So says the headline of an article detailing how the new atheists are using traditional tactics to spread the word of non belief. Sadly, it’s in England:
Herald Sun — This new brand of aggressive atheism has been inspired by people such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett, and its aim is to drive religion out of public life.Figures released last week revealed that a quarter of England and Wales’s population identified themselves as having no religion, a figure that has doubled in the past 10 years.
The Census data also shows a significant decrease in the number of Christians, lending weight to a study conducted by the British Parliament this year that concluded that atheism could overtake Christianity within 20 years. The increasing secularisation of England has resulted in bans on prayers at council meetings and even court cases over people’s right to wear a cross at work.
Well, we can always hope. But here in the US, our founding fathers were so fanatically religious they were invited to leave the realm of King Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. It’s not necessarily in our genes, but it is stamped deep into our national DNA. Hard to tame that ancient superstition.
OP
Errm…that did not quite happen…!
The Council prayer nonsense was challenged it is true,
But Eric Pickles a right wing Tory and a justice minister invoked a rarely used ruse…and within three days the law was changed specifically so these bozos could whisper inanity to their delusion on the public’s time and money.
The cross at work scam was a muppet that demanded that she could advertise her hero to the public…when the company she worked for (British Airways) explicitly said in its work contract that no ostentatious jewellery shall be worn where it is visible to the public.
Worn under clothing was not an issue.
Several theist inspired sunbeams for jeebus funder her to take it to the higher courts where the lower court and its verdict supporting the contract was overturned.
She was later moved elsewhere in her job that was not in front of the public…and she started to complain about that…as they do!
I’m trying to imagine what a non-“traditional” method of communication might be. Out tactic, which may not be entirely traditional, is to take these religious people, stun ’em, and stuff ’em in the learnin’ tanks.
Do you remember back in the 1960’s when we all said “God is dead”. By the end of the decade the Jesus Freaks started to fight back – with fundamentalists in the front-lines.
The same will happen in Britain. Religionists have been in the majority for thousands of years and they will fight really hard (and dirty) to stay there.
grumpyoldfart @ 3
Yes indeed…but something is a little different this time!
There are sporadic, and in the main seemingly uncoordinated, eruptions of theist pouting and mewling in the media about some slight delivered, imagined or otherwise, to their delusion, but they are not getting the support from a Brit ‘fair play’ scandalized populace as they once used to.
Support is in fact dropping like a stone and that decline seems to be accelerating.
So much so that even the C of E has glanced up from their navel gazing to ‘tsk ‘tsk and mutter about Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett et al…although not in any cogent or coherent manner, but folks in the country at large just do not seem bothered.
They are in the main bored with theist howling and unconvinced it will get much better and seemingly the Four horsemen have done the deed they intended.
It might also be a lot more folks are educated these days…percentage per enclave has a higher proportion of rational and grown ups then it used to just a decade ago and it is having an effect it is starting to percolate outwards and through society.
Some tidying up remains but the bulk of extreme belief is a busted flush.
It is left to the likes of the Herald Sun to wring handy pandies in shocked effrontery that religion is a dying meme.
A few religious correspondents of the major papers tend to pretend that all is hunky dory, but in some editorials one can smell the bitterness and fear…it wreaks like soggy undergarments.
One can also tell that it is half hearted and depressive if not pessimistic…methinks they know the game is up!
The ‘Born Again’ bunnies are a spent and vacuous force and even though they comprise the bulk of the ‘evangelicals’ the core support is ethnic happy clappy ever so modern services where ‘tongues’ and other such pathetic shenanigans is the entertainment, mostly at the behest of the imported delusional from eastern Europe and Africa.
That is the new religious growth scam, but it is not likely to snowball into an avalanche, in fact it seems to have peaked already and is now diminishing as some ethnics return to their home land, churches in Blighty are still closing doors and selling up!
But indigenous worship in the shires and certainly in the inner cities has shot its bolt and the main protagonists now are the geriatric, naive, and insulated from reality either through upbringing or through dumb peer relationships…they are just unaware of the real world..simples!
Tomorrow that article in the Herald Sun will be the wrapping around hot and greasy Fish & Chips and a deep fried saveloy!
At one time an article like that would have made headlines everywhere…but not a whimper so far…don’t expect any!
My impression is that on the mainland most Europeans just don’t care and that the UK is influenced by that. Here in the States a lot of people still do care, so we have a lot farther to go. But the number of non-religious are growing fast.
I suppose Blighty is in a far different position to the USA in regards to religious affiliation.
Anytime Hatch Match or Dispatch requires some meaningless gobbly gook and some spurious anointing by a figment of the imagination …
Blighty has had a state religion that goes through the motion and no pressure beyond paying for the ceremony, there seems little urgency and even less ‘hard sell’ by the officiating officer to get the principals in the ceremony to return and bless their congregation…
Seems that secular authority requires some church signed documentation as evidence of ID. but even that little hoop has seemingly been forsworn with registry office and Humanist intervention.
Although some schools still insist on record of spiritual affiliation of some description.
Made almost mandatory in some areas now ‘faith’ schools have arisen.
But whatever no avid recruitment occurs, why should there be?, the religion itself has a place in society without having to pimp itself to gain that status.
That is what gives the C of E such a laid back…’nother cup of tea vicar’ attitude!
A far different state of affairs compared with the US where every church has its own advertisement and recruitment policy.
But the crash of religion as a mythical major influence in Blighty is a shock that the C of E has not yet commented on…I think trying to spin that glaring elephant in the room is going to require skills even above Saatchi & Saatchi and co…in softening the blow.
I remember my Grandparents and their take on religion, even their peers seemed of a same mind.
They had of course lived through the Blitz, well most of them had lost someone to the bombs, one old fella, a work colleague of my Grandfathers I met in the 70’s had apparently lost his wife to the V2 that hit the Woolworths store in New Cross in ’44’, as far as I know he never re-married!
But there were many other losses, women, mates, kids…pets…my Grandparents and their peers had seen god’s love up close and personal…they had little enough to do with it before they would have nothing whatsoever to do with it now.
And certainly since the end of that war, and most of the adult folks in Blighty were alive if not well aware of the 1st war that really devastated a generation just 20 yrs before, religion as a force that brooked no challenge was a busted flush.
Ever since then the numbers have dropped generation on generation at first steadily up to the 60’s (only 15 years after WW2) then slipped irrevocably down the slopes of rationality into the tar pit of bad ideas which will eventually swallow that toxic nonsense in no uncertain terms.
It is picking up speed now, a real meltdown.
And every generation is seeing a plummet in figures despite the rear guard being waged by a theist dominated media and their obsessive crocodile tears about the religious demise.
Aided and abetted by parliamentary muppets that still think there are votes in extolling jeebus.
Behind the times, out of touch, and ignorant of the fundamental change in society.
Makes sense their mantra is not so much to serve in the public sphere but to serve themselves and family.
The theists are caught like rabbits in the headlights, with zero idea of which way to leap.
I cannot profess sorrow just relief.