Aid train and he still keeps it up, even in a joking manner then he is not trying to be a freind he is lying to get you to trust him. If he drops it then dandy you can be friends and just don't step on each others toes so to speak.

If not then at that point he deserves the wrath of whatever HR tightass you can call down upon him. Xtians in general rely on the assumption that most people are just too polite to tell them off face to face. They figure they'll get the benfit of the doubt since they are generally the 'majority' in any workplace.

[Omeganian]

This science reminds me... Ever saw this proof of global warming?

[Kanastrous]

When someone says "I will pray for you", what he's saying is "You deserve eternal suffering and damnation, and I will pray that Lord Almighty Jebus turns you from the evil, evil path that you are on, you terrible terrible man."

Okay.

Since that's all pretty much just the contents of his own fetid imagination, I don't perceive any effect, or cause for concern.

It's as much cause for "concern" as someone telling you to fuck off. It may not harm you in any real sense, but you have every right to take offense. Are you trying to be dense here?

No, this is about my usual density at STP.

[Mayabird]

Back on the rising disasters, a good bit of trivia to bring up is the New Madrid Quake of 1811. Possibly an 8.0 on the Richter Scale, powerful enough to ring church bells hundreds of miles away and make the Mississippi River flow backwards for a few days. The area was so thinly populated, though, that it didn't lead to any sort of disaster. A couple log cabins and maybe...what did the Native Americans in the area live in, anyway? Whatever they lived in... got knocked down, and maybe some horses got spooked. That's about it. If it happened today, we'd be talking maybe hundreds of billions in damage and tens of thousands of deaths. There are more people living in more places, so when something bad happens, people are more likely to be affected.

[Darth Servo]

I find debates with people like that to be frustrating if only because I find that I have to repeat myself just so he doesn't forget that I am, in fact, an atheist. I've lost count of the number of times, when dealing with these types, that I have to remind them of really basic things like "Remember, I don't believe in him" or "Remember, I don't believe in the authority of the Bible". It's annoying to have to constantly remind the other person of what your actual position is.

Much of that problem is due to the fact that they honestly don't have anything else and are incapable of seeing things any other way. Thats what they've been programmed to say most of their lives. And sure, they're still assholes.

[Darth Wong]

I find debates with people like that to be frustrating if only because I find that I have to repeat myself just so he doesn't forget that I am, in fact, an atheist. I've lost count of the number of times, when dealing with these types, that I have to remind them of really basic things like "Remember, I don't believe in him" or "Remember, I don't believe in the authority of the Bible". It's annoying to have to constantly remind the other person of what your actual position is.

Much of that problem is due to the fact that they honestly don't have anything else and are incapable of seeing things any other way. Thats what they've been programmed to say most of their lives. And sure, they're still assholes.

A lot of it is just ingrained pattern thinking. Most of the time, when people like this discuss religion, they are discussing it with other people at their church. They've probably spent an entire lifetime periodically discussing religious ideas with other churchgoers, repeating and reinforcing the same basic patterns of communication for decades. So it is incredibly easy for them to fall into old patterns, which is why it often seems as if they are barely aware of anything you're saying. Even if they try to grasp your words, they easily fall into patterns of saying the sort of things they would normally say to a fellow churchgoer.

Worse yet, the more agitated they get, the more likely they will do this. It's sort of like first-generation immigrants who revert to their native language when they get angry or upset. That's why, whenever you feel like you're making some really good points, they revert to mindlessly spouting religious sound bites and stop having any kind of two-way discussion with you. I've come to realize that it's not a deliberate tactic; it's a function of the way their minds work.

[Kuroneko]

At least in the case of war, the past inadequacies of documentation aren't really too significant of an issue. It's very true that it is difficult to judge death tolls accurately, but one can compensate somewhat by estimating the magnitude (common logarithm of fatalities) instead, which is much easier to measure reasonably--after all, a difference of just 0.3 corresponds to a factor of two in the actual death toll, so this scheme automatically incorporates the uncertainties.

That said, your co-worker's conclusion about wars is rather easy to mistake but is nonetheless unjustified. I recall reading about The Statistics of Deadly Quarrels by Lewis Richardson, who compiled detailed statistics on both individual murder rates and wars in the period 1820-1950 (war being here defined as a quarrel of magnitude 2.5 or greater). Plotted as a graph of war magnitude vs. start/end dates, there is actually a visually apparent trend toward deadlier and more frequent warfare, but statistical analysis does not support this conclusion, and instead suggests that the wars are a random phenomenon with war outbreaks of a given magnitude following a Poisson distribution [1].

I haven't come across on any detailed studies on the total number and severity since 1950, but it seems fairly obvious that the majority of war deaths in the twentieth century occured before 1950.


[1] This of course does not at all mean that any particular nation declares wars randomly.

[Kitsune]

I did notice a problem with patterns in some cases.....
When I talk about a religious text in a certain context, it is almost like he does not hear me. Such example include how experts in languages can sometimes when new text has been added.

I think I am working with him Saturday and printed out a bit which should help a bit.