BlaiseP,

"Why don't we give it a rest and let others comment on Ms W's article?"

I wasn't aware that my commenting prevented anyone else from commenting.

Other people commenting certainly doesn't prevent me from commenting.

Do these comment sections hold only a finite number of comments?

Pers & PS:

Why don't we give it a rest and let others comment on Ms W's article? I would only comment that Pers. felt bad that the Chinese have abandoned their ancient religion but he was more than happy for Europe, and the European settlers of the US to abandon theirs .

BlaiseP,

I hear that if you believe really, really, hard, and clap your hands really, really, loud, you can keep Tinkerbell alive!

'There is an excellent book entitled God is Back , well reviewed, good stats, which detail the rapid growth of Christianity in the emerging world, most of it Christian evangelical. Catholicism seems to be holding its own in Africa and LatAm (Economist survey) but the true growth is in evangelicals.'
__________

There's plenty of reason to be disillusioned with in the hollowness of Catholicism. These new developments along Protestant evangelical lines seems to be true according to the link below.

There is a huge 'here and now' kind of appeal that caters to unmet emotional needs, although the promise of a 'better life' tends to be just another empty promise in the end - a placebo, although finding a quick purchase, where all hope is lost.

Unfortunately, the poor still have to wait until they're dead to find out if their newfound religious beliefs paid off.

This seems like a longshot to me.....a bird in the hand, and all of that.

Given a mythical fair and equitable distribution of all the necessary life-sustaining resources, one wonders how popular religion of any kind would continue to, if the poor of the world suddenly became vested citizens of that same world. We will not soon find out, I'm betting.

http://www.religion.info/english/articles/article_121.shtml

To repeat:

PSolus asked re the Pew Religious Survey:

How many are children who have no choice?

I merely noted (s)he hadn't bothered to link the survey and read its definition. As well, I wrote that the subjects of most surveys are adults, who, by definition are not children.

PS seems pretty dumb IMHO not to know the above, however, (s)he probably has other redeeming characteristics.

BlaiseP,

"Pers. might ignore the constitution of a valid sample but PSolus denies the definition of a survey."

Really, I denied the definition of a survey by asking questions?

"The Pew Relgious Survey is based on a survey of adults, who, by definition are not children."

Ouch, somebody's sensitive today.

"Should read the description in the beginning of the survey."

Is it something I said?

"I'm not going to do it for you."

Have I hurt your feelings?

"You're an intelligent, spirited atheist,..."

I'm an atheist?

How did you come to that conclustion?

"...you can do it yourself!"

So I guess I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight?

Here's $10; what say you go out and buy something that makes you feel pretty.

Found this quote over the weekend:

Harvard economist, Larry Katz, offers the most compelling analogy [about the problems in American economy from about 1973 on]. “Think of the American economy as a large apartment block,” says the softly spoken professor. “A century ago – even 30 years ago – it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed. The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working. That broken elevator is what gets people down the most.”

Pers. I found that too but it is based on the world values survey of 2000 and, as such, is out of date. Wiki cites a 2008 survey from Georgetown which is more current.

Anyway, we are arguing over facts. There is an excellent book entitled God is Back , well reviewed, good stats, which detail the rapid growth of Christianity in the emerging world, most of it Christian evangelical. Catholicism seems to be holding its own in Africa and LatAm (Economist survey) but the true growth is in evangelicals.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Back-Global-Revival-Changing/dp/B002KAORUW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280767978&sr=1-1

As I see it, the problem atheists have is in holding the US model as the template for the emerging world. And even sillier is holding the European model as one. America is more unequal than any other developed country wit 90% of its population struggling--no real growth since 1973 and social mobility a thing of the past. Europe is more equal but aging so rapidly that it has been forced to import poorly assimilable Muslim migrants.

Why would any self-respecting emerging country want to emulate either one?

Best Regards

Definition of a Survey

Pers. might ignore the constitution of a valid sample but PSolus denies the definition of a survey.

The Pew Relgious Survey is based on a survey of adults, who, by definition are not children.

Should read the description in the beginning of the survey. I'm not going to do it for you. You're an intelligent, spirited atheist, you can do it yourself!

All in all, the stats are not terribly impressive. Surprisingly, Ireland is at the top of the list....must be lots of old ladies in Dublin! What's up with the implied multitudes of non-churchgoers anyway? :^)

Click on the country name for a breakdown of the various religions to be found there.....

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/rel_chu_att-religion-church-attendance

BlaiseP,

"Amongst Catholics,... 42% attended Mass weekly or more. Amongst evangelicals the number is an astonishing 58%!"

Of those number, how many do you think are true believers?

How many are spouses who are dragged there by their SO?

How many are children who have no choice?

A valid sample?

Your relatives and the few Ecuadorian natives of SC that you happen to know do not constitute a valid sample, I'm sorry but it's so. (But somehow I think you already knew that.)

'Amongst Catholics, a faith widely represented by atheists to be on its knees (not in the religious sense of course), 42% attended Mass weekly or more. Amongst evangelicals the number is an astonishing 58%!........

So I can't agree with you and as you have posted no numbers, just your opinion, IMHO my contention, not yours, has legs.'
__________

Well, of course it's just my opinion! That's all any of us really have. Your numbers, on the other hand, seem to fall a wee bit short of the 100 percentile mark.....

Where are all of those non-churchgoing hold-outs when you need them most?? I'd say about 89% of all my Catholic relatives DO NOT go to church. Unfortunately, they do vote republican.

I happen to know quite a few Ecuador natives here in SC, and the number of times they go to church per annum can be counted on one hand....South Americans are not nearly so devoted as one imagines.

We should also take a poll of how many Irish Catholics (both here and in Ireland) go to church regularly. Any numbers??

And you base your contention on what numbers? The Pew Religious Survey tells a very different story. Amongst Catholics, a faith widely represented by atheists to be on its knees (not in the religious sense of course), 42% attended Mass weekly or more. Amongst evangelicals the number is an astonishing 58%!

http://religions.pewforum.org/portraits

And since the most remarkable phenomenon of the past decade has been the emergence of militant atheism, no one needs to adhere to a faith in which they no longer believe. So I can't agree with you and as you have posted no numbers, just your opinion, IMHO my contention, not yours, has legs.

'About the proportion of believers who actually believe , all I can say is that how can you possibly know the how many of the 1.6 billion Christians-- billion!--actually believe in the Creator and Redeemer? (Why would they call themselves Christian if they didn't believe in Christ?) You're being a wee bit hubristic here, eh?'
_________

No, I was being kind. Without doubt, a significant percentage of folks who identify themselves as Christian, are either ambivilant and/or skeptical with regard to the 'truth' of various Christian doctrines, dogma, revelations, and so forth ..... or just plain don't believe at all.

Perhaps we can call them the cafeteria Christians :^)

They are the legions of self-identifed nominal Christians who are neither persuaded nor convinced of the supernaturalism upon which Christian theology is founded.

Stepping away from religion can have real and life-changing consequences,and many formerly devout believers are ostensibly not willing to make that move. Some posters here seem to believe that it's very easy to drop one's religous identity once beliefs and convictions change - I am not in that camp however.

So yes, Christianity most likely has numbers of former believers that will never be 'outed' as a/theists.

Ms W. eschews the revealed God of the ancients in favor of an universalist mysticism.

There have been great Catholic mystics, of course, from St Paul through Pascal to Pope John Paul II, but their experiences were within the context of a religion which worshipped a personal God, the same God who revealed himself to the ancient Jews and later who intervened personally in history in the form of Jesus Christ.

Well, P, I disagree. Both Judaism (and the first Christian believers--like the Messiah Himself-- were Jews) believed in a personal God, a God of Revelation. He was separate from the cosmos, a cosmos He created.

About the proportion of believers who actually believe , all I can say is that how can you possibly know the how many of the 1.6 billion Christians-- billion!--actually believe in the Creator and Redeemer? (Why would they call themselves Christian if they didn't believe in Christ?) You're being a wee bit hubristic here, eh?

'Christianity suddenly stepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world eventually accepted as the answer. It was the answer then, and I think it is the answer now.'
_______________

Christianity stepped in and offered another version of the 'Great Whatever' - that would historically be the more accurate portrayal. The 'world' has not accepted this as the answer to the 'Great Whatever' conundrum. We can excuse Chesterton for a wee bit of hubris here.

And only in the imaginations of 1 out of 6 potential believers does this system of belief ring any bells.

As well, MW's faith would have us worship the act of love (while loving each other) itself.

I'm OK with worshipping the love a mother has for her baby but I'm not so sure about how sacred the love a desperate housewife has for her (married) next door neighbor is.

It gets confusing: which love to worship?

Here I am again, reading Ms Woodruff. So kind but so vague. So mysterious and so nebulous. But can anyone tell me what exactly does she mean? (Can she?)

• That we should worship the Great Whatever, although we’ll never know what the whatever is? Doesn’t sound very practical.

• That we should worship the great Mystery which is also the Great Whatever?

• That we should look within and worship what we find there?

• That we should worship the above and also worship each other?

So the Great Whatever seems awfully like the Quaker “God Within”. Chesterton had a few things to say about this God.

.... our idealist pessimists were represented by the old remnant of the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius and his friends had really given up the idea of any god in the universe and looked only to the god within. They had no hope of any virtue in nature, and hardly any hope of any virtue in society. They had not enough interest in the outer world really to wreck or revolutionise it. They did not love the city enough to set fire to it. Thus the ancient world was exactly in our own desolate dilemma. The only people who really enjoyed this world were busy breaking it up; and the virtuous people did not care enough about them to knock them down. In this dilemma (the same as ours) Christianity suddenly stepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world eventually accepted as the answer. It was the answer then, and I think it is the answer now.

This answer was like the slash of a sword; it sundered; it did not in any sense sentimentally unite. Briefly, it divided God from the cosmos. That transcendence and distinctness of the deity which some Christians now want to remove from Christianity, was really the only reason why any one wanted to be a Christian.

GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/orthodoxy/ch5.html

Everything is a manifestation of the Mystic Law and that universal law's creations are fractal representations of the Law. The problem is with the word "God", which implies a force outside ourselves. While the Mystic Law is larger it is still embodied in ourselves and everyone else. The question is how to get in touch with it. That requires practice and study as well as faith. You can't find a practice by keeping your options open and refusing to define your faith.

Dear Martha,
I experienced what you experienced when you pulled off to the side of the road and engaged in that conversation. I, too, had such an experience about 15 years ago, and because of this experience, I now take the time (daily if possible) to have conversations with those that cross my path. Those conversations have enriched my life and taught me so much. We are the stories of faith.

"Are we brave enough for faith?"

"Your (civil and respectful) response?"

Civil and respectful, huh...

OK...

Well...

Uh...

Ummm...

I got nothing civil and respectful.

2. "Brave enough for faith? When we deny our conenction (sic) with others, we deny God."
I deny the existence of god(s).
-----------------------------

gee Tojby, I guess by the standards of the Huckabee community, you'll never "be all that you can be"

What is faith in the first place?

Is it someone who demands we all follow their interpretation of God's intention of what it was to be?

Brave enough for it?

The questions should be: "Brave enough to question it?"

A Christian tenet: God is everyone and in everyone.

1. Making your case with analogy is fallacy.

2. "Brave enough for faith? When we deny our conenction (sic) with others, we deny God."
I deny the existence of god(s).