Religion set for extinction in nine countries, study says

[cleanhippie]

Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says
By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197

--------------------

Interesting.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. good.

about time.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. Hallelujah, Thank the Lord, and Amen!

:rofl:


TG

[Jim Lane]

12. Don't thank the Lord. It was actually the work of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (n/t)

[Tansy_Gold]

13. My apologies to His Magnificent Noodliness

(I keep telling my friends about the FSM and no one believes me. . . ..)

[liberal N proud]

3. And that is why the evangelicals say they need more money to save the religion

They need more money to send missionaries to these god forsaken places to save the wretched.

edit to add:



:sarcasm:

[meow mix]

4. Science, Reason... is that all there is??

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155419/kill-the-wise-one

[Deep13]

11. No, it isn't...

...but other stuff that exists is still natural rather than supernatural.

Anyway, science and reason is an awful lot.

[WatsonT]

5. Doubtful

it seems to be hardwired in to most people.

And no religious affiliation doesn't mean no religion.

[speltwon]

7. it's also based on false assumptions

Remember the old game of life, one of the first simulations of it's sort on the PC? It showed rather graphically how such predictions are suspect from the start.

TO give an analogy, if I have a group that is doubling in population every week - like let's say my gym business membership, it would be a little ridiculous to believe it can go on forever. In a matter of weeks, my membership would be greater than the population of the earth. It's going to be more an ebb and flow thing, and it's perfectly possible that some impetus will even reverse the direction of the "trend". It's just baseless speculation imo based on quasi-scientifical models that SOUND compelling, but don't really offer anything.

[WatsonT]

15. Sir, I would like to invest in your gym

[LiberalFighter]

6. The major keys that will help extinquish religion...

More science.
Organizations that can replace church services and gatherings as a social organization. People probably want to get together on a regular basis and be involved in activities with their families.

[Rage for Order]

8. That, and another Stalin. A couple more Great Purges and religion will be extinguished

[LeftishBrit]

14. In fact, Stalin , though very successful at murdering people, was singularly unsuccessful at getting

rid of religion.

At present, 63% of people in Russia consider themselves to be Russian Orthodox; and another 6% are Muslims.

[Rage for Order]

17. True, but I was thinking more along the lines of...

If he just killed a few hundred million more people there would be nobody left to adhere to a religion.

[LeftishBrit]

18. Fortunately he's dead and cannot do so! For the restt I do not see the relevance to the OP

The OP was about people in some countries losing interest in and commitment to religion, not about religion being banned or people exterminated!

And Stalin is *not* the definition of a non-religious leader. There have been many atheist/agnostic leaders who were not Stalin. In the UK, my favourite Prime Minister Attlee - and if you include people who are indifferent to religion without necessarily bein *explicitly* atheist, many earlier leaders going back to the early 18th century. Then in other countries Gough Whitlam, Julia Gillard, Helen Clark, Michele Bachelet, Jawaharlal Nehru, etc. etc. One may support or oppose any of these, but they're not Stalin!

It's dictatorship that is evil. And religious dictatorships, from the Inquisition to the Taliban, haven't been great either.

[trotsky]

19. C'mon, LB. You know what the relevance is.

Anytime anything bad is said about religion, there are some (to borrow a bit from Lewis Black about Glenn Beck) who develop "Stalin Tourette's" and can't help but at least insinuate that it is somehow a key tenet of atheism that all believers must be killed.

[Rage for Order]

51. The person I replied to spoke of "extinguishing" religion

That's quite different than religion fading out, don't you think? Stalin was the most recent leader I could think of who tried to extinguish religion, hence my reference to him.

[Bragi]

9. Science hasn't a chance in America

About 80 per cent of Americans actually think that evolution is something that they can choose to believe or not, and they choose to believe religious nonsense over science.

The political rejection of science and the triumph of religion will doom America.

[humblebum]

21. You need to ask yourself, "how did we make it this far?"

The very idea that science and religion are necessarily in opposition is bunk. I think that attitude is the popular mantra of radical atheism and nothing more. We certainly would never have made it this far if religion was in strict opposition to science.

[laconicsax]

26. You must be right. The primary opposition to scientific progress certainly hasn't been religious.

:eyes:

-Galileo disproved the Church-sanctioned geocentric model, and was imprisoned for it.
-Creationism is the major opposition to teaching evolution in schools.
-Religious "pro-life" groups oppose stem-cell research.
-Biblical literalists oppose climate change research and action because "God promised he wouldn't destroy the Earth."
-Religious groups push for myth and superstition to be taught as science.

[humblebum]

27. Like I said:

"I think that attitude is the popular mantra of radical atheism." You merely confirmed that. the fact is we did make it this far and guess what? Religious people did in fact have a lot to do with it.

[laconicsax]

28. Religious groups have actively worked to suppress scientific progress. That is a fact.

Denying this on the grounds that many religious people have been (and are) scientists is ridiculous. You might as well cite the existence of pedophile priests to deny that the Catholic Church hierarchy has actively worked to suppress child-rape allegations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias">Where there's contradiction, you see confirmation?

[humblebum]

29. And this coming from the same person who claimed that I had

mentioned Stalin over 3000 times when I had only posted around 1500 times. I think you lost your credibility at that point.

[trotsky]

30. So it's impossible for you to mention Stalin more than once in a post?

:shrug:

[humblebum]

31. Twice in every post I've written? Yes. nt

[trotsky]

32. On average though...

2x per post is about what I'd estimate with your history. Stalin Tourette's.

[humblebum]

33. Then your estimate is based on an obvious lie. nt

[humblebum]

34. I should add that I make no apology for using Stalin as one example, but

it is obviously a lie to claim that I have used Stalin and Stalin only as an example of militant atheism and the actions of it.

[cleanhippie]

37. Thats THREE is this post alone.

:rofl:

continual fail.

[trotsky]

38. LMAO

:rofl: indeed!!!

[humblebum]

39. Good. Now show me the other 3500 or so in my 1500+ posts. nt

[humblebum]

40. Let's see. I am willing to bet that you have mentioned your buddies

the militant atheists many more times than I have mentioned Stalin. And that trotsy has used his default "straw man" much more too.

[cleanhippie]

42. Uh, yeah, ok.

:rofl:

failing again.

[trotsky]

49. You get funnier and funnier...

the deeper into the doo-doo you go. :rofl:

[cleanhippie]

36. Well, you just added to the number.

:rofl:

Epic Fail.

[laconicsax]

41. Nice ad hominem dodge!

:rofl:

And while you want to discuss credibility...

"http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=269473&mesg_id=269792">there are times when strawmen are quite valid...http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html">The best straw man is not, in fact, a fallacy at all"

Though others have pointed this out already, an example of how you could have more mentions of your favorite Soviet dictator than posts is how many times "humblebum" appears with "the." Go, search box!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/searchresults.html?domains=democraticunderground.com&q=humblebum+the&sa=Search&sitesearch=democraticunderground.com&client=pub-7805397860504090&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A0000FF%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BFORID%3A11&hl=en">16,700 results. This of course is impossible since there's no possible way you've used the word "the" more times than you've posted...:rofl:

[humblebum]

43. And also a REAL one. nt

[cleanhippie]

35. What utter BS! If it weren't for religion, we would be leaps and bounds FURTHER than we are now.

Religion has been nothing but an obstacle to scientific progress. In fact, there is a whole ERA of human history where religion purposely retarded the development of knowledge and understanding, it was called The Dark Ages! Perhaps you have heard of it?

[humblebum]

44. Would you care to prove that statement since it was largely religious people

who carried out early science.

[cleanhippie]

45. What do you mean?

You mean this? Another tired, worn out, debunked apologetic argument?

Yawn.


http://www.nobeliefs.com/comments10.htm


But in case your history differs from mine, here is a graphical representation. Enjoy.




Next up, you explaining how it was really militant atheists who impeded scientific progress.

:rofl:

[humblebum]

46. A very attractive graph but hardly proof of anything.

As usual nothing but avoidance.

[cleanhippie]

47. Oh, ok. More of your "where you see contradiction, I see confirmation" philosophy?

Good luck with that.

And I'm not avoiding anything, I asked you a question: was that the argument you were getting ready to make? perhaps a mirror would better reveal who is avoiding. :rofl:

[humblebum]

48. Oh yes, Christianity was really spreading in the early part of the "Dark Ages"

Um? Do you by chance remember those guys collectively referred to as the barbarians and the Vikings (pagans and atheists) who almost wiped it out. You always seem to out do yourself.

[cleanhippie]

50. Almost only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and nuclear bombs...

Point is, they didn't, and christianity went on to stifle scientific progress for centuries. Thanks a lot, if it weren't for religion, especially the kind believed by you, we may very well have been exploring the galaxy by now.

But hey, nice try, but fail, again. :rofl:

[humblebum]

52. Back to your old self I see. nt

[cleanhippie]

54. Really? An Ad Hominem is ALL you can come up with in response to the fact that the religion

you and a billion other people follow, is personally responsible for the retardation of human scientific achievement over the course of several centuries?

Really? Thats your response?


What a joke.

[humblebum]

55. What ad hominem? You called it the 'Christian Dark Ages' and

yet had the world remained in the hands of those pagan and atheistic barbarians and vikings, and not have eventually became Christians, then one could easily say that the Western world might have remained barbaric and totally devoid of any advancement, scientific or otherwise. Your reasoning is VERY flawed, and VERY biased against one particular group of people. And "biased" is the most generous of a term I can think of.

[cleanhippie]

56. I did no such thing. That is the label history assigned to that period, not me.

Take up your nonsensical argument with the historians.


And since you seem to be very confused about what an Ad Hominem is, let me assist with your education...

From Websters -

Ad Hominem - adjective

1. appealing to one's prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one's intellect or reason.
2. attacking an opponent's character rather than answering his argument.



Responses such as "back to your old self, I see" is a classic Ad Hominem. But you know that.

[humblebum]

57. Excuse me but I believe that is what it said on the graph you presented.

Generally it is called the Dark Ages or the Low Middle Ages. It appears that you are the one a bit ignorant of history. If you are going to present a graph at least use one with some credible labeling.

[cleanhippie]

59. Feel free to peddle those tired apologetic arguments, but you are only fooling yourself.

Enjoy some light reading.

http://www.hermes-press.com/DAtruth.htm

http://www.google.com/search?q=christian+dark+ages&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=KBX&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=ct2MTdOxDYO6sQOekeWKCQ&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=16&ved=0CHMQ5wIwDw


Now, I know you probably won't even bother to read them, as it completely contradicts your assertions, but hey, I tried.

[humblebum]

60. Oh great. You continue in your ignorance by not presenting

an article from Britannica or some scholarly work, but from something written strictly from an atheistic perspective. You've really outdone yourself this time. The Hermes Press - now there's academic integrity if I ever did done see it!

And of course "Some of the ideas in this section of the complete essay have been adapted from the site: www.jesusneverexisted.com."

Good day. BTW, I see you really have a handle on that ignoring thing.

[cleanhippie]

62. Blah, blah, blah. You sound like a broken record.

You really are becoming quite boring, you know.

[humblebum]

58. Where in that did I attack your character? Unless of course

referring to your old self is somehow degrading.

[cleanhippie]

61. Friend, an attack on someones character is not about what the attackee thinks, its about what YOU,

the attacker thinks. But you know that.

[humblebum]

63. Oh great. Now you're into reading others' thoughts.

Truth be told, I enjoy these little exchanges with you ( but of course I would never say that because it would spoil the atmosphere of contention).

[cleanhippie]

64. You put your thoughts on public display with your posts. What do you think a forum is?

You really make me shake my head in disbelief of what I am seeing sometimes.

[humblebum]

65. Well Kreskin, I hope your mind-reading abilities are better than your

knowledge of history.

[cleanhippie]

67. Ahh, more insults. How expected. Its the last line of defense for the ignorant.

:nuke:

[humblebum]

68. You really should take your own advice. But, I agree

calling someone Kreskin is highly insulting and should never be tolerated.

[cleanhippie]

69. Its simply your use of innocuous terms in an insulting manner, makes you look like an asshole.

Whether you ARE an asshole is simply a matter of opinion. Are you an asshole? Should we post a poll?

[darkstar3]

66. Tell me, do you know of the concept of "projection"?

yet had the world remained in the hands of those pagan and atheistic barbarians and vikings, and not have eventually became Christians, then one could easily say that the Western world might have remained barbaric and totally devoid of any advancement, scientific or otherwise.

A bold, baseless, and ridiculous statement, which would be bad enough if you hadn't followed it up with:

Your reasoning is VERY flawed, and VERY biased against one particular group of people.

In one post, you've managed to provide the most perfect example of blind projection I've ever seen.

[Deep13]

10. Sadly, this isn't one of them. nt

[dimbear]

16. The world is suffering an epidemic of obesity, increasingly so, yet

I don't predict the extinction of thin people. Not going to happen............

[humblebum]

20. Oh yes indeed. And of course the most famous and enlightened of all

was the Soviet Union. What a bastion of free thought that was.

[LeftishBrit]

22. So the Netherlands and New Zealand are just like the Soviet Union because most people are not

religious in these countries?

[trotsky]

23. The nine countries referred to, since you obviously didn't bother to read the article, are...

Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Perhaps you could tell us which of those are so viciously hostile to religious belief rather than pulling out your tried-and-true yet still irrelevant 20th century example.

[humblebum]

24. I merely stated a fact and nothing more, but if atheists in those countries

are as vocally against and as tolerant of religion as you and many others are here, then yes there is much intolerance of religious thought. As you already know, i consider atheism to be a very narrow-minded way of thinking inspite of its claim of favoring free thought

[LeftishBrit]

25. So private citizens being 'vocally against religion' is exactly the same as the government engaging

in Soviet-style oppression?

Personally I am not intolerant of religion at all; I am intolerant of the religious right (and that goes for all religions, not just Christianity). I am intolerant of efforts to impose social conservativism - and too often also economic conservativism - in the name of religion. Or in the name of any other ideology. I am against people treating atheists and secularists - or those of the 'wrong' religion - as second-class citizens or worse, as a main cause of the problems of society.

And much 'intolerance of religious thought' comes not from atheists but from religious people who are intolerant of those of different religions or denominations.

'i consider atheism to be a very narrow-minded way of thinking'

If you really consider ALL atheism as 'very narrow-minded' rather than simply thinking that some atheists are narrow-minded about their atheism, then surely that is just as 'vocally intolerant' as what you are complaining of?

[laconicsax]

53. Well, Christianity does criminalize thought.

If thinking something is just as bad as doing something, then doing something must be just as bad as doing something on a much larger scale.

[sudopod]

72. "... i consider atheism to be a very narrow-minded way of thinking..."

lol

[houstonintc]

70. Very doubtful...

Considering fundamentalist religious groups have more children then secular's and atheists and in many countries the future is actually looking decidedly more fundamentalist.

Did this study really crunch the numbers? I say look at who has children and who doesn't it's the more conservative religious groups. Israel being a prime example where the Orthodox have just simply out-bred everyone else.

[Azathoth]

71. Organized religion might disappear, but the religious impulse will manifest in other ways

The human species is a long way off from being able to embrace pure reason and logic while wholly eschewing the comforting succor of "faith".