World’s most dangerous religion: Atheists face worldwide persecution

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by humphreysjim
These problems people have with atheists, this is an American or Middle Eastern thing. In Europe we are the majority in most places. Here in the UK, we are the majority.

Unless in "atheist world" 40% of the population is a majority and 55% is a minority, no, you are not.

2011 UK Religious Demographics

Maybe put up a few more bus adverts and you'll convince some more people to abandon their faith.

On census returns, you're hedged in to a position where there's not much room for deliberation and 'well, I kind of believe this...'. It's basically a set of boxes and maybe a line for 'other'. As most people are still culturally Christian in the UK, it kind of operates as a mental 'default' setting because it's what most people are exposed to through school assemblies and such. If people were actually asked to define their faith a little more, I'd guarantee that these figures would drop right off the scale.

Another example of this is hospital admissions: patients are asked do they have a religious faith, as they can be served by a faith leader whilst on the ward and also just in case the hospital stay ends tragically. Most people still declare themselves Church of England, and yet, faith leaders based on hospital sites find themselves at loose ends most days and even on Sundays.

Church attendance in Britain is falling dramatically (with the exception of African 'charismatic' forms of Christianity), and most towns have seen closures of churches in recent years and many only stay open by doubling up as multi-purpose buildings: day centres, community meeting rooms and so on. If people were asked what was their church attendance like or how did they actually 'practise' their Christianity, then I think the overwhelming majority would struggle as there's practically no religious observance.

One of these easiest ways of making some 'religious' statement - according to the anti-gay marriage lobby - is by getting married: a union between man and woman recognised by god. And yet, according to the figures that came out today, non-married cohabitation between couples is on the rise. It's been widely accepted for a long time that most people's church attendance is limited to weddings and funerals and now it seems like people can't even be bothered to go to their own wedding!

Originally posted by humphreysjim

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by humphreysjim
These problems people have with atheists, this is an American or Middle Eastern thing. In Europe we are the majority in most places. Here in the UK, we are the majority.

Unless in "atheist world" 40% of the population is a majority and 55% is a minority, no, you are not.

2011 UK Religious Demographics

Maybe put up a few more bus adverts and you'll convince some more people to abandon their faith.

See the above discussion between myself, boymonkey74, and Merriman Weir as to why this poll will not tell the whole story. Then add the fact that the poll is a poor one, because it asks people if they consider themselves religious, which is not quite the same as declaring God-belief, or atheism, and add that to falling trends away from the main rival of atheism (Christianity), and you'll see your argument is not very sound:

"Religion: Number of Christians down 12% in a decade

The number of people calling themselves Christian in the UK fell dramatically between 2001 and 2011. Christianity was the only religion to see a drop-off in membership, with a 12% decrease during those 10 years.

The number of people with no religion at all in the UK has doubled since 2001."

Continued...

www.independent.co.uk...

Yes, I read that article yesterday, which is why I knew that your "Here in the UK, we are the majority" statement was invalid, because it also states that the majority of Britons are Christians.

You can speculate all you want on why someone would lie and say that they were part of the CoE when they're really an atheist, but those are the numbers in 2011, and saying "in my experience, those numbers are wrong" is called anecdotal evidence, which means nothing.

reply to post by adjensen


To add to what the others have said about UK and religion
www.telegraph.co.uk...

Basically it’s mainly the elderly who do go to church; youngsters are just not getting into it


edit to add
and this guy is on the money

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by humphreysjim

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by humphreysjim
These problems people have with atheists, this is an American or Middle Eastern thing. In Europe we are the majority in most places. Here in the UK, we are the majority.

Unless in "atheist world" 40% of the population is a majority and 55% is a minority, no, you are not.

2011 UK Religious Demographics

Maybe put up a few more bus adverts and you'll convince some more people to abandon their faith.

See the above discussion between myself, boymonkey74, and Merriman Weir as to why this poll will not tell the whole story. Then add the fact that the poll is a poor one, because it asks people if they consider themselves religious, which is not quite the same as declaring God-belief, or atheism, and add that to falling trends away from the main rival of atheism (Christianity), and you'll see your argument is not very sound:

"Religion: Number of Christians down 12% in a decade

The number of people calling themselves Christian in the UK fell dramatically between 2001 and 2011. Christianity was the only religion to see a drop-off in membership, with a 12% decrease during those 10 years.

The number of people with no religion at all in the UK has doubled since 2001."

Continued...

www.independent.co.uk...

Yes, I read that article yesterday, which is why I knew that your "Here in the UK, we are the majority" statement was invalid, because it also states that the majority of Britons are Christians.

You can speculate all you want on why someone would lie and say that they were part of the CoE when they're really an atheist, but those are the numbers in 2011, and saying "in my experience, those numbers are wrong" is called anecdotal evidence, which means nothing.

edit on 12-12-2012 by adjensen because: tag repair

The uselessly flawed and out of date poll you cite means even less. I live here, I know full well 55 percent of the population are not Christians. Sorry, you're just wrong.

Originally posted by bowtomonkey
reply to post by Druscilla

 

I've enjoyed some of your posts but your scientific utopia is something too unnatural to enjoy or sustain. In fact I was reading Alan Watts describe this idea as becoming plastic, just today.

It's really a shame that people think the elements have to be conquered without ever noticing that we are not separate from our environment. (Alan Watts' main point)

I also noticed you launch a crusade against the lowest common denominator to your brethren. It's like that. Sad really. I don't need to stoop to that to show the fallibility in technology.

I've always had an avid interest in science but at the same time found that everything we are supposed to accept as fact always seems to change. I've later learned that this will occur without exception and as such everything we currently think we know will change as well. Early on I lost faith in the science fraternity because of the stubbornness it has with adapting new discoveries. TPTB in science not only have an hierarchy, research is focused on things that attract funding and they are mostly salary earners working within strictly limited parameters.

Solipsists on the other hand ...

Respectfully, your opinion about the sustainability of a plastic/silicon/artificial transhumanism while having some merit based in current sustainability theory, seems to be global-centric in not accounting for migration to the deadly harsh environs outside our little goldilocks nest of dirt where synthetic incarnation within the pan-solar disk outside the fat gravity wells of planetary habitation, beyond the needs for sticky biological living, sucking air, and living by firefly short timescales may very well prove advantageous.
Your use of the word "unnatural" is emotionally based, where adaptation from biological to self-guided artificial evolution could very well be the most natural, predictable step a sapient sufficiently advanced technological culture takes if only as postulated and entertained in a prodigious wealth of speculative science fiction commentary.
Such a step would need not be permanent either, where down and upload between the biological and artificial machine, given sufficient evolution, could eventually be as easy and no less complicated than changing clothes.
There's also the aspect of distributed intelligence, where one personality with sufficient resource may distribute themselves physically over a wide range of multiple semi-autonomous incarnations including simultaneous aspects in both biological and artificial nodes.
One, if so desirable, could easily become many.
As I've suggested in a previous post regarding reading material of entertainment value, I suggest again author Iain M. Banks for reading, but, this time, you may profit from Surface Detail soundly within the author's Culture series where the depiction of a number of colorful 'artificial' intelligence Minds/personalities may illustrate some of what I'm talking about.

Getting back to religion; my details were far away from lowest common denominator-ism.
Such debates can get very dirty, and go extremely low.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind about their faith. That's a pointless and ridiculous endeavor on par with the energy requirements needed to split the atom.
Atheists are going to be atheists, and the faithful are going to maintain whatever faith they follow.
I was illustrating perspective.
Perspective requires no emotional attachment to any position, though I enforce the positional perspective with details you've likely construed as lowest denominator-ism where such were only colors from a brush to illustrate a positional perspective.

... then there's solipsism.

Originally posted by humphreysjim

You can speculate all you want on why someone would lie and say that they were part of the CoE when they're really an atheist, but those are the numbers in 2011, and saying "in my experience, those numbers are wrong" is called anecdotal evidence, which means nothing.

edit on 12-12-2012 by adjensen because: tag repair

The uselessly flawed and out of date poll you cite means even less. I live here, I know full well 55 percent of the population are not Christians. Sorry, you're just wrong.

Oh, come on, a 2011 poll is "uselessly out of date"? It's the data that was used for the article that you cited earlier, so if it's out of date, then so is that article, which was written yesterday.

Here's another one: Now fewer than six in 10 say they are Christians as religion goes into decline

Christianity has declined sharply over the past decade, according to the census returns. Numbers who choose to call themselves Christians fell by more than four million.

The collapse in belief in the religion which has been central to the history of the country for 1,500 years means that fewer than six out of ten, or 59 per cent, now describe themselves as Christian. A decade ago nearly three quarters, 72 per cent, did so.

Whether you like them or not, those are hard numbers.

By what data do you "know full well 55 percent of the population are not Christians"? That's a very specific number, and I can find absolutely nothing that says that.

Originally posted by adjensen

Oh, come on, a 2011 poll is "uselessly out of date"? It's the data that was used for the article that you cited earlier, so if it's out of date, then so is that article, which was written yesterday.

You're twisting my words. I did not say "uselessly out of date", I said "uselessly flawed and out of date". The emphasis is on the flaws. The being out of date comment is simply to make it clear that as numbers of Christians fall every year, those numbers come down even further.

Your poll is 20 months out of date, so yes, it's no longer accurate for certain. None of them are going to be an accurate reflection of life here.

The major issue is as has been explained, people here state they belong to a religion as a description of who they are and the environment in which they are raised. It doesn't have a great bearing on actual God belief. If you lived here, you'd get it, trust me.

I have also cited a poll that stated only 38% believed in God. I think the poll I cited is a better reflection because it avoids the issue of people describing themselves as belonging to a religion, and instead focusses on what they actually do or do not believe.

Originally posted by adjensenHere's another one: Now fewer than six in 10 say they are Christians as religion goes into decline

This is inaccurate for the exact same reason stated by myself and others here. People associate themselves with a religion but this does not mean they believe in God.

Originally posted by adjensenBy what data do you "know full well 55 percent of the population are not Christians"? That's a very specific number, and I can find absolutely nothing that says that.

The first poll you cited named 55% percent as Christian, I am saying, as an Englishman with experience of a lot of English people, there is no way in hell that is remotely close to the real number. The other poll I cited at 38% is closer to the mark, but the real numbers would be even lower as Christian numbers are falling rapidly every year, which even the census you cited agrees with.

You should come visit one day and ask around for yourself. Ask the person specifically if they believe in God.

Here are some more "hard numbers" that focus primarily on God belief, and not belonging to a religion:

"Many large-scale polls indicate that less than half the British public believe in God, with the larger ones showing a rate of 34-35%:

2011 - 64,000 representative adults polled. 34% believed in a personal (theist) or non-intervening (deist) God, 10% in a generic "higher power"

www.vexen.co.uk...

It's easy to find polls to support your position, whichever side of the fence you live on, so I have to go on experience as someone who lives here and say your conclusions are way off the mark.

Originally posted by jude11

It's not a religion, just a fact.

No, it's a category of thought. And as a category of thought, it's psi-inhibitive, because it's virtually synomymous with materialism and hence with a conscious rejection of their own unknown, unconscious psi. So "true athiests" are, in effect, living in a delusion of their own narrow-minded making.

"Gertrude made one of the most important discoveries ever in parapsychology, one with strong spiritual implications and one which I think none of the spiritual traditions knows about, for while it's something that can happen in everyday life, it's pretty much unobservable except under laboratory conditions. She gave many classes of students ESP tests, guessing at concealed cards, but, before giving or scoring the tests, she had students fill out questionnaires that asked, among other things, whether they believed in ESP.

When she analyzed the results separately for the believers - the "sheep" - and the non-believers - the "goats" - she found a small, but significant difference. The sheep got more right than you would expect by chance guessing, they were occasionally using ESP. The goats, on the other hand, got significantly fewer right than you would expect by chance.

Think of it this way. If you were asked to guess red or black with ordinary playing cards, no feedback until you'd done the whole deck, you would average about 50% correct by chance. If you got 100% correct, you don't need statistics to know that would be astounding. But if you got 0%? Just as astounding!

The sheep thought they could do it, they got "good" scores, they were happy. The goats knew there was no ESP, nothing to get, they got poor scores, they were happy, that "proved" their belief. These were not people who were sophisticated enough about statistics to know that scoring below chance could be significant…

Many other experimenters replicated this effect over the years.

The only way I've ever been able to understand it is to think that the goats occasionally used ESP, but on an unconscious level, to know what the next card was and then their unconscious, acting in the service of their conscious belief system, influenced them to call anything but the correct one." -Charles Tart

reply to post by BlueMule


Are you saying that the phenomena of psi, or "ESP" of any kind is proof of God? If an atheist acknowledges the existence of such phenomena then they are hypocritical, because it is proof of a soul and therefore a God?

Did you know that many scientist believe that quantum theory will someday prove and explain psi phenomena?

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by BlueMule

 

Are you saying that the phenomena of psi, or "ESP" of any kind is proof of God?

I suppose it depends on what you mean by God....and on how many 'kinds of proof' there are...and on what one means by 'proof'...

If an atheist acknowledges the existence of such phenomena then they are hypocritical, because it is proof of a soul and therefore a God?

I wouldn't say that.

Did you know that many scientist believe that quantum theory will someday prove and explain psi phenomena?

Yes, but I doubt it will.

Originally posted by humphreysjim

Originally posted by adjensen

Oh, come on, a 2011 poll is "uselessly out of date"? It's the data that was used for the article that you cited earlier, so if it's out of date, then so is that article, which was written yesterday.

You're twisting my words. I did not say "uselessly out of date", I said "uselessly flawed and out of date". The emphasis is on the flaws. The being out of date comment is simply to make it clear that as numbers of Christians fall every year, those numbers come down even further.

That's a supposition -- you may think that the number of Christians falls every year, but until polls like the one I cited come out, you don't know.

I have also cited a poll that stated only 38% believed in God. I think the poll I cited is a better reflection because it avoids the issue of people describing themselves as belonging to a religion, and instead focusses on what they actually do or do not believe.

I went to look at that 2008 study, to look at the actual methodology and couldn't find anything (the link on that page is dead.) Looking for articles that point to that poll only took me to more secular postings, leading me to wonder, since it significantly differs from the 2011 results, whether there was something in error in it. But without the original source, there's no way to tell.

The first poll you cited named 55% percent as Christian, I am saying, as an Englishman with experience of a lot of English people, there is no way in hell that is remotely close to the real number.

Again, this is purely subjective and anecdotal. Regardless of whether you think it's "flawed" or not, a scientific poll is a more reasonable source of data than someone's personal observations.

2011 - 64,000 representative adults polled. 34% believed in a personal (theist) or non-intervening (deist) God, 10% in a generic "higher power"

Come on, that's totally out of date!

Naw, just yankin' your chain

I'd say that the verdict is still out, and you'll notice that I never said that Christianity wasn't plummeting in popularity in the UK, just that every dog will have his day, but the atheists' isn't here quite yet.

reply to post by adjensen


The GOP had scientific polls that showed Romney was going to win the presidency, too. Polls can be skewed. In this case, the question is too broad, and the data is pulled from sources, like hospitals and governmental forms, where the question of religion wasn't answered with the polling statistics in mind.

If the questions were worded fairly, and addressed as a scientific survey that narrows down personal belief, we might have more accurate data.

I mean really, if you surveyed those who claim to be Christian, how many would agree with the entire Nicene Creed? I know the Christian members of my family wouldn't.

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by adjensen

 

The GOP had scientific polls that showed Romney was going to win the presidency, too. Polls can be skewed.

That was intentional, obviously -- this is conducted and published by a government entity without a horse in the race, so I don't see why they would be skewing it.

In this case, the question is too broad, and the data is pulled from sources, like hospitals and governmental forms, where the question of religion wasn't answered with the polling statistics in mind.

If the questions were worded fairly, and addressed as a scientific survey that narrows down personal belief, we might have more accurate data.

If this poll were truly flawed, one would expect outrage on the part of the British secular community, pointing out the flaws, but contrarily, in the articles that I've read, the secular talking heads seem delighted with the numbers, so I don't believe that it's an invalid poll.

reply to post by adjensen


I think you're wrong about the government not "having a horse" in the race. "Church of England"? Hello!

But I'll leave you to your opinion. I too, have no horse in this race.

reply to post by luciddream

.
I didn't make this world it was the work of some other power.
That which creates and destroys is God by default.
I feel there is a greater intelligence out there that is far more powerful than myself or any collection of people
It is the recognition of my utter insignificance in the grand scheme of things.

reply to post by Druscilla


You are working on a number of unproven hopes.

seems to be global-centric in not accounting for migration to the deadly harsh environs outside our little goldilocks nest of dirt where...

This is a hope. The descriptions you use are based on almost no evidence of anything living outside out planet and a very base guess at what would produce life.

Your use of the word "unnatural" is emotionally based, where adaptation from biological to self-guided artificial evolution could very well be the most natural, predictable step

Your use of the word "natural" suggests that you understand that natural and sustainable are an equivalent. It does not suffice, however to expect completely unknown technology to replace something that is also not understood (by science), life. To suggest this will happen is none other an expression of attachment to science fiction.

There's also the aspect of distributed intelligence, where one personality with sufficient resource may distribute themselves physically over a wide range of multiple semi-autonomous incarnations including simultaneous aspects in both biological and artificial nodes.

Incarnate ... we already do that with far more advanced science. Anyway I included this quote as the novel and archaic.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind about their faith. That's a pointless and ridiculous endeavor on par with the energy requirements needed to split the atom.

Do you care to quantify this statement? I am interested in what you know about the energy of thoughts. I am less interested in the energy of creating mind blockages and frustration due to ego requirements.

Perspective requires no emotional attachment to any position

I actually think that may be the one thing that does requite an emotional attachment.

I enforce the positional perspective with details you've likely construed as lowest denominator-ism where such were only colors from a brush to illustrate a positional perspective.

Yes, yes it's all a matter of perspective, and we are going to be robots so let's forget about out present position and project the future into present as if it was interchangeable. Of course it's relative, so your position reveals your bias.

... then there's solipsism.

reply to post by bowtomonkey

Originally posted by bowtomonkey
reply to post by Lucid Lunacy

 

Only to give balance to the ultra-annoying bible thumping clubs.

So you are just as bad. Your choice.

That was in jest.

Honestly I am bothered not one iota at the prospect the religious might find my opposition annoying

I don't believe in apathy. I am almost religious about it

Originally posted by adjensen

If this poll were truly flawed, one would expect outrage on the part of the British secular community, pointing out the flaws, but contrarily, in the articles that I've read, the secular talking heads seem delighted with the numbers, so I don't believe that it's an invalid poll.

Outraged is a bit strong. It's just a poll, I thought most people accepted most of them are unreliable at best anyway?

As for secular groups pointing out the flaws, that's exactly what the link I cited did. Granted not for the exact poll you mentioned as my link predates it, but the exact same objection stands. For the most part, people here just don't care because religion is completely unimportant as anything other than a cultural thing.