From the news wire this morning:
A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.
Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.
“No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state,” the study’s authors said.
That’s what I call the secular secular trend.
full data set:
http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/
Good to see. I’m not in America, but from the media I got the impression religion was on the rise there compared to a few years ago. I guess the religious groups have just gotten more vocal, possibly due to the events of 9/11, and an increased animosity towards islam and threat from the outside.
It was very depressing, though, to see how important religion was during the election process, the inauguration etc. You could also tell from the fake emotions of the candidates, that they just knew they had to praise religion, boast about their ‘relationship’ with Jesus and its importance in their lives, in order to not ruin their chances to get elected.
Neither McCain nor Obama really seemed all that religious to me in their personal lives, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were very dishonest about the extent of their religious beliefs during the campaign.
I don’t know about McCain, but Obama’s belief is covered in pp. 175-176 of Steve Sailer’s book. The short answer to the question “What does Obama believe?” seems to be “Nothing much.” Steve’s an honest man, and has made a very close study of Obama’s autobiography. America’s Half-Blood Prince is in fact a sort of book-length book review of Dreams from my Father. I’m therefore inclined to accept Steve’s analysis. However, if anyone knows of evidence the other way on Obama’s religious beliefs, I’d be most interested to hear it.
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“I guess the religious groups have just gotten more vocal, possibly due to the events of 9/11, and an increased animosity towards islam and threat from the outside.”
I don’t want to be snarky, but the “events” of 9-11 included the wanton slaughter of thousands of U.S. citizens by some fairly religious folk. As far as the “increased animosity toward Islam,” I freakin’ wish! Most of America’s Christian denominations went into full appeasement mode. The American Catholic Church released an official love letter to Islam so obsequious it was difficult to tell which religion, Christianity or Islam, they thought was more holy.
The mainline Protestant sects (Episcopalian, Lutheran) and various Evangelical churches (Methodist, Church of Christ, etc.) all did their version of kiss-Muslim-ass, with the Church of Christ taking home the gold when one of its leaders gave the equivalent of an inter-religious hand job to the leader of Hezbollah (“They’re so much friendlier than those Jews”).
This love-in was offset by a few Baptists who chimed in with defamatory (i.e. true) facts about the pedophile prophet, while reminding us of God’s role as real-estate broker in the Holy Land. All in all, not much “animosity” from the followers of the Jewish carpenter, who is described on many Christian social-justice websites as “the first Palestinian.”
I’m just saying…
The god worshippers will attempt to correlate this with our current national decline. What do you say to those who blame ‘godless druggies’ for causing the ills of society?
Derb: I believe McCain was raised was raised Episcopalian, but now attends his wife’s Baptist Church. Obama, from what I can tell, most likely made a political decision to join the most influential Black Church in Chicago. He will likely continue to identify as a generic Protestant. I doubt America will ever elect as President a professed atheist.
Godless druggies don’t bother me. Let them sit in their ratty apartments chasing the dragon.
Godless leftists are a menace, though only marginally more so than godly ones. Millennarianism was originally a godly doctrine, remember.
Godly conservatives are America’s sheet anchor. I’m with Gibbon’s magistrate on this.
Godless conservatives are, however, the wisest, justest, and best!
That’s crazy talk Bradlaugh. The only thing godly conservatives can be relied on to do in an emergency is pray and attack the first thing that looks like a scapegoat.
Bradlaugh is right about Steve Sailer’s depiction of Obama as empty of religious belief. He agreed with the general thrust of Wright’s anti-white rantings because he was trained that way by his disgruntled mother.He has already demonstrated his socialist beliefs and his rather shallow, almost lazy tendency to implement hasty judgments to quickly get his way. Not many surproses here.He is a supreme opportunist.
Bradlaugh is misguided to morally disregard a huge druggie subculture that includes epidemic abuse of alcohol, as well. Godless or not, they do not bode well for our future.Young people consider drugs and alcohol fundamental rights. Since they meet with little resistance until the police haul them in, they meet no agency that can moderate their sortees into oblivion. I see the effects of indiscriminate drinking at sports events that are increasingly unruly. Control of behavior at such events has become a major issue. Godless or otherwise, druggies cannot be ignored if you have a moral conscience, for their acts are not private much of the time, as they were many years ago. When they crash into your car you may begin to think otherwise.
The godless trend is, in my opinion, a byproduct of the general decline of society. The Sixties tidal wave of leftist sentiment led to eventually lax standards across the board-morally, religiously, educationally, professionally, and culturally.We are racing the Brits to the bottom!Vulgarity was once obscene but today in Hip-Hop it is celebrated-with whites as copycats.. Once you overlay the horrendous shackles of PC over this amalgram of gluttinous, slovenly depravity, you realize that Bradlaugh’s disinterest can only aggravate the downward trend. I believe that the atheists among us are a minor factor in our decline because the moral depravity and vulgarity are a swamp that will produce godlessness by default. Those who cannot overcome their personal demons with religion are good candidates for easy atheism or complete indifference, neither of which is worthy of respect.Godlessness by itself is not to be feared if a society has traditions and mores strong enough to offset human primal tendencies.However,European countries that could have achieved a splendid balance without excessive diversity are on track to decline like the US and UK because of liberal ideals. What a shame.
Troost: “Those who cannot overcome their personal demons with religion are good candidates for easy atheism”
Pretending your demons were created and destroyed by imaginary deities is hardly overcoming them; nor is having to face the personal responsibilities inherent to atheism the easy route.
“Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions.” – Frater Ravus
I agree with Cornelius that the drift towards godlessness is epiphenomenal, one consequence of deep social tides, and probably all effect, not a cause of anything. I doubt if you could find any one among those throngs of misbehaving sports fans to declare: “Hey, there’s no God, so I can do as I like!”
I do think he’s elevating minor phenomena to major ones, though. I especially think so with regard to whites as copycats of black slum culture. There is certainly some of that — the “wigger” teen is a well-known feature of suburbia — but with two teen suburban kids myself, my strong impression is that the great majority of white teens will run a mile from anything celebrated by hip-hop fans. My daughter (16) knows the term “wigger,” but says she knows of no actual instances.
For Steel Phoenix: You are simply wrong re the great power of belief to heal and bring comfort and solace to vast numbers of grieving people.Religion can literally save lives just as it has the potential for destruction of lives. Some “easy” atheists are those who cannot resolve personal issues via religion and become disenchanted, so to speak. Your point about imaginary deities is beside the point.The exact “cause” of one’s healing is not important.
For Bradlaugh: You are right re sports fans but civility is under enormous pressure from various and sundry forces for radical individualism. My sunny Florida is the nation’s hotbed for male sexual predators so perhaps I see more depravity than one would see in Vermont, for instance.Also, Florida is host to santuary policies and vast loads of illegals who degrade the local landscape with crime and disorder.Rounding up 100-200 tatooed young men every month or so doesn’t seem to lead anywhere.You cannot ignore the changing landscape that will eventually modify substantially the character of our nation.
You misunderstand my point on “copycats.” While the sharpest kids will run from the worst depravity, it is still sociologically significant that black culture is protected by taboos and given free reign in the MSM and entertainment industries. Everyone is afraid to strongly criticize deviant, counterproductive behavior. The ripple effect of this cowardice will surely coarsen our social life.Public morality- for better or worse- derives from our Christian tradition and is the cornerstone of our social life.I see no panacea in epiphenomanal atheism, but vulgar, crude, violent slobs without religion as a suppressant are a threat to civilization.
Now that Obama and Eric Holder can engineer the criminal justice system, we may see crime statistics soar again as released inmates “do their thing.” If police are then hamstrung by PC mandates anyone with insufficient melanin is in trouble.Big Brother may be coming to town after all.
Troost:
Any wound you an heal with religion, I can heal without it.
What comfort religion gives to some, it tends to take away from others in hate and worry.
You can try to blame black people and Obama for the mess we are in, but they aren’t the ones who caused out current macroeconomic issues. Did the ghetto go to congress claiming to be too big to fail? How many of the trillions were squandered by or received by black people? We don’t call it white collar crime for nothing. Believing you don’t live in a glass house won’t stop the stones.
A true believer wouldn’t turn to atheism because they thought it would let them sin without consequence or because it was easy, any more than an atheist would decide to believe in religion in order to go to heaven. Their belief or disbelief is absolute and not based on laziness, because it is honest. Those who are on the fence fail on both accounts. God doesn’t take in nonbelievers, and reality has a scientific bias.
Associating tattoos with crime? I could just as easily associate religious vestments with homosexual relations with young boys.
For Steel Phoenix,
What can I say to your absolutism except to note its raw simplicity.You interpret human nature far too simplistically.For one, religion has complex relationships with art, music, philosophy, literature, and history as well as its deep and somewhat mysterious interaction with the human psyche.Its great positive effects may be delusions, but they work very effectively for many.While I spend some time shooting down its epistemology in my book, I still respect its role in assuaging the human spirit and reinforcing the weak basic human moral sense.Relax and give it the credit due.
You are right that our cultural decline is complex and not entirely a black phenomenon despite black chaos in nearly every nation where their numbers are significant.Our decline was directly associated with the Sixties revolution and the destruction of all forms of authority via radical liberalism and loss of the Protestant ethic and our terribly important meritocracy. We now fudge grades and institute massive remediation of black deficiences while using affirmative action to transform higher education into a postmodern pseudoacademic playground.The PC environment based upon massive muticultural propaganda makes the “inequality taboo” an ironclad threat to freedom of expression. Remember Charles Murray and James D. Watson? Recall Don Imus and Jimmy the Greek? Iam not associating taboos with crime, but with talking honestly about delicate topics in a nation where “dirty talk” is now open and public.We are supersensitive in a very selective way to protect specific groups.We became rich rather quickly but failed to find a solution to our culture wars.Spending untold billions to redistribute wealth will only degrade the best democracy the world has known. Bradlaugh’s UK is also trapped by the corrosive effects of multiculturalism and, like the US, will sadly decline into a Northern version of Brazil or even worse.
The problem imo is that our society fails to indoctrinate enough young people with the work ethic and respect for others that leads to social stability. In most cultures such indoctrination has been the function of religion. Some religions are better at it than others. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be religious in nature, but certain behaviors have to be reinforced for ongoing social success. I think there is a growing number who do not come from nor identify with any particular religious tradition and say they have no religion, here referred to as “lazy atheists”. These folks are certainly a different breed from atheists who arose from cultures with strong religious traditions as well as a culture of education and enlightenment. I would call these people intelligent skeptics. They are in my estimation honest and convinced in their atheism. They aren’t just miscreants, nor lazy or criminal.
sg: What do you call lazy, criminal, or otherwise miscreant non-believers who never worked for their beiefs and care not a bit about defending them?you are illustrating postmodernism perfectly.To become an atheist in the USSR one simply stopped practicing religion.Some brave souls(excuse the term) practiced secretly but many millions lost their faith under those repressive conditions. There is little to admire in those atheists. Becoming an atheist in fifties America was far less deadly but was still Promethean because you were an immediate outcast.Lord Russell had a terible time in the USA because of his atheism, just as D.H. Lawrence was completely censored by our publishing industry in the 1920’s.To stand up for Lawrence or Russell took guts galore.We were indeed a far more conservative culture back then.Look at old Hollywood movies!
I admire those who, like the late Walter Kaufmann of Princeton, wrote eloquent books on atheism for the educated reader. Kaufmann also defended humility as a virtue before America slid into its liberal therapeutic and narcissistic mode that paved the way for Obama.Humility is today shunned almost as much as shame. James Hillman wrote an obituary for shame a decade or so ago and announced the death of morality as a consequence. How does one feel shame in a society that claims that its children are perfect? The last thing they want is the “pathology” of shame, but with the bathwater goes the baby!