‘Religion has been a focal point for all sorts of backward, indeed bigoted, thinking‘. – Richard Dawkins
‘It is time that public policy caught up with this mass turning away from religious identities and stopped privileging religious bodies with ever increasing numbers of state-funded religious schools and other faith-based initiatives’. – Andrew Copson
The 2011 census reveals that the Christian population of England and Wales has fallen by four million to 33.2 million in the past decade.The number of people describing themselves as having no religion rose from 15% to 25% of the population.
Such a good news! It seems people are becoming less stupid in the U.K. But the bad news is, people are becoming more irrational, more superstitious, more religious in many parts of the world. If state, society and system could stop from influencing, indoctrinating, instructing people to become religious, people would definitely become less religious.
I wish people around the world could choose truth over god.
I would love it to be that people are less stupid, but I suspect it’s more a breakdown of cultural conditioning. I imagine belief in a deity can easily be replaced with all sorts of woo-filled thinking. The internet is the new stomping ground of the credulous.
I also read that much of the population growth in England and wales is from immigration? More people fleeing religiously governed countries for perceived freedom.
The general ignorance will only be replaced with critical thinking skills through an education that emphasizes this from the early grades, and media that stops sensationalizing and emphasizes critical reporting!
—mikmik@2
So true, something I have had almost constant irritation about for many years, most particularly with local TV broadcast media.
I think the christian scandals have to do with this. I don’t have data to back it up, just throwing it out there. It seems to be the case in Spain as well, rather than thinking their way into non-belief, people get disillusioned that the church they trusted and admired turned out to be dominated by a bunch of sexual abusers. There’s an increasing disconnection of people from the church rather than an approach of people towards secularism.
That isn’t the case for other big religions, right?