Internet helping to kill religion

[Glacier]

Perhaps you could share a link to that data, because everything I've read about Canada indicates religion in on a down slide.

I've shared it before, but here ya go... http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... opulation/

[Verum]

My understanding of those stats are that they mostly represent countries like india where they have a huge population and a large growth rate as well as a large portion of their population being religious. So worldwide by percentage non theistic people will be "declining" though generally in western developed nations theism is on the decline.

Yes, basically the countries with the high birth rates have lower levels of education, wealth and irreligiosity. The fact is that basically everywhere is starting to catch on to education and birthrates are dropping. Whether this will reduce religiosity or not has yet to be seen, and there are arguments for and against, but if the current developed world is anything to go by, in the long run it might, but even so, it will take quite some time before there are fewer religious people than today, even in relative terms.

[OldIslander]

http://icelandmag.visir.is/article/00-icelanders-25-years-or-younger-believe-god-created-world-new-poll-reveals

I'm not sure how much the internet has to do with this, but I believe that Omnitheo, the OP, was absolutely correct when he suggested that "knowledge is the single greatest god killer in history". And thanks to the internet, all manner of knowledge has never been distributed, so quickly and efficiently, to so many.

Religion started out as a thousand different spirits that inhabited our environment, and which were responsible for pretty much everything that happened to early mankind. Then as our earliest ancestors evolved and got smarter, all the spirits that lived in rivers and trees and volcanoes, and in the clouds, were rejected for more complex Gods that were responsible for everything.

So as we continue to evolve and place more trust in science, down the road, future generations will finally give up the notion that the earth was created in 7 days by an old guy with a white beard, and that his son walked on water and that all living creatures on the earth evolved from the animals on an ark.

[Glacier]

Yes, basically the countries with the high birth rates have lower levels of education, wealth and irreligiosity. The fact is that basically everywhere is starting to catch on to education and birthrates are dropping. Whether this will reduce religiosity or not has yet to be seen, and there are arguments for and against, but if the current developed world is anything to go by, in the long run it might, but even so, it will take quite some time before there are fewer religious people than today, even in relative terms.

You don't even have to compare country to country, but just within a single country. Take Turkey for example. For over 80 years it was a secular country, BUT the religious have been out-breeding the secular for quite a few decades, which is turning the nation back into a theocracy again.

[my5cents]

Perhaps you could share a link to that data, because everything I've read about Canada indicates religion in on a down slide.

I've shared it before, but here ya go... http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... opulation/

Thanks for taking the time to provide the link Glacier. In reading the article I note Canada isn't mentioned at all.

Being a Washington DC based think tank, that's understandable. I don't think we can extrapolate trends in the US with Canada, when it comes to religion.

[Glacier]

Thanks for taking the time to provide the link Glacier. In reading the article I note Canada isn't mentioned at all.

Being a Washington DC based think tank, that's understandable. I don't think we can extrapolate trends in the US with Canada, when it comes to religion.

Yes and no. Because immigration is ramping up in Canada, church attendance has actually increased slightly in Vancouver and such over the past 30 years while decreasing dramatically in Newfoundland and PEI where immigration is much less (Canada's most religious provinces), and if Trudeau gets his way, immigration from religious areas of the world will be ramped up further, driving religiosity up, or at least reversing the current trend.

Don't get me wrong. Religiosity as a whole in Canada has been in decline since it peaked in the 1960s, and will continue to decline for a couple more decades. However, if we follow the path of Europe, it will start to increase after that.

This link I posted is not talking about the USA either. It's talking globally and also by continents. Europe is becoming far more religious. In fact, the Generation Z in the UK is the most socially conservative generation since the Greatest Generation (WW2 generation). This in large part because Generation Z has a disproportionately high percentage of first and second generation UKers. Remember, teenagers of today are the adults of tomorrow.