#Bitchin: Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says

Looky looky the article my friend just posted on Facebook ... not gonna lie, its kinda making my life ...

Per BBC News: A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Nonlinear dynamics is invoked to explain a wide range of physical phenomena in which a number of factors play a part.

One of the team, Daniel Abrams of Northwestern University, put forth a similar model in 2003 to put a numerical basis behind the decline of lesser-spoken world languages.

At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the "utility" of speaking one instead of another.

"The idea is pretty simple," said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.

"It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.

"For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there's some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not."

Some of the census data the team used date from the 19th century

Dr Wiener continued: "In a large number of modern secular democracies, there's been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%."

The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the "non-religious" category.

They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.

And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.

However, Dr Wiener told the conference that the team was working to update the model with a "network structure" more representative of the one at work in the world.

"Obviously we don't really believe this is the network structure of a modern society, where each person is influenced equally by all the other people in society," he said.

However, he told BBC News that he thought it was "a suggestive result".

"It's interesting that a fairly simple model captures the data, and if those simple ideas are correct, it suggests where this might be going.

"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out."

If I have no religion I have no reason to be scared. If I am going to hell then I Just. Don't. Care.

#thatisall

Hi, my name is @SaintPepsi ... and I am a #Christian

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @SaintPepsi

I was born and raised a Christian.  I've believed in God all my life.  I still do.  I know... I know I'm not enlightened or whatever.  Christianity is what I believe in and I know why I believe in it, which is more than I can say for most of the faithless flock that are guilt ridden with issues that have been misinterpreted by trusted leaders. In this current political climate, however, I have never been so ashamed of the word Christian. I know many Christians who are good people and don't swing out into the crazy zone. However, it seems like the people with the microphones, the people who are spear heading the agenda of God (seeing as they love the word agenda so much), are the individuals who have turned the religion I once gained peace from into one of the greatest war engines for hate I have ever seen.  I realize that the major factions of God fearing individuals:  Christians, Muslims, Jews, all have blood on their hands for mass amounts of wars in the past.  Don't jump down my throat on this one, its history. Hell, it's now!  I studied this, I went to college to come be a minister (totally serious on that one) for a religion that seeks to spread the love of God.  All I hear now is hate, hate, and more hate.  Hate is passed off as loving the sinner, but not the sin.  This is bullshit!  I can smell it as soon as their mouth opens.  These people actually rationalize hatred with the assumed judgment of God, a being they so easily speak for yet always seem to misquote.  These miscreants steal single lines from entire books and use them as ammunition against anything they believe is against God. Bearing the cross as if they, themselves, bore the weight of the world’s sins, a weight worth 30 silver coins.

Homosexuality?  Well, of course that's bad.  People shouldn’t love each other! That kind of love involves “dirty” sex... but, so does heterosexual love.  No way, though!  Gays have an agenda to upend the church and all its teachings.  I have never seen any of my gay friends try to shove their sexuality in anyone’s face.  I have never on any occasion seen a gay person openly face someone and say, "I think you should be gay because it's natural and you won't burn in hell."  Darker still, are the examples of certain “sins” that these advocates for hate are perpetuating.  If all sin is sinful in the eyes of God, why are they always so focused on so-called sexual deviancy?  Violence seems to have become just a way of life and more importantly, violence is an answer to God's intentions.  Its all gotten so backwards it makes me sick to my stomach.  I recently went with some gay friends of mine to a church-sponsored meeting for an amendment that will allow gays to obtain protected status in Kansas, so that homosexuals would have the same privileges as heterosexuals under the same rights as race, gender, and age.  If anything, I could best describe the scenario as watching a KKK meeting where no one cared about wearing their hoods.  It's practical and even morally accepted to hate homosexuality in the church.  Taking the homosexual hatred out of the mix you still have a populous that seems to hang on the words of FOX news  -the only “moral” news organization, the mouth piece for rationalization, the news room that turns hate and fear into money and bares the name of God down like a gavel of power.

Gandhi once said, "I like your Christ, but not your Christians," easily an applicable quote in these times.  This is no longer the mad ranting of the Westboro Baptist Church.  Sadder still, I live 45 minutes away from that damned (no pun intended) place.  I asked a close Christian friend of mine how he feels about the direction the church is going and he said, "It's difficult.  As soon as you say the word Christian people tune you out."  The reality of all this is Christian churches have buried their heads so far into the sand, standing on hate and screaming, "LA, LA, LA!  I can't hear you," that the people in the church whom are caring, trying to do good, and love others, cannot associate with the political brand name of Christ or God.  A brand name used over and over again in politics.  Currently, I think the big three religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, have become so pro-war that none of them will ever come back from it.  Currently, there is no love between the children of Abraham and their future seems bleak.   Why would anyone want their names connected to the mass atrocities perpetuated in the names of these houses under one God. . I'm tired of it all.  From the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Israel, to the attacks on political figures, the beating of homosexuals, and the bombings on abortion clinics, all acts are rationalized by fear and intolerance and much like Anne Rice who found God and discovered that His followers are nuts. 

I happen to believe in a god.  I believe that there must be a starting point and that something contributed in putting all that exists together.  Chastise me all you like, but believing in the brand name Christianity, Judaism, or Islam is just something I fear I cannot do anymore.  It's true, I think that if Jesus comes back today and sees where his followers have taken his words through incorrect interpretation, he'd turn around and go home knowing no one had really listened to him, but instead just used his teachings as a means to an end.  What was the greatest commandment again? Oh right!  Love your neighbor as you would love yourself.  Well, people, start loving and stop hating and maybe there will be something to salvage when the end of it all comes. Whenever that happens.

A very clever atheist and wonderfully clear commentator on things, based on his ability to say what he thinks without caring about the political correctness, posted this video.  If you really want to know how the world sees the followers of God who rant and rave and spill hate with every vile word, this man shows it clearly and concisely:

Follow him @patcondell

If you like, call me a bad Christian, call me a faithless, blasphemer that will go to hell.  I'll tell you this much, in a world that believes that silence equals acceptance. That judges others based on their sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, and gender, and deems only a selection of people worthy to judge others, as if God, himself, is speaking through them... well is that a brand of religion you would wear with pride?

#nerdsunite

#Facebook: Why do people belive in #religion

I love me some Facebook Questions. For real, they populate some pretty random questions on the right hand side of my Facebook navigation ... like this one ... "Why do people belive in religion?" Here are the top 3 reasons as voted by Facebook users.

1. Belief in a higher power is what gives many a sense of reason or purpose to life and existence. With intelligence and self-awareness, naturally come the desire to find a meaning for it all to be in the first place.

Humanity tends to reject the concept that we are all merely "just here", and so having such faith can provide great comfort to the faithful.
Science can provide answers to the tangible things in life. For example, how does gravity work. It explains the physical world around us. Before we observed things with the rational scientific method, religion and science often intermingled. In the modern world we now separate science and religion in our secular society.
 
What science fails to explain is why. Why am I here? What is my purpose? Is there any meaning to life? The existence of God can or cannot be proven. Organized religion is just a centralized place for people with common beliefs to meet and share their common quest of the divine. It is much of a community as it is a place to worship.


 
Imagine sitting down with a deck of cards. Without a game to play, you possess nearly unlimited possibility, but very few interesting outcomes. You could of course make your own game, but not many people have the creativity or the patience to do this.
 
Now, imagine sitting down with a deck of cards to play Solitaire. All of the sudden you have a framework of rules in which to act, and you can act rationally inside those rules to win or lose.
 
Religion puts the infinite possibilities into a shared context, it gives us some rules and expectations with which to use. Religion is the codification of society. It is a pursuit of meaning beyond what we can simply experience with our basic senses. It opens a dialogue and community with people who share similarities to us, and gives us a perspective to share with others.
 
Try finding directions without picking a final destination. Most people are not willing to just pack up, hit the road and see what they will... existentially speaking.

 Check out the work of Dr. Andrew Newberg.

2. A theory goes something like this: Religion is a human slant on the brain-wiring that attempts to make animals work for the good of the pack, clan, or tribe, instead of the individual. As humanity evolved into our modern selves, we applied our knowledge, experiences, and social norms to that basic wiring, thereby creating religion.





Well, I think it's safe to say everyone "believes in" religion as an organization, since its existence is pretty plain. So I assume you mean to ask why people participate in organized religion. There are, of course, many answers to this, depending on the individual in question. Think of the institution of the state. Why do people participate in this institution? One person might do so because they believe it is the best available means to reaching some desired end. Another might do so simply because they were born and raised within a state, and may not have given much, if any, thought to their participation therein.
 
Similarly, some people participate in organized religion simply because it is what they have always done, while others participate because they believe it is the best available means to reaching some desired end. This end will, in turn, vary. Many certainly believe their religious traditions are the best available means to securing some form of immortality and eternal reward. Others may have more this-wordly interests in mind, whether they be something base, like profit, or something more noble, like perfection of character. Yet others, however, may believe the activity entailed by such participation to be an end in itself, as in the case of the Muslim mystic Rabia al-Adawiyyah, who famously prayed, "O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.” Similarly, the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart warned: "Know this: as long as in one way or another you seek your own advantage, you will never find God, for you do not seek God exclusively. You are looking for something else besides God. You behave as if you transformed God into a candle, in order to find something; and when one has found what one looked for, one throws away the candle." This, however, raises the question of the relationship between seeking God and participation in an organized religion, which is more than I have time to address at the moment.


       
3. Fear. People are brainwashed to believe that, if they don't have faith - which means not only belief but failure to question illogical beliefs - that they will be in trouble not only in this life but in the afterlife. The threat of an eternity of torture is a strong motivational tool.
 
Religion has been used for centuries to control the masses of people. If you get them to obey without question, you can accomplish a lot more than if they all think for themselves.
 
The sad part is, many religious people believe that if they profess their faith, they will be forgiven for all their sins, so they go ahead and do awful things to other people, knowing they can get away with it because they are "godly" - or worse, that they will be commended for it because the horrible things they are doing are against people who are "ungodly" i.e. do not believe in the same religious laws.
 
Many people are afraid that if religion disappears, that people will do horrible things to each other because, without belief in a higher power, there is no reason to act morally. This is why many believe atheists are the worst kind of monsters. While there are logical reasons to act in the best interest of society, it is often at one's own detriment, so one would need an inherent sense of altruism in order to act morally without faith. Since most people are naturally selfish, religion is the only way to scare most of them into behaving most of the time.

Not too shabby ... not too shabby at all. 

Oh baby, I love it when you pout at me like that. *drool*

Nerd #Rant: Religion Sch-mc-ligion

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Joseph Barney

Religion was there to fight for us after we couldn't fight, after we fell physically, and our spirit IS part of our body now, not later, Mormons. Otherwise you'd not bother to tell us and add that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. And our physical bodies succumb to all aspects of nature, the bad and good. You're nothing but hacks. And the little things do count. We behave the same and use the same defenses for the little things as we do the big things, and when stressed, even those that use different defenses tend to show their cards for all defenses, and we're all human, it doesn't take much to figure out your bones can break when theirs can too. Projection really means they take their weaknesses that've studied from themselves, and use that to break down your defenses. Sometimes it takes a bit of prep or social engineering but they'll eventually break you down. Whether it's a big explosion or implosion or they piss on your wall until it eventually wears away, they'll get to you if you aren't able to defend yourself. And things are different all over and they use taunting, rape, unwelcome advances, and then trick and manipulate your men, us, into being the same. Thru overwhelm us, break us, and completely fuck us up to deprive you and their bi or lez women do the same. It's divide and conquer at the very basic level, nipping us at the bud before we can fall in love, or even become friends and have children, a family. They've infiltrated and obsfucated, penetrated, and hated but in our hearts and spirits we're not related. That's why they hate true humanity. A stalker is all they are. Stalkers have joined forces or simply went along for the ride on this wave of synergy created by the original villains. During looting how difficult is it to break a window abs pillage? This is nothing more than looting, raping and pillaging, and they drag along good homosexuals and good compassionate people aka bleeding hearts, as well as the far right knowing exactly what's going on and taking part and promoting chaos to so exactly the same. Straight and prudes rape too. Catholic priests, Mormons etc don't just rape the sane sex, nor molest just the sane sex. They want and take everything they can. Forgiveness and turning the other cheek is merely getting you to put down your dukes, drop your badge and gun, put that phone down rather than dial 911, or put that pen down and not alert the masses they've been given the ultimate rape drug. THE opiate of the masses is this. And some psychologists have learned, and given away, how to manipulate even more educated and intelligent people. You didn't see that in Hitler's rise because they didn't need to. Things were simpler back then because people were simpler back then. It's the typical hunting/war maneuver, just like the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park. Clever move. Oh, and when it comes to survival, there is NO reverse osmosis, only flooding. It's only natural or God's laws of the entire Universe. You know, the one all scripture says he created?

Sent from my iPod