R society becoming more secular?

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R religion really becoming less important in society? or is this socially accepted "fact" another case of distortion of untrustworthy statistical evidence?

― I R sociological, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I R wanting more joke-science related posts.

― I R fatnick, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's a broad question fatnick. It depends what society you're talking about.

― Samantha, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

R that R being problem you see! many silly sociologists presume all modern societies R fully secularised, with people laughing at silly religious ways. They R also presuming all pre industrial societies R being silly people running around with masks and blue face paint And r worshiping strange gods (i r not meaningf slipknot by this)

― I R fatnick, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I dont think any sociologists presume this - I mean the most powerful and prosperous modern society in the world has hugely religious undercurrents. I think it's broadly correct though to assume that the superstitious and ritual aspects of religion have in Western societies mostly been shifted into other areas.

― Tom, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Those R views of a certain Bryan Wilson.

― I R fatnick, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Are we going to need one of them Fatnick translators, like we need with Genesis P-Orridge or Prince?

― Brian MacDonald, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Just read the nouns and not the pronouns and verbs.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hell, no. Religion is huge. I didn't realize this until I stopped living in large urban areas. You live in a place like San Francisco & you think religion has given up the ghost, as it were. Not so.

I think the gulf & tension between believers and non-believers are growing, though.

― Mark, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ultimately, I think a key mistake -- not necessarily *the* key one, I hasten to suggest -- is a common but not universal belief from believers (hey!) that those darn secular humanists are out to destroy them and their ways of worship. I think on an individual level this is patently ridiculous -- I'm not out to torch any churches and my own thoughts on the subject are my own to consider, and not to impose on anyone else. Similarly I don't think that every committed believer I know, and I know quite a few, is out to specifically convert me and deny me my own thoughts on the matter. But there does seem to be a larger tension beyond the individual level, one that needs to be kept in mind and not simply ducked.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 31 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm an atheist, but I have a pretty good knowledge of the various religions due to childhood research projects and growing up in a multifaith pick'n'mix suburb. One day, my friend Jen, a lapsed Catholic, invoked God in an argument to attempt to make me feel guilty about something (it's not really important what we were arguing about). So I just asked, 'can you restate your point without playing the God card; you might as well be saying Zeus, okay?' and she was completely flummoxed.

The current world climate, where divisions along religious lines are par for the course (and an astonishingly good way for the privileged to keep peasants in line, btw), would suggest to me that for all the good it does some people, religion has corrosive divide-and-rule side- effects many believers can't quite see. I believe pretty passionately in the absolute separation of religion and state because faith is a private and personal matter, whereas the state is about how we function together in a diverse world. Also if we ditched the mumbo jumbo we'd easily spot the real motivations behind TWAT, ie. oil factions trying to get their mitts on natural resources through completely illegitimate means.

― suzy, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

True, but the more cheap oil we have the better life is, so any subterfuge is acceptable in this case.

― dave q, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sorry, if I lie to the government or steal from someone, I go to jail. If the government lies to me or steals from someone it's business as fucking usual. Have you accepted your invite to Dubya's kegger yet, Dave? I hear they're inviting all the cheerleaders and his parents are staying away ALL WEEKEND.

― suzy, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i am taking nicks society to mean British society. if so, i think the secularisation process has reached its end point (at some point during the last 10-20 years???). i think now we are seeing a significant number of people turning to relgion. well, not, necessarily religion, but... 'spiritualism', 'new age things' semi- religious pick'n'mix type affairs. this must be linked in some way i feel to the depoliticisation of society (certainly the left anyway), and the rise of single issue groups. while a large number of people that in the past would have joined political type groups now make do with cynicism, a significant number choose the zeal and passion of 'the spiritual' (also avoids that pesky detail of having to think about things - often an attraction of political groupings that aspire to truth etc. an 'explanation', 'answers' etc as seduction)

personally, as an atheist, i feel these developments are slightly worrying

― gareth, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Here here to what Suzy said.

― chris, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Luxemborg is 97% Roman Catholic and 3% Protestant or Jew which implies that the worlds most prosperous country is not all that secular afterall.

― toraneko, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Is Luxembourg the world's most prosperous country? I never knew that.

Mind you as to the statistics on religion in countries, how do they work that out? You never see atheist, or can't be arsed to go out and worship on them do you?

― chris, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm guessing they take it from the census. In Australia "No Religion" was an option on the census. In the 1996 census 16.6% said No Religion and 9% didn't answer the question at all.

― toraneko, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, there's no atheist category on census forms, which is annoying.

Also there's an ethnic tilt to the whole percentages thing. F'rinstance, my parents were married in an Episcopal church so I'm ethnically Protestant.

― suzy, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's cause atheism isn't a religion.

― Nick, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But surely it should be an option on the forms, for clarity's sake if nothing else.

― chris, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Suzy, I disagree. You're only a Protestant if you subscribe to a Protestant religion. If my mum was Islamic and my dad was Buddhist I could still be an atheist or a Catholic or whatever I wanted to be.

― toraneko, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Religion is a matter of faith, not ethnics.

I love the examples they gave on the census form for "Other": Salvation Army, Hinduism, Judaism or Humanism!

― toraneko, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Toraneko, that's a valid personal opinion, yet after ODing on the David Starkey Liz I series and Northern Irish politics, one's Protestant family origins would be relevant and documentable even if as I do, I choose to call myself atheist. Kate has a really good joke about 'agnostic' being a synonym for Protestant.

― suzy, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

And I should add that from what you're saying Australians seem a lot more chilled-out about the whole issue of religion than the rest of us. Which is good; state-supported liberation from being identified as a WASP is cool and worth working toward.

― suzy, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There are some fairly religious Australians but they are few and far between. I did read in a book about my family that back in the mid 1800s one branch went Protestant and one branch went Catholic and they didn't see each other anymore but now none of them are religious at that I know of.

― toraneko, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There are some fairly religious Australians but they are few and far between.

I heard that from the fifties to the early eighties Queensland was something of a religious semi-dictatorship or something, though, thanks to the governor of the province. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 1 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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