This Gallup poll from a few weeks ago is a bit less disconcerting.
Posted on 12/29/2004 8:37:13 PM PST by Catholic54321
ONLY 44% NOW BELIEVE IN GOD Dec 28 2004
By Sean Connolly
PEOPLE who believe God exists are now a minority in Britain, a survey claimed yesterday.
According to a poll by YouGov, just 44 per cent believe in God compared to 77 per cent in 1968.
A majority - 81 per cent - also believe the country is becoming more secular, with fewer people going to places of worship.
But among this percentage, 68 per cent of believers and 14 per cent of non-believers, regretted that society was becoming less religious.
Only a third of the 1,981 people who took part in the online survey believe in heaven and even fewer believe in the devil. Just a quarter think hell exists. Fewer than half, 43 per cent, believed their souls would outlast their bodily life.
Young people especially are significantly less religious than older generations, with more than a third saying they were agnostics or atheists.
Among middle-aged people and the elderly, the figure is far smaller, according to YouGov.
One in four who were asked whether or not they believed in God, replied "don't know".
This Gallup poll from a few weeks ago is a bit less disconcerting.
The Big Guy upstairs .. that's who
My mother use to always tell me .. you will need your religion/faith before it needs you
The pollsters here are a fairly bs organisation on the whole, so I wouldn't take their numbers too seriously.
In the last national census conducted in 2001, 71% of the country identified themselves as "Christians". If the figures above were accurate then it would identify the fact that the majority of Christians in Britain do not believe in God.
That might be correct, however, because most Brits are pig-ignorant about anything outside of soap operas and "Big Brother".
"I only align with my people and do so by recognizing and keeping the enemy known and disseminated and in my people's counsciousness.
You, on the other hand, seem to be aligning yourself with the islamist enemy by recognizing their moon god."
People who do not believe in God are just as subversive of civilisation as those who believe in false gods.
"The fact is that Britain's society has changed due to an incredible number of forces at work, and to see that as decline is silly, considering how much better off I am personally than my grandparents and certainly the generations before."
To use a measure of material wealth as the yardstick of how "better off" a society is, is itself a sign of how you are worse off than previous generations.
"If 66% of people do not believe in a deity, surely as long as both they and the minority are free to live by their beliefs there is no cause for alarm."
If 66% of people do not believe in a deity, then they are not free, and before long they will be using force to enslave those who do believe as well.
I have heard that Islam is worship of a moon god....where does this come from?
This link is from the Catholic Encyclopedia online......a trusted site.
Their take on Mohammed and Mohammedanism (Islam)
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10424a.htm
See also the listing on Allah:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01316a.htm
sad news about the UK if it's true. But I'm not too afraid of something on that scale happening here in the US. In my experience, my generation (23) has about as many secularists as my parent's gen, BUT the ones my age who are religious often are more devout and traditional than our parents. I've read in several places about the growing trend of orthodoxy, conservatism, and traditionalism among young Catholics and Evangelicals. This is only in America tho, maybe Canada too, but certainly not in Europe. In Europe the youth are as secular as can be and there's little hope for the future IMO. But here in the US, I really believe that we are the wave of the future, at least for religious folks. The secularists will always be with us too, and sadly US society will probably become more divided and polarized between the secular Left and the religious Right than it is now. On the bright side, the right tends to breed more so I think eventually we'll outnumber them ;)
CS Lewis and GK Chesterton are rolling over in their graves.
I agree that America will become more divided along religious/non-religious lines. However, that division is mainly being caused by people of faith.
Another BS survey. No way that many people in Britain actually believe in God.
What metric am I supposed to use instead of the fact that most people are no longer living hand-to-mouth, Tantumergo?
"If 66% of people do not believe in a deity, then they are not free, and before long they will be using force to enslave those who do believe as well."
No one is being coerced by the state to follow a religion or not, and no adult is required to tolerate anyone trying to coerce ver: I consider this a more accurate approximation to being 'free' than whatever concept you might have. I fail to see why non-believers would use coercion.
Perhaps you are referring to the concept of being spiritually enslaved. This is a logical contradiction (read: absurdity) if you don't have religious beliefs.
LOL sassbox, that's the catch with the culture of death. It exterminates itself out of existence. I saw an article on the Australian government begging it's citizens to please have more children. If I can find it again tonight I'll post it.
As far as there being the same amount of secularists, I don't know what your defintition exactly is. Weather a poll tells us that people believe in God or not is really quite useless except for politicians. What is vital is how many people act and live as though the existence of God was paramount in their lives. And despite the 90% of Americans that believe in "a higher being" (a very fuzzy image), I would tend to think that most of those responding still live their lives as if He didn't exist. This really is just practical atheism when it comes right down to it.
hmmm...just joined today, with a wiccan tagline, and bashing religious people....I smell a troll....
by secularist, I meant atheists and agnostics but also the folks you described who have a "practical atheism" and even I'd add folks who say they are "spiritual but not religious" since that usually amounts to practical atheism in everyday life. Of course many religious folks often forget to act as if God is paramount in their lives too.
No, I'm not a "troll", or a "wiccan". Do you care to address my statement that people of faith are the ones who are deepening the divisions in our society?
Sybeck1, Everyone lives in the "here and now", believers and non-believers alike. I mean, when else would we live? It's always "here", and it's always "now", isn't it?
Also, I think everyone has hope. Even non-believers hope that consciousness survives physical death, but this is something that nobody knows for certain, despite the protestations of the faithful to the contrary.
My concern today is the ease with which certain people of faith - both Christian and Muslim - seem so eager to draw lines in the sand.
Tantumergo, I don't believe in God in the same way that Christians and Muslims do, yet I find myself feeling that the greatest threat to civilisation today comes from people who profess such faith, not from those who don't.
As we can easily observe, the loudest pleas for peace and understanding are coming from secularists. It is the faithful who are rattling sabers. Is this not correct?
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