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yankee_doodle
Guest
A planetarium 
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Bob_Crowley
Guest
A neatly cut hole in the ground, six feet long, two feet wide and six feet deep.A planetarium
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jpjd
Guest
The vast wasteland known as television.
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yankee_doodle
Guest
Seriously though. With the secularization of the western world, what will Christianity look like in ten or twenty years? Will it be confined to the third world & illiterate, impoverished westerners (with a few old timers hanging in there, a group some of you here might one day belong to), or will there be some sort of religious resurgence?
I can’t see religion making a come back in the Northeastern or Northwestern United States, or places like Scandinavia and France. Of course there is the fact that the poor and illiterate reproduce at higher rates compared to well educated higher income individuals (and hence we might assume places like the United States will become dominated by people of lower intelligence; not to mention how immigration by people from third world countries, which are almost completely illiterate, is playing into this dynamic).
So in a sense the only hope for religion in a progressive intellectual society seems to be societal and cultural decline.
I’m not inferring the religious are stupid by any means, I’m only saying that atheism and agnosticism is far more prevalent among the most educated and affluent in our society; and it’s popularity is growing at an excessively rapid rate within that group.
Some key findings from a recent study:
a. the proportion of the population that can be classified as Christian has declined from eighty-six in 1990 to seventy-seven percent in 2001;
b. although the number of adults who classify themselves in non-Christian religious groups has increased from about 5.8 million to about 7.7 million, the proportion of non-Christians has increased only by a very small amount - from 3.3 % to about 3.7 %;
c. the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just eight percent of the total in 1990 to over fourteen percent in 2001 [note 5];
d. there has also been a substantial increase in the number of adults who refused to reply to the question about their religious preference, from about four million or two percent in 1990 to more than eleven million or over five percent in 2001.
gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm
“People who were ashamed to say there is no God now say, ‘Wow, there are others out there who think like me, and it feels damned good,’” said Margaret Downey, president of the Atheist Alliance International, whose membership has almost doubled in the past year to 5,200. It has a 500-person waiting list for its convention in Crystal City, Va., later this month . . .
They tend to be more educated, more affluent and more likely to be male and unmarried than those with active faith, according to the Barna study. Only 6 percent of people over 60 have no faith in God, and one in four adults ages 18 to 22 describe themselves as having no faith.
For the younger generations, charter schools based on humanist principles have opened in New York City and Florida. CampQuest, an Albany-based group, runs five overnight camps around the country for atheist kids.
kentucky.com/158/story/183379.html
I can’t see religion making a come back in the Northeastern or Northwestern United States, or places like Scandinavia and France. Of course there is the fact that the poor and illiterate reproduce at higher rates compared to well educated higher income individuals (and hence we might assume places like the United States will become dominated by people of lower intelligence; not to mention how immigration by people from third world countries, which are almost completely illiterate, is playing into this dynamic).
So in a sense the only hope for religion in a progressive intellectual society seems to be societal and cultural decline.
I’m not inferring the religious are stupid by any means, I’m only saying that atheism and agnosticism is far more prevalent among the most educated and affluent in our society; and it’s popularity is growing at an excessively rapid rate within that group.
Some key findings from a recent study:
a. the proportion of the population that can be classified as Christian has declined from eighty-six in 1990 to seventy-seven percent in 2001;
b. although the number of adults who classify themselves in non-Christian religious groups has increased from about 5.8 million to about 7.7 million, the proportion of non-Christians has increased only by a very small amount - from 3.3 % to about 3.7 %;
c. the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just eight percent of the total in 1990 to over fourteen percent in 2001 [note 5];
d. there has also been a substantial increase in the number of adults who refused to reply to the question about their religious preference, from about four million or two percent in 1990 to more than eleven million or over five percent in 2001.
gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm
“People who were ashamed to say there is no God now say, ‘Wow, there are others out there who think like me, and it feels damned good,’” said Margaret Downey, president of the Atheist Alliance International, whose membership has almost doubled in the past year to 5,200. It has a 500-person waiting list for its convention in Crystal City, Va., later this month . . .
They tend to be more educated, more affluent and more likely to be male and unmarried than those with active faith, according to the Barna study. Only 6 percent of people over 60 have no faith in God, and one in four adults ages 18 to 22 describe themselves as having no faith.
For the younger generations, charter schools based on humanist principles have opened in New York City and Florida. CampQuest, an Albany-based group, runs five overnight camps around the country for atheist kids.
kentucky.com/158/story/183379.html
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DerekD
Guest
I have a couple of atheist in the family; they are the captains of their own ship; so to speak. However when you ask them how they got here in the first place, how anything got here, or why it is not okay to walk into a daycare and shoot all the little children (a built in moral compass), thay can never give a reasonable explanation. Why? because as an atheist you believe no one plus nothing = everything; wheras the Christian knows that God plus nothing = everything, including the atheist. Everyone has a god; yours is called “self”.
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Bob_Crowley
Guest
I suspect the hedonism of the post-Christian West is why God has left Islam as a major challenge to the West. Whatever else you want to say about them, they take “Allah” seriously. It’s obvious they’re quite prepared to die for him. He’s also given them most of the oil at this particular time to make them a real economic if not military threat.
I also think some major challenges are on their way. God knows very well that in times of affluence and social comfort, people turn away from Him. John Wesley led a revival in England, and part of that was to improve the living conditions of the common peopel. But he found that as they did so, their devotion to Christ waned. And that’s basically what has happened in the West. We’ve never had it so good.
Hence I think He’s allowing some severe challenges to the status quo to eventuate.
The other factor is the division of the church, which is more notable in the USA than anywhere else. When your house is divided, in the end there can only be one result. Christ told us that.
In the case of Europe, with a much longer Christian experience, I suspect the Religious Wars of the Reformation, and the centuries long aftermath of bitter division, left a disillusionment with religion in general. In World War II for example, Atheist USSR, Protestant America and Anglican British Empire (with Hindu India and Confucian China) fought against Lutheran Germany, Shinto Japan and Catholic Italy.
Much of the mentality of obedience to the state at all costs in Germany came from Luther’s heritage for example. The Catholic Church itself showed itself to be rather reactionary at times. Vatican II wasn’t called in a vacuum. John XXIII could see what would happen if the Church kept trying to avoid modernism.
Personally I don’t see creeping atheism as the challenge you think it is. I think it’s in it’s dying days. It appears strong on the surface, but when major challenges arrive, I dont’ think it will be as pervasive as it seems. For a start I think a lot of ordinary people have a gut belief in God, or that there is some primary reason the universe happened.
But they don’t take HIm seriously.
Finally, between Marian apparitions over the last century in paricular (and they have been occurring eg. Fatima with 2 major miracles - dancing sun and sudden drying of clothes and ground - and Akita - statue weeping genuine blood and tears on 101 occasions), and the way they line up with Scripture in Revelation 12 (the Woman who is a portent in Heaven), I think we’re gettnig close to the bowls of wrath being poured out.
Akita - “If you do not change, you have no idea what’s being prepared for you.”
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abucs
Guest
It’s interesting reading Alister McGraths book “The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World” where he claims that each generation of atheists for the last 150 years has thought theirs would be the last one with religion.
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Bob_Crowley
Guest
You’ll probably find the current crop of hardcore atheists think the same thing. Oddly enough the Abrahamic religions, which are the ones they dislike most are growing. You don’t hear them saying much about Hinduism or Buddhism - and they usually target Christianity. If the following link is accurate, then Christianity and Islam claim over half the world’s population between them, wiht the Jews adding about around 15 million.
bible.ca/global-religion-statistics-world-christian-encyclopedia.htm
Funny how God told a wandering citizen from Ur, old Abraham, to go out of his tent and count the number of stars in the sky and that He would give him that many descendants. In the spiritual sense, that’s what He’s doing, and He shows no sign of slowing down. And that was despite the long delay in giving him a natural heir. It wasn’t really the natural heir He was talking about, when it was all said and done.
Frankly unless God was behind it, the whole thing would have collapsed long ago, when we consider how much opposition both the Jews and the Church have faced over the centuries.
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Gertabelle
Guest
:curtsey: Well this academia nut is happily Roman Catholic, and I don’t check my brain at the door when I go to Mass, or pray the Rosary, or teach my son to “genuflect to Jesus.” I’ve been down the road of “there is no God, so do what you want, and harm none.” To quote the president of the atheist club, it did indeed feel d**** good to do whatever I wanted (and harm none) without having to consider sin. Live for the moment. Yep, been there, done that.
And about the time that I began my doctorate, I also chose to take another look at the Catholic Church. Nothing so lonely (i.e., severing the human connection) and stupid as making myself the god of my universe. So not everyone joining the atheist groups or claiming they no longer have faith are going to stay that way. For some of us who are highly educated (and only procreating once), the intellect leads us back to faith, rather than away from it.
Just my two cents. But thanks for the laugh
Gertie
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AntiTheist
Guest
DerekD:
Incidentally, a lot of atheists seem to think it likely that the “stuff” that preceded the Big Bang was always here. And some think that what we call “morals” are the result of “values” (things we choose as important), values informed by social training, society, tradition, empathy, and reason.
Gertabelle:
Sheesh, unless you have some new definition of the word “god,” the average atheist does not think himself a “god” of anything.
Yankee: I imagine that in twenty years, the demographics here in America won’t change all that much. Perhaps we’ll see some growth in the number of self-proclaimed atheists and non-believers, but I predict that the vast, vast, vast majority of the country will still at least claim to belong to some kind of religion.
The reason for this is that most people are born into a religion and most of these people never think critically about that religion. And for good reason – most people don’t have the leisure time to seriously think this stuff through. All they have time for is, “Gee, I don’t have any clue how the universe got started – therefore god.”
Well, if you don’t know something, “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer. Not knowing something doesn’t make “a god did it!” automatically the answer.
Incidentally, a lot of atheists seem to think it likely that the “stuff” that preceded the Big Bang was always here. And some think that what we call “morals” are the result of “values” (things we choose as important), values informed by social training, society, tradition, empathy, and reason.
Gertabelle:
Where does this nonsense come from? DerekD said it, too: “Everyone has a god; yours is called ‘self’.”
Sheesh, unless you have some new definition of the word “god,” the average atheist does not think himself a “god” of anything.
Yankee: I imagine that in twenty years, the demographics here in America won’t change all that much. Perhaps we’ll see some growth in the number of self-proclaimed atheists and non-believers, but I predict that the vast, vast, vast majority of the country will still at least claim to belong to some kind of religion.
The reason for this is that most people are born into a religion and most of these people never think critically about that religion. And for good reason – most people don’t have the leisure time to seriously think this stuff through. All they have time for is, “Gee, I don’t have any clue how the universe got started – therefore god.”
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DerekD
Guest
Thanks for proving my point; you have no answers except on the morality; which you claim is based on values etc, where did thos come from? You mentioned society; where did that society with these values come from and are our values improving or disintegrating? How can you say you do not know; we told you that Jesus is God and without Him nothing was created; so you do know, but chose not to believe? How do we know? God has revealed his character and nature or attributes through creation and anyone that knows anything knows there is a strict order to the universe and it is like a swiss watch in precision. How do we know that all men have a built in moral compass, the Word of God tells us that he has and experience of life with humans demonstrate this. How do we know the Bible is deivine in origin, no one could invent the a person such as Jesus Christ, no one could use a multitude of writers to produce a book that contains these events and tell about some in great detail ong before they ever happened. Fo rthose that have received the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, special revelation, does what it says; it transforms lives for the good to those that truly believe in God and there are very few that actualy do and more that claim they do and trmple under foot the Son of God who end with be eternal hell. Your hell will be bad, but not a bad as thoses that claimed to profess Christ and whose hearts are far from Him.
Intutively; you know there must be something more than living this life, then nothing, God has pput in the heart of every person that feeling there must be more and of course there is a lot more. I proof of the Bible is “Israel”, by all sense it should not exist as many nations much greated in size, military and economic has risen and fallen; yet Israel remains just as Gd said and the other nation shave disappeared and discovered through acheology and this is a s God said would happen.
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AntiTheist
Guest
I already said that they come from many sources – empathy (natural, inborn feelings of connection with other members of one’s species), reason (deciding which actions would be best for one’s survival), social traditions (societies tested out actions in the past and passed down to us the ones that worked the best), etc.
EDIT: And, of course, I’m not claiming to know 100% for sure that these are the only sources of values. It’s quite possible that our values are informed by other factors that we’re not aware of yet.
So you say. Other religions claim that other gods were responsible for the universe. I don’t see any reason to think that any intelligent being was responsible for the universe.
If you’d like an answer to any of your other questions, please pick one and ask it clearly, rather than submitting a wall of text.
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anode
Guest
Many Unitartian-Universalists, Humanists, and Quakers are atheist, so if you visit their churches, you’ll be visiting ‘atheist’ churches.
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Gertabelle
Guest
Hmm, well, what else would you call it when your opinions, your attitudes, your power or lack thereof is the end-all and be-all of your own existence? Sounds like a god to me
Excuse me? And just where, pray tell, did you get that little bit of data? Most of the people I know in religion have done some serious explorations of life, their religion, other religions. And many are experts in their fields, whether they be engineers, chemists, educators, etc. (We highly educated people tend to hang out a lot together.) To hear you tell it, no one with a masters or doctorate could possibly be part of a religion!
Personally, I wonder at the vehemence with which you relegate all of us religious types to lowest levels of apathy and ignorance. Wow. Astounding, simply astounding…
Praying for you, dear one. Just loving you and praying for you…
Gertie
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AntiTheist
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Well, depending on what you mean, I’m not sure that many atheists would agree that their opinions are the “end all and be all” of their existence. And at any rate, you appear to be using a definition of “god” that resembles none that I have ever heard (usually, a “god” is a supernatural entity with powers of control over nature that exceed the imagination – often, these beings supposedly have qualities of omniscience and omnibenevolence and are objects of religious rites and rituals conducted by inferior beings like humans).Hmm, well, what else would you call it when your opinions, your attitudes, your power or lack thereof is the end-all and be-all of your own existence? Sounds like a god to me
I got it from DerekD’s post. He wrote of the atheists he knows, " when you ask them how they got here in the first place …] thay can never give a reasonable explanation."
The argument appears to be that if humans do not know how the universe began, then the default answer must be a god. Hence, my paraphrase: “Gee, I don’t have any clue how the universe got started – therefore god.”
You know what they say: you pray for me, and I’ll think for you.
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jmcrae
Guest
In my experience, the majority of those over the age of 21 who still attend Church are doing so because they have thought long and hard about the question of God.
It’s those who don’t have any particular religious practice who are the ones who haven’t taken the time to think things through. (I am not talking about atheists here - atheists have also thought the problem through, and concluded that there is no God. I am talking about people who have literally never considered the question, and have no idea why anyone would either go or not go to Church; they go “sometimes” - if a friend invites them or if a relative is receiving a Sacrament - but they don’t give the question any thought, and they certainly don’t get out of bed on their day off and go to Church “out of habit” - those under the age of 21 might be dragged there by a parent, but over the age of 21, they are sleeping, or else doing household chores.
It’s those who don’t have any particular religious practice who are the ones who haven’t taken the time to think things through. (I am not talking about atheists here - atheists have also thought the problem through, and concluded that there is no God. I am talking about people who have literally never considered the question, and have no idea why anyone would either go or not go to Church; they go “sometimes” - if a friend invites them or if a relative is receiving a Sacrament - but they don’t give the question any thought, and they certainly don’t get out of bed on their day off and go to Church “out of habit” - those under the age of 21 might be dragged there by a parent, but over the age of 21, they are sleeping, or else doing household chores.
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gearhead
Guest
Arrgh. I think this thread does more harm than good.A planetarium
I don’t know how many times I’ve been confronted with this notion on the part of religious people that atheists have some sort of “atheist” analogue of everything that theists have. And I think you’re feeding that stereotype with this thread, as well as the stereotype that atheists “worship” science.
A planetarium is not an “atheist church”, at least not in the sense that it’s where atheists as a group go for religious observance. I’m fascinated by lots of things that I’d see in a planetarium, but there’s nothing there that I would worship.
What does an atheist church look like? Depends on the atheist. For some atheists (i.e. the Buddhist kind), it might look like an atheist temple. For this atheist, though, my church looks like this:
Nothing. I have no church. I have no god. It’s not that I’ve made a “god” of science, myself, or anything else. I simply don’t have one.
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AntiTheist
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To be clear, in my post earlier to yankee I was specifically talking about people who simply identify themselves as belonging to a particular religion. That number is always going to be high because most people don’t have the time to think about this stuff and just consider themselves to be whatever their parents were, regardless of whether they routinely believe and practice it.
I understand that the number of those religious people who actually go to services or practice the religion is lower and that those who do practice their religion tend to have thought about the subject, at least a bit.
But I would still maintain, obviously, that most of them have not thought sufficiently critically about the subject.
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gearhead
Guest
I wouldn’t be so sure. Over the years, I’ve asked various theists of various ages why the believe and worship as they do, and I’m surprised at the number of responses I’ve got that indicate (to me, at least) that they haven’t put a whole lot of thought into the question.
Reminds me of a descriptor I heard a while back: “apatheist”… someone who doesn’t so much believe or disbelieve in deities, but just doesn’t care about them.
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jmcrae
Guest
Not everyone has the gift of being able to put these kinds of things into words (it’s kind of like asking how you came to the profession that you are in - it’s not really a one-word answer; nevertheless, one doesn’t enter into a profession without thinking it through and at least proving something to someone about one’s competence) - but the fact that they are present, without being coerced, means that they have thought it through and know that they want to be there, rather than anywhere else, on a Sunday morning.
That’s a good word - I like it!
- Status