10 facts about religion in America

10 facts about religion in America

“Consciousness Creates Reality” – Physicists Admit The Universe Is Immaterial, Mental & Spiritual

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/11/11/consciousness-creates-reality-physicists-admit-the-universe-is-immaterial-mental-spiritual/

How Atheists Are Turning ‘Religious Freedom’ Laws Against Religion

http://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/world/story20150521-482657

Think Progres - For almost a year now, the nation has been locked in almost constant debate over various state and federal versions of the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA), a 20-year-old law that was broadened by the Supreme Court in 2014 and has since been embraced by right-wing politicians and pundits — especially religious conservatives. But in an unusual twist, an atheist activist is galvanizing support for a legal campaign to use the federal RFRA to remove the phrase “In God we trust” from U.S. coins and paper bills.

Michael Newdow, who unsuccessfully sued to have “Under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance in 2004, published a guest post on the The Friendly Atheist blog last Friday outlining a new initiative to challenge the decades-old policy of printing the religiously themed American national motto on U.S. currency. He explained that while courts have dismissed claims that the phrase violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution — which prohibits Congress from passing laws that establish one religion above others — his new legal argument is rooted in RFRA’s stipulation that religious activity cannot be “substantially burdened” without a “compelling government interest.” The government’s interest in emblazoning currency with “in God we trust,” Newdow argues, is suspect.

“Because Constitutional principles can be twisted and perverted, the challenges to this practice under the Establishment Clause have, so far, failed,” Newdow wrote. “Challenges under RFRA, however, are not as susceptible to misapplication. This is because every Supreme Court justice involved in the three RFRA cases heard to date has agreed that, under RFRA, religious activity may not be substantially burdened without a compelling governmental interest and laws narrowly tailored to serve that interest.”

Newdow, who plans to file the case in 7 federal court circuits, told Think Progress that although many Americans simply ignore the motto, it can be infuriating for those who don’t believe in God.

 “Imagine if Christians had to carry on their body something they disagree with religiously, like ‘Jesus is a lie’ — how long do you think that would stand?” Newdow said. “But atheists are so denigrated in this society that people accept this without a second thought.”

Use of “In God We Trust” has long frustrated hardline supporters of the separation of church and state, who often note that its inclusion on U.S. paper currency is a relatively recent phenomenon that emerged out of a specific historical context. The phrase didn’t even become theofficial U.S. national motto until 1956, for example, replacing the mantra “E pluribus unum” during the early years of the Red Scare — an era when the U.S. was locked in a Cold War with Russia and its officially atheistic communist government. Paper bills began bearing the aphorism the following year, joining several kinds of metal coins that had been imprinted with it since 1864. The phrase “Under God” was also added to the Pledge of Allegiance during this time, and the state of Ohio changed its motto in 1959 to “With God, all things are possible.”

For more, please check Think Progress

The end of religion as we know it: Why churches can no longer hide the truth

The end of religion as we know it: Why churches can no longer hide the truth

丹尼尔·丹尼特（Daniel Clement Dennett，1942年3月28日－），是一名美国哲学家、作家及认知科学家。其研究集中于科学哲学、生物学哲学，特别是与演化生物学及认知科学有关的课题。目前是塔夫斯大学（Tufts University）的哲学系教授、Austin B. Fletcher讲座哲学教授及认知研究中心的共同主任。

丹尼特是一名坚实的无神论及世俗论者，美国世俗联盟（Secular Coalition for America）咨询委员会成员，及明智思想运动（Brights movement）一名突出的支持者。有媒体将丹尼特、理查德·道金斯、山姆·哈里斯及克里斯托弗·希钦斯称作新无神论（New Atheism）的四骑士。

William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer ? ［TED 中文］

The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/

Why the Future of Religion Is Bleak为什么宗教的未来是暗淡

http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-future-of-religion-is-bleak-1430104785

By DANIEL C. DENNETT

April 26, 2015 11:19 p.m. ET

Religion has been waning in influence for several centuries, especially in Europe and North America. There have been a few brief and local revivals, but in recent years the pace of decline has accelerated.

THE RESILIENCE OF RELIGION

•           The search for meaning is eternal, writes Emilie M. Townes

Today one of the largest categories of religious affiliation in the world—with more than a billion people—is no religion at all, the “Nones.” One out of six Americans is already a None; by 2050, the figure will be one out of four, according to a new Pew Research Center study. Churches are being closed by the hundreds, deconsecrated and rehabilitated as housing, offices, restaurants and the like, or just abandoned.

If this trend continues, religion largely will evaporate, at least in the West. Pockets of intense religious activity may continue, made up of people who will be more sharply differentiated from most of society in attitudes and customs, a likely source of growing tension and conflict.

Could anything turn this decline around? Yes, unfortunately. A global plague, a world war fought over water or oil, the collapse of the Internet (and thereby almost all electronic communication) or some as-yet unimagined catastrophe could throw the remaining population into misery and fear, the soil in which religion flourishes best.

Behind the decline

With hardly any significant exceptions, religion recedes whenever human security and well-being rises, a fact that has recently been shown in numerous studies, but was suspected by John Calvin in the 16th century. He noted that the more prosperous and comfortable his Genevans became, the less dependent they were on church. Presumably, those who deplore the decline of religion in the world today would not welcome the sort of devastation and despair that could give religion its second wind.

There is no other plausible scenario that could halt the slide, for a fairly obvious reason: the recent rapid growth of mutual knowledge, thanks to the global spread of electronic and digital communication.

Any institution—just like a person or an organism—depends on a modicum of privacy in which to conduct its business and control its activities without too much interference and too many prying eyes. Religious institutions, since their founding millennia ago, have managed to keep secrets and to control what their flocks knew about the world, about other religions and about the inner workings of their own religion with relative ease. Today it is next to impossible.

What is particularly corrosive to religion isn’t just the newly available information that can be unearthed by the curious, but the ambient knowledge that is shared by the general populace.

 Funny business

Laughter is particularly subversive. A Mormon watching the episode of “South Park” that lampoons the Church of Latter-day Saints doesn’t just see some outsiders poking fun at her religion. She learns that vast numbers of people find her religion comical, preposterous, ludicrous, as confirmed by the writers’ decision to belittle it and the networks’ decision to broadcast it. This may heighten her loyalty, but it also may shake her confidence, and as soon as she even entertains the hypothesis that belief in God might be a life-enhancing illusion, not a rock-solid truth, she is on the slippery slope.

The late computer scientist John McCarthy, a founder of artificial intelligence, once said, “When I see a slippery slope, my instinct is to build a terrace.” That’s what theologians have been doing for hundreds of years, shoring up whatever they think they can salvage from the rain of information eroding their ancient peaks of doctrine. In some denominations the clergy are obliged to swear to uphold the “inerrant truth” of every sentence in the Bible, but this is becoming more of an embarrassment than a shield against doubt.

Hardly anybody today believes in—or would want to believe in—the wrathful, Old Testament Jehovah, for instance. A God who commands our love is a nasty piece of work by today’s perspectives, and has been replaced, over the centuries, by ever-less-anthropomorphic (but more “loving,” more “forgiving”) addressees of our prayers. (Isn’t it curious how the obsolete term “God-fearing” is still used in some quarters as a commendation?) God has no ears, but may “listen” to our prayers, and “works in mysterious ways,” which is a face-saving way of acknowledging that He doesn’t answer them at all.

Do you remember the impressive and rigorous Benson Study? It was conducted by a Harvard Medical School team that labored for years. It was finally published in 2006, and it concluded that intercessionary prayer for the recovery of heart-surgery patients not only didn’t work; in some conditions it showed a small but measurable increase in post-surgical complications.

Media bias

This was dutifully reported by the media, and promptly forgotten by most. But if the study had found any positive result, you can be sure it would have been on the cover of all the newsmagazines and featured in television specials. This pro-religion bias in the media is crumbling, however, and once it dissolves, the exposure of all the antique falsehoods of religious doctrine will oblige the theologians to build yet another terrace, lower down the slope. They are running out of rocks.

Religious leaders of all faiths are struggling to find ways of keeping their institutions going, and one of the themes emerging from the surveys they conduct is that creed should be de-emphasized and loyalty and community should be fostered.

 PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

If we are lucky—if human health and security continue to rise and spread around the globe—churches might evolve into humanist communities and social clubs, dedicated to good works, with distinctive ceremonies and disappearing doctrine, except for a scattering of reclusive sects marked by something like institutional paranoia.

If we are unlucky and calamity strikes, our anxiety and misery will provide plenty of fuel for revivals and inventions of religions we have happily learned to live without.

Prof. Dennett is co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University and co-author, with Linda LaScola, of “Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind.” He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.