Example U.S ( religiosity is on decline in U.S while atheism is on the rise ). Why are people losing faith in god/religion ?



Whats your opinion OT?

 

Because science.



Most of us also quit believing in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy also along the way.



I fully support other people's right to have their own beliefs. If you weren't told repeatedly during your formative years that everything around you was created a few thousand years ago by some guy (who also appeared from nothing apparently) that is not a logical conclusion to come to. So what you have are basically 4 groups:



A. The people who were not raised religious and don't see any real evidence to convince them that they should become religious.



B. The people who were not raised religious but after they've matured they've decided that they should be religious.



C. The people who were raised religious and the main reason that they are religious is due to their upbringing.



D. The people who were raised religious but after they've matured they've decided that they are not convinced that their religion is correct.



I know many people in groups A, C, and D, but almost nobody in group B.



For me personally it just doesn't make any sense, at all, to think that everything in the entire universe was created by some unseen entity. That doesn't seem likely or logical and nothing even bordering on reasonable evidence to support this has been presented. I'm not truly an atheist though, I just don't know how the universe got to the current configuration. It could possibly have been created by something, but I don't think that's the most likely scenario.

 

I was brought up Catholic. I went to church every Sunday. I was baptized, had my first communion, confirmation etc.. My Mom gave me the choice when I was 14 if I wanted to continue going. Obviously, like the majority of 14 year old's when giving the chance, I stopped going. Now that I'm older I decided "why not give church another shot?". Holy crap that was a mistake. Church is SO BORING! I don't need to get up early on Sunday and go listen to some priest babble on about god and how great he is and how we should be more like him. I'm positive that you can be a good Catholic and not go to church.

 

I can't say my folks forced religion down my throat by any stretch. I fact, I can only think of a hand full of times we actually went to church as a kid. As I grew older and more cynical, I started seeing the same people that were just sitting in church, wearing the most expensive suite they could afford, trying to prove one hour a week, in a random building, that they are more pious than the person next to them. I believe in a deity, I have my own evidence from experiences in my life that to me prove beyond the shadow of a doubt. I have also visited a lot of religions trying to find the one that suits me best. Every christian faith church had the same site, people driving the best cars, in the best suits, and as soon as the church was out of sight shelved their best behavior. I once saw 2 men get in a fist fight over a minor bump leaving the church parking lot. Its enough to make anyone sick. When I was in my younger 20s I revised my old church after hearing they had establish a casual sermon. After the pastor retired they canned the service and I now live hours from there, but that service was the best I have ever seen as were the church crowds actions both inside and out of the church grounds. It's my firm belief that a deity who is supposedly omnipotent doesn't give a sh*t what you wear/drive/act to worship for an hour or so, any more than he/she/it does the other 167(+/-) hours that week.







So um.... a little from column b, a little from column d, with a side of c.







And yes, I'm a a total dick. But I refuse to act nice once a week at church, it's like lying to your God. Like he doesn't know better

So it's not hypocritical.....

 

Catholicism.



A large majority of "atheists" that I meet, know, talk to will start out with, "I used to be Catholic"

 

Catholicism isn't a religion, it's a political party.

 

Yup

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMnThZgN-PM[/media]

 

I'm boiling the kettle and getting a comfy chair ready, because whatnot is surely doing up a nice evening's reading as we speak.

 

^^ LOL nice, I started before your post....but odly enough, finished after, that never happens lol Like I took a lot of time to write this or something lol.

I was just hitting the forum up real quick before going to bed, was going to get 8:06 hours of sleep, now the alarm is saying 6:47, 6:07 after editing/adding more.... I can sleep when I'm dead though, so that is aight.



What are you GMT+10? I am GMT+4:30 (though on night shift so really close to EST), so I am sure most are sleeping on the EST. I tried to keep it short enough that some might actually want to read.







There is a difference in your questions, or you are asking many. Religiousity is on the decline because it is being exposed for what it is. I wouldn't so much say atheism is on the rise though. I don't think very many are losing with in God, though many are losing faith in religion.





This is a huge reason they are turning away from religion.



Sure God doesn't care what we wear, the reason some do wear their best is a personal respect thing. They were raised that a suit is respectful, and being they respect God and want to dress their best. I don't fault anyone for wearing a best suit, just as I don't fault anyone for wearing sandals and a hat. But I see what you are getting at, it disgusts God too. These were the types that Jesus yelled at. The Phariasees were the religious type, folowing the law to a "T" in public, but not having any heart and doing wrong in secret. These are the only people Jesus got mad at, the sinners were the ones Jesus came to help, IF they wanted it.



I do believe this (even you yourself say) that you were and people are driven away from religion, they can't even follow or even know what their own religious books say, they are mostly column C people.





I would actually say quite the opposite. I think science is turning many towards God. Sure there was the dark ages when man was dumb, hard-headed, and lacking in faith and pretty much just beleived what their dad or religious leaders told them and anything contrary was heresy. I don't mean those times. But the more science reveals, the more is confirmed with what the Bible says, but not just the Bible or Christianity, the more it leads people to believe in an intelligent designer, a creator or all things, would be much more logical than a random chance and rediciulosuly high (almost higher than we can count) odds of probability.



We just recently discovered the fairyfly, it is a 250 micron long fly thing, and it doesn't have wings like traditional aviation theory, it has wierd paint brush like wings which since it is so small has something to do with turbulence or something. But as smart as we are, we are just nw discovering these things, who knows what else we will find.



Comets, where do they come from. According to science, they lose 2% of their mass every revolution and if the theories (NOT to be confused with sicence fact) say the universe is so old, comets couldn't exsist. So where to do comets coem from? Well since science needs to have an aswer to anything, they say it is from this 'Oort' cloud sphere. The sphere was named after the astronomer Jan Oort who hypothesized its existence in 1950. Although its existence has NOY yet been proven through direct observation, the reality of the Oort Cloud is WIDELY ACCEPTED in the scientific community. Jsut like macro evolution. No proof, but theories, theories that require more faith to belive than religions do. The typical, "hey we don't have an answer for something, we can't explain it, so let's use math and science to speculate and push it so firmly, people actualy think it is a fact and to argue it means they have little intellect.



Though I am sure some may see me as a crazy person, I see God every day in mulitple ways. Whether it is random acts of kindness, or helping me through circumstances, or the little seemingly 'pointless' things like the fairy flys or flowers, or in the science of how the moon comes up and the purpose of the moon. All the things that had to occur to make life possible on this planet. With all the billions of stars and galaxies out there, the 'random' chance that the sun could be just far enough to not boil water, and not close enough to freeze it all, the moon is just close enough to provide a tide, but not close enough to flood the earth. The fact that we can adapt to our surroundings, I don't mean becoming a new species (which is a theory, unproven), but adapting as the same species. As the sun sets and rises, creating temperature differences and the earth rotates creates pressure changes and wind, the wind that blow enough to create weather trends which give plants water, not too strong to created 24/7 hurrucane and no life possibilities, not so weak so that weather can't move. Not just the heat of the sun, but the size of it and gravity, not to strong to crush bones, but not so weak we don't develope muscles 'fighting' it as we move throughout the day. The grand things of this universe, all the way down to the smallest things, like finger prints and retinas, how they are all individual and unique.







If you weren't told repeatedly during your formative years that everything around evolved, that is not a logical conclusion to come to.



That works both ways.....







The people who were raised religious and stay religious purley based on their upbringing can be quite scary. They are full out brainwashed (by definition) and have not thought for themselves nor know what their actually religious book preaches, they just do what others told them to do (hence braing washed). Though some are raised religous and then chose for themselves to remain religioug becuase they chose to, not just due to their upbrining. I guess a sub cat C.



If you don't believe in the Bible stories that is one thing. But conceptually or objectively, if you knew what the Bible says (not what man portrayed it to say), what it actually says and the wisdom in it, and the love shown in it, you would have to think that if the Bible were real, that is some powerful love. Most kings or princes are held to high esteem and treated as royalty, rarely would they live as a commoner given the choice, or even as a servant. And some would people die fro their family or friends, though would anyone die for their enemy too? Leave the comfort of a perfect utopia to go to a place like earth with heartache and evil and selfishness and pain, and suffering, to show an example of how to live life, and then take credit for all of their bad things and pay the debt for thosee? Hopefully there are some Christians out there to show that love to people and THAT is how they will see God, not through science or evidence or miracles, but through God's love being shown, that is how I hope all will know of God and seek Him. Sure I have an intellectual side and enjoy and debate and really don't see a more logical way, and the amazing things of this world scream of a God who created it all. But that isn't how I would like to make known Gods exsistance.











Though I could go on for a long time on the 'logical' side of creationism and evolution. Which first let me clarify I mean macro evoultion, we can and do observe mirco evolution all the time. The most simple example is black and white people, they evolve, sun does some stuff, makes our skin darker to protect us from it. If anything I would point that to an intelligent designer to make skin that does that....There is no proof on interspecies evolution over millions of years.



I have used this analogy before. You have two beakers of water on a table on a hot plate, one beaker is halfway full, the other 91%, both boiling. You walk in the room and using simple math and science and laws of physics, we guestimate how long they have both been there, theorizing the 50% one has been there longer. This is a fine theory, but you find out later you are wrong when you ask the person who set it up. He actually only filled that wone 50% and it was there 5 min, the one 90% has actually been there for hours, he just keeps refulling it when it goes below 90%



We have science and math and physics to theorize how long something has been in existance, but won't can' know for sure. But we then take this theory and add another theory to this contigent completly on this first theory being correct. So the earth being how many billions of years old is the first theory and evolution is another theory contingent on this. We take mirco evolution and this other theory and viola, evolution and big bang.



What is a tree? It is layers of wood, started from a sapling and grew more and more. So if God made a tree appear, would He make it a shell with no inner layers? It only took a second to make, why should it have years of rings? Then it wouldn't be a tree, it needs those rings and roots ect that make it a tree. Maybe God just sped up the growing process. Time is relative anyways. We meausre time by the time it takes something constant (or that we think is constant) to go from point a to point b. It was the sun, earth spinning, that is one day or 24 hours ect. One earth revoution around the sun a year. So I am 30 years old according to this supposedly constant measuring device. What happens if the sun went faster? Would I seriously age faster? No, we age by our cells breaking down and all kinds of stuff scicenc hasn't quite figured out. If used the moon, I would be some thousand years old. Does that actually make me older? No it is all relative. We happen to use an atomic clock, but that is only contingent on the atoms moving at the same rate, maybe something causes them to slow down or speed up? So if a God could create all the universe and the laws of physics which it abides by and the factors that can bend those laws even, couldn't He probably speed up a process of which a tree grows? How about a universe? If that process was sped up, couldn't it be possible the universe appears to be billions of years old, but it actually isn't? Maybe water slowly acting on rock created the grand canyon....though what if the whole process was sped up and for God that was one day but for what we measure time with, it was a thousand years? Or maybe it was just a massive flood over 40 days that created it? 100 years ago, you told someone you got a Christmas/Easter turkey cooked in 1 hour, they would laugh at you, that is an impossible task to the close minded. To them, a turkey takes 8 hours to cook (as their close minds think about ovens only). Then you pop out a deep fryer and do it in 1 hour. You opened their mind to a plausible solution.



So if science can prove that a tree is 100 years old, it must be, and if they can prove a rock or a planet or star is 1 billion years old, that it probably is.....relative to our measuremetns....It doens't prove the Bible wrong at all just because the Bible says 7 days and sicence shows billions. It doesn't prove the Bible right, but it doens't prove it wrong either. I don't know if the Bible can be proved right or if it is supposed to be, nor do I thikn it can be proved wrong or it was designed for either. Though when Jesus showed us how God wants us to live, it mostly focused on showing the love of God to everyone, and if they saw this and wanted to know God from whom this love flows, they very well could, and if not, then it was their choice, free will.









And on Joe Rogan.....He is a comedian, you can't actually use his video to attempt to debate anything. Nor can you use non-biblical references to prove the Bible wrong. If you are going to talk about a Bible story, than you can to follow the context of the Bible. God who created the animals can surely control them, so marched 2 of each probably wasn't difficult. The arc was HUGE, it is diffuclt to fathom how huge it was, this is why it could stand the waves and wind ect that probably sunk other boats, and it could easily fit all the animals. It doens't say extra animals were or weren't on there for food, how about sea creatures, they could be caught and ate? Birds of the air too. It doens't say plants weren't brought aboard or not. Objectively speaking withing the other 'outrageous' claims of the Bible the story of the arc is perfectly feasible to have had occured. But if you down't believe on part of it, of course you aren't gong to beleive the rest. If God isn't real, none of that remotly pans out. But a retarded 8 year old or an intellectual from 500's also wouldn't believe we have things called planes that humans can fly in and we have computers that send video and information over 1000 miles in seconds and the earth revolves around the sun. To the close minded, that seem completly outlandish, but you say that to someone from the 2000's and it sounds perfectly normal to them. Just because you can't assign logic to something doens't mean that it isn't possible, just because you are stuck close minded in a box, doesn't mean nothing outside that box exist. I don't know all the answers, and I have no issues with an atheist that BELIEVES that God doens't exisst, but to actually be so hawdy to think think they KNOW for sure is as foolish and close minded as those in the 500's.

 

and yep don't read any of it