This is my eyrie, whence I shall witness the Endtimes
What is the dark blue box on the lower wall by right of the door?
Concealed plug?
It was some random phone line thing from before I moved in. Had no use. Was gonna remove it, but then I thought I’d paint it over - texture
The bottle on the bedside cabinet is Fielden English rye whisky (absolutely delicious). The spot lamp is pointing at an antique lacquered “Mandalay box” I bought in Rangoon in January, for a ridiculous $50
It contains my Tramadol
The photo above is of the terrifying sea stacks by St Kilda, from 2018
It seems that Israel is on the good side because they’re like us. They have the same God, even if they don’t have the same support for Jesus. Whereas the other countries in the Middle East, don’t have the same God. Jesus was only a prophet of Mohammed.
If we ignored religion, and thought of Israel as just another Middle Eastern country, would we think of them the same as we do now? I suspect not.
Given that the UK is basically not religious why do we think the way we do?
How many PB contributors attend their church, or place of worship, regularly? I suspect that, apart from @HYUFD, not many.
Me. Every day.
It turned out that the PB demographic (older, more thoughtful about big questions) was more church-going than the average, I wouldn't be surprised. Though even then, a minority thing.
And a demographic that is moving on as fast as Tory voters and Telegraph readers, I expect.
'Of adults surveyed, 12 per cent reported that they attended a church of any denomination at least once a month last year, compared with eight per cent in 2018. This does not include weddings, baptisms/christenings, and funerals. “In numerical terms, that’s growth from 3.7m in 2018 to 5.8m in 2024 — an increase of 56%,” the report says.
This “dramatic growth” is owed largely to younger generations, it says. In 2018, four per cent of the 18- to 24-year-olds reported that they attended church monthly, compared with 16 per cent in 2024. For men, this increased from four per cent to 21 per cent, and, for women, from three per cent to 12 per cent.
“This is now the second most likely age group to attend church regularly.”
The result is a “curve” rather than a straightforward association between age and attendance, the report says, with the middle-aged (45-54) the least likely to attend (five per cent). The reversing trend is also true of gender, it says: overall attendance by men (13 per cent) outstrips attendance by women (ten per cent).
The shift to younger generations is also increasing diversity in the Church, the report says. While just 19 per cent of all churchgoers belong to an ethnic minority, this figure rises among 18- to 54-year-olds to almost one third (32 per cent).
Yes, we have discussed this survey before. It’s self certification, of a group of people under moral self-pressure to over report, rather the inverse of the NHS asking us how much we drink each week. It’s also been commented on by people inside the CofE that it doesn’t match up either with their own anecdotal experience or the congregation count data the church itself collates.
If you had actually bothered to read the article rather than add your preconceived atheist prejudice, you would see it was the Roman Catholics and evangelical Pentecostals seeing the main growth in church going amongst the young, not the C of E.
Not that surprising as most Christian immigrants to the UK tend to be Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant rather than middle of the road Anglican.
The more immigration rises the more the decline in religion in the UK may start to reverse, especially as the religious tend to have more children than atheists and agnostics on average as well
Antidote rather than data, but in my patch of the evangelical world, there has been a noticeable increase in interest in Christianity, particularly from young people, in a pattern very similar to that implied by that survey. Our church (evangelical Anglican, just about still in the CofE, but not for much longer) has literally had teenagers (white, English, locals from birth) wander into church off the street ask what it's all about and become Christians - and talking to friends in similar churches, many have had similar experiences. Compared to 20, or even 10 years ago, this is remarkable - back then you had to lure the youth in with table tennis and pizza, and then barely any of them were even slightly interested in anything deeper.
Of course the CofE is still falling off the cliff, because the bulk of it doesn't actually belive in anything, which is a difficult message to sell with conviction. It's decline is also being accelerated because not only are it's only growing churches the fundimentalist evangelicals, those same churches are leaving the CofE in droves over gay marriage, either lock stock and barrel where that's possible, or more commonly by 85% of the congregation and 95% of the staff walking out and founding a new church outside the CofE just down the road.
I wouldn't say the only growing churches in the C of E are the conservative evangelical ones. High church London churches like St Bartholomew the Great are also growing as are cathedral congregations and rural village churches still tend to have above average attendance as a percentage of the local population and of course gay marriage is still not performed in C of E churches anyway. PLF for same sex services are allowed within services now but only because a majority of Synod voted for them, even if even that was too much for the most hardline of evangelicals. However if they refuse to offer any recognition of same sex couples married in English law now in the established church they are better off not being in the established church if even the opt out from PLF for them is not enough
Same sex marriage is with us to stay. Sooner or later, religion will have to take social progress on board as, eventually, it generally does.
It’s nice that you think social progress is inevitable and in one direction.
History, so far, doesn’t look like that.
You’re quite right that there is a lot of pressure in the opposite direction right now, both domestically and around the world. And of course the pendulum has swung between conservative and liberal in both directions through history - c.f Victorian social attitudes compared to those prior.
But legal slavery isn’t coming back, neither is property-based limited suffrage, or bear baiting, or corporal punishment in schools. Some progress is permanent.
Democracy is in retreat around the world. I wish it wasn't, but it is. You're an absolute fool
"Just 6.6% of the world's population now lives in a full democracy, down from 12.5% ten years ago."
Yes but only because they count a full democracy as a nation not only with universal suffrage and multi party elections but which usually elects liberals or left liberals
There might be legitimate criticism of their methodology but given your own interpretation of democracy is 'anywhere which holds elections, even if blatantly not free or fair' such as Russia I don't think you are the best person to expose it.
Indeed, people taking such a, ahem, liberal view of what counts as a democracy is possibly a sign of the democratic backsliding Leon's post identifies in that we are more accepting of flawed democracies than we were.
Yes, but the democracy point was a non sequitur from Leon; there was no reference to systems of government in any of the earlier discussion. Whether or not some sort of democracy is a pre condition for social progress is an interesting, but different question. The decline in the dominance of and adherence to religion, in the ‘west’ at least, has been a long and slow progress, from the days when people were tortured and murdered merely for having small differences in belief, and that progress started in societies that we wouldn’t today describe as democratic.
The biggest mass murdering regime in human history was of course Mao's atheist Communist regime in China
Which when you examine it, right down to its ‘holy’ book, was effectively a religion.
No, it was a political philosophy of enforced state control of the economy and property.
Religion normally requires a God or Gods or at least worship of Spirits
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
You are making the classic assumption that it must all be con. Because you can’t see how anyone can believe it.
There are endless millions who do, genuinely, believe in the resurgent, militant version of Hinduism.
Also. Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
Most of the great scientists from the early 20th C were religious - Einstein believed in "the God of Spinoza," Schrodinger was drawn to Vedanta, a system derived from Hinduism, Heisenberg was a practicing Protestant and I could list many more. - Max Planck, Charles Townes, Abdus Salam, and John Polkinghorne for example. There are a large number of talking heads now espousing a rationalist, atheistic viewpoint but to say they have all the answers is a mistake. For example, there are multiple explanations for the observer effect in Quantum Mechanics but to pick one out relies on faith, whether it's consciousness causes collapse, there's an underlying explanation that is unknowable to us, there is a multiverse etc etc. String theory has been going for decades with no empirical evidence to back it up. Physics ultimately has left us with more questions, not fewer. And the talking heads nowadays, all aping Feynmann's aesthetic but without the feats to back them up, are uninspiring.
In the end Empiricism is better than Rationalism. It is the scientific method and it does not exclude religiosity, or anything else.
I'm willing to bet any sensible amount of money that the proportion of non-religious people in the UK increases significantly at the next census in 2031.
I would bet the same for 2041 and 2051 but it's too far in the future to bother betting on.
And Muslims will become more secular over time as generations pass. There may be periods where it tends the other way at a population level (new migrants more pious than previous migrants), but over time groups will converge with UK secular norms.
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
Most of the great scientists from the early 20th C were religious - Einstein believed in "the God of Spinoza," Schrodinger was drawn to Vedanta, a system derived from Hinduism, Heisenberg was a practicing Protestant and I could list many more. - Max Planck, Charles Townes, Abdus Salam, and John Polkinghorne for example. There are a large number of talking heads now espousing a rationalist, atheistic viewpoint but to say they have all the answers is a mistake. For example, there are multiple explanations for the observer effect in Quantum Mechanics but to pick one out relies on faith, whether it's consciousness causes collapse, there's an underlying explanation that is unknowable to us, there is a multiverse etc etc. String theory has been going for decades with no empirical evidence to back it up. Physics ultimately has left us with more questions, not fewer. And the talking heads nowadays, all aping Feynmann's aesthetic but without the feats to back them up, are uninspiring.
In the end Empiricism is better than Rationalism. It is the scientific method and it does not exclude religiosity, or anything else.
Ludwig Wittgenstein - possibly the smartest man who ever lived - was religious. As he put it: “what confounds me is not the How, but the Why. Why is there anything at all?”
But faith does not rely on appeals to authority. It is a gift. From God
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
Most of the great scientists from the early 20th C were religious - Einstein believed in "the God of Spinoza," Schrodinger was drawn to Vedanta, a system derived from Hinduism, Heisenberg was a practicing Protestant and I could list many more. - Max Planck, Charles Townes, Abdus Salam, and John Polkinghorne for example. There are a large number of talking heads now espousing a rationalist, atheistic viewpoint but to say they have all the answers is a mistake. For example, there are multiple explanations for the observer effect in Quantum Mechanics but to pick one out relies on faith, whether it's consciousness causes collapse, there's an underlying explanation that is unknowable to us, there is a multiverse etc etc. String theory has been going for decades with no empirical evidence to back it up. Physics ultimately has left us with more questions, not fewer. And the talking heads nowadays, all aping Feynmann's aesthetic but without the feats to back them up, are uninspiring.
In the end Empiricism is better than Rationalism. It is the scientific method and it does not exclude religiosity, or anything else.
Indeed, the Nazis had some brilliant scientists. You need ethics behind the human application of science to stop it being used for evil ends
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
You are making the classic assumption that it must all be con. Because you can’t see how anyone can believe it.
There are endless millions who do, genuinely, believe in the resurgent, militant version of Hinduism.
Also. Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
They’re both organised religions, which means they both include all sorts of crap that is self-evidently political and sociological rather than even attempting to be factual.
I don’t have a clue whether there is or isn’t a god, but it’s highly unlikely to be the one or ones described in great detail in societal creation myths from thousands of years ago.
On this new comment design - no objections to the basic format - I am struggling to see which comment page I am on in the "VF" interface, where I used to be able to see if say I was on page 5 of 11.
Is it possible to be religious without believing anything that is scientifically not provable?
Is it possible to only have beliefs that are falsifiable? The validity of logic? The existence of an external world? The universe is ordered and predictable? There are other minds?
I'm willing to bet any sensible amount of money that the proportion of non-religious people in the UK increases significantly at the next census in 2031.
I would bet the same for 2041 and 2051 but it's too far in the future to bother betting on.
And Muslims will become more secular over time as generations pass. There may be periods where it tends the other way at a population level (new migrants more pious than previous migrants), but over time groups will converge with UK secular norms.
I have been all three of these in my life: atheist, agnostic, believer
I can honestly say the last is by far the most rewarding, as a way to live, as a mirror to life, as a kind of blueprint to navigate through the storms
Faith has not stopped me being miserable, suicidal, stupid, desperately sad. It HAS saved my life a couple of times, and it has absolutely made my life richer, more intensely patterned, more fully lived
That’s just my experience. But it honestly is my experience
Consider this: many many religious people will feel like me. The idea they will blithely give up this spiritual richness for “better shopping” is perhaps the greatest delusion of late stage capitalist materialism
On this new comment design - no objections to the basic format - I am struggling to see which comment page I am on in the "VF" interface, where I used to be able to see if say I was on page 5 of 11.
Too much white space and the font is too thin and gray.
It seems that Israel is on the good side because they’re like us. They have the same God, even if they don’t have the same support for Jesus. Whereas the other countries in the Middle East, don’t have the same God. Jesus was only a prophet of Mohammed.
If we ignored religion, and thought of Israel as just another Middle Eastern country, would we think of them the same as we do now? I suspect not.
Given that the UK is basically not religious why do we think the way we do?
How many PB contributors attend their church, or place of worship, regularly? I suspect that, apart from @HYUFD, not many.
Me. Every day.
It turned out that the PB demographic (older, more thoughtful about big questions) was more church-going than the average, I wouldn't be surprised. Though even then, a minority thing.
And a demographic that is moving on as fast as Tory voters and Telegraph readers, I expect.
'Of adults surveyed, 12 per cent reported that they attended a church of any denomination at least once a month last year, compared with eight per cent in 2018. This does not include weddings, baptisms/christenings, and funerals. “In numerical terms, that’s growth from 3.7m in 2018 to 5.8m in 2024 — an increase of 56%,” the report says.
This “dramatic growth” is owed largely to younger generations, it says. In 2018, four per cent of the 18- to 24-year-olds reported that they attended church monthly, compared with 16 per cent in 2024. For men, this increased from four per cent to 21 per cent, and, for women, from three per cent to 12 per cent.
“This is now the second most likely age group to attend church regularly.”
The result is a “curve” rather than a straightforward association between age and attendance, the report says, with the middle-aged (45-54) the least likely to attend (five per cent). The reversing trend is also true of gender, it says: overall attendance by men (13 per cent) outstrips attendance by women (ten per cent).
The shift to younger generations is also increasing diversity in the Church, the report says. While just 19 per cent of all churchgoers belong to an ethnic minority, this figure rises among 18- to 54-year-olds to almost one third (32 per cent).
Yes, we have discussed this survey before. It’s self certification, of a group of people under moral self-pressure to over report, rather the inverse of the NHS asking us how much we drink each week. It’s also been commented on by people inside the CofE that it doesn’t match up either with their own anecdotal experience or the congregation count data the church itself collates.
If you had actually bothered to read the article rather than add your preconceived atheist prejudice, you would see it was the Roman Catholics and evangelical Pentecostals seeing the main growth in church going amongst the young, not the C of E.
Not that surprising as most Christian immigrants to the UK tend to be Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant rather than middle of the road Anglican.
The more immigration rises the more the decline in religion in the UK may start to reverse, especially as the religious tend to have more children than atheists and agnostics on average as well
I bet their children won’t be quite so religious. It’s just a matter of time.
This is palpable bollocks on multiple levels
Just one example: Muslims
Muslim immigrants into the west have become MORE religious in the last few decades - 2nd and 3rd generation Muslim Europeans and Americans are more devout and more conservative than their first generation antecedents (as everyone else knows, in a rather uncomfortable way)
And that's just, as I say, one example
Not my experience having met a lot of Muslim sixth formers in east London.
That doesn't surprise me. There was some research a few years ago, which agreed that Muslims were more religious, but rather than being "more devour and more conservative", they were also a lot more liberal. That certainly chimes with my experiences.
Exactly. The article that poor Leon doesn’t properly understand refers to the sense of ‘otherness’ and identity, being influenced both by social and political issues, particularly in the Middle East, and - ironically - as a counter-reaction to bigotry such as we regularly get from Leon. It’s not saying much about religiosity or extremism.
It's a good article.
I disagree with his emphasis on "generations", in that I think that sectors within generations of Muslims in the UK are also important (eg Saudi inspired, Iraq inspired, Muslim Brotherhood inspired, then perhaps varieties of Sufi, Ahmadi etc),
I think he also neglects the influence of where Mosques were being funded and created, and Imams appointed, from, in the 1970s to 1980s. In large measure, that was how Iran and Saudi sought to influence the future of the UK Muslim community.
The UK Government, inevitably, was very laissez-faire.
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
You are making the classic assumption that it must all be con. Because you can’t see how anyone can believe it.
There are endless millions who do, genuinely, believe in the resurgent, militant version of Hinduism.
Also. Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
Astrology, popular in India these days, definitely is unscientific.
I'm willing to bet any sensible amount of money that the proportion of non-religious people in the UK increases significantly at the next census in 2031.
I would bet the same for 2041 and 2051 but it's too far in the future to bother betting on.
And Muslims will become more secular over time as generations pass. There may be periods where it tends the other way at a population level (new migrants more pious than previous migrants), but over time groups will converge with UK secular norms.
Up to 2041 maybe but as immigration increases year on year and the UK becomes ever more Muslim (and the Christian immigrants ever more evangelical or RC) too that will start to change.
Not least as the native white born British population is well below replacement level fertility, with the only exceptions white British evangelical Christians who have 3 children on average to their secular white British fellow countrymens' 1 or 2
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
Most of the great scientists from the early 20th C were religious - Einstein believed in "the God of Spinoza," Schrodinger was drawn to Vedanta, a system derived from Hinduism, Heisenberg was a practicing Protestant and I could list many more. - Max Planck, Charles Townes, Abdus Salam, and John Polkinghorne for example. There are a large number of talking heads now espousing a rationalist, atheistic viewpoint but to say they have all the answers is a mistake. For example, there are multiple explanations for the observer effect in Quantum Mechanics but to pick one out relies on faith, whether it's consciousness causes collapse, there's an underlying explanation that is unknowable to us, there is a multiverse etc etc. String theory has been going for decades with no empirical evidence to back it up. Physics ultimately has left us with more questions, not fewer. And the talking heads nowadays, all aping Feynmann's aesthetic but without the feats to back them up, are uninspiring.
In the end Empiricism is better than Rationalism. It is the scientific method and it does not exclude religiosity, or anything else.
Ludwig Wittgenstein - possibly the smartest man who ever lived - was religious. As he put it: “what confounds me is not the How, but the Why. Why is there anything at all?”
But faith does not rely on appeals to authority. It is a gift. From God
What if your faith is in the non-existence of God?
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
You are making the classic assumption that it must all be con. Because you can’t see how anyone can believe it.
There are endless millions who do, genuinely, believe in the resurgent, militant version of Hinduism.
Also. Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
That's imo quite a peculiar (maybe 'meaningless' is a good word) question. I think you have your magisteria overlapping strangely.
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
Most of the great scientists from the early 20th C were religious - Einstein believed in "the God of Spinoza," Schrodinger was drawn to Vedanta, a system derived from Hinduism, Heisenberg was a practicing Protestant and I could list many more. - Max Planck, Charles Townes, Abdus Salam, and John Polkinghorne for example. There are a large number of talking heads now espousing a rationalist, atheistic viewpoint but to say they have all the answers is a mistake. For example, there are multiple explanations for the observer effect in Quantum Mechanics but to pick one out relies on faith, whether it's consciousness causes collapse, there's an underlying explanation that is unknowable to us, there is a multiverse etc etc. String theory has been going for decades with no empirical evidence to back it up. Physics ultimately has left us with more questions, not fewer. And the talking heads nowadays, all aping Feynmann's aesthetic but without the feats to back them up, are uninspiring.
In the end Empiricism is better than Rationalism. It is the scientific method and it does not exclude religiosity, or anything else.
Ludwig Wittgenstein - possibly the smartest man who ever lived - was religious. As he put it: “what confounds me is not the How, but the Why. Why is there anything at all?”
But faith does not rely on appeals to authority. It is a gift. From God
What if your faith is in the non-existence of God?
Fuck knows
The wisest thing Wittgenstein ever said was in the Tractatus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
I cannot explain my faith, ultimately. It just happened to me. And it was completely unexpected. The correct word really is “gift”. On occasion it’s been more than a gift and maybe akin to a lottery win, or a massive unexpected royalty cheque from Japan
I generally don’t interrogate it. I’m just grateful for it
It seems that Israel is on the good side because they’re like us. They have the same God, even if they don’t have the same support for Jesus. Whereas the other countries in the Middle East, don’t have the same God. Jesus was only a prophet of Mohammed.
If we ignored religion, and thought of Israel as just another Middle Eastern country, would we think of them the same as we do now? I suspect not.
Given that the UK is basically not religious why do we think the way we do?
How many PB contributors attend their church, or place of worship, regularly? I suspect that, apart from @HYUFD, not many.
Me. Every day.
It turned out that the PB demographic (older, more thoughtful about big questions) was more church-going than the average, I wouldn't be surprised. Though even then, a minority thing.
And a demographic that is moving on as fast as Tory voters and Telegraph readers, I expect.
'Of adults surveyed, 12 per cent reported that they attended a church of any denomination at least once a month last year, compared with eight per cent in 2018. This does not include weddings, baptisms/christenings, and funerals. “In numerical terms, that’s growth from 3.7m in 2018 to 5.8m in 2024 — an increase of 56%,” the report says.
This “dramatic growth” is owed largely to younger generations, it says. In 2018, four per cent of the 18- to 24-year-olds reported that they attended church monthly, compared with 16 per cent in 2024. For men, this increased from four per cent to 21 per cent, and, for women, from three per cent to 12 per cent.
“This is now the second most likely age group to attend church regularly.”
The result is a “curve” rather than a straightforward association between age and attendance, the report says, with the middle-aged (45-54) the least likely to attend (five per cent). The reversing trend is also true of gender, it says: overall attendance by men (13 per cent) outstrips attendance by women (ten per cent).
The shift to younger generations is also increasing diversity in the Church, the report says. While just 19 per cent of all churchgoers belong to an ethnic minority, this figure rises among 18- to 54-year-olds to almost one third (32 per cent).
Yes, we have discussed this survey before. It’s self certification, of a group of people under moral self-pressure to over report, rather the inverse of the NHS asking us how much we drink each week. It’s also been commented on by people inside the CofE that it doesn’t match up either with their own anecdotal experience or the congregation count data the church itself collates.
If you had actually bothered to read the article rather than add your preconceived atheist prejudice, you would see it was the Roman Catholics and evangelical Pentecostals seeing the main growth in church going amongst the young, not the C of E.
Not that surprising as most Christian immigrants to the UK tend to be Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant rather than middle of the road Anglican.
The more immigration rises the more the decline in religion in the UK may start to reverse, especially as the religious tend to have more children than atheists and agnostics on average as well
Sadly not, however much I might wish it to be so. From last time we discussed this-
According to their data, 41% of the English and Welsh Church attendance in 2018 was in Anglican settings. Based on a total regular attendance of 3.7m people, we can calculate the Anglican attendance at around 1.5m. By 2024, Anglicans had reduced as a proportion to 34% but of a much larger reported attendance of 5.8m people, so we should be seeing an increase in attendance of around 500,000 to around 2m. In other words, the report claims that the Church of England has grown by a third since 2018.
There may well be big percentage growth in funkier churches, but the CofE is such a large part of British Christendom that the total can't plausibly grow without the CofE growing.
And other, better, measurements just don't show that.
Not true, Christian church attendance is growing in the UK, just not C of E church attendance.
As I posted earlier Roman Catholics now make up 31% of church goers from 24% in 2018 and Pentecostals have more than doubled from 4% to 10%
Stuart is telling you that the figures don’t add up. And it’s obvious why.
First question - are you religious?
Second question - for those that answer yes - which flavour of religion are you?
Third question - how often do you practice it?
Quite obvious the third question is going to be self-exaggerated
As was explained to you earlier, a big percentage increase in a small part of the pie is not sufficient to balance with the high level numbers you were citing - hence why even religious experts have challenged their accuracy
It is, see also the regular Mass attendance figures I gave
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
It has indeed in my view. And the outbreak of highly reported wars involving people who look a bit like us. Not to mention economic stagnation. And that beacon of idealism across the ocean proving to be as corrupt as a Sicilian village. We've had a prodigious uptick in inquiries about Buddhism since the pandemic. Folk are lost and in the dark and are groping about for a route out of it all.
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
It has indeed in my view. And the outbreak of highly reported wars involving people who look a bit like us. Not to mention economic stagnation. And that beacon of idealism across the ocean proving to be as corrupt as a Sicilian village. We've had a prodigious uptick in inquiries about Buddhism since the pandemic. Folk are lost and in the dark and are groping about for a route out of it all.
They really are. See also the baby bust
If life has no ultimate purpose, beyond your present comforts, you stop having kids. Of course that’s not the only reason but it plays a role
Atheist consumerist materialism is the ultimate dead end
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
Most of the great scientists from the early 20th C were religious - Einstein believed in "the God of Spinoza," Schrodinger was drawn to Vedanta, a system derived from Hinduism, Heisenberg was a practicing Protestant and I could list many more. - Max Planck, Charles Townes, Abdus Salam, and John Polkinghorne for example. There are a large number of talking heads now espousing a rationalist, atheistic viewpoint but to say they have all the answers is a mistake. For example, there are multiple explanations for the observer effect in Quantum Mechanics but to pick one out relies on faith, whether it's consciousness causes collapse, there's an underlying explanation that is unknowable to us, there is a multiverse etc etc. String theory has been going for decades with no empirical evidence to back it up. Physics ultimately has left us with more questions, not fewer. And the talking heads nowadays, all aping Feynmann's aesthetic but without the feats to back them up, are uninspiring.
In the end Empiricism is better than Rationalism. It is the scientific method and it does not exclude religiosity, or anything else.
Ludwig Wittgenstein - possibly the smartest man who ever lived - was religious. As he put it: “what confounds me is not the How, but the Why. Why is there anything at all?”
But faith does not rely on appeals to authority. It is a gift. From God
What if your faith is in the non-existence of God?
I'm willing to bet any sensible amount of money that the proportion of non-religious people in the UK increases significantly at the next census in 2031.
I would bet the same for 2041 and 2051 but it's too far in the future to bother betting on.
And Muslims will become more secular over time as generations pass. There may be periods where it tends the other way at a population level (new migrants more pious than previous migrants), but over time groups will converge with UK secular norms.
Up to 2041 maybe but as immigration increases year on year and the UK becomes ever more Muslim (and the Christian immigrants ever more evangelical or RC) too that will start to change.
Not least as the native white born British population is well below replacement level fertility, with the only exceptions white British evangelical Christians who have 3 children on average to their secular white British fellow countrymens' 1 or 2
I think you are missing out an analysis of conversions and loss of religion (call it "drifting") in those assumptions.
If you consider the changes in evangelical population in South Korea, or Brazil, over the last half-century, growth has been heavily through conversion. Similarly in places like eg Singapore.
One of the reasons (that imo is also a weakness) is that Evangelical Christianity can be stated in logical, transactional terms (substitutionary atonement etc) that seems to fit in quite well with a modernist cultural tone.
On this new comment design - no objections to the basic format - I am struggling to see which comment page I am on in the "VF" interface, where I used to be able to see if say I was on page 5 of 11.
Too much white space and the font is too thin and gray.
"We just need it to have a bit more space to 'breathe'. And that font is too ... strong."
Every conversation I've had with designers in the past 20 years. Usability and a11y is someone else's problem.
In some ways, I welcome our LLM overlords. At least you can give them a system prompt to give a f*ck.
I'm willing to bet any sensible amount of money that the proportion of non-religious people in the UK increases significantly at the next census in 2031.
I would bet the same for 2041 and 2051 but it's too far in the future to bother betting on.
And Muslims will become more secular over time as generations pass. There may be periods where it tends the other way at a population level (new migrants more pious than previous migrants), but over time groups will converge with UK secular norms.
Up to 2041 maybe but as immigration increases year on year and the UK becomes ever more Muslim (and the Christian immigrants ever more evangelical or RC) too that will start to change.
Not least as the native white born British population is well below replacement level fertility, with the only exceptions white British evangelical Christians who have 3 children on average to their secular white British fellow countrymens' 1 or 2
I think you are missing out an analysis of conversions and loss of religion (call it "drifting") in those assumptions.
You are also assuming loss of religion amongst immigrants and children of the religious outweighing the well below replacement level fertility rate of the irreligious in the UK now.
Irrespective of conversion evangelical Christians have more children on average than irreligious couples do
I'm willing to bet any sensible amount of money that the proportion of non-religious people in the UK increases significantly at the next census in 2031.
I would bet the same for 2041 and 2051 but it's too far in the future to bother betting on.
And Muslims will become more secular over time as generations pass. There may be periods where it tends the other way at a population level (new migrants more pious than previous migrants), but over time groups will converge with UK secular norms.
Up to 2041 maybe but as immigration increases year on year and the UK becomes ever more Muslim (and the Christian immigrants ever more evangelical or RC) too that will start to change.
Not least as the native white born British population is well below replacement level fertility, with the only exceptions white British evangelical Christians who have 3 children on average to their secular white British fellow countrymens' 1 or 2
I think you are missing out an analysis of conversions and loss of religion (call it "drifting") in those assumptions.
You are also assuming loss of religion amongst immigrants and children of the religious outweighing the well below replacement level fertility rate of the irreligious in the UK now
Possibly. But immigration may fall, and native fertility may increase.
Also. I wonder how much the "purpose" of life has become inculcated as get qualifications, a job, a mortgage, move up the "ladder", pay off your mortgage, and retire for six cruises a year? This was the "Good Life" for our generation, passed down the lineage by the postwar generation above. Now. We've done that. And it's still a bit shit. We don't pass on this mantra to our kids. Cos they can't possibly afford it without help and / or luck. Nor do we even have peace and prosperity. No wonder young people have nothing to aim for.
On this new comment design - no objections to the basic format - I am struggling to see which comment page I am on in the "VF" interface, where I used to be able to see if say I was on page 5 of 11.
On my smartphone, Vanilla has gone back to being legible after a day of being very weird & tiny. It looks now exactly as it has for ages.
I'm happy to see it but I've been in bed for ages, woke up, used the loo, then had a minor accident requiring a plaster on my foot. So I took a look on here to settle myself down and wonder of wonders, VF is working properly again.
It seems that Israel is on the good side because they’re like us. They have the same God, even if they don’t have the same support for Jesus. Whereas the other countries in the Middle East, don’t have the same God. Jesus was only a prophet of Mohammed.
If we ignored religion, and thought of Israel as just another Middle Eastern country, would we think of them the same as we do now? I suspect not.
Given that the UK is basically not religious why do we think the way we do?
How many PB contributors attend their church, or place of worship, regularly? I suspect that, apart from @HYUFD, not many.
Me. Every day.
It turned out that the PB demographic (older, more thoughtful about big questions) was more church-going than the average, I wouldn't be surprised. Though even then, a minority thing.
And a demographic that is moving on as fast as Tory voters and Telegraph readers, I expect.
'Of adults surveyed, 12 per cent reported that they attended a church of any denomination at least once a month last year, compared with eight per cent in 2018. This does not include weddings, baptisms/christenings, and funerals. “In numerical terms, that’s growth from 3.7m in 2018 to 5.8m in 2024 — an increase of 56%,” the report says.
This “dramatic growth” is owed largely to younger generations, it says. In 2018, four per cent of the 18- to 24-year-olds reported that they attended church monthly, compared with 16 per cent in 2024. For men, this increased from four per cent to 21 per cent, and, for women, from three per cent to 12 per cent.
“This is now the second most likely age group to attend church regularly.”
The result is a “curve” rather than a straightforward association between age and attendance, the report says, with the middle-aged (45-54) the least likely to attend (five per cent). The reversing trend is also true of gender, it says: overall attendance by men (13 per cent) outstrips attendance by women (ten per cent).
The shift to younger generations is also increasing diversity in the Church, the report says. While just 19 per cent of all churchgoers belong to an ethnic minority, this figure rises among 18- to 54-year-olds to almost one third (32 per cent).
Yes, we have discussed this survey before. It’s self certification, of a group of people under moral self-pressure to over report, rather the inverse of the NHS asking us how much we drink each week. It’s also been commented on by people inside the CofE that it doesn’t match up either with their own anecdotal experience or the congregation count data the church itself collates.
If you had actually bothered to read the article rather than add your preconceived atheist prejudice, you would see it was the Roman Catholics and evangelical Pentecostals seeing the main growth in church going amongst the young, not the C of E.
Not that surprising as most Christian immigrants to the UK tend to be Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant rather than middle of the road Anglican.
The more immigration rises the more the decline in religion in the UK may start to reverse, especially as the religious tend to have more children than atheists and agnostics on average as well
I bet their children won’t be quite so religious. It’s just a matter of time.
This is palpable bollocks on multiple levels
Just one example: Muslims
Muslim immigrants into the west have become MORE religious in the last few decades - 2nd and 3rd generation Muslim Europeans and Americans are more devout and more conservative than their first generation antecedents (as everyone else knows, in a rather uncomfortable way)
And that's just, as I say, one example
Not my experience having met a lot of Muslim sixth formers in east London.
Which school Ian?
Over my time pretty much every school in the borough.
My girlfriend worked at Stepney Green Sixth for quite a while, they seemed to have a bit of aggro with radicalisation
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
You are making the classic assumption that it must all be con. Because you can’t see how anyone can believe it.
There are endless millions who do, genuinely, believe in the resurgent, militant version of Hinduism.
Also. Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
That's imo quite a peculiar (maybe 'meaningless' is a good word) question. I think you have your magisteria overlapping strangely.
Is a guinea pig or a rabbit more toaster-like?
Oh yeah Gould. Just cos Dawkins thinks he's a twat doesn't make him right.
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
You are making the classic assumption that it must all be con. Because you can’t see how anyone can believe it.
There are endless millions who do, genuinely, believe in the resurgent, militant version of Hinduism.
Also. Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
That's imo quite a peculiar (maybe 'meaningless' is a good word) question. I think you have your magisteria overlapping strangely.
Is a guinea pig or a rabbit more toaster-like?
Oh yeah Gould. Just cos Dawkins thinks he's a twat doesn't make him right.
I recall having hilarious fun with one victim - he was trying to argue that The Book Of Mormon musical was fine to lampoon Mormonism, because it wasn't a "proper religion".
He got very agitated by my comparing The Golden Plates to other accounts of founding religions.
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
One factor you might not be accounting for is that most of us are just older, and closer to death. Which concentrates the mind on existential matters.
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
You are making the classic assumption that it must all be con. Because you can’t see how anyone can believe it.
There are endless millions who do, genuinely, believe in the resurgent, militant version of Hinduism.
Also. Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
That's imo quite a peculiar (maybe 'meaningless' is a good word) question. I think you have your magisteria overlapping strangely.
Is a guinea pig or a rabbit more toaster-like?
Oh yeah Gould. Just cos Dawkins thinks he's a twat doesn't make him right.
I recall having hilarious fun with one victim - he was trying to argue that The Book Of Mormon musical was fine to lampoon Mormonism, because it wasn't a "proper religion".
He got very agitated by my comparing The Golden Plates to other accounts of founding religions.
Rational believers have always got around that kind of argument by looking at awkward to explain trappings in terms of metaphor, which is a decent-ish argument.
But I do think it's fair to compare religions in terms of the sheer amount of irrational stuff being an adherent requires you to accept.
There's also the other argument that the longevity of a religion demonstrates something about its practical value to societies and individuals.
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
You are making the classic assumption that it must all be con. Because you can’t see how anyone can believe it.
There are endless millions who do, genuinely, believe in the resurgent, militant version of Hinduism.
Also. Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
That's imo quite a peculiar (maybe 'meaningless' is a good word) question. I think you have your magisteria overlapping strangely.
Is a guinea pig or a rabbit more toaster-like?
Oh yeah Gould. Just cos Dawkins thinks he's a twat doesn't make him right.
I recall having hilarious fun with one victim - he was trying to argue that The Book Of Mormon musical was fine to lampoon Mormonism, because it wasn't a "proper religion".
He got very agitated by my comparing The Golden Plates to other accounts of founding religions.
Rational believers have always got around that kind of argument by looking at awkward to explain trappings in terms of metaphor, which is a decent-ish argument.
But I do think it's fair to compare religions in terms of the sheer amount of irrational stuff being an adherent requires you to accept.
There's also the other argument that the longevity of a religion demonstrates something about its practical value to societies and individuals.
Religion is of huge benefit, both to individuals in answering the unanswerable with some made up guff, in consoling people after tragedy or who are in fear of ill health and death, and to the powerful, in giving them a tool to encourage the young and strong but powerless to go out and die for them in war. As a consequence every human society throughout history has invented or adopted some sort of belief system, and rulers have frequently exercised choice over what belief system their peoples have been required to follow. Multi-god systems have tended to be replaced by single ones, because the latter don’t allow for any competing opinions.
None of this has anything to do with objective truth.
Not really a fan of the new login/comments layout. But, then, Vanilla never asked me before making the changes...
Utterly OT, but downloaded Sea of Stars yesterday (very old school RPG) and it's intriguing how games like that and Octopath Traveller II are proving so popular with very retro graphics and turn-based (albeit souped up) combat.
Can't say I'm keen on the new format. I don't use a smartphone to read PB, and on my laptop the main irritation is the inability to resize the overlarge window. It is also annoying that the "quick links" which I never use occupy a substantial margin on the left. The overall effect is that PB grabs real estate on my screen from other live applications quite unnecessarily, so that I feel less well disposed to the app
"Middle-class families could face higher water bills to subsidise poorer households Labour ministers will be urged to introduce scheme that would see low-income families given huge discounts" (£)
Typical Telegraph. They've suddenly noticed 'social tariffs' which are available for water and power utilities for at least a decade, and have spun it as some attack on their readership. What a rag of a paper.
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
One factor you might not be accounting for is that most of us are just older, and closer to death. Which concentrates the mind on existential matters.
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
One factor you might not be accounting for is that most of us are just older, and closer to death. Which concentrates the mind on existential matters.
I think the collapse of Communism and other secular political ideologies is a part of the resurgence of religiosity, as well as part of the resurgence of neo-Facism around the world.
People disgruntled with the way their society is run, and with how soulless consumerism does not value them and their kin are in need of something to believe in. That can be something pretty toxic such as Islamism or ethnic nationalism.
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
It has indeed in my view. And the outbreak of highly reported wars involving people who look a bit like us. Not to mention economic stagnation. And that beacon of idealism across the ocean proving to be as corrupt as a Sicilian village. We've had a prodigious uptick in inquiries about Buddhism since the pandemic. Folk are lost and in the dark and are groping about for a route out of it all.
They really are. See also the baby bust
If life has no ultimate purpose, beyond your present comforts, you stop having kids. Of course that’s not the only reason but it plays a role
Atheist consumerist materialism is the ultimate dead end
I found quite an interesting discussion somewhere that pointed out the amount of supervision kids need now is 5x what it was 50 years ago (or something like that). They don't spend as much time going round to friends, playing football in the park after school, cycling about.
The sense that the community cares for children rather than just the parents has gone, so it's a much bigger undertaking.
Can't say I'm keen on the new format. I don't use a smartphone to read PB, and on my laptop the main irritation is the inability to resize the overlarge window. It is also annoying that the "quick links" which I never use occupy a substantial margin on the left. The overall effect is that PB grabs real estate on my screen from other live applications quite unnecessarily, so that I feel less well disposed to the app
It doesn't really work on my phone because I've lost all the menus on the top, making it trickier to navigate to new threads and so on. The font sizes are all inconsistent too - "You can use Simple HTML" is pt 72 or something.
PB has these religious debates from time to time. We’ve done it for 20 years or so.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
'Religion' is a word as general as 'politics', 'sex', or 'relationship'. 'Belief' and 'faith' have the same quality. The idea that religion is in itself good or bad, true or untrue is without meaning. A moment's reflection (or a lifetime) shows that when it comes to 'god' we are all agnostics because it is not knowable whether or not there it, outside all that exists, such a 'god' who corresponds in any way to monotheistic intuitions.
Religion is about the big subject of that which binds us both individually (existential moments on a mountain) and collectively (football mania); much of it is only trivially related to god or gods. 'Endless secular progress' is losing its religious grip I am sure, not least because it has no chance, less than the beliefs of the fith monarchy men, of corresponding to how reality presents itself.
There will now be more than 200k Afghans coming to the UK.
This will be a disaster. They committ crimes at a much higher rates than almost any other group, and will never be net contributers. Never. What a disaster, the far right will only grow because of this decision.
There will now be more than 200k Afghans coming to the UK.
This will be a disaster. They committ crimes at a much higher rates than almost any other group, and will never be net contributers. Never. What a disaster, the far right will only grow because of this decision.
Is there a source for that?
If Labour let in that many, regardless of whether they claim (or are correct) that the Conservatives are to blame they'll suffer for it at the polls.
Vanilla is now readable again. Just rejoice at that news.
As for immigrant religious belief: surely the trends of the last couple of hundred years hold true. 1. That incoming groups will become more like the host population over time, 2. That the host population will take on some traits of the incomers, particularly in popular and youth culture, 3. Most cultures seem to be getting less religious over time.
Certainly not true in Iran compared to the 1970s under the Shah, or India which is more militantly Hindu than it was under Modi, or China where underground evangelical Christianity is growing from near non existence under the rule of atheists like Mao or Russia where the Russian Orthodox church is a close ally of Putin and was repressed under the Soviet Union. Trump is also the most pro evangelical US President there has ever been policy wise
Government is different from public opinion. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would hazard a guess that:
- Iranians are on average more secular than in 1979 - Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990 - Chinese are less, what, let’s say superstitious, than in the 1950s
I don’t know about Russians, who the fuck knows, but they’re in the middle of a national mass delusion so let’s hope they’re not indicative of anything other than Russians.
I don't think that Indian Hindus are more secular than in 1990. The rise of Hindutva ideology there suggests very much the opposite.
It suggests they’re more nationalist. Not more religious.
It’s pretty difficult to believe all that shit, like really deep down, faced with modern science. That doesn’t mean people don’t sometimes use it in order to justify group supremacy.
You are making the classic assumption that it must all be con. Because you can’t see how anyone can believe it.
There are endless millions who do, genuinely, believe in the resurgent, militant version of Hinduism.
Also. Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
That's imo quite a peculiar (maybe 'meaningless' is a good word) question. I think you have your magisteria overlapping strangely.
Is a guinea pig or a rabbit more toaster-like?
Oh yeah Gould. Just cos Dawkins thinks he's a twat doesn't make him right.
I recall having hilarious fun with one victim - he was trying to argue that The Book Of Mormon musical was fine to lampoon Mormonism, because it wasn't a "proper religion".
He got very agitated by my comparing The Golden Plates to other accounts of founding religions.
Rational believers have always got around that kind of argument by looking at awkward to explain trappings in terms of metaphor, which is a decent-ish argument.
But I do think it's fair to compare religions in terms of the sheer amount of irrational stuff being an adherent requires you to accept.
There's also the other argument that the longevity of a religion demonstrates something about its practical value to societies and individuals.
Religion is of huge benefit, both to individuals in answering the unanswerable with some made up guff, in consoling people after tragedy or who are in fear of ill health and death, and to the powerful, in giving them a tool to encourage the young and strong but powerless to go out and die for them in war. As a consequence every human society throughout history has invented or adopted some sort of belief system, and rulers have frequently exercised choice over what belief system their peoples have been required to follow. Multi-god systems have tended to be replaced by single ones, because the latter don’t allow for any competing opinions.
None of this has anything to do with objective truth.
We can't know that about objective truth. Getting outside the subjective nature of the world as it appears to us, and our individual rationality is not available for our inspection.
Trump’s attempt to shut down the big pal of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein story seems to be going well. Elon appears to be entirely relaxed about everyone saying anything they like about ex best buddy DJT on X/Twitter.
I’m in central London and my Uber Lux has been surrounded SWP types protesting about Starmer and Palestine.
In the interests of safety you could always decamp at Leon's gaff.
But I’m meeting JohnO!
Then again he’s been delayed at Waterloo.
Please yourself, but I doubt you will find any SWP Palestine Action protestors anywhere near Leon.
I haven’t been this scared since 2006 when my friend asked me to take her shopping at Aldi.
If you just consider Aldi and Lidl as exclusive German delicatessens you'll be fine. Have you been to Morrisons recently? You'll feel you'll need a couple of tattoo sleeve's to fit in. That's going the way of Poundland, watch this space.
Any ‘young person’ who wants to provoke real change. Who really wants to disrupt the status quo. Who genuinely fancies indulging in a little bit of teenage rebellion. Who are they going to turn to? Keir Starmer? The man who encapsulates all the radicalism and latent insurgency of a bored double-glazing salesman from Milton Keynes. ‘What do we want?’ ‘A New Border Security Command!!!’ ‘When do we want it?’ ‘As soon as we have stabilised the economy and resources allow!!!’
The Times reports that hundreds of asylum seekers per week are, after having claimed asylum and benefits in Britain, crossing into Ireland to simultaneously claim asylum and benefits there.
Comments
The bottle on the bedside cabinet is Fielden English rye whisky (absolutely delicious). The spot lamp is pointing at an antique lacquered “Mandalay box” I bought in Rangoon in January, for a ridiculous $50
It contains my Tramadol
The photo above is of the terrifying sea stacks by St Kilda, from 2018
Is Hinduism less "scientific" than Christianity?
In the end Empiricism is better than Rationalism. It is the scientific method and it does not exclude religiosity, or anything else.
I would bet the same for 2041 and 2051 but it's too far in the future to bother betting on.
And Muslims will become more secular over time as generations pass. There may be periods where it tends the other way at a population level (new migrants more pious than previous migrants), but over time groups will converge with UK secular norms.
But faith does not rely on appeals to authority. It is a gift. From God
I don’t have a clue whether there is or isn’t a god, but it’s highly unlikely to be the one or ones described in great detail in societal creation myths from thousands of years ago.
Got to sweat those assets
Only 8% of Koreans would accept immigrants as family: study
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/globalcommunity/20250719/study-finds-only-8-of-koreans-would-accept-immigrants-as-family
I can honestly say the last is by far the most rewarding, as a way to live, as a mirror to life, as a kind of blueprint to navigate through the storms
Faith has not stopped me being miserable, suicidal, stupid, desperately sad. It HAS saved my life a couple of times, and it has absolutely made my life richer, more intensely patterned, more fully lived
That’s just my experience. But it honestly is my experience
Consider this: many many religious people will feel like me. The idea they will blithely give up this spiritual richness for “better shopping” is perhaps the greatest delusion of late stage capitalist materialism
I disagree with his emphasis on "generations", in that I think that sectors within generations of Muslims in the UK are also important (eg Saudi inspired, Iraq inspired, Muslim Brotherhood inspired, then perhaps varieties of Sufi, Ahmadi etc),
I think he also neglects the influence of where Mosques were being funded and created, and Imams appointed, from, in the 1970s to 1980s. In large measure, that was how Iran and Saudi sought to influence the future of the UK Muslim community.
The UK Government, inevitably, was very laissez-faire.
What’s deeply interesting to me is that the site is clearly more religious - and open to religious perspectives of the world - than at any time hitherto. And this is largely a site made up of statistically inclined politics geeks - not obviously fertile ground for mysticism
This echoes what I see around me in real life. My friends and family now express religious belief, or at least curiosity, more frequently
I wonder if Covid has played a part in this. It certainly shook the idea of endless secular progress
Strange colour, though.
Not least as the native white born British population is well below replacement level fertility, with the only exceptions white British evangelical Christians who have 3 children on average to their secular white British fellow countrymens' 1 or 2
Is a guinea pig or a rabbit more toaster-like?
The wisest thing Wittgenstein ever said was in the Tractatus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
I cannot explain my faith, ultimately. It just happened to me. And it was completely unexpected. The correct word really is “gift”. On occasion it’s been more than a gift and maybe akin to a lottery win, or a massive unexpected royalty cheque from Japan
I generally don’t interrogate it. I’m just grateful for it
And the outbreak of highly reported wars involving people who look a bit like us.
Not to mention economic stagnation.
And that beacon of idealism across the ocean proving to be as corrupt as a Sicilian village.
We've had a prodigious uptick in inquiries about Buddhism since the pandemic.
Folk are lost and in the dark and are groping about for a route out of it all.
If life has no ultimate purpose, beyond your present comforts, you stop having kids. Of course that’s not the only reason but it plays a role
Atheist consumerist materialism is the ultimate dead end
If you consider the changes in evangelical population in South Korea, or Brazil, over the last half-century, growth has been heavily through conversion. Similarly in places like eg Singapore.
One of the reasons (that imo is also a weakness) is that Evangelical Christianity can be stated in logical, transactional terms (substitutionary atonement etc) that seems to fit in quite well with a modernist cultural tone.
Every conversation I've had with designers in the past 20 years. Usability and a11y is someone else's problem.
In some ways, I welcome our LLM overlords. At least you can give them a system prompt to give a f*ck.
Irrespective of conversion evangelical Christians have more children on average than irreligious couples do
I wonder how much the "purpose" of life has become inculcated as get qualifications, a job, a mortgage, move up the "ladder", pay off your mortgage, and retire for six cruises a year?
This was the "Good Life" for our generation, passed down the lineage by the postwar generation above.
Now. We've done that. And it's still a bit shit.
We don't pass on this mantra to our kids. Cos they can't possibly afford it without help and / or luck.
Nor do we even have peace and prosperity.
No wonder young people have nothing to aim for.
I'm happy to see it but I've been in bed for ages, woke up, used the loo, then had a minor accident requiring a plaster on my foot. So I took a look on here to settle myself down and wonder of wonders, VF is working properly again.
Good night, everyone.
Rare for the BBC to give him a prime politics time outing.
Just cos Dawkins thinks he's a twat doesn't make him right.
He got very agitated by my comparing The Golden Plates to other accounts of founding religions.
But I do think it's fair to compare religions in terms of the sheer amount of irrational stuff being an adherent requires you to accept.
There's also the other argument that the longevity of a religion demonstrates something about its practical value to societies and individuals.
None of this has anything to do with objective truth.
Not really a fan of the new login/comments layout. But, then, Vanilla never asked me before making the changes...
Utterly OT, but downloaded Sea of Stars yesterday (very old school RPG) and it's intriguing how games like that and Octopath Traveller II are proving so popular with very retro graphics and turn-based (albeit souped up) combat.
People disgruntled with the way their society is run, and with how soulless consumerism does not value them and their kin are in need of something to believe in. That can be something pretty toxic such as Islamism or ethnic nationalism.
The sense that the community cares for children rather than just the parents has gone, so it's a much bigger undertaking.
Religion is about the big subject of that which binds us both individually (existential moments on a mountain) and collectively (football mania); much of it is only trivially related to god or gods. 'Endless secular progress' is losing its religious grip I am sure, not least because it has no chance, less than the beliefs of the fith monarchy men, of corresponding to how reality presents itself.
This will be a disaster. They committ crimes at a much higher rates than almost any other group, and will never be net contributers. Never. What a disaster, the far right will only grow because of this decision.
If Labour let in that many, regardless of whether they claim (or are correct) that the Conservatives are to blame they'll suffer for it at the polls.
NEW THREAD
Elon appears to be entirely relaxed about everyone saying anything they like about ex best buddy DJT on X/Twitter.
Genuinely autocorrect.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/uk-asylum-seekers-caught-double-benefits-68krzd9cj