From a global perspective, is religious belief on the way out?

Question

Amongst my friends, family, colleagues and other acquaintances, hardly anyone is religious. Is this a reflection of a general worldwide decline in religious belief?

Answer 1

No, this is a reflection of the kind of people you hang out with. If you and the other people in your circle take a good hard look at the rest of the world, you would find that the Lord has a very big following!

Answer 2

I doubt it--

I've lived abroad, and while we hear a lot about secularizing europe, migration is changing that. Even though many of the old cathedrals are close to empty, pentecostal churches, mosques and temples across europe are full of immigrants and firs-generation europeans of different ethnic backgrounds.

Go to any country in Africa, and you'll find vibrant religious life.
Same in many Asian countries, and of course, the middle east is the cradle of the Abrahamic traditions, and all three are practiced there in different ways.

Answer 3

That's because you're european, damm you! Over here across the pond things are becomming more fundamentalist and conservative.

Do you know that Nixon couldn't get elected as a *democrat* because he'd be too liberal? It's true. His policies were to the left of Kerry's when Kerry ran.

I think...perhaps they're becoming more polarized. The educated countries are becoming less religious while the uneducated ones are becoming more...whats the word?....wack.

Answer 4

Depends on what you mean by religious. I have friends who are members of a religion, but do not act "Religious". I think that religion is changing, hopefully for the better and more people are turned off by the Extremism of the mainstream religions. *You just don't see Agnostics, Atheists, Pagans going to funerals to protest homosexuality... nor do we blow things up cause we're ticked off that they don't believe like we do*

Answer 5

As everything else in nature, this goes in cycles. Ups and downs. As the USA is coming down from an extreme high, other parts of the world are swinging up. Only locally does it ever look as if things were going in only one direction.

Answer 6

Unfortunately, as long as the various "Ultimate Truths" (religions) are having a competition to see which one can out breed the others, there is little hope that Humans will mature and become fully rational.

Answer 7

A University professor at a well-known institution of higher learning challenged his students with this question.

"Did God create everything that exists?"

A student bravely replied, "Yes he did!"

"God created everything?" The professor asked.

"Yes, sir, he certainly did," the student replied."

The professor answered, "If God created everything; then God created evil. And, since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are, then we can assume God is evil."

The student became quiet and did not answer the professor's hypothetical definition. The professor, quite pleased with himself, boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

An other student raised his hand and said, "May I ask you a question, professor?"

"Of course," replied the professor.
The student stood up and asked, "Professor does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?"

The other students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy.

Absolute zero (-460F) is the total absence of heat; and all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact, we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course, as I have already said. We see it everyday. It is in the daily examples of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a world that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

The young man's name -- Albert Einstein

Answer 8

are you kidding, globally the rise of islam is excelerating at a pace
that will in several decades be the leading religion of the world.
does that sound like a decline?
d

Answer 9

Most everyone that I know is religious, either. I certainly hope that this could be indicative of a decline in religion.

Answer 10

Unfortunately, no. Nietzsche wrote God's obituary 125 years ago, but then came the Reaction, as usual. The masses of ignorant peasants simply aren't ready to give up their primitive superstitions.