Tuesday

Christianity, atheism and the 2016 Australian Census



The Australian 2016 Census figures show a decline in Christian belief from 61% to 52% of our population. This goes along with the steady decline since 1901:

1901 96.1%
1911 95.9%
1921 96.9%
1933 86.4%
1947 88.0%
1954 89.4%
1961 88.3%
1966 88.2%
1971 86.2%
1976 78.6%
1981 76.4%
1986 73.0%
1991 74.0%
1996 70.9%
2001 68.0%
2006 63.9%
2011 61.1%
2016 52.0%

In just over a hundred years Christianity has lost 44% of the population in Australia. Obviously the Christian church is doing something wonderful to continue in this downward spiral.

In a blow to Islamophobia the decline in Christianity (9.1%) was more than the percentage of Muslims in Australia (2.6%).

The category of "No religion" is up from 22.6% to 29.6%.  Despite what some atheists may like to believe, "No religion" does not mean that every person in this category is an atheist. It includes agnostics and theists who belong to no religion.

Wednesday

An Agnostic’s Assessment Of New Atheist Attitudes

FROM http://strangenotions.com/an-agnostics-assessment-of-new-atheist-attitudes/

An Agnostic’s Assessment Of New Atheist Attitudes by Matt Nelson

BBC Radio personality, John Humphrys, an agnostic ... responds to seven common New Atheist attitudes in his book, In God We Doubt (I have reconfigured the statement/response format for easier reading):

1. Believers are mostly naive or stupid. Or, at least, they’re not as clever as atheists.

To which Humphreys responds: “This is so clearly untrue it’s barely worth bothering with. Richard Dawkins, in his best selling The God Delusion, was reduced to producing a “study” by Mensa that purported to show an inverse relationship between intelligence and belief. He also claimed that only a very few members of the Royal Society believe in a personal god. So what? Some believers are undoubtedly stupid (witness the creationists) but I’ve met one or two atheists I wouldn’t trust to change a light-bulb.”

2. The few clever ones are pathetic because they need a crutch to get them through life.

To which Humphrys responds: “Don’t we all? Some use booze rather than the Bible. It doesn’t prove anything about either.”

3. They are also pathetic because they can’t accept the finality of death.

To which Humphrys responds: “Maybe, but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Count the number of atheists in the foxholes or the cancer wards.”

4. They have been brainwashed into believing. There is no such thing as a “Christian child”, for instance—just a child whose parents have had her baptised.

To which Humphrys responds: “True, and many children reject it when they get older. But many others stay with it.”

5. They have been bullied into believing.

To which Humphrys responds: “This is also true in many cases but you can’t actually bully someone into believing—just into pretending to believe.”

6. If we don’t wipe out religious belief by next Thursday week, civilisation as we know it is doomed.

To which Humphrys responds: “Of course the mad mullahs are dangerous and extreme Islamism is a threat to be taken seriously. But we’ve survived monotheist religion for 4, 000 years or so, and I can think of one or two other things that are a greater threat to civilisation.”

7. Trust me: I’m an atheist.

To which Humphrys responds: “Why?” He adds: “I make no apology if I have oversimplified their views with a little list: it’s what they do to believers all the time.”