Very cool, if true

Those are figures for the UK, of course.

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heron61.livejournal.com

The % of people on the wrong side of ideas about both homosexuality and abortion are still disturbingly large (more than 1/3 of the population in both cases - I'm betting mostly the same fairly scary third) but also far better than in the US - I wish we were doing as well.

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A lot of people don't seem to realise (a) how bad things still are and (b) how much worse they were 30 years ago, outside of the liberal bubble. Glad to see you're not one of them :->

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The no religion stat is odd, as according to the 2001 census (which I consider to be more reliable than this study) 77% of the population said that they were religious (83% of those who answered the question).

The abortion stat is also interesting, I wonder how it was that the abortion act came in to effect in 1968 given that (according to these stats) in 1983 the majority would have been opposed (and, one presumes, even more would be opposed before then).

The stats look quite iffy to me.

Edited Date: 2009-12-17 08:50 am (UTC)

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There are a few laws which many people are against. If we had a referendum tomorrow then we'd likely have hanging back. You'll notice the majority were against homosexuality then as well.

As for religion, I suspect you get sharply different answers depending on what question you ask. If you ask people "Are you religious?" then you get a lot of people answering yes who answer no if you ask "Do you belong to a religion?" - and apparently if you ask whether people believe in God, belong to a religion _and_ attend services, the number is around 25%.

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Sure, but if you're trying to work out how many people hold an atheist world view (for instance) you're looking at the number of people who answered 'No religion' on the census, and of those some (most?) will actually be agnostic. So the figure for that is somewhere less than 15%.

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Yes, but they weren't trying to find how many people hold an atheist world view, so that's ok :->

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What's an "atheist worldview"?

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GOD SUCKS!

AND I'M NOT GOING TO TIDY MY BEDROOM!

YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND ME!

*sound of slamming door*

(No, I'm not being serious)

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I'M GOING TO USE MY EDGY ICON.

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I think the issue of abortion and public opinion is quite different from the one with homosexuality. With abortion the issue tends to be that it's killing a defenceless person, and people tend to think that that should be illegal (if they agree with the premise that the unborn child is a person), whereas you can believe (as I do) that homosexual practice is immoral without thinking we should legislate against it.

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Many people also seem to feel that it's not killing a person, but it is killing a potential person, which is kinda wrong, but not as wrong as the alternative.

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drplokta

I suspect there are quite a lot of people who believe themselves to be religious but belong to no particular religion, so a multiple choice question asking "What religion do you belong to?" will pick them up as no religion.

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Even non-nultiple-choice ones will pick out that segment whose answer is basically "Why yes, I do occasionally think that the world is a large and strange place, and there's bound to be more to it than what we see in front of our noses."

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wildeabandon.livejournal.com

The abortion stat is also interesting, I wonder how it was that the abortion act came in to effect in 1968 given that (according to these stats) in 1983 the majority would have been opposed (and, one presumes, even more would be opposed before then).

The same reason we don't have the death penalty - we're in a representative democracy.

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heron61.livejournal.com

Don't belong to any religion doesn't mean that the person isn't spiritual and they may even pray and suchlike. It does mean they don't belong to any organized faith, but that's somewhat different.

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I assumed that [Bad username or site: andrewducker' / @ livejournal.com]'s comment about things moving in the right direction meant that he understood the stats to show a significant increase in atheism, rather than a significant increase in non-organised religion (as seems far more likely to be the cause of the bulk of the increase), perhaps that was an incorrect inference.

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I'm pretty happy just to have people no longer feeling they have to be a member of a religion by default. I remember when I was young havig to fill in a form that included religion, and having a fair chunk of the class um and err over the religion question before plumping for Christian, "because that was what everyone did".

While having everyone realise The One True Way and convert to agnosticism would be make me even happier, I'll take my happiness where I can get it :->

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Andrew Brown has organised religion (which means Christianity, I think) in the UK in decline, but not in favour of an explicit atheism, more indifference or "I'm spiritual/believe in God but not religious". As the CIF commenters say, there's some cultural stuff going on here: half of people who said they were Anglicans never go to church, for example.

The results also suggest that this is generational: "The results suggest that institutional religion in Britain now has a half-life of one generation, to borrow the terminology of radioactive decay. Two non-religious parents successfully transmit their lack of religion. Two religious parents have roughly a 50/50 chance of passing on the faith. One religious parent does only half as well as two together". Though I think committed Christians and Muslims also have more kids than the rest of us, which may offset this.

I'll have to have a look at the survey site and see what the questions actually were: that would make a large difference to the results.

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Also - the stats about the Anglican church being in decline are, largely about people who went for cultural reasons (often in village churches) who are now dying out. Many Evangelical congregations, where the people who go to church do so because they believe Christianity is true, are growing significantly - as are non-CofE Evangelical churches. The media are always reporting the decline of the church, but the church I go to, and the ones my friends go to are packed to the extent that sometimes you have to get there early to find a seat!

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I've not seen any stats about what the growth of evangelical churches is is doing to the net numbers of people going to church in this country. Do you know of any?

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atreic.livejournal.com

*icon love*

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