could you ever see ireland becomming a atheist nation?

barone

just pondering this,most people i know,in fact nearly all the people i know dont go to mass,only for funerals,confirmations etc.. i can actually see the church in ireland phasing out within my lifetime..im 36, im not anti any religion either before anyone starts..
born n bred in ireland also,catholic,havent attended mass just for mass since i can remember,if ever..

opinions?

Wolfe Tone

No. Secular perhaps

MagicMarker

No such thing as an atheist nation.

Secular though, I fúcking hope so. Sooner the better.

orourkeda

who cares?

dlofnep

What's an atheist nation? Where the majority are atheist? I think that's already happened for the 30- generation.

Yakult

Dont think I could see it happen. Religion (Not as strong tho) will always be there even if none of it is true.

WolfForager

Oh no....

Celly Smunt

well the catholic church will be more or less gone when the current coffin dodgers move on

barone

ok your right, secular, ye got the jist anyway

3hn2givr7mx1sc

Oh fúck.

barone

mostly the older folk who go ,so what happens the church's when there aint nobody goin ta mass to fill them..

Rhys Essien

Bring it on.Id say in fifty years time we'll be asking ourselves what kind of eejits were we at all.

bonerm

I don't believe so.

Daegerty

Hope not, we have enough keyboard warriors already

partyatmygaff

Nope.

TeddyTedson

pmcmahon wrote: »

well the catholic church will be more or less gone when the current coffin dodgers move on

It's hard to know for sure. Isn't Religion on the increase in the likes of America.
I can't see too many people nowadays getting into Religion, however AA is basically all about putting your faith into God:D
I don't see why people currently can't leave the Catholic Church. It's crazy.

Daegerty

TeddyTedson wrote: »

AA is basically all about putting your faith into God:D

and there I was thinking it was about getting your car fixed if it breaks down while you're on the road. sneeky baeshtads

Fluorescence

According to the priest in my local church catholicism is very much in the minority these days. Was surprised to hear a clergyman take such a stance, but it seems to be true alright. There's few practising catholics around now after all the scandals drove people who were just catholic in name to shed their ties to the religion.

Dyr

Im in my late 30s..a lot of people tend to turn back towards the church as they get older but I reckon with my generation and after that the catholic church has had it's chips in this country. Once our govt mans the f**k up and takes responsibility for education then the catholic church in this country will have no interface with future generations

They'll be a like function hall, only used for christenings, weddings and funerals...and the sooner that stops as well then the better.

hiscan

Thank God I'm an Atheist.

Craebear

inb4 "hitler was an atheist"

Tar.Aldarion

Will be secular in a generation or so.

gurramok

Can't wait for secularism, equal rights for all!

hatrickpatrick

I'm a Catholic and I believe very strongly in God. But I feel religion should be a purely, totally, and completely private matter - it shouldn't be endorsed or enforced in any way by the government.

Liam Byrne

The "nation" should be neutral, allowing citizens to choose their religion (or non-religion) equally and without abuse or ridicule.

Mind you, the nation should also jail criminal twisted sick f**k paedo's and should definitely not force taxpayers to pay their legal bills, so I doubt we're anywhere near neutral just yet, unfortunately.

breadandjam

There's a huge difference between an Atheist nation and a Secular one. I don't think Ireland will ever become a nation of atheists but hopefully it will become a secular one soon.

Aldebaran

I attended mass for the first time in a long time recently (a remembrance mass for my grandfather) and the place was packed. I'd say reports of the Church's death are greatly exaggerated.

HUNK

I was always under the impression that anyone in Ireland today who is generally 30 years old or younger wouldn't take religion all that seriously. I reckon most are either atheist/agnostic or are just non-practicing within thier religion.

strobe

Aldebaran wrote: »

I attended mass for the first time in a long time recently (a remembrance mass for my grandfather) and the place was packed. I'd say reports of the Church's death are greatly exaggerated.

I'd just say your grandfather was probably a popular man. Chances are you weren't the only one there that was attending mass for the first time in a long time.

Mark200

Well if you mean by "atheist country" that atheism is the predominant religious view, then yes I think it's inevitable. Religion will eventually die out, even if it won't happen for centuries or longer.

Liam Byrne

Aldebaran wrote: »

I attended mass for the first time in a long time recently (a remembrance mass for my grandfather) and the place was packed. I'd say reports of the Church's death are greatly exaggerated.

I attended an anniversary mass recently and it actually scared me - I felt like I had gatecrashed a cult.

And while yes, the church was full, a lot of those there were there because of the anniversary.

gurramok

Aldebaran wrote: »

I attended mass for the first time in a long time recently (a remembrance mass for my grandfather) and the place was packed. I'd say reports of the Church's death are greatly exaggerated.

And try attending a regular sunday mass and report back!

HUNK wrote:

I was always under the impression that anyone in Ireland today who is generally 30 years old or younger wouldn't take religion all that seriously. I reckon most are either atheist/agnostic or are just non-practicing within thier religion.

Ahem!! The 30-40yr age group started the desertion from the church, ye young wans should be a little more appreciative

Aldebaran

strobe wrote: »

I'd just say your grandfather was probably a popular man. Chances are you weren't the only one there that was attending mass for the first time in a long time.

Possibly, but still as an atheist and having not stepped into a church in a while I was expecting a fair few empty pews but there wasn't, lots of young families too.

Aldebaran

gurramok wrote: »

And try attending a regular sunday mass and report back!

I'll do it, for science!

Tar.Aldarion

Aldebaran wrote: »

I'll do it, for science!

May science preserve you

pragmatic1

Yeah its in a very sharp deline at the moment. Maybe one of my friends goes to mass regularly but shes the most a la carte Catholic I've ever met. The census should be interesting.

NomdePlume

I went to an anniversary mass last month and was surprised at how full the church was. A lot of 30 to 40-something parents with their small children.

This was in a rural area where I suppose maybe Mass is a social outlet though. People get to have a chat outside afterwards and catch up with the local news. That's probably a patronising/insulting view of things, sorry.

Birroc

I reckon it will take 2 more generations but it will happen. The question is what will fill the void of man's need to understand their reason for being.

philologos

I'd hope not anyway.

The "secular" that is being thrown around here can have many meanings. In governance it can mean impartiality in respect to religion, or it can mean that the population is largely irreligious which to me would mean the same thing as a majority atheist country. I would consider the former pragmatism, the latter lamentable.

Although in saying that the RCC will be gone, this doesn't mean that other belief systems won't emerge (Evangelicalism / Pentecostalism, or Islam would be the two worthy of consideration) or that all the other churches will necessarily go into decline.

strobe

Birroc wrote: »

I reckon it will take 2 more generations but it will happen. The question is what will fill the void of man's need to understand their reason for being.

Communal farming initiatives of course, comrade.

Workers of the world unite!

J_E

pragmatic1 wrote: »

Yeah its in a very sharp deline at the moment. Maybe one of my friends goes to mass regularly but shes the most a la carte Catholic I've ever met. The census should be interesting.

I doubt the census will be really accurate though. I think my mother put both herself and me as Catholic, despite the fact she never ever goes to church and she knows I'm an all-out athiest. :rolleyes:

philologos

strobe wrote: »

Communal farming initiatives of course, comrade.

Workers of the world unite!

Are you a capitalist atheist or a communist atheist?
Are you an anarchist atheist or a socialist atheist?
Are you a Trotskyite atheist, or a Stalinist atheist?
With all those divisions we'll be back to stage one boss :pac:

strobe

philologos wrote: »

Are you a capitalist atheist or a communist atheist?
Are you an anarchist atheist or a socialist atheist?
Are you a Trotskyite atheist, or a Stalinist atheist?
With all those divisions we'll be back to stage one boss :pac:

Snowball?

http://www.glogster.com/media/2/4/35/57/4355729.jpg

pragmatic1

Cydoniac wrote: »

I doubt the census will be really accurate though. I think my mother put both herself and me as Catholic, despite the fact she never ever goes to church and she knows I'm an all-out athiest. :rolleyes:

I'd say it'll be a fairly accurate representation.

Pace2008

Daegerty wrote: »

Hope not, we have enough keyboard warriors already

Like all those insufferable Japanese and Scandinavians.

G_R

There was a pretty interesting report on BBC Online a while back saying that, looking at census data, religion will all but die out in 9 countries, and Ireland was one of them.

Here's a link to the report.

And for those on Mobile:

Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says By Jason Palmer


The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.


The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.


The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.


The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.


Their means of analysing the data invokes what is known as nonlinear dynamics - a mathematical approach that has been used to explain a wide range of physical phenomena in which a number of factors play a part.



One of the team, Daniel Abrams of Northwestern University, put forth a similar model in 2003 to put a numerical basis behind the decline of lesser-spoken world languages.


At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the "utility" of speaking one instead of another.


"The idea is pretty simple," said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.


"It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.


"For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there's some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not."

Some of the census data the team used date from the 19th century
Dr Wiener continued: "In a large number of modern secular democracies, there's been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%."


The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the "non-religious" category.


They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.


And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.


However, Dr Wiener told the conference that the team was working to update the model with a "network structure" more representative of the one at work in the world.


"Obviously we don't really believe this is the network structure of a modern society, where each person is influenced equally by all the other people in society," he said.


However, he told BBC News that he thought it was "a suggestive result".
"It's interesting that a fairly simple model captures the data, and if those simple ideas are correct, it suggests where this might be going.


"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out."