Worst Pope Ever

[andrewducker]

I'm actually pretty pleased in some ways - by moving, in many ways, even further in a conservative direction the church has made it more likely that it will lose members in the west, and possibly even provoke a schism.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Likely true in the civlized world. In the US, far too many people will hail him as an excellent choice :(

[rainstorm.livejournal.com]

We live in an age of fundamentalism. The "civilised" world is, to my mind, small, scattered and powerless to stop the fundamentalists as they destroy all hope of world peace.

(I'm in a pessimistic mood today.)

[andrewducker]

100 years ago, less than 1% of the population of Europe was non-religious. Nowadays it's nearer 40%. And most of those who _are_ religious are very uncertain about it. About 5% of the population actually attend church on a regular basis.

America lags behind - 10% of their population is atheistic. But this is split in the same way that the Democrat/Republicans are - along a rural/urban divide. And as more people become urbanised (a long-standing trend) the percentage should increase.

[adders.livejournal.com]

America lags behind

People tend to assume we're on some straight line from a place of mass belief in religion, to a post-religious society. In fact, these things tend to go in cycles, with a massive growth in rationality and atheism in the early 19th Century, followed by a religious revival in the late 19th and early 20th century, for example.

So'd I'd say that America is just at a different point in the cycle to us.

[andrewducker]

Fair enough point. Although I would argue that the 19th century atheism was largely amongst the middle classes - which were then much smaller - and not nearly so widespread as they are nowadays.

People seem to have an inbuilt need to believe _something_ and I doubt that we'll every get away from a majority of people believing in the mystical nature of the universe - most people find it just too depressing to believe anything else.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

We're social animals basically. We need to be part of something and to defer to something bigger than us. Whether that comes from religion or something else depends on the individual.

I stand by an earlier statement that humans cannot possibly ever deal with the universe because we're not mentally designed to cope with it.