Viewpoints: Why is faith falling in the US

[klr]

... from the BBC website. It's a long piece, but worth reading:

A new poll suggests that atheism is on the rise in the US, while those who consider themselves religious has dropped. What's the cause? Two writers debate.

Recently, researchers conducting a WIN-Gallup International poll about religion surveyed people from 57 countries.

The poll suggests that in the US, since 2005:

the number of people who consider themselves religious has dropped from 73% to 60%

those who declare themselves atheists have risen from 1% to 5%

What's behind the changing numbers? Is the cause churches that chase modern trends at the expense of core beliefs? Or are those who have always been ambivalent about religion now less likely to identify as Christian? We asked two writers for their take.

continued: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19262884

[SteveB]

Less people are believing in God(s).

[Rum]

Less people are believing in God(s).

It might sound a bit glib but that' it alright!

However there are reasons. Despite appearances to the contrary at times people are smarter, better informed, less prone to superstition and simply more rational. Perhaps also slightly less fearful of punishment if they reject god(s).

[klr]

Less people are believing in God(s).

It might sound a bit glib but that' it alright!

However there are reasons. Despite appearances to the contrary at times people are smarter, better informed, less prone to superstition and simply more rational. Perhaps also slightly less fearful of punishment if they reject god(s).

... and I think somewhat less fearful of negative social reaction if they just come out and say what they've really been thinking for some time. To judge from some of the stats* in the article, there are still a good deal more people in the "just waiting until it's safer" category.

*Which I think are from the same source that Rum has a thread on.

[Coito ergo sum]

It's probably because Amerikkkans are too fat, stupid, intolerant we don't do things like they do in all the civilized western European parliamentary social democracies....

[JimC]

It's probably because Amerikkkans are too fat, stupid, intolerant we don't do things like they do in all the civilized western European parliamentary social democracies....

FFS...

[Rum]

It's probably because Amerikkkans are too fat, stupid, intolerant we don't do things like they do in all the civilized western European parliamentary social democracies....

FFS...

Yep. Passive aggressive is passive aggressive.

[Audley Strange]

It's probably because Amerikkkans are too fat, stupid, intolerant we don't do things like they do in all the civilized western European parliamentary social democracies....

Nah it's because your education system is so fucked most of you don't even have the wits to conceptualise an abstract AND because you're all fat, stupid and intolerant.

[HomerJay]

It's probably because Amerikkkans are too fat, stupid, intolerant we don't do things like they do in all the civilized western European parliamentary social democracies....

[Robert_S]

It isn't that belief is declining really, it is that it is more acceptible to admit you don't believe, Not only to others, but to one's self.

[JimC]

The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[Svartalf]

Maybe the very insanity of the hardcore believers is driving off those who have some neurons in working order still?

[Robert_S]

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour

[JimC]

I love that, Rob! Where's it from?

[Robert_S]

I love that, Rob! Where's it from?

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16424