Posted on 08/15/2012 7:51:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A new poll suggests that 1 in 20 Americans now call themselves atheists, a fivefold increase from the last time the survey was taken in 2005.
The Religion News Service reports that, to go along with the jump, just 60 percent of Americans now identify as religious, down from 73 percent the last time the Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism poll was taken seven years ago. The decline has also been felt in many other countries around the world, including double-digit drops in several European and North American countries.
Here's the question pollsters asked 50,000 or so people from 57 countries and five continents: "Irrespective of whether you attend a place of worship or not, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious person, or a convinced atheist?"
Overall, the WIN-Gallup International-conducted poll found about 13 percent of respondents worldwide consider themselves atheists, and also showed notable disparities in atheism among faiths.
The stark findings set off some expected resistance, including a theory that the poll shows less a rise in atheists than in people who are willing to identify as one, especially with the rise of popular, outspoken skeptics like Richard Dawkins.* Others questioned the poll's international standards.
(Excerpt) Read more at slatest.slate.com ...
...
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
...
Kipling nailed it.
Kipling nailed the next century ... from the vantage point of 1919.
Meanwhile, as Christian faith declines in Europe, with enlightened individuals rejecting doctrines of gods and other such “trivialities”, the sect of Mohammadism descends upon the face of Western Civilization. You cannot have a vacuum of belief; it will be filled, either with Truth or with Death.
Does this mean Atheists are evil? I don’t see them as a threat. The believers, like the Wahhabi religious fanatics of Saudi Arabia and Iran are far more of a threat. Atheists aren’t Jihadists or Crusaders.
Because preachers have never committed adultery
Then there are those who identify themselves as Christian (CINO)...and have no daily prayer/Scripture reading and who do not follow the Christian path of holiness.
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do (1 Peter 1:15)
“Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” ... Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.” ...GK Chesterton
No surprise here. The Scriptures clearly tell of these in the end times. More is coming. Read your Bible. It is all there.
They’ll be saying their prayers when they or their loved ones are dying.
Not surprised. The scriptures indicate that evil is going to increase in the latter days.
Are they going to sing John Lennon’s “Imagine” in Korean ? :)
RE: The scriptures indicate that evil is going to increase in the latter days.
Not defending the beliefs of the atheists, but I have a few atheist friends who will object to equating their belief with “evil”. Just sayin’.
Yes.
I don’t see them as a threat.
I don't see them as a personal threat either. Doesn't mean they aren't evil.
"Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins." (Ecc. 7:20)
Really? Look up the names 'Josef Stalin' and 'Mao Tse-Tung' and get back to us on that.
Some (not all) atheists are really as fanatical 'believers' as any religious zealot. The aforementioned names and many of their clones and epigones over the last century attest to their bloodlust in imposing their vision 'heaven on earth'.
Oh, and by the way, our pResident Zerobama is, IMHO, a fanatical atheist as well. If he gets another term, I'm afraid that he'll take us down the same road that Stalin took Russia and Mao took China. Be very afraid.
Yeah, they probably would. There are some atheists who call Christian belief evil. :::Shrug:::
More have been killed in the name of atheism or humanism in the past 100 years than all of the religions combined in all of history.
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