On both sides of the Atlantic, membership in once-quiet groups of nonbelievers is rising, and books attempting to debunk religion have been surprise bestsellers, including "The God Delusion," by Oxford University professor Richard Dawkins.
New groups of nonbelievers are sprouting on college campuses, anti-religious blogs are expanding across the Internet, and in general, more people are publicly saying they have no religious faith.
More than three out of four people in the world consider themselves religious, and those with no faith are a distinct minority. But especially in richer nations, and nowhere more than in Europe, growing numbers of people are actively saying they don't believe there is a heaven or a hell or anything other than this life.
It had to happen. The worm had to turn. The pendulum had to swing back. Sanity had to become at least a consideration for a healthy world!
Apparently, according to the Washington Post report, the fundamentalists overplayed their hand.
Christian fundamentalist groups who want to halt certain science research, reverse abortion and gay rights and teach creationism rather than evolution in schools are also angering people, according to Sanderson and others.
"There is a feeling that religion is being forced on an unwilling public, and now people are beginning to speak out against what they see as rising Islamic and Christian militancy," Sanderson [Terry Sanderson of Britain's National Secular Society] said.
None of these groups, which have gained strength in the UK, the US and in most of the rest of the world, seems to be trying to kill off religion. But they are motivated by their horror at what fundamentalism is doing to the world -- not just the fundamentalist sects of Islam but those of Christianity and other religions. It needs to be said (over and over again) that the inexplicable failure of these major religions to deal with their own repressive, murderous fundamentalists has lost them a lot of respect. That's certainly true of Christians in America.
God always shows his hand to societies who don't believe in Him. That is the future, and sadly, the Muslims might be the instrument of his justice, in the same way that the Canaanites where allowed to savage the Hebrews when they lost respect for God.
Go ahead, tell me how negative that is, and then read the Old Testament.
Posted by: SoftwareFreedom | September 16, 2007 at 12:56 AM