The number of posts in here dunking on believers of religion are quite disrespectful tbh. It's completely acceptable to believe or not believe in God, but don't be an ass and ridicule people for it. It makes the whole lot of you seem childish.
Belief in God in U.S. dips to 81%, a new low
- Thread starter Forerunner
- Start date
81% is still very high. But a trend from 92% in 2011, to 87 in 2017, to 81 in 2022, seems like a significant shift in a small space of time.
1944 98%
1947 98%
1950s 98%
1960s 98%
2011 92%
2017 87%
2022 81%
1944 98%
1947 98%
1950s 98%
1960s 98%
2011 92%
2017 87%
2022 81%
Believers are the majority, they don't need to find a way to be oppressed because people ridicule and question their faith and beliefs.
No I don't believe. But if there is one then they're a dick and when I pop it I'd be more than happy to give them an earful
You see, you're ignoring the fact that saying that leprechauns don't exist isn't just about there not being evidence, but because we also have logical and rational explanations for how the idea of something like a leprechaun comes about. The same explanations we have for billions of other mythical beings (including the divine beings in most modern-day religions, btw) that have been made up over the millennia. It's literally called non-belief. It's not a system of belief. It's a lack of belief in something. If you really want to drill down into the meanings of words and how the human mind interprets and understand things, you can maybe make a case that yes, not believing in something is a kind of belief and score a goal that way. But passively not believing in something is not even on the same planet as actively believing in something, nevermind within the same ballpark.
I've seen this "non-belief is also a kind of belief" argument in its different iterations many, many times over the years and it's never anything but a "gotcha" that wastes a lot of time and goes nowhere.
I'll feel bad for the poor, oppressed, privileged Christian majority once millions of people in the world stop suffering as a direct result of Christianity. Sorry if I don't have a lot of respect for the religion that caused and continues to cause me, and other queer people like me, untold suffering over the millennia. And queer people is just a small subset of the people affected, btw.
And please nobody start the whole "but not all Christians" or "those aren't real Christians!" nonsense.
Last edited:
Seeing that religious people seem to skew quite heavily towards being Republican, I feel a bit less inclined to totally give them a free pass when that belief in a magic wish-granting being in the sky is so often used as a weapon to attack LGBT people or other minorities.
So do other things, such as philosophy, religion is not the only ideas for mass control. See cult of personality, or social medias fear of missing out. Conforming to something also comes from community and the desire to belong to tribes, thus see sports fans or look at the idea of the people who fight over being a fan of certain companies, only drink certain brands, etc. I would say, even if you remove religion, humans will just break off into tribes based on the people who become the most influential.
Most did science because of religion though. A number of them connected to the idea of trying to understand the will of what they believed in. I'd also point out that the likes of Newton were in their own religion and going for alchemy wasn't the study of science, but that of magics, which is a religion in and of itself.
And that's the thing, people will always want to connect to something higher. So they latch onto everything that they can, and in a lot of cases that manifest in materialization.
Thats insanely high IMO. In The Netherlands where I live, only 45% of the population is religious.
It's been argued many times that humans are simply hardwired for magical thinking.
Magical Thinking and The Plastic Brain | Biology and Life
This post explores the concept of magical thinking and its flaws, as well as what neuroplasticity has to say about the matter.
biologyandlife.com
Last edited:
Well my question is that some people might have answered no because they might have understood this to be a specific god.
Pray forgive the discourtesy of those of us who can't help but be skeptical and snark at religions, since some of us have had ourselves and our people personally, horribly affected by monsters doing awful things in the name of their religion and/or religious texts.
I mean, probably. But then again some people who don't believe in God probably said yes just because they, for whatever reason, didn't want to give voice to their actual beliefs.
The question is broad enough that the vast majority of people, told to answer yes or no, would have just answered "yes I believe in one or many higher power(s)" or "no I don't believe in anything like that."
Yeah I think some people have a skewed perspective on just how uncommon it is for people to claim atheism in the United States, regardless of whether or not they even believe it. And religion doesn't heavily favor either major political side; it's more in the application.
Kinda surprised it's so high. I guess a combination of cultural inertia (people being raised Christian with or without any actual religious activity) and people having their own idiosyncratic spiritual beliefs ("there's gotta be something out there") may make up fairly large chunks of the god-believing population. Maybe I'm wrong and most people are actually still capital-R Religious. I think at least a majority of Americans probably are, judging from how there's never been an (admitted) atheist president.
I think it's telling that only half the people who say they believe in God thinks it takes actions that impact our daily lives.
That is insanely high.
Depending on the country, those numbers are about double what they wrote be in Europe.
I wonder why Christianity the US had persisted much more. In the UK we don't have a separation of church and state, and religious schools are widespread, and funded by the state (free).
Depending on the country, those numbers are about double what they wrote be in Europe.
I wonder why Christianity the US had persisted much more. In the UK we don't have a separation of church and state, and religious schools are widespread, and funded by the state (free).
Wow. I thought the percentage would be around ~60% or so. But still more than four-fifths? That is a sobering statistic.
Pretty sure the numbers here in Denmark are a complete reversal of that. Around 20% that believe in God.
Sorry, but no.
If a god exists as is described, omnipotent, then it must be sadistic, as if it IS omnipotent then it could design a plan without the suffering and injustice we see.
It is not what they describe, either way.
I have nothing against religion, or the faithful, at least those who live peacefully, but a lot of the claims are nonsense and are used to justify cruelty.
To be fair, the CoE is only because Henry VIII wanted his marriage annulled so he could remarry and have a male heir, and stuck two fingers up at the pope over it. Whereas US religiosity is perhaps more down to it being founded by a highly religious group leaving the UK. So we ended up with the CoE being both pretty mild as Christian churches go, while also still having Bishops in the Lords as a relic of an ancient setup. While the US ended up having a lot of religious influence but also the sense to keep it out of the constitution.
Last edited:
From what I'm seeing (and it could be wrong), it's 54% of people in Denmark have complete, moderate, or a little belief in the certainty of God, and 46% that have none.
I think these numbers are going to be a bit higher than most people expect for most countries.
I'll never understand these stats, I think I've known all of 5 people in my entire life who are religious and not all that many more that really believe in anything. It never makes any sense to me, it shouldn't be possible to live in that much of a bubble
Faith in a god is so often weaponized and religion has caused so much death and suffering that to suggest that it's beyond reproach is ludicrous. Believe or not, that's your choice, but I'm not going to police my tone because those with seemingly unbreakable faith feel challenged by my lack of it. You have the majority and God on your side, why worry about us in our dark corners slagging off the big man upstairs?
So long as you're not using your faith to justify cruelty and backwards beliefs, we're cool and I have no problems with it. I'm not going to respect the organized religions that have continued to crush millions of people that they deem "immoral" or those that hide behind them to justify those fucked up beliefs though and you can bet your ass I'll criticize them and lament their continued popularity until the day I die.
It's simple though, if God is all powerful, he can't be all good because he'd have the power to stop pain and suffering and he doesn't. If God is all knowing, he can't be all powerful and/or all good because he would stop disasters before they occur. If God is all good, he's not all powerful or knowing because he doesn't stop disasters from happening.
The problem of evil and suffering is something that pokes a gaping hole in almost every monotheistic religion and the response "yeah, but free will" collapses in on itself when you realize that an all knowing, all powerful and all good God would realize that free will would lead to evil and suffering which, again, he didn't stop by preventing us from having free will which conflicts with the all knowing, all good, all powerful thing again.
If religious folk have trouble squaring that issue, chalk it up to the "well, I have faith" thing but let's be honest here, there's no logical rebuttal to that logical fallacy.
Last edited:
Yep, era is a bubble for some things and this is one of them I think. It's easy to be a part of a community like this and assume that most (or at least a large portion of) other people don't have any faith in a god. But faith in a god is a very, very prevalent thing and also a very understandably human thing.
There's a difference between saying you're not religious and actively denying god's existence. People are weary to make that last leap.
A ton of the people who answered "yes" are not practicing or really religious in any way.
God doesn't exist but I'm happy for people to worship one, so long as it's not a shield for bigotry.
Absolutely, I'd say this is the majority of people out there in my experience.
A lot of people I know would put themselves down as believing in God despite saying they don't really when discussing it.
I have two housemates that do this (we're in the UK though). One of them says it is habit after being raised in a religious family.
Super disingenuous post. Atheism isn't a religion in any sense that people use the word. Atheists come in all stripes and have no dogma and no holy text or anything. Atheists are the most hated group in the US and there are nearly zero elected officials that are publicly atheists. Meanwhile every single president has kowtowed to Christianity as an unspoken rule.
You can absolutely dunk on believers that find irrational beliefs rational. Just because they hold the position that it isn't irrational doesn't make their jumbo jumbo justified. If they want to claim god couldn't have made the world without evil, then ask them about eden/heaven. If they think god is good then show them the Old Testament where he orders genocide and rape. You may think them worthy of protection but really you're just patronizing them to say that they are just the type of person that believes illogical stuff blindly. Yeah people aren't just born that way they are indoctrinated and if you don't think magical thinking is a problem in our society then I guess you were asleep the last few years. It's a major problem, worthy of ridicule, and if people care about their religious freedom and freedom to speak their mind then they have to deal with the converse of that, people are gonna disagree and call you out if you think your mantras are anything but that.
Umm, no?
1944 98%
1947 98%
1950s 98%
1960s 98%
2011 92%
2017 87%
2022 81%
It was a long time with very little movement, and then an 11% drop in 11 years.
If I had to guess Australia's, I'd guess anecdotally that it'd be like 20/30%. But I'd probably also be shocked at it being significantly higher.
