by EdenOne 9 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
According to this article, a recent Pew Research concluded that until 2050, an estimated cumulative net number of 65.050.000 will opt out of the Christian faith, and the trend is accelerating. On the other hand, the "unaffiliated" will have a net growth of 61.490.000.
Eden
Here are other chief findings from the report:
1. Islam will grow faster than any other religion over the next 40 years.
2. The number of Muslims will equal the number of Christians around the world by 2050.
3. Atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion – though increasing in countries such as the United States and France – will make up a declining share of the world’s total population.
4. The global Buddhist population will be about the same size it was in 2010, while the Hindu and Jewish populations will be larger than they are today.
5. In Europe, Muslims will make up 10% of the overall population.
6. India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia.
7. In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050, and Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion. Muslims will be more numerous in the U.S. than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion.
8. Four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.
....So Muslims will replace the loss of Christians in Population by 2050..
Atheists,
agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion..
.
..................................ARE CIRCLING THE DRAIN..
......................
2050..(1)Moon bases will play a crucial role in global conflicts.
(2)Air travel, transparent walls will flood the cabin with natural light
and best of all, you'll be able to get anywhere on the planet in under
two and a half hours.
(3)You we be able to simply run a scanner over your body and the
results will be forwarded to a health network.
(4) Hillary Clinton's grandchild will be about the right age to run for president.
(5) and finally all JW will go to heaven, the reason, there will be only 144000
on this planet.
I am not totally convinced there has been such a great sea-change in religious attitudes here in the U.K as has been reported, based on recent Polls.
I think one reason the Non-religious seem to have more numbers now is that people are more honest about it than a few decades ago, many would have then answered "CofE" or something similar, Methodist say, because their family had a history of affiliation, but these people were far from regular church-goers, and far from being believers in their own minds in anything more than a vague way.
I wonder if something similar is not at work in the Pew Research findings.
There are interesting pockets of non-belief in Europe, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands for example, and it is heartening to see that at least 13% of U.K citizens identify as Atheist.
There is still much educational work to be done to free people from the ignorance that keeps them in religions like Islam, Catholicism, Mormonism, the J.W's etc
What Phizzy said is basically about right, even in the US, (at least on either coast, maybe not the Midwest or deep south, as much).
Religious people have been in the minority for quite some time, and for the most part, the particularly religious are considered misfits. Many claim a religion, but pretty much interpret their "religion" they way they want to, and this has been this way at least as long as I have been around, (since the '70s). It is likely that fewer people today "identify" with a religion, because they have a greater degree of honesty about it.
Despite how the USA may appear to the rest of the world, most people are not religious fanatics by any stretch. The main issue here is the minority on the religious right have a disproportionately large voice in our political system, due to the way our state representation works. When this is fueled by a plutocracy that preys on the uneducated for its own gain, you have what you see from abroad looking at the USA. (Obviously, this should be its own thread, didn't mean to hijack).
d4g
D4g,
Excellent comment. Thank you. Churches have been one of the primary springboards for those with political ambitions and political power bases for politicians for centuries, so it makes sense that state legislatures are overly stocked with fundies or the very religious. A lot of politicians are no doubt atheist or at the most, irreligious, but 'coming out' as such is political suicide. That is changing slowly, but it is changing.
The perception in much of the US and the rest of the world, unfortunately, is that the irreligious and god forbid the atheists are soul-less, baby killing, war mongers. We used to see these types of comments every few weeks on this site, thankfully not much anymore.
