70% of Britons "Do not believe in Nativity"

Gambler

Just came across this interesting article on BBC News:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7793106.stm

The majority of Britons do not believe the Biblical story of the birth of Jesus, a survey has suggested.

Of 1,000 people questioned, 70% doubted the account, according to the British Market Research Bureau.

Almost a quarter of people who described themselves as Christians shared their scepticism.

St Helen's Church in Bishopsgate, London, which commissioned the survey, has produced a film of "sound evidence" supporting the Bible's account.

More than a fifth of Christians who answered said they did not believe Jesus was both God and Man - another central tenet of Christianity.
Young people were particularly sceptical.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Piggott said the findings suggested a fading influence for the Church's teaching in a secular age.

I have to say that personally I find that a very positive sign. I'd love to know what percentage of those questioned had to say about other religious matters to give that statistics some context though.

UU

Oh thanks for that! Very interesting. I did find when in Britain that religion wasn't really an important thing in many people's lives. I suppose though that the main religion is Anglican and it is a very soft, weak and liberal branch. I wonder though what evidence they have for the nativity? If it happened, it certainly did not happen on the 25th December because it begs the question as to why on earth would the shepherd be out in the fields in the middle of winter herding sheep???

Galvasean

I'd like to see the exact wording of the question before making aproper comment on the data.

Gambler

Galvasean wrote: »

I'd like to see the exact wording of the question before making aproper comment on the data.

Yeah, they have a couple of choice questions that they comment about like if the person believes God and Jesus are the same person but no real details which is dissapointing. I did a fairly thorough search of both the British Marketing Research Burea and St' Helen's websites but had no luck finding anything of any substance (I even tried watching the video they made on the back of the research but didn't appear to be any details in that either) on the actual questions and religious backgrounds of the people questioned. It does appear that it was an online survey though which probably skews the results quite a bit depending on how participants were found.

pH

Another new report from the UK:

Church attendance 'to fall by 90%'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/21/anglicanism-religion

This refers to the Anglican church only, and a 90% fall from their current position would leave them wiped out.

Current (Anglican) church attendance is approx. 1,000,000 each Sunday (about 1.5% of the population) and the report is predicting a fall to 88,000.

kiffer

UU wrote: »

If it happened, it certainly did not happen on the 25th December because it begs the question as to why on earth would the shepherd be out in the fields in the middle of winter herding sheep???

What's winter like in the middle east?
All snow and little red breasted robbins i'm sure. That's what my primary school religion book had...

According to yahoo weather it's 19 degrees in beit lahm today with 50% humidity. Although tomorrow is forecast to be 14 degrees... Which is colder than I was expecting but still warm enough for sheep.

UU

kiffer wrote: »

What's winter like in the middle east?
All snow and little red breasted robbins i'm sure. That's what my primary school religion book had...

According to yahoo weather it's 19 degrees in beit lahm today with 50% humidity. Although tomorrow is forecast to be 14 degrees... Which is colder than I was expecting but still warm enough for sheep.

Yeah it is I suppose possible it may have been during winter but it could equally have been in spring and as the Bible is rather vague on the matter, there is room for speculation. Although many Christians do understand that the 25th December may not have been the exact date of his birth. After all, many Christians in other countries like Russia and Greece celebrate the 7/8 January as the date. But I found this on Wikipedia which lists different possibilities of when he may have been born. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Jesus. Although it does seem plausible to say that it is realised as the 25th due to Sol Invictus, the pagan Roman festival celebrating the birth of the sun god Mithras and the return of the sun.

Tusky

Mark my words. Religion will eventually die out. People will look back on religion and it will seem as ridiculous and old fashioned to them, as slavery and women not being able to vote seems to us.

UU

Tusky wrote: »

Mark my words. Religion will eventually die out. People will look back on religion and it will seem as ridiculous and old fashioned to them, as slavery and women not being able to vote seems to us.

Oh I do doubt your claim. I think that religion will always be there somehow as in it will never die out completely. Many humans are rather vulnerable to believing in supernatural things. It feeds a certain longing for the "unworldly" as I like to call it, that is, a sort of longing for things outside the realm of reality.

But as an existentialist also, I find it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding value in a heaven of idea disappears along with him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. In saying that, I am still atheist nonetheless.

From an anthropological point of view, religion has existed for a long time in nearly every culture (that includes any belief that can be considered supernatural). Although in Ireland, we are seeing a definite and undeniable decline in religion, there are still many countries where religion is in no danger of dying out anytime some. Take for example Saudi Arabia or Iran. Even in the seemingly secular west, there is a rise of very outspoken Evangelists in America but also in Britain, Australia and many other countries. I would never wish atheism to be thrust upon people like religion, rather I would like for people to think for themselves and make up their own minds. I would like that governments would stop granting religions special statuses. Here, religious institutions are exempted from the National Equality Act which is disgraceful and petty.

Zombrex

Gambler wrote: »

Just came across this interesting article on BBC News:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7793106.stm


I have to say that personally I find that a very positive sign. I'd love to know what percentage of those questioned had to say about other religious matters to give that statistics some context though.

I guess the flip side of that is the 30% of Britons still believe the claims of a middle eastern cult leader who claimed to be the son of God.

Replace any of those bits of information with any other cult in the world and it would be a shocking thing to say (imagine if 30% of Britions believed L Ron Hubbard).

But we aren't shocked when it is Christianity.

Húrin

pH wrote: »

Another new report from the UK:

Church attendance 'to fall by 90%'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/21/anglicanism-religion

This refers to the Anglican church only, and a 90% fall from their current position would leave them wiped out.

Current (Anglican) church attendance is approx. 1,000,000 each Sunday (about 1.5% of the population) and the report is predicting a fall to 88,000.

If current trends continue. But assuming that current trends actually will continue for the next 40 years is more like wishful thinking. Nothing sends people back to church like a severe recession! Well I don't know about that, but it is important to acknowledge that the decline in church attendance (which has been actually happening since the mid-19th century in Britain) is a lot more complex than the gradual triumph of reason.

Factors like prosperity and the social alienation that accompanies capitalism are much more effective than the dissemination of inassailable philosophical reasons for atheism. That's why you get most people in Britain writing on the census that they're CofE, but the same people do not know or do not believe in even basic tenets of that religion.

Coming back to capitalism again, the advertising industry is often at odds with a Christian or even a generally metaphysics-influenced view of life. This means that a lot of people reject or drift away from religion not because they decide it is not true, but because they don't want to hear what it is saying.

That's why you get people opposing the Catholic Church here due to its very prescriptive way of moral teaching. "I don't want to be told what to do (by a church heirarchy)" is a statement I can agree with, but it is not in any way a reason against theism.

pH

Polly Toynbee: My Christmas message? There's probably no God

It is neither emotionally nor spiritually deficient to reject religions that seek to infantilise us with impossible beliefs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/23/atheism-disestablishentment-rowan-williams-humanism