The World's Fastest Growing Religion is No Religion

[Cobol]

Great thread

The Secular Age is snowballing. The Internet exposes young people to a wide array of ideas and practices that undercut old time beliefs. That family breakdown severs traditional participation in congregations.

Religion has soured tolerant minded Americans. Today it’s less plausible to believe in the invisible and other supernatural claims. Magical thinking is suspect and ludicrous.

Young people have stopped believing miraculous church dogmas. Thinking people finally see that it’s untrue, false and dishonest.

The secular age is blossoming spectacularly.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

That family breakdown severs traditional participation in congregations.

Family breakdown is a good thing? Breakdown of communities is a good thing? What is this, Brave New World that you're lusting after?

The secular age is blossoming spectacularly.

I disagree. I find it very wanting. I hate this world.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

The secular age is blossoming spectacularly.

And yet, I'm noticing more and more Pagans in America and Europe...

 

[Cobol]

Family breakdown is a good thing? Breakdown of communities is a good thing? What is this, Brave New World that you're lusting after?

I disagree. I find it very wanting. I hate this world.

Your just upset that Catholicism is losing members faster than any denomination.

 

[LuisDantas]

So where did religion drop the ball?

When it failed to properly care for its own goals and motivations, I would think. Most likely because it fell prey to the temptation of fast immediate growth.

See for instance what passes for proselitism for religious observance these days. So much of it is proud posturing with no substance that even believers have begun to point out that they are "believers, not religious". As if that were something to pursue.

Religion these days is generally rather confused about its own nature, goals and requisites, largely because it so often found it advantageous to confuse itself in the last few centuries.

The most constructive course of action would have been to open itself to learning from science, particularly the social sciences, and to understand and accept how feeble, archaic and unnecessary any claims of connection to a conscious divinity are. But the lure of radicalization and pride was all too often too strong for religious authorities and even common adherents to resist.

Now much of religion has run itself into a corner, and increasing numbers of people find that they have to choose between believing in their own discernment or instead keeping true to their own churches. That the choice is even necessary shows how much harm the average religious group has inflicted on itself.

And since the most reasonable people end up leaving, those groups are left to the mercies of the most passionate and unbalanced people, creating a vicious, self-feeding cicle of decadence.

The silver lining - and a very significant one it is - is that this situation does a lot to encourage people to learn of religious diversity and open themselves up to new, worthier doctrines, including more reflective and more vital variants of their own "former" nominal religions.

A specific but very significant part of it is that people no longer feel any great duty to be "faithful" to doctrines that they never chose to begin with. There was always something weird with the very idea that parents and family could somehow choose the metaphysical beliefs of their little children.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Your just upset that Catholicism is losing members faster than any denomination.

I'm concerned about it, why wouldn't I be, since I'm Catholic? Grow up. Now answer my questions, please.

 

[Cobol]

I'm concerned about it, why wouldn't I be, since I'm Catholic? Grow up. Now answer my questions, please.

Yes, the breakdown and decline in religion is a good thing.

 

[LuisDantas]

Wonderful news indeed!

Actually, many of them mentioned, especially the European ones, do have an official state religion.

Yes... but that was the first part of the filter proposed.

What about the second part, that of being subject to some sort of actual trouble for not following that religion?

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Yes, the breakdown and decline in religion is a good thing.

You seemed to be implying that family and community breakdowns and the replacement of them by the Internet are good things. Is that what you think?

 

[Cobol]

The ongoing, growing, and powerful movement called secularism, a way of understanding and living that is indifferent to religion in fact, not even concerned enough to pay it any attention to it, is slowly taking over society. That is all i am implying.

Millennials are saying no to traditional marriage in record numbers…and that’s not all. In Western culture in the late 18th century, marriage transformed from an economic arrangement into a union based on love. It is now heading toward radical change.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

The ongoing, growing, and powerful movement called secularism, a way of understanding and living that is indifferent to religion in fact, not even concerned enough to pay it any attention to it, is slowly taking over society. That is all i am implying.

Millennials are saying no to traditional marriage in record numbers…and that’s not all. In Western culture in the late 18th century, marriage transformed from an economic arrangement into a union based on love. It is now heading toward radical change.

What's wrong with marriage, now?

 

[Cobol]

What's wrong with marriage, now?

I never said there was anything wrong with marriage. I am only stating facts.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

I think he's suggesting that "non-traditional marriage" - i.e. marriage for love and of both hetero and homosexual couples - is part of the "sweeping wave of secularism." Never mind the numerous religions that offer non-biased marriages, and that marriage has been about love for decades now.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I never said there was anything wrong with marriage. I am only stating facts.

You're implying that the "radical change" in marriage - whatever you think this "radical change" is - is a good thing. What exactly are you talking about? You sound like a character from a dystopian novel, honestly. Or am I just not following you?

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I think he's suggesting that "non-traditional marriage" - i.e. marriage for love and of both hetero and homosexual couples - is part of the "sweeping wave of secularism." Never mind the numerous religions that offer non-biased marriages, and that marriage has been about love for decades now.

Okay. Maybe I'm misreading it or we're using terms differently.

 

[George-ananda]

.
So where did religion drop the ball?

.

The traditional religions are not meeting the intellectual and spiritual needs of modern people who have access to so much education and information. People now can think for themselves. In the very old days maybe the priest was perhaps the only one in a small village that did any advanced studies.

I think what is advancing in the western world are more eastern/New Age spiritual thinking which better meets the intellectual and spiritual needs of modern people. Spiritual but not religious is a growing sector. This is often a build-it-yourself belief system. Atheism/Agnosticism is also strong as it fits many educated people with a scientific bent.

These things add up to a rapid decline in the traditional religions of just our great-grandfather's days.

 

[Cobol]

You're implying that the "radical change" in marriage - whatever you think this "radical change" is - is a good thing. What exactly are you talking about? You sound like a character from a dystopian novel, honestly. Or am I just not following you?

Yes, you are misunderstanding me, and i don't want an unpleasant society.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Yes, you are misunderstanding me, and i don't want an unpleasant society.

Okay. Sorry.

 

[Tumah]

Births in per woman:

• Norwegian birth rate: 1.25 births
• British birth rate: 1.9 births
• Icelandic birth rate: 2.04 births
• Dutch birth rate: 1.72 births
• Spanish birth rate: 1.32 , Danish birth rate: 1.73 , Slovenian birth rate: 1.53 , German birth rate: 1.38 , Belgian birth rate: 1.79, Swedish birth rate: 1.91 , French birth rate: 2.01
• American birth rate: 1.88
• Canadian birth rate: 1.61
• Australian birth rate: 1.93
• New Zealander birth rate: 2.05
• Japan birth rate: 1.41

Sub-replacement fertility is a total fertility rate (TFR) that (if sustained) leads to each new generation being less populous than the older, previous one in a given area. In developed countries sub-replacement fertility is any rate below approximately 2.1 children born per woman.
Sub-replacement fertility - Wikipedia

Pew found that Orthodox Jews averaged 4.1 children per adult
Read more: Orthodox Population Grows Faster Than First Figures in Pew #JewishAmerica Study

The average Israeli woman has three babies in her lifetime, nearly double the fertility rate for the rest of the industrialised countries in the OECD...
The birth rate is even higher among Israel's Arab community and more than double among its ultra-Orthodox Jews
Israel has the highest birth rate in the developed world, and that's becoming a problem

Globally, Muslims have the highest fertility rate, an average of 3.1 children per woman
Muslim population growth - Wikipedia


So I guess another way to look at it, is that Orthodox Judaism and Islam are the fastest growing religions.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Births in per woman:

• Norwegian birth rate: 1.25 births
• British birth rate: 1.9 births
• Icelandic birth rate: 2.04 births
• Dutch birth rate: 1.72 births
• Spanish birth rate: 1.32 , Danish birth rate: 1.73 , Slovenian birth rate: 1.53 , German birth rate: 1.38 , Belgian birth rate: 1.79, Swedish birth rate: 1.91 , French birth rate: 2.01
• American birth rate: 1.88
• Canadian birth rate: 1.61
• Australian birth rate: 1.93
• New Zealander birth rate: 2.05
• Japan birth rate: 1.41

Sub-replacement fertility is a total fertility rate (TFR) that (if sustained) leads to each new generation being less populous than the older, previous one in a given area. In developed countries sub-replacement fertility is any rate below approximately 2.1 children born per woman.
Sub-replacement fertility - Wikipedia

Pew found that Orthodox Jews averaged 4.1 children per adult
Read more: Orthodox Population Grows Faster Than First Figures in Pew #JewishAmerica Study

Globally, Muslims have the highest fertility rate, an average of 3.1 children per woman
Muslim population growth - Wikipedia


So I guess another way to look at it, is that Orthodox Judaism and Islam are the fastest growing religions.

Indeed. Plus, places like the US and Western Europe are headed towards collapse because our economic system isn't sustainable. It'll either be a slow decline or a crash, but it's coming.