Ireland's Christian culture thing of past

layke

Well anyone could have told you that.

But officially it looks like were on the way up

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0409/religion.html

Sean Mullan of the 35,000-strong Evangelical Alliance said the data - along with answers to six other questions - show that the notion of Ireland having a Christian culture is becoming a thing of the past.

Well at least they are admiting it rather then denying the blatently obvious. Does anyone know if the figures in the US are in decline or on the rise? One would hope this sort of nonsense will be bred out soon but sadly I think a lot of those Chritians are heavily indoctrinated. I'm actually quite intrigued to see what percent of society will be religious in say 50 years in Ireland and abroad.

Crucifix

There's some discussion of this going on over on the christianity forum. And I think someone noted that there are similar trends for America.
I think it's great that religious education is being made more secular, and it's great to see on that other thread that christians seem to think it's a good idea too.
However, I fit in the age group, am Atheist/Agnostic, and could answer all of those questions correctly. I don't know if I'm a relic of past education or what.

Stephen

Me too - that stuff was so thoroughly drummed into me as a child that I knew the answers to all of the questions :eek:

Dades

I don't think it would be a stretch to say most non-believers here are probably more versed in religion than most believers you'd meet on the street.

Owen

The Atheist wrote:

I don't think it would be a stretch to say most non-believers here are probably more versed in religion than most believers you'd meet on the street.

I'd have to agree. It's refreshing to see some many fellow Athiests/Agnostics on boards, some times it feels a bit strange ploughing a furrow offline. The more the merrier, eventually people should see past stories like Noah being 600, etc.

Schuhart

They need a time series comparison. Church attendance might have been higher in the 1930s, but who’s to say Catholics were any better informed if they were just spectators to services conducted in Latin.

I read a book recently on the Spanish Inquisition. One of the concerns of the Inquisition was the low level of awareness of the faith among the population - 500 years ago. They have files of cases where some of the laity seemed unaware that incest was meant to be sinful, including one reported case of a man who showed no apparent need for embarrassment or secrecy over sleeping with his mother.

For all we know, religious knowledge may be at an all time high.

JC 2K3

Sure if they knew what their religion involved they'd hardly believe in it.

</controversial>

nobodythere

Excellent. Offies open on good friday!

DublinWriter

It's funny but I came through being brainwashed a Catholic, to renoucing it all at 12, to being an Athiest, through Hinduism and eventually Buddhism to realise that there is no monothestic god.

I remember debates in the mid-80's on RTE saying the Catholic church would be finished by 2000.

Well here we still are. I believe that the general belief in fundamental relgion is linked to a lack of investment in the educational system. Growth in fundamental Christianity has been on the rise big-time in the states since the mid-70's.

Back in the 70's, Southern states wanting to teach creationism as science would have raised alarm bells. Now it's an option.

I think we're at the start of a new dark age.

Asiaprod

DublinWriter wrote:

It's funny but I came through being brainwashed a Catholic, to renoucing it all at 12, to being an Athiest, through Hinduism and eventually Buddhism to realise that there is no monothestic god.

Much the same as my story; Catholic to Atheist to Buddhist.

DublinWriter wrote:

I think we're at the start of a new dark age.

I always felt that the election of Pope Benny was a U-turn so to speak, a step backward, heading the Church once again into the Dark Ages. A fact backed up to me by my Mom who is a devote Christian and would never speak ill of the church.

The Atheist wrote:

I don't think it would be a stretch to say most non-believers here are probably more versed in religion than most believers you'd meet on the street.

I would believe that. Also shows me how important Boards ie.

Schuhart

DublinWriter wrote:

I believe that the general belief in fundamental relgion is linked to a lack of investment in the educational system.

I’m not convinced this explains the rise of fundamentalist religion, which seems to be based on a rejection of reason. To my mind, this is suggestive of disquiet as to where reason leads.

An illustrative example – an acquaintance of mine, with customary thoroughness, recently read up on Catholicism as his young lad is approaching Communion age. My friend would, up to this, have been a Catholic by habit and not really given the whole thing much thought. He felt a need to study the faith really just to be able to answer the young lad’s questions, same as he’d want to support any part of his son’s development.

His was frankly stunned at the nonsense he was supposed to accept by virtue of being Catholic. But his honest human reaction, as recounted to me, was ‘what’ll happen if everyone just stops believing all this stuff all at once’. It was that fear that a godless society will eat itself, because there’s no God-given reason not to do bad stuff. (I’m not stating this as a principle – just reporting an individual case of what I feel to be a common human reaction to the discovery that religion is bunk).

I think the prospect of atheism raises two fears in people’s minds – lack of point in life and lack of order in society. To be honest, I think they are also two questions that atheist thought has not yet addressed particularly well (and I’m not suggesting I can do any better). Faced with those two fears, I think perfectly educated people can actually decide to swallow the whole book.

There’s a line I remember Sam Harris coming out with in a video – something to the effect of ‘how many university graduates will have to crash planes into office blocks before we see there’s more to this than ignorance’. (I may be distorting his words – it’s a while since I heard them – but the sentiment was certainly in what he said). Education is part of the job, but it may also produce quite a number of qualified people with an even more literal view of scriptural authority. This is one reason why I think we need to understand and explore – as objectively as possible and without recrimination – what actually attracts people to religion and what function it fulfils in their lives.

[EDIT]Just tracing that Sam Harris quote. It’s from this video about 20 minutes in.

I don’t know how many more engineers and architects have to hit the wall at 400 miles an hour for us to realise this is not simply a matter of education. The truth of our circumstance is quite a bit more sinister than that. It is actually possible to be so well educated that you can build a nuclear bomb and still believe that you’re going to get the 72 virgins. That’s how Balkanised our discourse is and that’s how easily partitioned the human mind is. I can tell you there is no place in the curriculum of becoming a scientist where they say ‘this is bull****, you stop believing it”.

[/EDIT]