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Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US
gollum123 notes new U.S. demographic data from the Pew Research Center which show that the percentage of Americans declaring affiliation with a particular religion has declined sharply since 2007. Americans identifying as Christian dropped from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Those describing themselves as atheist, agnostic, or simple having no affiliation took up most of the slack, rising from 16.1% to 22.8%. Members of non-Christian faiths collectively rose from 4.7% to 5.9%. Despite the overall decline, the demographics within the Christian group are getting much more racially and ethnically diverse. The willingness of respondents to marry outside their religious affiliation is also on the rise. The median age of unaffiliated adults is dropping, while the median ages of mainline Protestants and Catholics are rising. The study estimates that 85% of adults age 70 and over are Christian, while only 56% of adults ages 18-24 are Christian. They also say that each individual generation has shown a slight decrease in religious affiliation compared to their statistics in 2007.
maybe the relig-a-phobes will calm down now.
We live in a world of empiricism, where the concepts of faith and religion are - if not outright mocked and denigrated - are under constant pressure.
The benefits that faith brings to individuals and societies are trivialized. The engines of media are actively working to tear religion* down: few films in the last 40 years (aside from those specifically built for sale to the isolated Christian demographic) have identified-Christian characters that don't prove to be motivated to evil thereby.
*hypocritically, the attack is usually on the most benign and banal faiths. The most regressive, reactionary, anti-modern faiths are accorded a curiously protected status.
Finally, the acts of radicals have further poisoned the view of the general public toward religion generally.
This should surprise nobody.
I believe people need faith in proportion to their misery. As long as humanity continues to generally be better off, religious affiliation will decline. But of course, I personally don't expect that will be a ceaseless climb, and people will turn back to religion again.
-Styopa
maybe the relig-a-phobes will calm down now.
Turn on the evening news tonight. Tell me how many stories you hear that at their core is some form of religious fighting or tribal bigotry. Israel/Palestine. Shiite/Sunni. Most acts of terrorism. Gay bashing. Anti-abortion protests. So called religious restoration acts (actually bigotry in disguise). Child abuse by priests. Oppression of women. It goes on and on. Tribal warfare, bigotry, hatred. While you don't need religion for these things, there can be no argument that religion frequently exaggerates these conflicts.
Would you be comfortable around a group of people who greatly outnumber you and who base a big part of their world view on something so fundamentally irrational and tribal and many of whom have a demonstrated propensity for violence?
Gerald the pink-furred cat only exists in your imagination.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
>may i ask you how a (Greek Orthodox) Christian like me can get off your "hit list"?
I'm not the poster, but I would say by dying (we all do eventually) or by coming to your senses (never too late)
Oh, and please, tell me how you came to choose your religion, did you calmly consider all religions past and current, and decided that this one was the best, or the most likely to be true, or some shit like that ?
I don't doubt that there are some exceptions, possibly even some motivated enough to be slightly dangerous; but those people I've met who actively want religion to die out (as opposed to merely being atheists personally, or apathetic toward metaphysics) specifically want it do die out by persuasion rather than persecution.
It is relatively trivial, if you have the resources, to wipe out a belief just by killing everyone who holds it. However, that's an atrocity and an atrocious 'argument', if it can even be called one. You prove nothing but power, and being an awful person, by doing it. It is only a victory of ideas if people voluntarily come to believe differently.
There's also the consideration that religions(in addition to their metaphysics and their moral prescriptions, which do tend to trouble atheists and non-aligned) tend to be a fairly large chunk of cultural practice(either because they developed it or because they co-opted and modified existing traditions. It is not at all uncommon for atheists to actively enjoy these aspects (the big, scary, Richard Dawkins himself is said to participate in christmas related ceremony with his family...), so long as they don't include religious leaders being granted state power and other unpleasant side effects.
Perhaps Rob Kaper is more ardent than usual, I don't speak for him; but my guess is that, while he'd be pleased to have you lose faith, you are in no danger whatsoever and may continue without incident.
Evidence, anecdotes and Congressional appointments.
"Lies from the Pit of Hell", you know.
I would be far more likely to be swayed by your argument if you were to show / link / discuss any actual "double-blind tests now showing liberals as more racist than conservatives", Please show me how average liberals are racist against white people, especially 'over and over'. There are kooks everywhere, I know, but claiming massive one-sidedness doesn't work with some sort of evidence by a researcher.
While it'd be fun to take out the atheist triumphalism drum, it's worth noting that the thing being measured is religious affiliation not 'theological position' or 'amount of magical thinking done per day', or 'even the vaguest knowledge of how empiricism works'.
Religious affiliation is quite significant, of course, it's obviously notable that substantially more people both can't be bothered to get their ass out of bed on Sunday morning and are willing to admit that they have no formal affiliation(historically, at least in the US, you might not actually attend all that often, or pay that much attention; but denying association was somewhat transgressive). It's also significant for the hopes of various religious groups to exercise political power through organized bloc voting (the 'moral majority', not that it was ever either, sure isn't going to be done any good by the evangelical protestant numbers, nor is the ability of bishops to bluster during election season going to improve with those catholic numbers.
However, it's by no means the case that religious non-affiliation is necessarily anything other than pure disinterest, or vague belief in supernatural entities(probably shaped by a layman-level understanding of whatever your parents nominally believed, with any overtly objectionable parts left on the cutting room floor). There may also be a story about atheism here; but that isn't really the poll result.
In that sense, the results aren't really too surprising: the liberal protestant and 'cafeteria catholic' congregations have been working their way toward being increasingly irrelevant social activities for years to decades now; some nice people and all that; but pretty light on religion, which meant that they drifted into direct competition with any and all other activities you do with other people, without being obviously more entertaining, conveniently scheduled, or otherwise competitive.
The more conservative groups tended to retain the religiosity a bit more intensely; but they really got burned by their flirtation with state power(let's say roughly Reagan through Bush II in round numbers). They did get some of what they wanted, though not enough to prevent disappointment; but they burned a lot of religious legitimacy in the process. Remember that jewish radical who said that his kingdom was not of this world? Well, it'd be hard to argue that the evangelical power-brokers hanging out at the 'National Prayer Breakfast' and trying to get Washington to do something about homos and abortionists do. Even if your beliefs are fairly strong, and largely 'Christian' in outline, it's hard to avoid seeing the liberal wing of Christianity as increasingly wishy-washy and irrelevant, certainly not worth going to church with; and the conservative wing as dangerously unfocused on the kingdom of god in favor of trying to achieve local political gains.
I have seen bad and anti-science dribble spread across equally from Religious and Atheist alike. If the science is against their worldview or political viewpoint then they will choose to disagree with it. You don't see too many Evangelical Religious folks touting the dangers of GMO food, or stating the dangers of vaccines (The religious folks may refuse to take vaccines, but not because of the risks or rewards, but due to other reasons).
Also jumping onto the latest diet trend, (Remember the low fat, high carbs movement back in the 1990's)
Religion and Science are not in conflict nor are they one in the same. The "Proofs" against the existence of God, are just as faulty as the "Proofs" for God.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Here are Gallup's historical trends up to 2013.
This is the most insightful post here so far.
The real trend seems to be away from a "default" position of "Yeah, I guess I believe in God, and maybe I'm a Christian" to "Yeah, I don't really care that much."
Is that an actual shift in values, or is it just that it's more socially acceptable now to acknowledge that you don't care about religion that much? A few decades ago, these people may have just gone to church on Christmas and Easter, but otherwise showed no daily signs of being "religious," but it was just the default way of things.
Nowadays, these people may still go to church on Christmas and Easter or whatever because it's family tradition, but they behave precisely the same way as they did decades ago... it's just now they feel more free to admit that there are other things they do. (It's worthwhile to remember that socialization was very different a few decades ago; churches were an important hub for communities and still are, but now we have a lot more possible ways to participate in both real-world and virtual communities.)
Basically, the percentage of people who are "devout" and attend church regularly has remained roughly the same. The people who were essentially "meh" before probably still are, but they've found other ways of filling their time and social calendar than attending an occasional church BBQ.
That isn't to say there aren't significant shifts, but I'd be more likely to interpret this as a social shift rather than one in the number of "believers." After all, we seem to still have record numbers of nonsense shows on TV concerning ghosts, aliens, and whatever other crap. People are still willing to believe in all sorts of mystical weirdness (though I'd be interested in seeing some more recent polls than in that link) -- it's just becoming less institutionalized.
Finally something I can be proud of(go Denmark):
Country Yes, important No, unimportant
Sweden 16.5% 83%
Denmark 18% 80.5%
Estonia 16% 78%
Norway 20.5% 78%
Hong Kong 23% 75.5%
Netherlands 24.5% 75.5%
Japan 23.5% 75%
Czech Republic 20.5% 74.5%
United Kingdom 26.5% 73%
Finland 28% 70%
France 29.5% 69.5%
Vietnam 29.5% 69.5%
Australia 32% 67.5%
New Zealand 33% 66%
South Korea 32.5% 65.5%
Cuba 33.5% 64%
Albania 32.5% 62%
Bulgaria 33.5% 62%
Russia 33% 60.5%
Germany 40.5% 59%
Uruguay 40.5% 59%
Hungary 39% 58.5%
Latvia 39% 58.5%
Belarus 33% 57.5%
Belgium 33% 57.5%
Canada 42% 57%
Switzerland 41.5% 56%
Taiwan 45% 54%
Slovenia 47% 52.5%
Slovakia 46.5% 51.5%
Spain 49.5% 50%
Lithuania 41.5% 49.5%
Israel 49.5% 49.5%
Kazakhstan 43% 48.5%
Ukraine 45.5% 48.5%
Azerbaijan 49.5% 48.5%
Montenegro 45.5% 48%
Serbia 50.5% 46.5%
Ireland 53.5% 46.5%
Uzbekistan 51% 45.5%
Austria 55% 43%
United States 65% 34.5%
The "Proofs" against the existence of God, are just as faulty as the "Proofs" for God.
That's an important point, wrt not making claims about what we don't know. I realise Richard Dawkins is critical of people who say, "science doesn't understand x therefore I believe in dragons etc." BUT/AND there is the other side where, scientism claims that life after death is impossible, and that's a step too far because, going back to the "we don't understand x", we don't have the faintest idea what sentience is, and nobody has come up with a good answer for how to even define it, or for how sentience arises out of matter, so Occam's razor doesn't help, because we don't know what the simplest answer would even be.
Why if you are a biological machine, are you also sentient? What's the point of sentience? It is irrelevant to life. Ants and birds might not be sentient, they are just machines running, like plants or trees, so why is there also this odd and unnecessary and frankly, annoying sentience? Yet if your body was here, living, yet without you being sentient, it would seem like... being dead? Why are we so identified with sentience, and why have we no idea how sentience works?
Not that I'm saying people should believe in sentience continuing after bodily death, I'm saying people overstep the mark when they claim that it must end and that's that and anyone who wonders otherwise is a religious nut. That's just where a scientific view becomes a scientism view, a belief in itself. So, remain open minded.
I'm not saying there is a god, and frankly my best speculative guess is that there is a cosmos of many kinds of beings, humans, ants, why not other stuff we don't know about, but there is NO evidence for ANY of the Abrahamic Gods, none of the Pagan Gods, whatever, these are all just old stories, and have no evidence at all for any of it. Those guys were not the first to have hallucinations nor the first to start a social movement.
And most of the main religions REQUIRE you to believe in a God, there is no way round that, and that belief or story is a sort of metaphor of then what you believe yourself to be, that comes to define what you believe you are, a sinner; in submission; etc., and all of those stories are simply bad psychology.
So yes, people should quite rightly be becoming atheist as they catch up with the modern world, like, if you are not atheist, then you haven't actually really quite noticed modernity. But that also means dropping the idea that we are "human animals" because, that's actually just another myth. We don't know what we are because we don't know what the real nature of sentience is. And as we discover more actual knowledge, maybe we'll start to discover something about that.
The hardest thing isn't just to drop the religious beliefs, the hard thing is to not go replacing them with pseudo-modern versions, like "we are a clever ape".
Modernity can retain the mystery because like all things we know we don't know, we simply leave it as an open question. And if atheists start getting too dogmatic then maybe we start a new thing called, "remaining being open minded".
"Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
The language of the GP was inflamatory.... But keep in mind we were deep throated during the last decades with scores of politician calling us second class citizen, or worst. See also scalia's 2014 speech in university of colorado's christian university.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I am atheist and while I am pro-nuclear power, pro-vaccine,and believe in global warming I am very much against GMO foods. I against them though because if the transfer of power they represent, not about the food itself. No study has ever shown GMO corn is any less or more healthy than natural corn. GMO foods shift power from the people and the farmer to the chemical company. GMO crops encourage the indiscriminate use of herbicides that put other crops and the soil itself at risk. If you don't believe this, try to grow a non-"Roundup Ready" (TM) crop in a field that has been sprayed with massive quantities of glyphosate for years.
This is a classic power play.
1. Sell seed that make it easier to grow a crop
2. Sell a chemical that removes the competition in turn raising yields
3. Said chemical poisons the soil making it impossible to grow anything but said seed
4. Profit...lots of it, for now and the future
This agrees with military research that shows religious believers tend to make better officers. Atheists and humanists have a more difficult time ordering others to their deaths, or directing the killing of other humans. Religious believers handle these tasks better because they have coping mechanisms they can use to justify these actions in the name of a higher power. 'Communist' societies (they were all usually dictatorships and not communist) substituted a belief in the party or the state instead of appealing to 'olde tyme' religion, but the result was the same: You are carrying out [God|The State|The Party]'s will, and so your actions are morally justified.
When this life is all you have and all you believe in, it becomes very precious and harder to justify destroying life. If, on the other hand, you are convinced that there is paradise waiting for you beyond this life there are all sorts of nasty actions you can justify.
I really suggest reading Victor Frankl's 'Man's Search for Meaning'. I don't agree with Frankl's later philosophies, but this is a meaningful look into the depths of atrocities that humans can inflict on other humans. Frankl's work helped explain how attitude and belief helped him and others survive Auschwitz. It doesn't directly deal in this subject, but is an amazing account that highlights both the good and the bad outcome of strong beliefs.
Possibly because religous persons are more likely ti donate their own time and money more willingly rather than donate everyone else's time and money like those that are less/non-religous seem to prefer. Make change happen yourself, by donating your own time, and your own dime toward what you feel is important and will make the biggest impact. Its also more efficient that way, rather than creating huge government beurocracies that skill and waste a large portion of the money that is supposed to be going to the "cause".
What's most interesting is that it's usually the most religious people who buy into the Republican Party's ideology, which includes "grabbing whatever you can get" and espousing Ayn Rand-style objectivist philosophy.
Check out this story on npr: http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/...
Basically it would appear religion is in politics for the same reason anything else is, fat cats want more money. Whoda thought?
Of course religion has its good sides, I think a lot of people behave better than they might have because they think God/Allah is watching or it affects their karm
I disagree. religion amongst murderers is higher than in the general population, suggesting religion has a negative effect on morality.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I oppose GMOs not because "chemicals" or "nature." I oppose GMO because I don't believe it is society's best interest to have a food supply controlled by corporations. I also worry about biodiversity, the sustainability of modern agriculture, and concern over the overuse of pesticides.
Here's a start for you
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
http://old.richarddawkins.net/...
You might also be interested to know that atheists commit LESS crime than their religious counterparts
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/1...
And their divorce rate is lower
http://www.alternet.org/belief...
Meanwhile shall we look at all the wars, murder and mayhem conducted in the name of religion/god? Not sure what the character limit is on /. posts, might exceed it...
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Being anti-religion is not the same as being pro-science. In fact, if you bother to read that article, the only time "science" is ever mentioned is when quite a few people in the Russian Academy of Sciences were arrested and executed on false charges.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Fortunately, these restrictions are all unenforcible. They're overruled by Article 6 of the US Constitution which states, "[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." But the fact that so many states tried, and that they've continued to leave these restrictions in their constitutions despite being completely unenforcible, is pretty shocking and disgusting.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."