Is God Dying? (Scientific American)

[pinto]

Good read. ~ pinto

Is God Dying?

The decline of religion and the rise of the “nones”
Nov 19, 2013 |By Michael Shermer

Since the early 20th century, with the rise of mass secular education and the diffusion of scientific knowledge through popular media, predictions of the deity's demise have fallen short, and in some cases—such as in that of the U.S.—religiosity has actually increased. This ratio is changing. According to a 2013 survey of 14,000 people in 13 nations (Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Israel, Canada, Brazil, India, South Korea, the U.K. and the U.S.) that was conducted by the German Bertelsmann Foundation for its Religion Monitor, there is both widespread approval for the separation of church and state, as well as a decline in religiosity over time and across generations.

In response to the statements “Only politicians who believe in God are suitable for public office” and “Leading religious figures should exercise an influence on government decisions,” even in über-religious America only 25 percent agreed with the former and 28 percent with the latter. All other countries reported lower figures (with Spain at or near the bottom at 8 and 13 percent and Germany in the middle at 10 and 21 percent, respectively). Moreover, most of the countries in the survey showed a declining trend in religiosity, especially among the youth. In Spain, for example, 85 percent of respondents older than 45 reported being moderately to very religious, but only 58 percent of those younger than 29 said they were. In Europe in general, only 30 to 50 percent said that religion is important in their own lives.

Why the decline? One factor is the dramatic spread of democracy around the globe over the past half a century. Most people surveyed agreed that democracy is a good form of government, with no differences across religious faiths. One of the features of a democracy is the disentanglement of the sacred from the secular because in religiously pluralistic countries no one can legitimately claim special status by faith membership. Democracies also have higher literacy rates and mass education that lead to a tolerance for the beliefs of others that, in turn, lowers the absolutism most religions in the past required, thus undermining the truth claims of any one religion over others.

A second factor is the opening up of economic borders, such as between member nations of the European Union, which replaces zero-sum religious tribalism with nonzero financial exchange. Free trade and the division of labor constitute the greatest generator of wealth in history, and according to the Religion Monitor report using the survey data, “socio-economic well-being generally results in a decline in the social significance of religion in society and a decrease in the numbers of people who base their life praxis on religious norms and rules.” Why? One of the social functions of religion is to help the poor, so as a country's impoverished declines (and, as in Sweden and other European countries, government social programs aid the poor), so, too, does religiosity. And because the middle classes of most countries are growing from the youth up, that could explain the report's assessment that “almost all the countries in the study … exhibit a decline in the centrality and significance of religion for daily life from one generation to another. As a general rule, the younger people are, the lower their religiosity.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-god-dying/

[Cooley Hurd]

1. God is dead:

...courtesy of National Lampoon's Disco Beaver from Outer Space:

[Cartoonist]

2. Nice graphic

?90B96

The article fails to recognize the influence of television and the internet. That's why the percentage of the young being non-religious is higher than that of the old folks. This is a great trend and bodes well for the future.

Beware: the comments section uses such words as deluded.

[pinto]

3. Yeah, I think the "information age" is a sea change in some ways.

The studies overlooked that, it seems, yet the SA article is all I read. Didn't read the comment section.

[Cartoonist]

4. Sometimes the comments section can be good

On sites like Yahoo, there are so many teabaggers commenting, it makes one sad for our country. I figured Scientific American readers would be more intelligent. They didn't disappoint. The subject of Islam came up and echoed opinions expressed here. Namely, that we should recognize its growing numbers while Jesus' numbers are slipping, and that we shouldn't be cowed into not criticizing Islamic extremism by demanding tolerance beause it's a religion, ya know.

[pinto]

5. I've missed objection to criticizing Islamic extremism here.

Have been in and out so it may have gone by the boards before I took a look at the forum. Or, I missed your point.

Yeah, the comments section on lots of websites are bizarre.

[tazkcmo]

6. He got the Ebola n/t

[littlemissmartypants]

7. But died from the influenza. nt

[trotsky]

8. As knowledge expands, god shrinks.

Interesting how that works.

[Act_of_Reparation]

9. Knowledge? Pft.

I'm pretty sure it was The Hulk.

[mr blur]

10. God is not dead - he just smells bad.

As someone once said.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

11. The word "God" is a useless concept.

Because language cannot express the "idea of the holy" as Rudolf Otto put it. The "mysterium tremendum".

The "Idea of the Holy" (from Wikipedia) book defines the concept of the holy as that which is numinous. Otto explained the numinous as a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self". He coined this new term based on the Latin numen (divine power). The holy is terrifying and fascinating at the same time.

Mircea Eliade built on this further:
(from Wikipedia) Eliade argues that religious thought in general rests on a sharp distinction between the Sacred and the profane;[85] whether it takes the form of God, gods, or mythical Ancestors, the Sacred contains all "reality", or value, and other things acquire "reality" only to the extent that they participate in the sacred.[86]

Eliade's understanding of religion centers on his concept of hierophany (manifestation of the Sacred)—a concept that includes, but is not limited to, the older and more restrictive concept of theophany (manifestation of a god).[87] From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies give structure and orientation to the world, establishing a sacred order. The "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation [is] given by virtue of its inherent structure".[88] Thus, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself. A hierophany amounts to a "revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the non-reality of the vast surrounding expanse".

Religious behavior commemorates but also recreates sacred events as in rituals.

[daleo]

12. He's just pining.