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Growing numbers of ‘millennials’ who are unaffiliated or atheists are causing vast changes in the American religious landscape, report says


Declining levels of religious belief and practice among the generation of Americans born in the last two decades of the 20th century is shifting the US towards becoming a less devout nation, a major new survey has found.

The growing proportion of “millennials” – young adults now in their 20s and 30s – who do not belong to any organised faith is changing America’s religious landscape, says a report by the respected Pew Research Center, based on a survey of 35,000 people.

The religiously unaffiliated or “nones”, who include atheists and those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular”, have grown to 23% of the US population, compared to 16% at the time of the last comparable survey in 2007.

But three out of four Americans still have some religious faith, mainly Protestant denominations, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. And 89% of US adults say they believe in God – including a significant proportion of “nones” – making America more religiously inclined than other advanced industrial nations.

Youth largely equates with a lack of religious activity, says the report. One in four millennials attend religious services on a weekly basis, compared with more than half of those adults born before or during the second world war. Only 38% of adults born after 1990 say religion is very important in their lives, compared with 67% of those born before 1945.

Overall, 55% of American adults say they pray daily, 53% say religion is very important in their lives and 50% attend a religious service at least once a month. Significantly, more women (64%) pray on a daily basis than men (46%).

The 2014 Religious Landscape Study follows an analysis in May which looked more broadly at the changing religious composition of the US public. The report released on Tuesday examines beliefs and practices.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/young-americans-shift-religious-landscape-less-devout

It was about time. Interestingly even in the 21st century a huge number of people believe in fairy tales. I guess accepting the reality of nothingness after life is a scary thought which has shifted people towards religion in the past. Although I do not want to start a religious debate in this thread as there is a huge thread about "atheists hating religion". This seems like natural to me and this trend is probably only going to persist in the future.

My friends who are atheists usually point to the utter absence of a God as the reason for their belief.  It's not anti-religion or that they have had a bad experience with religion. It is simply that no evidence of a God exists.

Actually, research indicates the opposite.

A large scientific study determined that veridical perception during brain-death is a scientific fact. Consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn’t resume again until the heart has been restarted. Furthermore, the detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events.

Press release:
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2014/10/07-worlds-largest-near-death-experiences-study.page#.VDa5LhaOqSo.

Perhaps atheists like YOU are simply refusing to acknowledge the scientific evidence for what it is?? This is not the first time that I have presented this evidence to you, RodeoX.

Scientific evidence supporting near-death experiences and the afterlife:
http://www.near-death.com/science/evidence.html

50 years of jewish cultural marxism will do that to a country

Actually it does not. You're part of the ignorant and deluded group of people who take everything they read for granted.  There is always going to be an article or two opposing some idea. You should never believe stuff because of stories that people tell you or because of a few articles. Here's a nice example:
AWARE Results Finally Published – No Evidence of NDE (http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aware-results-finally-published-no-evidence-of-nde/). It is quite easy to tell a random story to people so that you attract attention with a NDE.  A quote from a scientific perspective:

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I wouldn't call the US a democracy anymore.

I would disagree.  What I see happening is that the religion of 'Scientism' is rapidly gaining traction, and just like the Christian fundies worried themselves over, it is under the increasingly competent and dedicated direction of public schools.

A practitioner of the Scientism faith has to be ignorant and/or antagonistic to the philosophical methods used by scientists of old.  He/she must know 'science' as being, by definition, whatever a government chartered or partnered 'scientist' says it is.  The idea of practicing the scientific method on one's own is as abhorrent to a Scientism-ist as it was for Catholics to try to read and interpret the bible on their own with less than complete direction of the clergy prior to the reformation.

The most discouraging thing about these new Scientism adherents is that they are every bit as intolerant and nasty as your average whack-a-doodle religious fundy.  e.g., the Westboro Baptists or the Taliban who won't let girls go to school.  It is also worth note that the global warming scam rode to town on the backs of these minions so they represent a clear and present danger to a lot of the 'freedoms' that our country (the U.S.) has held dear dating back to the founding of the nation.

Of course the religious nutters that have spawned on the board are out in force on this thread over the news lol.

Agreed.

And as a Christian, I don't lose any sleep over it, because it was clearly predicted in the bible.

It's not a random story at all! Events witnessed and heard by NDErs while in an out-of-body state are almost always realistic and their observations are almost always confirmed as completely accurate.

Why is it that verification of seeing what a doctor that walks in a room wore, or seeing a shoe from a ledge, or other cases is not enough? A physical marker like audio stimuli is good enough to show that these experiences are not hallucinations and false memory. That is what happened in this study.

Also, you can see in point #52 on the near-death site another study that was done which showed that "Memories of Near-Death Experiences are More Real Than Normal Memories": not only were the NDEs not similar to the memories of imagined events, but the phenomenological characteristics inherent to the memories of real events (e.g. memories of sensorial details) are even more numerous in the memories of NDE than in the memories of real events.

Actually, NDEs cannot be explained by brain chemistry alone (http://www.near-death.com/science/evidence.html#a32).


Even if NDE elements can be reduced to only a series of brain reactions, this does not negate the idea that NDEs are more than a brain thing. Actually, this AWARE research study certainly suggests that the brain does not generate consciousness; it provides an example of the many veridical cases which cannot be explained by the current mind-brain paradigm.

This is not to change the subject, but to generate awareness about the evidence supporting life after death and the possibility of God. According to Thonnard et. al in PLOS ONE (2013):

“This suggests that memories of NDEs are flashbulb memories of really perceived hallucinations. Although the similarities of NDEs with hallucinations are striking, further research is needed to characterize the relationship between these phenomena more precisely. Finally, additional neuroimaging studies are needed in order to better understand the neural signature of NDEs.”
This is a “working hypothesis”, and if this is falsified (which is science) then what else is left? If “really perceived hallucinations” are falsified? The problem is that you need a functioning brain to have an hallucination. Blood flow, electrical activity etc. – which is not there during some people’s “actual death experiences”.
It seems that one possibility is something going on in the brain much deeper than can be detected at present and this may be able to “save”, in some way, the current brain-mind paradigm. But I don’t know how this then explains tunnels, meeting dead relatives, enhanced perceptions, clarity, life review…
Why should all that go on?
Hence,
Even if NDE elements can be reduced to only a series of brain reactions, this does not negate the idea that NDEs are more than a brain thing. Since you listed "saw a divine being" or "brain pumping out chemicals" as the two possibilities from a scientific perspective; what is the result?

Most of the youth around the world are also becoming less religious. Government is now the new church.

It is very true that most youths are turning into atheists each and every day. Some of them feel that church has dissapointed them, not fulfilled what it has promised to them through the men of God who preach this things.They feel that it is a thing of the past and has no place in today's world. They want to be free to do what they want without any restrictions. but personally i believe there is a GOD.

Prepare for religious violence. The less religious people in general become, the more fanatical the religious people become.

No problem, as muslim immigration is encouraged in all (originally) white christian countries, they will soon rebalance this situation and in the long run the western countries will be religious states again ;). In the US the latin population probably will have the numbers and ability to convert the whole country to one big catholic community soon :).

Really if you look at Islam in particular it's already happening, any time people start openly trying to criticise them they go ballistic, Christians are more used to it but there are definitely groups out there that are already enraged at the thought of somebody daring to question their religion.

They won't convert the whole country, as some Christian religions in the US would point out the papacy may be the beast of Revelation, as they changed times and laws.

But I can see them becoming bigger here, especially after watching everyone fawning over the Pope when he came.

If the so-called churches were helpful, more young people would attend services. They ought to helping the poor and needy. Instead, they stuff the money they are given in the bank--or invest it in stocks !

Same thing is happening in Europe. People are becoming less religious and want division of religion and state. I think it's a good thing because clergy is rolling in money and own a lot of land that is basically untouchable because politicians usually don't want to mess with religion.

The 'NPR-listener Atheist' crowd that I know is suddenly quite warm to the new Pope, and were leading into his visit to the U.S.  Clearly a well implemented marketing campaign occurred.  On a side-note, several people in this general category mentioned to me independently how great the Rockefellers are now.  The 'younger generation' of Rockefellers is reported to have dumped all of their interest in evil fossil fuels and are going green or some shit.  It is fascinating to see the focus and impact of some of these marketing campaigns, and observing the through the filter of the impacted target audience is helpful in some ways.

Some of the fantastical assertions about the desire to set up a 'one-world religion' are interesting to muse about.  Similarly, the idea that it might be possible and useful to foment significant conflict  between the the Monotheists and Atheists in which they would mutually destroy one another leaving a gap to be filled by what your type (MMH) would classify as 'Satanists'.  To me these are things that I neither believe nor dis-believe.  Just ideas to match against observations I make.

For just about all of my life it has seemed common for many non-religious people to claim that they are not religious but clarify they are 'spiritual'.  My estimate is that something like 90% of humans have some sort of a 'spiritual' instinct.  It expresses itself differently under different social pressures.  Under political systems which dis-favor organized religion it might pop out as a fixation on 'lucky numbers' or some such.  It might indeed be possible to capitalize on this phenomenon world-wide and forge a 'one-world religion'.  If so, the 'Scientism' I mentioned earlier would be a key component since it could re-absorb those who have been pinched off from the more organized big faiths (e.g., Christianity, Islam, etc.)

or any of their ideas / philosophies / beliefs for the matter. its not just religious people that are getting fanatical, (getting slightly off topic) people of all sorts have been just acting up lately, just look at tumblr and SJW's for a moment. lots (and i mean lots) of similarities in how those fatasses act /react to criticism of their ideas and how ISIS or any other fanatical religious nutjob group would react to similar criticisms of their beliefs. its a worldwide trend at the moment imo. also, theyre all huge hypocrites too.

I can see the Scientism, Catholic Church (who has accepted the theory of evolution, and is gazing at the stars through a telescope named Lucifer, looking for aliens), and green movement all working together beautifully without any problems. They all strive for the fixing of this global problem of "climate change".

Just get the Christians in the world to convert to Catholicism, and you're probably more than half way there to the 1 world religion.  Many churches are accepting of Catholicism more than ever.

Next you need to get rid of the "fundamentalist" Christians who believe in the bible only (who are right now being labeled extremists on SPLC (https://www.splcenter.org/)) and either convert the atheists to the green movement or get rid of them, and you're really almost there.

There's an interesting prediction on WW3 that actually talks about getting rid of the Christians and atheists (http://www.threeworldwars.com/albert-pike2.htm) to get their end goal.

The phenomena of low oxygen hallucination is well known and happens to people of all faiths and no faith.  As the brain dies our perception of reality is, of course, skewed and perverted. There is nothing in this observation that is inconsistent with that process. I just don't see where the God part comes in. The first link does not mention anything about religion or an afterlife, it is about near death hallucinations.
It's just not evidence of God of any kind. Where is this God/afterlife part?

The Western nations seems to be moving towards a less religious society, and at the same time the rest of the world seems to be moving towards more religious dominance. It is true that the influence of organized religious groups is declining in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. But at the same time, their influence seems to be growing in Africa, India, China, Russia, Middle East.etc.

As I mentioned in my other posts in this thread, the "dying brain" and "illusory hallucination" theories are not scientific. The brain needs oxygen to create hallucinations; someone who lacks a gag reflex due to cardiac arrest will not be able to form memories, that is why NDE in the AWARE study cannot be explained by brain chemistry alone.

please do feel free to rationally explain just why those theories are not scientific. right here, all youre doing is stating a few vaguely, possibly related statements. exactly what does a gag reflex have to do with the recording/creation of new memories here? memory is controlled primarily by the hippocampus.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-near-death-experience-isnt-proof-heaven/

Hi,
You quoted:
"the reason hallucinations seem so real 'is that they deploy the very same systems in the brain that actual perceptions do.'"
This means that the brain systems responsible for actual perception would have to be active and functional during a period of brain death in order to produce an NDE under the "really-perceived hallucination" framework proposed by you and Thonnard. NDEs occurring after 30 seconds of cardiac arrest (during brain death) have been reported before, and also recently:
In the AWARE study, consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn’t resume again until the heart has been restarted.
Will either you or Dr. Sacks please explain how could there be hallucination for 3 minutes if there is "typically" no possibility of perception after the first 30 seconds of cardiac arrest? How can the patient in the study "remember being shocked" when he does not remember feeling pain from the shock (while he was unconscious)? And furthermore, how can the memory of a hallucination that is "more real" (per Thonnard) than a real memory be produced under conditions when the brain is literally "offline"? Even the basic functions of memory-formation and perception is a lot to ask for a body under CPR and a brainstem that isn’t furnishing a gag reflex (or even one which has newly just recovered such a reflex).

So let's put gag reflexes aside and focus clearly on the possibility (if any) of awareness and apparent conscious function under the physiology of a brain which is offline. Do these theories actually provide us with such a possibility? These theories are not scientific because they do not address the results of the AWARE study which provided one example of the kind of realistic OBEs which show that NDEs cannot be explained by brain chemistry alone (http://www.near-death.com/science/evidence.html#a32).

I do think that NDE are interesting I just do not see the need for any supernatural explanation. It makes perfect sense that one would have an altered perception of reality when dying. The brain takes 10 min. or so to die from hypoxia. During that time normal functions become increasingly difficult. As you mention, most people go unconscious about 30 seconds after the heart stops. But they often can still hear or remember things that happen after appearing unconscious. Sometimes they later are able to recall things that were said in the ER. This proves they are able to form memories even in their sad state.

Of course this does not dis-prove a God or an afterlife. There is no logical way to prove that. But there is also no logical way to prove that people don't turn into bananas when they die. This leave us to decide on the information we do have rather than what could be. I personally think that when we die that's it. No fanfare or grand event, no turning into a banana or Valhalla.

I think it is likely you do not understand that NDEs are a medical anomaly.

I already responded to this:
The problem is that you need a functioning brain to have an hallucination. Blood flow, electrical activity etc. – which is not there during some people’s “actual death experiences”.
These people who do not have a functional brain are simply not medically capable of any degree of awareness, including perception and memory-formation.
Actually, there is no medical explanation for perception occurring during such a "sad state" of "brain death" and it is the same story with memory formation and therefore hallucination; your claim that memories can somehow form during brain death is totally unscientific; unlike the skeptical theory, I will substantiate my claim by citing researchers. These researchers claim that if people have these memories without the use of the brain's functions, then it SUGGESTS that consciousness is NOT produced by the brain.

New Scientist: "No Medical Explanation For Near-Death Experiences"
Guess what, that is exactly what happened in the AWARE study! The patient was aware of a sound and formed a memory about it up to 3 minutes after "clinical death"; Parnia uses "actual death experience" as the more accurate term from a medical perspective. Also, the patient reported no pain upon being shocked, this confirms that his brain was not only unconscious, it was totally non-functional at that time.
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20070621123534/http://neardeath.home.comcast.net/nde/001_pages/18.html

There is strong empirical evidence that the personality survives death; if you study the 52 points of evidence I linked, it will likely convince you of that. What YOU personally think about death is not important since it is not based upon any scientific evidence. NDE research has show that your experience "up there" reflects your present beliefs, expectations, and level of awareness. In the here and now you can shape what happens after you die.

Well, this is because scientific researches makes more sense than religion.

But read from some book (forgot what it is ) "People go to religion to avoid going from hell or be in despair when they die".

It isn't true. I've met plenty of people who became Christians from personal experiences and logic. I don't think anyone has converted because they're afraid of what happens when they die. Because if you don't believe in religion, you're not afraid of hell, so no one would convert for fear of it lol.

Religion is a fairy tale.

As people become more educated, religion will die.

This is just common sense.

A lot of you need to get common sense.   :-\

http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-believe-i-have-a-healthy-common-sense-and-therefore-have-no-need-for-religion-heidi-klum-65-58-16.jpg

Worship me! I have money!.

Haha Just joking but i have my point

Sometimes i dont get the logic of religion. Really.

Just saw this video (https://youtu.be/m8_G2877gIU) the other day trying to give proof of God. It seems way more likely that the world was created versus random, logically. He also talks about your conscience proving there's a God as a conscience is not something that would ever be required so why would people grow a conscience through evolution (it can actually be detrimental from an evolutionists standpoint)?

It's all because government is hindering parents from beating their children properly.

:)

On the other hand I have met a few people who converted to Christianity after falling in to various dirty tactics employed by the missionaries. Their tactics are not working that well in the developed nations, and therefore they have shifted their focus to the third world nations, such as India, African nations, Latin America.etc.