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Title: Americans are turning away from organized religion in record numbers
Source:
Alternet
URL Source: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/ ... ed-religion-in-record-numbers/
Published: Mar 2, 2015
Author: Lynn Parramore
Post Date: 2015-03-06 12:42:16 by Willie Green
Keywords: None
Views: 21761
Comments: 83
With fire-breathing religion figuring anew in global conflicts, and political discussions at home often dominated by the nuttery of the Christian right, you might get the sense that somebody’s god is ready to mug you around every street corner. But if you’re the type who doesn’t like to hang your hat on organized religion, here’s a bit of good news: in America, your numbers are growing. There are more religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S. today than ever before. Starting in the 1980s, a variety of polls using different methodologies have come to the same conclusion: people who do not identify with religious labels are on the rise, perhaps even doubling in that time frame. Some call them “nones”: agnostics, atheists, deists, secular humanists, general humanists, and people who just don’t care to identify with any religious group. It’s not exactly correct to call them nonbelievers, because some still have faith and spirituality in some sense or another. A 2012 Pew study noted that 30 percent of these people believe in “God or universal spirit” and around 20 percent even pray every day. But according to the latest research, Americans checking the “none of the above” box will make up an increasingly important force in the country. Other groups, like born-again evangelicals, have grown more percentage-wise, but the nones have them beat in absolute numbers. The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute has documented this sea change in its American Values Atlas, which it released last Wednesday. The fascinating study provides demographic, religious and political data based on surveys conducted throughout 2014. According to PRRI director of research Dan Cox, “The U.S. religious landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation that is fundamentally reshaping American politics and culture.” Last year, for the very first time, Protestants lost their majority status in the Institute’s annual report, making up only 47 percent of those surveyed. The religiously unaffiliated, who come in at 22 percent, boast numbers on par with major religious groups like American Catholics. All told, the unaffiliated is the second-largest group in the country. It was also the most common group chosen by residents in 13 states, with the largest share (a third or more) in Washington, Oregon and New Hampshire. In Ohio and Virginia, this group was tied for first place. The unaffiliated don’t find too many like-minded folks down in Mississippi, however, where they make up only 10 percent of the population. The study also found that there are 15 states where the unaffiliated constitute the second-largest group. So what do we know about these people? Nones tend to be more politically liberal — three-quarters favor same-sex marriage and legal abortion. They also have higher levels of education and income than other groups. While about one out of five Americans is unaffiliated, the number is much higher among young people: Pew research shows that a third of Americans under 30 have no religious affiliation. Harvard professor Robert Putnam, who studies religion, thinks the trend among younger people is part of their general lack of interest in community institutions and institutions in general. Last year, the Washington Post ran an article citing research by Allen Downey, a professor of computer science at Massachusetts’ Olin College of Engineering, who claims that people become nones mainly for two reasons: lack of religious upbringing (OMG those hippie parents!) and… the Internet. According to Downey, as much as 20 percent of unaffiliation is attributable to Internet use. He found that between 1990 and 2010, the share of Americans claiming no religious affiliation grew from 8 percent to 18 percent while the number of Americans surfing the Web jumped from almost nothing to 80 percent. But he acknowledges, as his critics are quick to point out, that correlation does not causation make. One thing is certain: voting nones are making their presence felt in politics. They are thought to have helped Obama win a second term. But the GOP doesn’t seem to show many signs of reducing the outsized influence of white evangelicals, who represent only 18 percent of the population, at least publicly. Just a couple of weeks ago, presidential hopeful Scott Walker could be seen refusing to answer a question about evolution, as if embracing widely accepted science would make him an apostate. Ordained Southern Baptist Mike Huckabee, also making noises of running, just released a book titled God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy, which kind of makes the Lord sound like the Great Bubba in the sky. But on the secretive big money donor trail, which all serious candidates must follow, the only religion they’ll be talking about much is free market fundamentalism. Your libertarians, your supply siders, and your various fatcats care a whole lot more about their bank accounts than any spiritual reckonings. Getting the government out of their way to leave them to their plundering is their holy scripture. But when talking to voters, the GOP really can’t afford to tone it down, because while monied elites tend to be secular, selling free-market pillage to the people getting robbed is not a very effective strategy. So they still have to mask their agenda behind appeals to popular religion so the non-rich will vote against their economic interests in places like Tennessee, which has the highest share of white evangelicals, at 43 percent. (White mainline Protestants account for 14 percent of the population nationally.) As you might expect, the fact that religion is losing its grip on the daily lives of Americans is freaking a lot of people out. The New York Times’ David Brooks is quite alarmed, admonishing nones that “secularism has to do for nonbelievers what religion does for believers — arouse the higher emotions, exalt the passions in pursuit of moral action.” Of course, secularists only form one portion of the unaffiliated group, but considering that Mr. Brooks likes to wax on about the moral probity of America’s founders — your George Washingtons and so on — he might ask himself which box they might have checked.
Atheist teen girl holding a banner with the inscription-"THERE IS NO GOD" (Shutterstock)
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#43. To: Willie Green (#0)
Who needs organized religion?
The subject is religious eunuchs and their occult manipulation of the collective McFleeced within their purview -- with all the oblivious worker bees, obediently depositing coin in the hive's plate.
You'll have to pardon my asking the obvious: Do you kinda recall the 200 years or so that Americans -- right on up through around 1965 -- attended church fairly regularly? And prayer was often recited in public school? When academia actually promoted divinity studies -- instead of Tranny Orifice Instruction 101?? Let's pinpoint the year the whole shebang began devolving into the current chaos and insanity: 1963. The name Madelyn O'Hair ring a bell? Timothy Leary? It took just another THREE years before America began getting dismantled, and God declared "Dead" by Time Magazine in 1966. Now the question is: Will they replace organized mythology with reason and serious evaluation of prudence and consequent conditions to actions, or will the merely substitute a new mythology of licensed self indulgence and self destruction. Astute questions, very nicely articulated, Perfessor. I'm sure Kumbaya-Time will then soon be upon us were your wish granted. OH WAIT -- Would you like a bag o' chips with your secular humanist fantasy that's NOW become YOUR reality and OUR current nightmare?? ANY intellectual honest historian and cultural observer would readily admit that the glue that's held this nation together for 200 or so years has been "organized religions," that is to say, the Biblical/Christian ethic. Refutation, Perfessor?
Now I'm wondering if I have any chips in the house. BRB. : )
No dumbass, homosexual marriage isn't isn't even human. Given your attention span of a gnat, Doofus, let me remind you that "Gay Marriage" was in quotation marks. And it's NOT that a "human" thing; It's a language thing. And a lie. (Jefferson): "I KNOW BUT ONE CODE OF MORALITY FOR MEN WHETHER ACTING SINGLY OR COLLECTIVELY" Out of curiosity, have you rummaged through your extensive Tommy Jefferson Fan Club paraphernalia and pom-poms to discern EXACTLY the derivation of his "One Code of Morality"? Frankly, if the religiously petrified McSheeple hadn't allowed state-establishing Eunuchs to castrate their ability to place human morality in the context of several billion years of heterosexual evolution, you might be up to speed on that. First, you'd have to further define "religious," Sparky. In the meantime, you're blaming the electorate for trusting what has become a rogue globalist secular humanist gubmint that's become hostile to both the USCON and Christianity? Or do you mean Fundies? Catholics? Baptists? (white or black?) Secular Humanists? (yes, they are "religious") Statists? (yes, they too are "religious") New Agers? Atheists? The disturbing truth is that Tommy Jeff has contributed to making us the victims of The Law of Unintended Consequences. Without God as our moral underpinnings (and NO, not just your same ol' Romans 1:25 spamming), Jefferson's obsession with undercutting the Bible-based moral foundation has evolved into the current confused, divided and conquered MESS. And America MIGHT have survived the current secular humanist insanity.
I've noticed you've been at the top of your comedic game today. :-) (and yes, I DO have chips in the house - woof-woof!)
A simple assertion from a simple man.
Lol...You're rolling.
I think you know the Eunuchs presently perching upon the Vatican's temporal steps are not castrati. www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fr...e/secrets-of-the-vatican/ "For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others--and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it." --Matthew 19:12 Kingdom of Heaven my arse.
Noted, but I was referring only to Jefferson's "area of Salvation" as "sorely lacking." If only all the liberals and strict constitutionalists would be reminded of Tommy Jeff's moral aversion to sodomy. There ya go, V.
"Jefferson was the main contributor of the DoI" Jefferson was playing stenographer for Sherman, Livingstone, and Franklin
Uh-oh. In this very thread I mentioned "gnat." The context was someone's "attention span." I guess that's ok...sorta.
Uhuh. Thus demonstrating the tendency of religiously petrified individuals like you -- "Fallible and Uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others" -- and your kindred religious spirits in ISIS, from whom Jefferson and Co. wisely protected the rest of us.
You're so adorable when your blowing a gasket from your HUGE fat azz... Nonetheless, yes, your god Jefferson was ostensibly playing stenographer for Sherman, Livingstone, and Franklin. The final result was his fallible, roll of giant Charmin that today means next to NOTHING. This nation is a corporation owned by international Bankers, Elites, and Globalist interests and NOT We The People. Our Founders should have chosen more wisely and picked Patrick Henry or any one of the 52 of 56 Christian Founders who signed the DoI to write this instrument.
HA!! Really?? Then tell me why Americans have been treated and regarded as "terrorists" since 9/11??
Survey says... Global Growth Threatened in $693 Trillion Derivatives Review Global regulators’ failure to align efforts to reform the $693 trillion derivatives market threatens to undermine economic growth, according to the International Swaps & Derivatives Association ...don't hold your breath
Maybe because they confused Individual liberty and spirituality with being religious parrots in servitude of "liberators" like you and Vern Howell. The female Secret Service agent who inquired as to why I was in the prone position whilst acquiring this photo... ...didn't treat me like a terrorist. Instead she just laughed after I explained how I used the flowers to obscure the "No Nukes" protester who's been camping out there for years. I s'pose YMMV though.
How many shares of stock in that corporation does the Vatican own these days Mr. Religious Parrot?
Reading further on the thread, imagine my shock to discover you are some variety of religious parrot. So don't try to peddle your psitti-caca 'round here!
I agree the larger organized religion is waning in the West. However the church which is the Body of Christ (Christians are members of the One Body of Christ) is an organism and not an organization. The organism will never fade.
"Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." (1 Peter 1:23)
"We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them. If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it! " --Thomas Merton Are bee colonies part of nature or not? Go ahead and answer from which ever face suits you for the moment.
The organizers of course.
потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
"There is no god but the TZar!"
Long live the Tzar. Oh.....wait.......he's dead and gone. Never mind.
потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
SOSO: The organizers of course. You over-simplified your answer. Don't you realize the vast majority of weak minded people NEED some sort of guidance in their life? If it is not "spiritual" in nature, it is government force in nature or perhaps an over-bearing relationship with somebody. Most people are weak, silly, submissive creatures begging to be trained.
I don't come here to provide you a target for cheap shots as you google away downing shots on weekend afternoon. Not my job in life.
Quack, waddle...
Multiple disingenuous faces, multiple disingenuous targets... actually. Are bee colonies part of nature or not?
{ crickets crickets crickets } A vapid answer from a vapid "conservative" parrot. Are bee colonies part of nature or not?
Are you asking me to put you on my bozo list? Yes or no.
Are bee colonies part of nature or not? Yes or no.
How does that work in the context of temporal natural selection? And does organized religion typically result in the self- actualization of the individual -- or in the supression of individual self- actualization in the profit of whoever happens to be perched atop the state- establishment? http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
Yep
Most people are weak, silly, submissive creatures That shit is all spot on.
Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on. Robert Kennedy
America in the past was a good nation. We had people who were christains and acted accordingly. Your vision of the future is the USSR. Millions of people brutally murdered. You can take your atheism and stick it up your ass.
The USSR where the KGB originated as the Oprichniki Secret Police of the Russian Orthodox State Establishment. That USSR? The relationship between myself and my Creator is not a temporal state affair. You can take your state-establishment and stick that up your Fallible and Uninspired ass, assuming you can fit it past your head - which is evidently already occupying the space.
Most people are weak, silly, submissive creatures Most people are weak, silly, submissive creatures that politicians, clergy, and educators have acquired the skill and power to manipulate.
This is true... But ultimately, the decision to turn into a SHEEPLE is on the individual. I grew up in the same libtard society and watched the same libtard MSN sources. I didn't buy any of their bullshit.
Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on. Robert Kennedy
#44. To: TooConservative (#42)
(Edited)
Stop changing the subject.
#45. To: rlk (#39)
Americans are turning away from organized religion in record numbers
Good
#46. To: Liberator (#45)
(Edited)
Would you like a bag o' chips...
#47. To: Liberator (#45)
(Edited)
ANY intellectual honest historian and cultural observer would readily admit that the glue that's held this nation together for 200 or so years has been "organized religions," that is to say, the Biblical/Christian ethic.
Remind us -- what herd of religiously bleating parrots was the drafter of the Declaration of Independence part of?
"... who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men , have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;
--Thomas Jefferson, 1786
What bound America together was the freedom to contradict the religiously tyrannical errors of its former state-established owners.
#48. To: VxH (#19)
Well now -- is "Gay Marriage" also as "American as Apple Pie and Thomas Jefferson" as well?
#49. To: TooConservative (#46)
Now I'm wondering if I have any chips in the house. BRB. : )
#50. To: VxH (#47)
What bound America together was the freedom to contradict the religiously tyrannical errors of its former state-established owners.
#51. To: TooConservative (#42)
#52. To: TooConservative (#28)
(Edited)
I think you know that most eunuchs were castrati,
#53. To: TooConservative, VxH (#21)
(Edited)
As I recall, Jefferson was instrumental in writing the sodomy laws of the new state of Massachusetts. He was not at all soft on sodomy. MA was often a model legislature that other states regularly copied in areas of law.
#54. To: Liberator (#50)
http://libertysflame.com/cgi- bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=37828&Disp=146#C146
#55. To: TooConservative (#31)
We're not discussing apiculture.
#56. To: Liberator (#53)
(Edited)
I was referring only to Jefferson's "area of Salvation" as "sorely lacking.
#57. To: VxH (#54)
(Edited)
Which is it Mr. steaming pile of Fallible and Uninspired parrot guano?
#58. To: VxH (#56)
Jefferson and Co. wisely protected the rest of us.
#59. To: rlk (#39)
Will they replace organized mythology with reason and serious evaluation of prudence and consequent conditions to actions,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-08/global-growth- threatened-in-623-trillion-derivatives-overhaul
#60. To: Liberator (#58)
(Edited)
Then tell me why Americans have been treated and regarded as "terrorists" since 9/11??
Hail Caesar! NOT.
#61. To: Liberator (#57)
(Edited)
This nation is a corporation owned by international Bankers, Elites, and Globalist interests and NOT We The People.
#62. To: Liberator (#49)
(and yes, I DO have chips in the house - woof-woof!)
#63. To: GrandIsland, liberator (#25)
Don't shoot the messenger. It is what it is. No amount of individual faith will change that fact.
#64. To: TooConservative (#62)
(Edited)
#65. To: Pridie.Nones, Willie Green, All (#43)
Who needs organized religion?
#66. To: SOSO, Pridie.Nones, Willie Green, All (#65)
Who needs organized religion? The organizers of course.
#67. To: VxH, Pridie.Nones, Willie Green, All (#66)
"There is no god but the TZar!"
#68. To: SOSO (#65)
Pridie.Nones: Who needs organized religion?
#69. To: VxH (#64)
#70. To: SOSO (#67)
Long live the Tzar. Oh.....wait.......he's dead and gone. Never mind.
Same old CaeSARean Oprichinki Ba'alshyte, different state-established municipal toilet.
#71. To: TooConservative (#69)
(Edited)
I don't come here to provide you a target
#72. To: VxH (#71)
#73. To: TooConservative (#72)
(Edited)
#74. To: VxH (#73)
#75. To: TooConservative (#74)
#76. To: Pridie.Nones (#68)
Most people are weak, silly, submissive creatures begging to be trained.
#77. To: VxH (#76)
And does organized religion typically result in the self- actualization of the individual -- or in the supression of individual self- actualization in the profit of whoever happens to be perched atop the state- establishment?
#78. To: Pridie.Nones (#77)
#79. To: Pridie.Nones (#68)
the vast majority of weak minded people NEED some sort of guidance in their life? If it is not "spiritual" in nature, it is government force in nature or perhaps an over-bearing relationship with somebody.
#80. To: VxH (#76)
And does organized religion typically result in the self- actualization of the individual -- or in the supression of individual self- actualization in the profit of whoever happens to be perched atop the state- establishment?
#81. To: A K A Stone (#80)
(Edited)
Your vision of the future is the USSR.
#82. To: GrandIsland (#79)
the vast majority of weak minded people NEED some sort of guidance in their life? If it is not "spiritual" in nature, it is government force in nature or perhaps an over-bearing relationship with somebody.
#83. To: rlk (#82)
Most people are weak, silly, submissive creatures that politicians, clergy, and educators have acquired the skill and power to manipulate.
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