Posted on 03/22/2011 8:51:02 AM PDT by van_erwin
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.
The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.
The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Some of those may indeed flip from nominally Christian to Muslim, but none will be religion-free.
You can’t fight something with nothing.
Many of the European nations collect church tithing directly through the government, ie. it’s taken out of your paycheck as a tax. I’ve always felt this was a determining factor in weakening attendance. In Germany to opt out...you have to prove you have “officially” left the church, or whatever religion you used to belong to.
The reality is that, a number of European nations that do NOT appear on this list, are in that category ONLY because Islam is the predominately PRACTICED religion there.
My guess is that the rest of Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, and Norway) are in this category: the most practiced religion there is Islam.
That is probably true also of the UK, Belgium and Luexemberg, and Spain.
Not sure of Italy; I think the provincial French are still fairly practicing Catholics.
Poland is in a different class altogether: it will be the source of any Light left on that Continent.
All that said, in each of those countries slated for the extinguishment of religion, are vibrant, faithful Christians.
“The Light shines in the Darkness, and the darkness cannot put it out.”
Believe it or not, Africans have gone as missionaries to Europe.
I have known of some myself.
Ha, ha! Read my comment #45 which I posted before I read your post!
I, too, know Africans who are missionaries in Europe!
Yes.
The Party members are quite interested in Christianity because their children are among the converts!
The Koreans came to this understanding over 40 years ago, and invited missionaries to come to Korea.
Fifty years ago, Korea and Egypt had the same GDP.
What has made the difference?
That is most accurately said about WWI. The Nazis did not claim that God was on their side, but the various royal cousins who set their countries to war during WWI thought so.
WWI poets such as Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen gave voice to the pointlessness of it all and the seeming slence of God. The loss of faith of Europeans is rooted in the meaningless losses in the trenches of WWI.
“The loss of faith of Europeans is rooted in the meaningless losses in the trenches of WWI.”
Maybe so but most of Europe did not see the trenches in WWl even though an entire generation of young men disappeared.
I was thinking of the number of civilians killed, maimed, murdered, tortured, displaced and also participated in all of the above is unprecedented. The complete and total destruction of homes, villages, towns and whole cities was incredible. The experiences of the common soldier, best summarized by Erich Maria Remarque who dedicated “All Quiets on the Western Front” to those who survived the war but not the peace. I put those words on my fathers tombstone. He was haunted by what he experienced in WWll until the day he died.
Did you even read to the end? Where they admit their model is ‘fatally flawed, but we’ll release it anyway to titillate the Dawkinists’...
Australia is only 24% (in 2004), but that’s nearly identical to the 25% who went weekly in 1995, and up from 21% in 1980."
Exactly. And another thing about Oz, they all believe in God to some degree, they just don't go to bloody church.
I dare anyone who disagrees to go into any NSW pub and blaspheme, "Screw Jesus and all His Believers." You'd be beaten to a pulp. But in the-conspicuously-absent-on-this-list Norway? Hell, they'd probably give you a Nazi salute...
-——all are Christian——
were.....
It is probably the case that the time devoted to religion is reduced, as it competes with other activities. This will by many be interpreted as the end of religion, but I do not think so. We will still subscribe to Judeo-Christian values. Islam is different, it is a political religion, with a strange mind set that is foreign to Western values and has to be opposed.
Yeah, the nine largest predominantly Islamic states, the sooner the better. ;’) Thanks AdmSmith.
I haven’t read the whole thread.
But as far as the muzlames go, you can’t lose something you never had.
Will never happen. God always has a remnant of every nation.
Religion will never become extinct.
Spreading darkness
You mean sorta like that last bit of dogcrap you can’t seem to scrape off your shoe?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.