Spotted by chance today, I thought it interesting.

[ippy]

There's so much bad news nearly every time we listen to any of the media outlets and then I found this article, as follows:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11531005/Britain-one-of-the-worlds-least-religious-countries-says-poll.html

ippy

[Shaker]

Not that I'm complaining but this has been known for donkey's years, ippy.

[ippy]

Not that I'm complaining but this has been known for donkey's years, ippy.

Yes maybe, but it does cheer up a lot of people, I haven't got a link but it comes up quite easily on google with the simplest of English, try this it'll warm up your cockles no end:

Win/gallup polls on world atheism, looks like there's a way to go on that yet, while not quoting them verbatim it gives some revealing figures on how religious belief is hung on to mostly by the poorest and most uneducated people in this world and lots of other similar links.

It's a mission, if we can't cure them then at least try to demoralise these people as much as pos. 

ippy

[Nearly Sane]

I find the aim of trying to demoralise people repulsive and negative. I have no intention of demoralising me sainted old mother and if anyone else tries they may find themselves exsanguinated.

[Shaker]

Yes maybe, but it does cheer up a lot of people, I haven't got a link but it comes up quite easily on google with the simplest of English, try this it'll warm up your cockles no end:

Win/gallup polls on world atheism, looks like there's a way to go on that yet, while not quoting them verbatim it gives some revealing figures on how religious belief is hung on to mostly by the poorest and most uneducated people in this world and lots of other similar links.

America remains the sore-thumb exception to that, although - as I'm sure we all know - even that is changing fast of late. Several hypotheses have been put forward for this anomaly - one that seems persuasive to me is that the colonials have been so unusually religious amongst highly affluent, developed, educated, technologically-advanced nations because Americans have a remarkably low level of social security as compared to many other comparable nations and European countries especially. I know from personal experience of American friends and relatives that employment law over there, as compared to here, is utterly atrocious - you can pretty well be fired from your job on spec for no real reason whatever. There isn't anything like the same safety net of a welfare state that civilised countries have for the unemployed, the ill, the very young and the retired - especially the ill. The can-do, manifest destiny and self-reliant spirit on which the USA as we know it was founded omitted compassion for those who can't be self-reliant (much the same as present-day Tories in this country; these types all piss in the same pot, as 'twere).

Perhaps the greater factor, I've always thought, is simply time. Europe has had the time to grow out of religion; American hasn't, and so has some catching up to do. Here in Britain we've seen and done it all - the Reformations, counter-Reformations, persecutions and executions and all the rest of it; we saw human beings lashed to a big stick and set on fire in the middle of Oxford because they didn't believe the right things while the Americans of the time were still wiping their arses on leaves and wondering where the lightning came from. People are apt to forget just how young a nation the USA is in historical terms; as I say, they have some catching up to do when it comes to discarding religion, but it's clear that the process is well underway.

[Hope]

It's a mission, if we can't cure them then at least try to demoralise these people as much as pos. 

ippy

Is it an evangelical mission, ippy?

[ippy]

I find the aim of trying to demoralise people repulsive and negative. I have no intention of demoralising me sainted old mother and if anyone else tries they may find themselves exsanguinated. humour

I suppose it would seem that way, but if you go into that world survey Gallup poll, I found it a bit of a surprise here and there, it does seem to me to be more religious in the poorer parts of the world even without doing a survey, some of the results and the thorough way this survey was conducted, well I think it was a very good effort.

Oh and by the way the atheists didn't come out on top so if you take a look you can come to your own conclusions.

By the way your exsanguinated gets, a red line, chucked out by my spell checker set to British English.

No good asking me I can't spell very much anytime without spellchecker.

ippy

[Hope]

Perhaps the greater factor, I've always thought, is simply time. Europe has had the time to grow out of religion; American hasn't, and so has some catching up to do. Here in Britain we've seen and done it all - the Reformations, counter-Reformations, persecutions and executions and all the rest of it; we saw human beings lashed to a big stick and set on fire in the middle of Oxford because they didn't believe the right things while the Americans of the time were still wiping their arses on leaves and wondering where the lightning came from. People are apt to forget just how young a nation the USA is in historical terms; as I say, they have some catching up to do when it comes to discarding religion, but it's clear that the process is well underway.

I wonder whether the greater reason is that the US was founded on the principle of religious liberty, with the early settlers leaving Europe in order to practise forms of Christianity that were proscribed by the authorities.

Interestingly, there was a similar 'experiment' in Patagonia, when 150 years ago, a large number of Welsh non-conformists left Wales to establish a 'New Wales ' where they could worhip in freedom.

It would be interesting to compare the respective proportions of religious to non-religious to see whether it has anything to do with time since setting up the project or the poverty/wealth divide.

[ippy]

It's a mission, if we can't cure them then at least try to demoralise these people as much as pos. 

ippy

Is kit an evangelical mission, ippy?

At least you got the little, but not that brilliant, touch of humour there; Our Lord Dawkins Etc.

ippy

[Shaker]

Darwin bless His holy name.

[Nearly Sane]

Not sure why you inserted 'humour' into my post, ippy, there was no joke and in this case my spelling, or rather my typing, was correct.

[Nearly Sane]

Darwin bless His holy name.

There is a joke about Darwin, Dawkins, and Hawking being a trinity somewhere to be made

[Shaker]

I wonder whether the greater reason is that the US was founded on the principle of religious liberty, with the early settlers leaving Europe in order to practise forms of Christianity that were proscribed by the authorities.

Religious liberty is one of those dog-whistle phrases that without too much (or any) examination strikes most people as A Good Thing, until you learn on closer inspection that - as in this case - what it actually means is a bunch of swivel-eyed fundamentalists taking their ball and going to a new home because they were unable to make everybody else dance to their tune, as religionists and monotheists especially are apt to do.

Interestingly, there was a similar 'experiment' in Patagonia, when 150 years ago, a large number of Welsh non-conformists left Wales to establish a 'New Wales ' where they could worhip in freedom.

Hm. That worked out well for them. I mean, people are always banging on about that world superpower, Patagonia.

[OH MY WORLD!]

I despise those atheists that strut around polluting the world their rotten arrogance, looking down their ugly beaks, and slithering around in their self proclaimed superiority. The reason faith is growing in Africa, Asia and South America is because the people are poor and stupid. That is basically what these godless, smarter than they, atheists are preaching. Get some money in the pockets of those Africans and N American Aboriginals, send them to our godless Universities to be educated by us and they will drop their faith. And the world will be a better place. They may not have the money and education of the godless ones spewing that crap but I'll tell ya this, even though they may not know as much they sure know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. Thanks to LBJ for that line of thought.

[Shaker]

The reason faith is growing in Africa, Asia and South America is because the people are poor and stupid.

Well, one doesn't necessarily wish to state matters quite as bluntly as that, but since you bring it up ...

By the way: "godless atheists" remains, as it has always been, a redundancy. One or the other will do just fine; both is a pleonasm, i.e. poor use of English.

[Hope]

until you learn on closer inspection that - as in this case - what it actually means is a bunch of swivel-eyed fundamentalists taking their ball and going to a new home because they were unable to make everybody else dance to their tune,

Shaker, the Plymouth Brethren who made up the early settlers were no more 'fundamentalist' than most mainstream groups today.  What made them fundamentaalist in 17th century terms was their insistence that church tradition wasn't the prime means of discerning God's purpose, and that the Bible was.  Nothing swivel-eyed about that, unless you happen to subscribe to a faith that is similar to ad-o's.

Interestingly, there was a similar 'experiment' in Patagonia, when 150 years ago, a large number of Welsh non-conformists left Wales to establish a 'New Wales ' where they could worhip in freedom.

Hm. That worked out well for them. I mean, people are always banging on about that world superpower, Patagonia.
[/quote]And that is why I suggested the comparison; are the descendents of those non-conformist emigrants, who currently enjoy a fairly OK lifestyle, but nothing that much to shout out about more religious in their comparative poverty than the the descendants of another bunch of non-conformists in their comparative wealth.  After all, in his post #7, ippy posits that it seems (to him) that "(it seems) to be more religious in the poorer parts of the world".

Perhaps that's why, in the UK, Europe and the US, church attendance, and therefore likely faith, seems to be something regarded as a middle- to upper-class preserve.

[OH MY WORLD!]

 Globally atheism is going right down the toilet and this trend shows no signs of reversing. A couple hundred thousand new Christians and Muslims a day while each day there is about 1000 fewer godless atheists. Oh and it doesn't help that western secularism is losing it's influence around the world. That's definitely the cherry on top!

[Nearly Sane]

I despise those atheists that strut around polluting the world their rotten arrogance, looking down their ugly beaks, and slithering around in their self proclaimed superiority. The reason faith is growing in Africa, Asia and South America is because the people are poor and stupid. That is basically what these godless, smarter than they, atheists are preaching. Get some money in the pockets of those Africans and N American Aboriginals, send them to our godless Universities to be educated by us and they will drop their faith. And the world will be a better place. They may not have the money and education of the godless ones spewing that crap but I'll tell ya this, even though they may not know as much they sure know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. Thanks to LBJ for that line of thought.

Yes, Christians have always been so supportive of aborigines. Let's ask the Tasmanian aborigines...oops no we can't because they've been exterminated

[Nearly Sane]

Globally atheism is going right down the toilet and this trend shows no signs of reversing. A couple hundred thousand new Christians and Muslims a day while each day there is about 1000 fewer godless atheists. Oh and it doesn't help that western secularism is losing it's influence around the world. That's definitely the cherry on top!

Good to know how supportive of ISIS that you are.

[Hope]

By the way: "godless atheists" remains, as it has always been, a redundancy. One or the other will do just fine; both is a pleonasm, i.e. poor use of English.

Except that he didn't refer to 'godless atheists', he referred to " godless, smarter than they, atheists", which is a somewhat different grammatical construction.  If anything, it's unnecessary hyperbole, emphasising the godlessness of atheism.

[Shaker]

A couple hundred thousand new Christians and Muslims a day while each day there is about 1000 fewer godless atheists.

Looks like you'll be basing this on the appearance of babies, then. (Here I refer to actual babies, not foetuses - canoe generally elides the difference between the two). The issues with this are obvious. One is that a baby can't be any religious identity, and only an atheist in the barest, sparest sense of someone who doesn't believe that gods exist. (In this context sometimes called implicit atheism). A baby can, at most, ever only be the child of parents who might happen to be religious. A religious identity pertains to the parents, not the baby.

A second issue is that even by the time an individual reaches the stage at which it makes sense that they have sufficient understanding of the concepts involved to regard them as a religious individual, the point is - do they remain one? The evidence coming from (especially, but very far from exclusively) the United States over the past decade and a half or so says that increasingly they do not.

Daily Mail types who chew their fingernails down to the knuckle about what they perceive to be the number of "Muslim babies" born in the UK lump the two categories together and still manage to get both wrong. 

Oh and it doesn't help that western secularism is losing it's influence around the world. That's definitely the cherry on top!

(1) What's the difference between "Western secularism" and "secularism"?

(2) Evidence for this assertion?

[Shaker]

By the way: "godless atheists" remains, as it has always been, a redundancy. One or the other will do just fine; both is a pleonasm, i.e. poor use of English.

Except that ht

jc, not ht.

refer to 'godless atheists', he referred to " godless, smarter than they, atheists", which is a somewhat different grammatical construction.  If anything, it's unnecessary hyperbole, emphasising the godlessness of atheism.

Yes, unnecessary. Which is exactly what I already said - a pleonasm. The godless are atheists. Atheists are godless. One or the other is good English; both is bad English.

[Dicky Underpants]

Darwin bless His holy name.

There is a joke about Darwin, Dawkins, and Hawking being a trinity somewhere to be made

One ex-forum fundamentalist actually formed a binity of two of them called Hawkins.

[Hope]

Yes, Christians have always been so supportive of aborigines. Let's ask the Tasmanian aborigines...oops no we can't because they've been exterminated

If history is anything to go by, this kind of disease-related extermination occurred long before Christianity arrived anywhere.

[Shaker]

Yes, Christians have always been so supportive of aborigines. Let's ask the Tasmanian aborigines...oops no we can't because they've been exterminated

If history is anything to go by, this kind of disease-related extermination occurred long before Christianity arrived anywhere.

What history specifically?