A new British poll finds that the people of the UK identify religion as one of the worst social evils of our time. This made some Brits happy:
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said he was “extremely pleased”.“Britain has had it with religion,” he said.
Sign of the times. Will the last Christian in the UK please take care to mail the Prayer Book to Nigeria for safekeeping?
OK, I'm being flip. But seriously, what does this bode for religious folks in the UK in the near future? I know that this blog has readership in Britain. Do you British Christians (and others) worry about your future as believers in the UK? If so, what are your worries?
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I think all religion is nonsense, human made fiction.
But religion is growing in the UK. It's just the Islamic religion.
I'm wondering how the UK and Europe will feel about that when those areas become Islamic majorities? Probably just fine. They'll like living under Sharia law. Which is fine since Islam is a religion of peace.
And above everything else we can't have Muslims be offended.
This is not just a question of religion in the UK.
Religion today, theism of all kinds, is setting a horrid example and people are understandably repelled by that example.
We in the US have suffered for eight years with an administration that has based its appeal on religion.
The current administration avoids constitutional separation of church and state by redefining religion as 'faith' and funneling tax money to favored groups through an office of 'Faith Based Plans'. That is the easy part.
For some Brits, with an established church, I suppose that is a given.
Non-believers may have another opinion.
The more difficult part for Americans lies in the fact that, in the last eight years, we have lived with a pattern of deep corruption. We have, in addition to the governmental lies and unwarranted secrecy, seen an unprovoked war, the institution of kidnapping and torture, approved by religious figures, sex scandals, the abandonment of the poor [inter alia, New Orleans], institutionalized government theft, governmental spying on individuals, TV and radio censorship using morality as an excuse and many other things.
While some of the blame has been focused on Fundamentalist Christians, other religious people, Christians, Jews and almost all the others, have looked on in silence.
As to the future, one of our presidential candidates finds it appropriate to say that she would 'obliterate, the Islamic Republic of Iran' if Iran should attack the Jewish State of Israel. That's right, she would be willing to kill 65 million people in retaliation for the actions of their government.
Her opponent, a Christian who bears an Islamic name, is treated by opponents as an enemy and accused of being a Moslem.
The reaction of religious people ... silence.
In the world at large, the religious wars in the Balkans, pit Catholics against Orthodox Christians and Christians against Muslims.
In The Middle east, we find Jews fighting Moslems and Moslems fighting each other.
In Africa, we see Moslems killing animists.
And across the Moslem world, and in Europe we find small but very public groups of Moslems fighting almost everyone.
In Sri Lanka, we find Buddhists and Hindus killing each other.
It is not a failure of words, doctrine, faith, slogans, individual good works or any of the standard appeals.
What people see today is the deep dark, even murderous, face of theism.
To be sure, there many other, far more complex factors, the underly the conflict we see in the world. Nonetheless, the common element is so much of the conflict we see today is religion. Religion gets the blame, deserved or not.
It is useless for believers to claim, 'But that is the other religions'. Theism itself on trial today and what people see does not inspire belief or faith.
Atheist Communism tried, without success, to extinguish belief. But no atheist could damage theism nearly so deeply as the behavior of believers across the world.
I suspect that it will take generations, if it is ever possible, to repair the damage to belief that internecine fighting among theists of so many stripes has wrought.
Joe:The reason people in the U.S. have such high rates of diabetes, and are "less healthy" isn't because of the kind of care that they get when they are unhealthy, it is because they are so unhealthy to begin with.
Actually, the study adjusted for those factors. It was for white, middle-aged men. And it still found that the poorest in the UK (and that's a plenty unhealthy lifestyle) had as good an outcome as the richest in the US.
And as for using Britain as an example, your comparing a country of 60 million people to a country of 320 million, a government bureaucracy of that size never works, which is way there is typically more of a push for conservative approaches.
I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to advocate the UK model for the US. I was just defending the NHS against an accusation that it provided poorer care. The US can run its healthcare the way it wants.
ask anyone in katrina who stepped it up. it was the faith based, the churches were there and still are
LO VE NO TR EL IG IO N*
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