Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
In many countries around the world, a fifth or more of all adults have left the religious group in which they were raised. Christianity and Buddhism have experienced especially large losses from this “religious switching,” while rising numbers of adults have no religious affiliation, according to Pew Research Center surveys of nearly 80,000 people in 36 countries.
In some countries, changing religions is very rare. In India, Israel, Nigeria and Thailand, 95% or more of adults say they still belong to the religious group in which they were raised.
But across East Asia, Western Europe, North America and South America, switching is fairly common. For example, 50% of adults in South Korea, 36% in the Netherlands, 28% in the United States and 21% in Brazil no longer identify with their childhood religion.
Most of the movement has been into the category we call religiously unaffiliated, which consists of people who answer a question about their religion by saying they are atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”
In other words, most of the switching is disaffiliation – people leaving the religion of their childhood and no longer identifying with any religion.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...religions/
In many countries around the world, a fifth or more of all adults have left the religious group in which they were raised. Christianity and Buddhism have experienced especially large losses from this “religious switching,” while rising numbers of adults have no religious affiliation, according to Pew Research Center surveys of nearly 80,000 people in 36 countries.
In some countries, changing religions is very rare. In India, Israel, Nigeria and Thailand, 95% or more of adults say they still belong to the religious group in which they were raised.
But across East Asia, Western Europe, North America and South America, switching is fairly common. For example, 50% of adults in South Korea, 36% in the Netherlands, 28% in the United States and 21% in Brazil no longer identify with their childhood religion.
Most of the movement has been into the category we call religiously unaffiliated, which consists of people who answer a question about their religion by saying they are atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”
In other words, most of the switching is disaffiliation – people leaving the religion of their childhood and no longer identifying with any religion.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...religions/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
