Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
Atheism has no structure at all. It is neither inherently good nor inherently evil.
It is incapable of supporting any position.
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Christianity in the US projected to lose majority status by 2070
- Thread starter Orbit
- Start date
Atheism has no structure at all. It is neither inherently good nor inherently evil.
It is incapable of supporting any position.
Atheism lacks faith.
So it's not included in "faiths".
Atheists can be evil or good.
But it doesn't make good people do evil.
Religions however, can command good
people to do evil, eg, execute the infidel.
Exactly.
Atheism is as relevant to good & evil as not collecting stamps.
Humanism is a better ideology than Christianity and has been since the Enlightenment.
Humanism promotes reason and evidence over faith, tolerance over irrational moral judgments, and rational ethics based in the Golden Rule and utilitarianism rather than ancient received moral codes. Humanism accomplishes what Christianity only promises - societal well-being. Humanism gave us science and the modern liberal democratic state with guaranteed freedoms. Humanism informed Christianity that slavery and pedophilia are immoral, but homosexuality and atheism not. Humanism converted astrology and creationism to astronomy and evolution science. Humanism converted serfs and subjects to middle class autonomous citizens. What was Christianity's last contribution to elevating the human condition? What was Christianity's last idea that bore fruit?
People are finding Christianity increasingly unkind, irrational, ineffectual, and irrelevant.
Agree. I did this calculation myself over a decade ago based in Pew and ARIS data, and came up with 2039.
This is the ARIS data from 2009:
Total Christian
1990: 151,225,000 (86.2%)
2008: 173,402,000 (76.0%)
From Pew in 2014, we learned that people self-identifying as Christians fell further to 70.6% in 2014
These are different sources probably using slightly different methodologies, but we can still estimate the rate of this decline from this data. We had a 10% fall in 18 years (about 0.55% per year), then 6% more in six years.
2039 is 25 years later (1% per year). The exodus from Christianity is accelerating as we would expect as atheism became more socially acceptable, but even were it to remain 1% per year, that's a fall to about 45% by 2039. I should probably change that estimate 2034-5.
Yet it is Pew predicting 2070.
This is also true of theism.
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
Atheism is an absence of faith. It is not dangerous.
Good point .Paying too much attention to media is hazardous to one's mental processing.
Neither is theism. The problem is people.
Sand Dancer
Currently catless
Religion is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end. - Rev. John Shelby Spong
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
Unfortunately theism necessarily organises it self in to religions, which can have both good and bad effects.
This can become large enough to have real power over entire populations. This can and does lead to wars and oppression.
Pew is a good research group.
Though the statistics are true, it can't project moves of God. Things like "a move of God" can't be quantified..
Things like the Welsh Revival or the US Isuzu Street Revival changed the direction world wide.
All the Abrahamic religions tend toward orthodoxy compared to Dharmic ones.
Philately will get you nowhere.
But it might earn you hairy knuckles.
In my belief system we are the stage like a tsunami where the ocean recedes from the shore before the real surge happens. What I know and what I believe tells me that when the "Ocean" surge happens it's going to be one for the ages.
AlexanderG
Active Member
Yes, it's very odd that their projections all estimate that the trend will suddenly slow from its clear direction.
Here is an image of their projections, but where I've added the red line for what seems like the obvious trend that they inexplicably rejected:
[GALLERY=media, 9797]Pewstudy by AlexanderG posted Sep 28, 2022 at 2:56 PM[/GALLERY]
I wondered about that as well. There's some statistical "magic" involved that results in the curves they used. I prefer my statistics plain rather then spiced with "magic".
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
There could indeed be a religious revival but it is becoming less and less likely.
Though if there is a religious upsurge. Christianity is unlikely to be the beneficiary.
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
Equally the surge could be toward disbelief.
Maybe... of course we are praying otherwise