Atheists officially outnumber Christians for the 1st time
Discussion
daddy cool said:
Jockman said:
daddy cool said:
Jockman said:
daddy cool said:
Esseesse said:
sadly I think the decline in Christianity will not play out well for us.
How can the belief in things that dont exist being reduced be anything other than a good thing?If there is, then lets keep religion as the lesser or two evils. But otherwise lets let humanity progress in this vacuum.
XJ40 said:
otolith said:
Some people do accept what they are told because they are told it by an authority figure. Whether that's a priest, a doctor, a scientist or a policeman. That kind of faith in authority is the same mechanism, but it doesn't mean that the function is the same. Science may have pushed the church out of explaining some of the things we couldn't understand about the world, in the same way that the law or the welfare state have usurped other functions that the church used to provide, but none of them are directly replacing it, they're just making parts of it redundant.
I'd say a major function of both religion and science is to understand the world/existence and our place in it. Esseesse said:
Even if we were able to continue in the growing vacuum without it being filled, I'm not sure if that is preferable than living in a Christian society. Christianity in the UK has/had required/achieved a great deal of willingness for individual self control and restraint. Without that will we require the state to be ever more heavy handed (hate speech laws etc)?
You would prefer to be ruled by priests than by democracy?Einion Yrth said:
Eric Mc said:
These threads always take off like a rocket.
People may not be religious anymore but it seems many people are still fascinated by the concept.
As an anthropological study? Undoubtedly fascinating. Theology? Not so much.People may not be religious anymore but it seems many people are still fascinated by the concept.
Eric Mc said:
Einion Yrth said:
Eric Mc said:
These threads always take off like a rocket.
People may not be religious anymore but it seems many people are still fascinated by the concept.
As an anthropological study? Undoubtedly fascinating. Theology? Not so much.People may not be religious anymore but it seems many people are still fascinated by the concept.
Without it there would be one less stressful thing for me to have to disagree with my family about.
When your mother is Church of England and has spent many years looking forward to you and your bother having 'big church weddings' only to be really upset when they both turn round and say you are atheists and are not getting married in churches, that kind of upsets an otherwise parents and causes arguments.
And my parents are only mildly/casually religious, I can't imagine how bad it is for those from staunchly religious families. It must literally be Hell, pardon the pun.
I suspect religion causes many people a lot of angst in their lives at one point or another, and that it why it's such a hot topic for many.
Eric Mc said:
Still want to discuss it though.
It just shows that it is an area people hold strong opinions on - no matter what side of the equation they are coming from.
As my Dad always told me, " people always shout loudest and argue more fiercely when they don't really know the answer"It just shows that it is an area people hold strong opinions on - no matter what side of the equation they are coming from.
otolith said:
Esseesse said:
Even if we were able to continue in the growing vacuum without it being filled, I'm not sure if that is preferable than living in a Christian society. Christianity in the UK has/had required/achieved a great deal of willingness for individual self control and restraint. Without that will we require the state to be ever more heavy handed (hate speech laws etc)?
You would prefer to be ruled by priests than by democracy?Esseesse said:
I would like to be ruled by a democracy, but I would rather people who otherwise would-be thieves were god fearing.
Gypsies are usually very god fearing. People who are god fearing tend to be up to the point where it might impinge on what they want to do, at which point they just do what the like anyway.Paedo priests etc.
XJ40 said:
Smollet said:
Spot on. Religion is about belief. Science is about knowledge and thus requires no need to believe in its findings.
I don't agree. There's a trust and an appeal to authourity involved with science that requires belief. For example, unless you have a large hadron collider in your back garden, you're going to have to trust and believe in the peer review process and it's output. And if a scientific view/theory is replaced with a new better one, you're going to have to perform a paradigm shift and modify the model of reality you believe in.Esseesse said:
I'm not religious in the spiritual sense, however sadly I think the decline in Christianity will not play out well for us.
+1 - typed loads more and deleted for fear of upsetting others. I tolerate all peoples beliefs but others do not. We are one race - we should not be fighting over fairies and other worldly beings we have NO proof of.
Efbe's point about science bring treated as pseudo-religion is absolutely spot on. Of course "scientism" is a completely daft distortion of real scientific thought, but that doesn't stop loads of people indulging in it. It is indeed about people's craving for certainty, cause and meaning. Science doesn't offer these; indeed it precludes such certainty absolutely. Religions don't really try to offer them either, but that's for another thread.
Efbe said:
generally speaking, for 99% of the population, people need to have a belief.
The move from christianity to atheism is not just a removal of this need for a belief, the belief has changed to science.
Most people that say religion is nonsense will put their faith in scientific laws and theories of which they have no concept, and are just as alien to them as the idea of a divine ruler.
Therefore science has just become another religion. people need to believe in something. The only problem is that science does not inherently come with a nice moral rulebook, of which the major religions did come with, no matter how badly they were interpreted/implemented.
The point being... I do not think for the vast majority of people you can remove religion. It needs to be replaced with something else. Another religion.
In attempting to remove it, you will bolster the arguement and push towards something else.
It's rare for me to say it but I couldn't agree with you less. Totally ridiculous comments.The move from christianity to atheism is not just a removal of this need for a belief, the belief has changed to science.
Most people that say religion is nonsense will put their faith in scientific laws and theories of which they have no concept, and are just as alien to them as the idea of a divine ruler.
Therefore science has just become another religion. people need to believe in something. The only problem is that science does not inherently come with a nice moral rulebook, of which the major religions did come with, no matter how badly they were interpreted/implemented.
The point being... I do not think for the vast majority of people you can remove religion. It needs to be replaced with something else. Another religion.
In attempting to remove it, you will bolster the arguement and push towards something else.
TwigtheWonderkid said:
ATG said:
It is indeed about people's craving for certainty, cause and meaning. Science doesn't offer these; indeed it precludes such certainty absolutely.
Does it? Are we not certain that the Earth isn't flat, and that we orbit the sun and not visa versa?But even in the cases, such as the ones you give, where we'd be mighty bloody surprised if we woke up next Tuesday to find we had been "wrong", the kind of certainty in those statements is rather wishy washy, i.e. not really certainty at all. It's a sort of provisional certainty, if you'll excuse the oxymoron. To be able to say "x orbits y" when describing real physical objects, you aren't saying much unless you can explain what you mean by "orbit", and that step leads you onto a fascinating path into fundamental physics which leads to anything but fundamental, absolute certainty.
Really there isn't a lot of difference between science, religion and a great deal of philosophy, they're different sides of the same coin, they're just expressions of the human condition and a need to explain and control both our perception of the universe around us and our immediate responses to it. The pursuit of knowledge is a primary human instinct as long as the knowledge fits (satisfies the question at the time) then it works, a lot of Abrahamic religious dogma no longer fits for a lot of people.
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