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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: 23454
Comments: 83
Atheist teen girl holding a banner with the inscription-"THERE IS NO GOD" (Shutterstock)
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. (1 image)
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 51.
And that's as American as Apple Pie and Thomas Jefferson...
"...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;...that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. ""I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY TO EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN"--The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom
--Thomas Jefferson, 1786
#17. To: VxH (#9)
Turning away from organized religion in record numbers....[is] as American as Apple Pie and Thomas Jefferson...
Well now -- is "Gay Marriage" also as "American as Apple Pie and Thomas Jefferson" as well?
Frankly, Jefferson's wisdom in the area of Salvation was found to be sorely lacking. If the "record number" of sheep choose to follow his example, they do so at their own eternal peril.
#21. To: Liberator (#17)
Frankly, Jefferson's wisdom in the area of Salvation was found to be sorely lacking.
Not to be too much of a smartass but, 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.
#22. To: TooConservative (#21) (Edited)
He was not at all soft on sodomy.
On the right track, but unfortunately castration wouldn't have had an impact upon the self-evident predisposition for human biology to produce reproductively inert worker bees in the context of severe environmental stress.
I suspect the Eunuch's running the Pharaoh's pyramid scheme were aware of that natural consequence -- and exploited it for their own religious propagation.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fr...e/secrets-of-the-vatican/
Same ol' Ba'alshyte, different municipal toilet.
#23. To: VxH (#22)
I suspect the Eunuch's running the Pharaoh's pyramid scheme were aware of that natural consequence -- and exploited it for their own religious propagation.
Egypt was not the only monarchy that used eunuchs as key servants of the state, most often from slave backgrounds. Islam and other empires made extensive use of eunuchs in government.
#24. To: TooConservative (#23)
Egypt was not the only monarchy that used eunuchs as key servants of the state
The world’s first city developed around its temples, and only later did palaces play a role. Its view of the world was conditioned, as in all ancient societies, by totalitarian religious belief. So the picture that comes into focus is that of a theocratic command economy, hierarchically organized , centrally directed, and regulated according to an ideology propagated by a priesthood, playing the role that, 5,000 years later, Soviet Marxists would call ‘the engineers of human souls’. Such was temple rule.
Kriwaczek, Paul (2012-03-27). Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization (p. 53). St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.
Yep. Such was temple rule.
Evidently at some point the Eunuch's took over the state- established asylum.
#26. To: VxH (#24)
Evidently at some point the Eunuch's took over the state- established asylum.
A natural outgrowth of the harem system actually.
If the sultan or emperor could trust his harem to the eunuchs, he could find other uses for them as well. And the eunuchs would have no family connections, no axes to gore other than service to the Grand Poobah of the current regime.
Civil government was often dominated by these eunuchs of the ancient empires. This persisted until relatively modern times in the Islamic world.
#27. To: TooConservative (#26)
And the eunuchs would have no family connections,
"And some were by birth."
This persisted until relatively modern times in the Islamic world.
It obviously still persists in the Vatican - regardless of whatever plumage the CaeSARean sun-parrots try to wear in public.
#28. To: VxH (#27)
"And some were by birth."
I think you know that most eunuchs were castrati, not congenitally deformed or asexual types which are quite rare in nature.
#29. To: TooConservative (#28) (Edited)
asexual types which are quite rare in nature.
That must be news to the majority of the individuals in any bee colony.
Who would be a more obedient worker-bee in the state-established hive: a castrati or...
www.google.com/? gws_rd=ss...nsensitivity+syndrome+XXY
I think the occult religious hive-masters knew more about procreating their state-establishing ilk than just wielding a knife.
#31. To: VxH (#29)
That must be news to the majority of the individuals in any bee colony.
We're not discussing apiculture.
#33. To: TooConservative (#31) (Edited)
We're not discussing apiculture.
Bee colonies aren't part of nature?
" not congenitally deformed or asexual types which are quite rare in nature."
Evidently not so rare among colonizing insects.
I wonder how rare it was in Delphic culture...
#35. To: VxH (#33)
‹sigh›
Eunuchs are not insects.
#36. To: TooConservative (#35)
asexual types which are quite rare in nature."
Evidently not as rare in nature as you assert. Care to rephrase?
Eunuchs are not insects.
Nonetheless, they modeled their state-establishments after the insects they kept.
#37. To: VxH (#36)
Nonetheless, they modeled their state-establishments after the insects they kept.
I don't think you can produce an iota of evidence that eunuchs and their role was established by rulers creating a system based on insects.
It sounds daft. We've reached the 'jumping the shark' phase, it seems.
#38. To: TooConservative (#37) (Edited)
I don't think you can produce an iota of evidence that eunuchs and their role was established by rulers creating a system based on insects.
Oh - What / who were the Delphic Bees?
Regardless of what inspired them, the role the religious Eunuch Sun-Parrots had in mind for their obediently pacified (and tything) McSheeple is plainly self-evident among the various corporal state-establishments they've managed to temporaly concoct throughout history.
What do you think the religious con-artists in the territory of Deseret had in mind for the bee-hive state?
Got Reformed Egyptian?
#40. To: VxH (#38)
Oh - What / who were the Delphic Bees?
They were not connected to the roles of eunuchs in medieval and ancient empires.
#41. To: TooConservative (#40) (Edited)
They were not connected to the roles of eunuchs in medieval and ancient empires.
Quack, waddle...
www.google.com/? gws_rd=ssl#q=Delphic+prostitutes
https://www.google.com/? gws_rd=ssl#q=XXY+body+hair
Is that a hairless occult duck being sold by the Eunuch money changers upon their temporal steps?
#42. To: VxH (#41) (Edited)
Stop changing the subject. You merely flit from one search result to the next with a lot of distractions.
Since you're turning this thread into your own Fun With Google weekend excursion, I'll leave you to it.
#51. To: TooConservative (#42)
Lol...You're rolling.
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