Despite Neitzschian declarations that "God is dead", it seems that religion is quite healthy as we start the 21st Century and showing no signs of weakening. In fact, in countries where religion was repressed by the state in the 20th Century (still the lowest percentage of believers to non-believers is evident in the old USSR, China and North Korea), religion has sprung back up as soon as the state has softened its control. Whatever atheists think of believers, it would seem that religious faith is irrepressible. Statistics published in the latest issue of National Geographic magazine show the following stats from 2005 (percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number and values less than 0.5% are not shown): The world average of believers is 85.7% which consists of: 33% Christians, 21% Muslims, 14% Nonbelievers, 13% Hindus, 12% Other, 6% Buddhists. In China the stats are: 8% Christians, 2% Muslims, 50% Nonbelievers, 32% Other, 9% Buddhists. In India the stats are: 6% Christians, 14% Muslims, 1% Nonbelievers, 73% Hindus, 6% Other, 1% Buddhists. In the USA, the stats are: 82% Christians, 2% Muslims, 12% Nonbelievers, 1% Hindus, 1% Other, 1% Buddhists, 2% Jews. In Indonesia, the stats are: 13% Christians, 77% Muslims, 2% Nonbelievers, 3% Hindus, 4% Other, 1% Buddhists. Apologies to readers for the invisibility of certain religions in these stats (the 23 million Sikhs, for example) - I dare say that of India's 6% "Other", a fairly sizable proportion are Sikh. For more statistics please also see this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups
Do you have any earlier statistics? say from 50 years ago as a comparison? Without something to compare it to, the current stat is a bit meaningless as to how "healthy" the state of religion is. Popularity does not equal veracity.
"About 33% of the world's population regard themselves as Christian. This percentage has been stable for decades. (The second most popular religion is Islam at about 20%. It is growing. If its present growth rate continues, it will to become the dominant religion of the world during in a few decades.) http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/stats.html
So xtianity seems to remain stable then. Though I'm not sure what "regard themselves as xtian" actually implies ie does that therefore include people who aren't pratising but just stick down "xtian" because there parents were etc etc.
There is actually a lessening of religious affiliation and church attendance in Canada and the United States over the past fifteen years. In the U.S. those with no religious affiliation were about eight percent in 1990 and are currently at fourteen percent. Although, admittedly this is less to do with a rise in atheism and more to do with rise of religious pluralism and the contempt for organized religion (as opposed to religious beliefs in general). In fact 93 percent of religious independents characterized themselves as having no religion whereas only 5 percent labeled themselves as agnostics or atheists. The 2001 Census shows this as does Canada's 2004 General Social Survey.
I don't see anything startling in any of these statistics... did somebody actually argue that various religions weren't still widely practiced the world over?
How many of these people are really believers? I bet barely any of them would sacrifice their son if God told them to.
And I don't think Nietzsche ever denied that a large percentage of people identify themselves as religious.
I think many people in the Uk are now taking and leaving Christianity to suit their lives. They are all Christian when they are getting married & having their kids baptaised but never set foot inside a church again.
While the nonbelievers category might contain people who do actually believe in God, the Buddhist category most certainly contains people who don't believe in a creator God.
Thats because you can't repress it, the only ways to get rid of religion is replace it with another religion or to convince the followers they are wrong. but since a religion is based on the willing suspension of disbelief that is not possible. my opinion as an Agnostic is that religions are cults. If you go back into each religions history, they all start out as being outcasts and most start during a period of repression. This is what cults thrive on. They give people hope, whether false or real, and unify the repressed peoples voices. When a nation represses a religion, it can only become stronger.
Well the Jews, Muslims, Christians, and some would say the Sikhs as well, should in theory all believe in the same God. They all believe that there is only one God. Additionally, Sikhism also recognizes monotheistic strands of Hinduism (such as Visnaism) as being different ways of acknowledging the one true God. Historically Sikhs have fought for other peoples' right to practice their different religions, even when the same courtesy has not been extended to them.
Why do you never mention Rastas JK? By far, out of all the Abrahamic relgions, they produce the best music - and isn't that really all that matters? By the by, NIEtzsche IS dead. But,the brilliance of the great man lives on. By "God is dead" he didn't mean that religion is dead - boy are you out of your depth arguing with him. He meant that the authority of a big daddy figure waving a stick over you if you don't obey is yours to cast off; that its time was ending - that you have all the power. And boy was he right.
I believe his point was that while this is true the majority of them aren't just strictly sticking to the Bible. They have a morality seperate from the Bible that they then apply to the Bible. This is often known as picking and choosing and of course does not apply to fundamentalists. However, the stats I reported about religious independence being on the rise in both U.S. and Canada (and in many European countries too, though I can't find the research so nevermind that) support that.
"God is dead" whilst partly in response to a change in the social structure of the time of Nietzsche, means "what used to control you is dead - you can take back that power." It means "the old ways are dead" or "the set of rules that used to govern you can be replaced by you." Ironically, Joanna particularly is very much a thinker along those lines - she doesn't agree with the old way of, say, believing the doctrine of the Catholic or Protestant church - she believes that you can be your own moral compass within the general monotheistic tradition. The fact that she can do that without being burned to death is partly because of people like Nietzsche, before and after, daring to question authority, and asserting that we can make such decisions for ourselves. What JK does is actually call upon people to be their own maker-of-religion, as long as it is from within a general sphere of thinking, despite thinking that she's against being your own compass. She's actually a direct benificiary of Nietzsche. "God is dead" in her case means that the old way of believing in monotheism is dead. Of course, the great man really meant something much more powerful - re-assertion of the human as his own guide, his own authority.
Yeah, like dead bodies. Hoo rah for religion. There again, religion is one of the trades that makes money out of dead bodies, so I begin to see how the scam works.
