It does look though that whiteness will be the mark of an increasing apatheism, Atheism, as statistics show, slated also to shrink.
I've not seen anything suggesting that the spread of atheism is slated to shrink, but it's entirely plausible as it rubs up against the hold-outs of developing nations. As to 'whiteness', it's also 'education' and 'wealth' and 'welfare state provision', so difficult to suggest that one is necessarily causative - it's certainly likely to be a rallying call in some places against the progress of secularism.
Every reason to think religion will shrink? One might suffice at this moment?
Not only is atheism and irreligiosity growing, but it's spreading, and the indicators that it strongly correlates with like wealth, education and strong human rights records are also gradually spreading too.
This is the point. Why are humanists so triumphalistic over a parochial decline?
Where's the triumphalism in identifying reports in the media and discussing them?
But that should only matter to people who take a ''Ve are ze masters now attitude'' over the statistics.
As opposed to the people who took a 've are ze masters now attitude' to pretty much the entirety of the Holy Land, South America, south-east Asia, sub-Saharan Africa... Nobody claims mastery over the statistics, they identify trends in the statistics and try to show that their interpretation is valid.
Bigotted statement in itself but let's examine it.
No, it's not bigotted, it's an indication of which parts of the movement I consider to be important because they pose a threat to communities. The remainder of Christendom is, largely, irrelevant.
Study of the atheist movements reveals them to be very celebrity oriented and take their views and beliefs from celebrities.
What beliefs? The entire 'movement' is predicated on failing to adhere to one belief, beyond that there are a myriad viewpoints within atheism - there are conservative atheists, liberal atheists, anarchist atheists, white-supremacist atheists... it's the broadest of broad churches, given that the only requirement for membership is that you don't actually church.
Since in humanism the more celebrated you are the more influential you are then this must be true of other groups.
1 - Humanism has a reasonably cross-over with atheism, but the two are not synonymous; there are any number of religious humanists and non-humanist atheists.
2 - If it's true of humanism (which you've asserted, but not justified) that's absolutely no guarantee that it's the case for other groups.
And there you have it, Humanist disdain for the rank and file ''irrelevant''.
For them as people, no. For their religious output, yes, because it has precisely no direct effect on my life or the life of anyone that I know. The institutional influence of the Church isn't directly tied to those 'rank and file' believers, and that's the bit in the UK that's currently problematic.
But then what if we look at UK society as the anomaly instead of as the vanguard of the new and wonderful avowedly atheist world that you seem to be looking forward to.
Actually we're somewhat in the middle of the pack, with the Nordic countries out in front, pockets of 'The West' around the same place we are, the developing world slowly catching up and the US as a bat-shit crazy outlier.
We have people who will believe they have less and less time for the ''higher'' considerations because financially and socially they will have to work harder and harder just to keep still.
And yet so much of Christianity's past and present is wrapped up in convincing the impoverished to accept their lot in life, that their rewards will come in the next life rather than this. At the risk of falling prey to 'celebrity Christians', you only need to look as far as the despicable veneration of Theresa of Calcutta to see how that works in action.
As to the idea that people don't have time to consider their spiritual lives because they don't have the time due to work pressures I'll raise you 'the Industrial Revolution' and 'current US life with the working classes needing multiple jobs to stay afloat' to see how religion does in those environs.
That's not to say that Christianity is the religion of the poor but the impoverished realise they have been impoverished in religion.
And the right-wing governments in, say, the UK, the US, Hungary, Poland... they are railing against Christendom, right?
I agree though that UK people are not going to want the prosperity gospel, which is only an extension of the financial motivation and expectation industry but the Gospel of community, fraternity, sorority and relationship with God............ or a kind of humanist life which is increasingly only enjoyed by celebrity.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, exactly. Prosperity gospel is just... mental is the only word I can come up. But the 'hard-line' Christian approach of homosexuality as something to be shunned and shamed, institutional misogyny, these aren't far from the forefront in much of the Christianity outside of Western nations which have been blunted by a secular approach to human rights.
The strongest part of Frasers argument is not to just be another providing agency or a kind of Christian+ answer to Atheist+. The church has news for mankind but the community that arises out of the response from it has a historically attractive aspect to it and has shown that it can be more levelling up than secular agencies have managed, because, dare we say it, they don't intrinsically have the means or motivation.
Christianity has a history of pointing to individual Christians' work and claiming to be a force for progress, whilst white-washing the institutional resistance it has consistently show to any sort of advancement in social equality. As to the idea that the Church in the UK, or around the world, lacks the means for anything... really?
That is the strongest part of Fraser's argument, I agree, the idea that the Church should stick to its 'principles' and see who that brings in, and make a tight-knit community out of them. It's just a practical problem that those tight-knit insular communities tend (from where I stand, at least) to look like the most regressive examples of Christianity, and then he goes and completely undermines that in the last paragraph by arguing for exactly the opposite.
You are artificially separating religion out from culture and social activity here.
No, we're talking about religion, I'm trying to isolate those aspects which are entirely or primarily the result of the expression of religion within culture.
Where is there a society or culture that has not been based on thousands or hundreds of years of religion?
Probably nowhere. Where are the societies that are performing measurably better on happiness, health, life-expectancy and education that are still revelling in religion?
Where has there been a secular society that has worked(including the exclusion of religion)after excising reference to religion?
The point is not to excise religion, it's to give religion its own space, but that space not to be in other people's faces. Where has that been successful - look around you. Western Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand... the places that have 'excised' religion - Soviet Union, China - have suffered for it, because if you ban something you create resistance, it becomes a point of rebellion.
But the point is surely that pub going is declining like church is declining and in fact socialising is probably going the same way.
No, it's not going away, it's switching venues, it's moving on-line. That brings with it other problems, like the 'echo chamber' effect where people (understandably) seek out like-minded viewpoints and don't get the general exposure that would occur if you were limited to the locals.
Is that a good thing because it's the modern way I don't know? It looks like a symptom of something not altogether pleasant to me. This section of your argument shows argument from modernity.
It's not that it's good because it's modern, but rather that it's not necessarily bad just because it's change. What you see as something disappearing is just something moving elsewhere.
But that is bad news for atheism isn't it.
I don't think so, personally. I think atheism is inclined to follow from access to information, and the internet provides that. There will always be people who want to be led, and they'll fall in line on whichever side they find comfortable, but the people with an inclination to consider for themselves will find information, and in a world of information about different religions and no religion I can't imagine that atheism is going to lose out too badly.
The idea that the church could have just moved on line, that the word religion largely means face to face, being together worship.
Why does the word 'religion' mean face-to-face? What is it about belief that requires direct supervision - isn't the point supposed to be that you're always being supervised anyway?
Of course the downside of the growth of communities of interest is well known. What does the ability to switch people off at the flick of a switch do for the soul?
What soul? What does it do for open-mindedness and tolerance - well, when you have religion intertwined with every level of culture and society you see how freedom of ideas flourishes - just look to the Arab nations, or the southern US states or, to an extent, Russia.
And we are talking now about souls for whom time is increasingly at a premium.
Which 'we' is this? You and Fraser, perhaps, you can be pretty sure I'm not.
No, People talk and type about human rights.
People demonstrate for human rights. People stand in front of tanks, people lie down in the street in front of police horses for human rights. And, yes, people write and talk as well, because human rights are ideas and whilst you demonstrate in order to get attention and get someone to listen, once they're listening you need to have something to say.
Secular Humanists might largely get involved in human rights where they think they can land one on the church or where they can out do the church.
Now who's showing their bigotry? Do you really think that the, for instance, the equality campaigners who demonstrated against Section 28, who wanted homosexuality decriminalised, who pioneered the Pride marches were motivated by 'bringing down the Church'? They wanted to live their own lives, it was the Church insisting that their tenets be encoded in the law that put itself in the firing line to any extent.
But are these religious problems or nationalistic problems?
Elements of both, but they require different solutions, and one of those solutions comes from separating the idea of religion from the idea of state - it's difficult to bring anything secular to a nation which sees religion as part of its identity, and it's especially difficult for a country that has a state religion and the clergy in the mechanics of government to 'preach' to such governments. We need to clean our own house on that before we can get other places to clean their's.
I think the latter But what Fraser is trying to show is that there is a functioning rank and file Christianity, truer than the caricature one fashioned by secular humanists, based in congregations and churches in which people will find community, daily spiritual and intellectual bread and God.
And, frankly, no-one outside of those communities gives a crap, which is exactly how it should be. If you volunteer to go, accept that the tenets have a hold on you and leave everyone else to their own thing, fine. It's when religion expects other people to kowtow to their demands that there's a problem, and the 'fire and brimstone' style that Fraser's advocating is at the very least strongly associated with that; in an environment where we still haven't cleared the hold-outs of religious influence in the state, that has the potential to take us backwards.
Rather than having celebrities massaging their idealised selves(namely a good stylish urbane bloke) while saying ''you (are on your way to becoming) da man!''
Instead we should have a man in a purple dress whispering into the King's ear and the manouevring his religious block in the Lords to make sure that his Sunday Club has an outsized say in who gets to be a 'da man' or, indeed, just 'a man', and whether they can marry another man, and whether they're allowed to bring up another little man...
O.
