God, heaven and hell, and life after death: data reveals UK’s low religious belief compared with other nations
by birdinthebush74
God, heaven and hell, and life after death: data reveals UK’s low religious belief compared with other nations
by birdinthebush74
18 comments
It’s obvious when you look at how the country is rapidly degenerating.
Edit: These replies are just proving my point.
I’m not religious so I cant quite understand what it’s like.
I know there are a lot of downsides to religion but I do think that it can also provide a sense of community, a sense of belonging, security and identity and a moral guideline for a lot of people.
Sometimes I wonder if the lack of directions is contributing to the feeling of people being lost and edgy at the moment.
I honestly can’t believe that 49% of Britons ~~believe in god~~ are weak-minded.
> Belief in heaven has decreased over the same period, but belief in life after death and hell has remained stable, with younger generations more inclined to believe in both – despite being less religious generally.
Interesting. Fewer people believe in Heaven but more believe in Hell.
Substitute the word “delusion” every time you see the word “belief” or “faith” until you realise what religion really is.
At last some good news . When people have less faith in belief and more in their own interpretation of what it means to be human … the better!
It could be due to how horrendously oppressive the church were way back when we were a more religious country.
The same thing will happen/has happened in other countries where the head faith had essentially a stranglehold on the people.
People don’t like it when you tell them to do things that go against their nature. Why can’t I do this harmless fun thing? Why do I have to go to this other patch of dirt just to commit unspeakable acts on people who are different than me?
Eventually, when the answers keep coming up lackluster such as “his will is mysterious he just has his reasons” etc etc
People stop caring.
*”But while the country is becoming less religious, the UK is second only to Sweden for trust in people of different faiths, and has high religious tolerance as well as increasing confidence in churches and religious organisations.”*
People finally seem to be realising that they have lost something. But they don’t know what to do about it.
I don’t think you can just return to the past, and start believing again in what you lost faith in.
Famously hard-to-read Freudian Phllip Reiff said a society like the West, that had a social order but had dismantled its sacred or ‘sacral’ order, had never before existed.
He was bleak at what he thought the likely outcome would be. His only suggestion was ‘inactivism’, ie, doing less damage to what remained.
As an evangelical Christian, I do find this saddening.
Sounds like a good thing. Likely increased intelligence?
I am not able to fully discuss my thoughts about religion without being banned.
I can’t see how anyone could have any interest in Catholicism and to a lesser extent CoE any more. Pretty much a bunch of paedophiles ,sadists and perhaps worse
It is interesting seeing how religious faith is shifting.
It would be interesting to see the figures for non-religious but still believe in a higher power because I think the majority of people actually fall into that.
People don’t like the institution of religion that much but find it difficult to believe all this is completely random and comes from nothing.
Good, all religions are nonsense and drive divide & hatred.
The main thing when looking at religious trends in countries like the UK is that religion hasn’t left, it’s just changed. The space in our society that was occupied by religion has shifted, so religion sits elsewhere. Institutional religion and formal worship seem to be declining but people’s relationship with religion has changed rather disappeared entirely.
These trends are only really appearing in countries that are similar to the UK in terms of culture and religious history, i.e. Christian Europe (particularly north/west Europe). Secularisation and declining religious belief are almost a uniquely European experience (I do understand there are similarities in East Asia but there are other factors that affect religiosity in Japan/China/etc). Perhaps it’s better to look at religion in the UK as the individual experience of religion and belief rather than personal attachments to denominations and churches.
Also can ppl please remember that atheism is a belief system, and under many definitions of religion it is actually considered to be a religion (also in sociology of religion it is one). This doesn’t mean you have to consider yourself to be religious bc you can call yourself whatever you want, but please don’t be rude to people saying that they’re stupid because they have a belief bc if you’re an atheist, you do too.
Theists and atheists are equally absurd. If we look inward with science and experience, maybe we will arrive at truth.
Humanism addresses ethics without reference to the supernatural as well as attesting that ethics is a human enterprise.
Secular humanism does not prescribe a specific theory of morality or code of ethics, and is not so much a specific morality as it is a method for the explanation and discovery of rational moral principles.
Secular humanism affirms that with the present state of scientific knowledge, dogmatic belief in an absolutist moral/ethical system (e.g. Christian, Kantian, Islamic) is unreasonable. However, it affirms that individuals engaging in rational moral/ethical deliberations can discover some universal “objective standards”.
Humanists believe that universal moral standards are required for the proper functioning of society. However, they believe such necessary universality can and should be achieved by developing a richer notion of morality through reason, experience and scientific inquiry rather than through faith in a supernatural realm or source.
Fundamentalists correctly perceive that universal moral standards are required for the proper functioning of society. But they erroneously believe that God is the only possible source of such standards. Philosophers as diverse as Plato, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore, and John Rawls have demonstrated that it is possible to have a universal morality without God.
Contrary to what the fundamentalists would have us believe, then, what our society really needs is not more religion but a richer notion of the nature of morality.
Humanism is compatible with atheism and agnosticism, but being atheist or agnostic does not automatically make one a humanist. Nevertheless, humanism is diametrically opposed to state atheism.
In other words, State imposed legal precedence for a belief system, be it theistic, or atheist, is diametrically opposed to “human freedom and democracy”.
On the other hand, the defense of religious liberty is as precious to the humanist as are the rights of the believers. Humanism is nothing more nor less than a religion without a God.