Collaboration with theists?

[leo-rcc]

Christian adherants (including non believers) in the world total 2.1billion of a total 6.2billion world population (2002 figures). Add the other religions and you don't reach 50% ...and remember a large proportion don't even believe.

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My point is that contrary to what the statement says, Christianity is actually at least as much of a dirty word as Atheism. Those cliche's you speak of are now effectively archaic language. No one would ever say those things indiscriminately in our society.

Atheists, agnostic, and non religious make up for 1.1 Billion. All others have a religion of some sort. That is a 1:5.8 ratio.

[fr0d0]

Religious adherence means nothing. To me it's ridiculous to count non believers as religious. I'm still looking for figures on what the churches have published re believers.. like I said the figure is something close to 3% of the UK population (which is baseless without evidence I know.. sorry - I shall keep looking)

I think that Ev for the reasons stated above. I'm referring to the words you used as examples of commonly used Christian terms, which I dispute.. they're not used like that in my experience.

Here's my guess:-
Believers = ~5%
Non believers = ~95%

[Edwardo Piet]

Guess? You are comparing guessing to polls?

Sure it's only adherents... but what are you going by? Guess work?

How do you suppose to know how many of the adherents truly believe?

You claim that atheists are in the majority! You also admit that statement is baseless and lacks evidence! Do you expect to argue your claim without supporting it?

I'll need evidence for your claim that atheists are in the majority, until then I would not simply assume that despite the majority of the world being religious the vast majority of them would somehow be atheists! Why believe that? Evidence please.

Until you can give evidence, I assume your claim to - at the very least probably - be utter bullshit of course :p

EvF

[fr0d0]

I explained in the post you replied to Evie.

Ok here are some survey results. (The ones I heard spoken are commercial research). You can believe what you see with your eyes now Evie

http://www.vexen.co.uk/UK/religion.html

In 2005:
"6.3% of the population go to church on an average Sunday"
"29% of churchgoers are 65 or over"
"Sunday churchgoing is declining at 2.3% per year"
"Nearly all Church 'growth' is due to immigrants"

"“Children who do not come from churchgoing homes - as I did not - now grow up largely ignorant of Christian ideas in a way unimaginable half a century ago. [...] The comments about religion by journalists in the press and on television [...] suggest that even the basic Christian ideas are no longer understood by university-educated people, still less by others. Indeed even churchgoers can reveal an ignorance of the main elements of Christian belief.”

"C of E: The State It's In" by Monica Furlong (2000)19"


"Christianity is the Established Religion in the UK

One single general trend can be brought out of all the statistics of religious belief in the UK: Our population is mostly irreligious, innocent and ignorant of religion, and despite some defaulting to calling themselves "Christian" (71%), the country is not Christian despite a vague 50% lingering belief in a God of some sort. Just over 6% of the population go to church on a Sunday (for every 6 who do, 94 do not)."

[Edwardo Piet]

["]The comments about religion by journalists in the press and on television [...] suggest that even the basic Christian ideas are no longer understood by university-educated people, still less by others. Indeed even churchgoers can reveal an ignorance of the main elements of Christian belief.”

What has this got to do with your claim that most people are atheists?

Even if the entire world was 'un-educated', 'not true' Christians.... that does not equal atheism. Non-true-Christians doesn't=Atheists. Non-Christians doesn't=Atheists.

Lets say 90% of the people who believe they are Christian don't actually properly practice Christianity and hence aren't 'true' Christians since they don't properly follow Christ.... that still doesn't make them atheists. If they believe in God, they're not atheists. Regardless of how Unchristian they are.

EvF

[Tiberius]

Fr0d0, you are bordering on a kind of No True Scotsman argument, defining "Christians" as people who go to church on a Sunday. You've previously agreed with my statement that anyone who "follows and believes the words of Jesus Christ" is a Christian, so how does going to church even come into it? My mother and grandmother didn't go to church for years, but they still believed Jesus was the son of God.

We could easily argue that America isn't mostly Christian by defining Christians as "non-bigoted, loving people", and just looking at the amount of hatred that comes out of major churches in that country...

Fortunately, we have a way of determining how many people are Christian in a country or not, and we do it by asking people what they believe. Yes, they might be lying, or just "defaulting", but you have no evidence that any of them are. It's all speculation aimed at trying to support your own view.

[fr0d0]

You (people here) wanted proof of the figures & I've provided them. If you can't read a reasonable set of statistics produced by people who should actually know what's going on, rather than some crazy poll. I mean.... If you read the linked page you'll see it very accurately dealt with...

"Less than half of the British people believe in a God, yet about 72% told the 2001 census that they were Christian, and 66% of the population have no actual connection to any religion or church, despite what they tend to write down on official forms."

You can't be serious right? Church attendance is one of the few true indicators you can possibly have. In 2005 it stood at 6%. The decline is shown to be 2% per decade. Yet you think you can still make a claim that 72% of the population are Christian?!? I am truly astonished.

"Sociologists know that if they count heads and ask about beliefs, more people say they belong to a religion, and say they have the beliefs of a particular religion, than actually do. People over-state their own religiosity; that's why statistics from polls will often give higher percentages of 'believers' than will head-counting and deeper investigations."

Believing is not lip service. If your mother and grandmother produced no fruit, they were not actually being Christian. Christianity doesn't accomodate stagnation. A child of a Christian who believes without understanding is not a Christian. What you are talking about is symptomatic of the extreme rot we're witnessing in the UK as highlighted in the vexen data and summaries(quoted above). That would be my take from mainstream Christianity.

Then there's this problem with stated belief in a god:

"Because Christianity is the dominant religion in the UK, most people who believe in a god here think that they are Christian. As a result of secularisation they do not know, understand, or care, what the differences are between the hundreds of god-believing religions in the world, generally because they don't know about them, nor do they want to know. In other words, most god-believers are theists and should not rightly be counted as Christians. This must also happen in other countries - there must be many Muslims who believe in god (who are 'theists') but who don't really care for the specifics of Islam, but, do not know what else to call themselves. They will still be caught up in all the cultural-religious practices centering on Mosques because they simply know no better."
- http://www.humanreligions.info/numbers.html#General

[solarwave]

The very reason theism thrives is that too many freethinkers are willing to collaborate with theists.
The agenda of theists is to dumb-down and control the masses. And you criticize those who would place that agenda under critical scrutiny.

Yes control the masses that is obviously the focus of my theist life!

[Secularone]

The very reason theism thrives is that too many freethinkers are willing to collaborate with theists.
The agenda of theists is to dumb-down and control the masses. And you criticize those who would place that agenda under critical scrutiny.

Yes control the masses that is obviously the focus of my theist life!

I don't think that remark is deserving of a response. It appears our constructive dialogue in this thread has ended.

[fr0d0]

Well if you make such a biased statement you should expect no less Seculaone. Keep it civil and others will be civil with you.