[extropy-chat] No Joy in Mudville

[Hal Finney]

Damien writes:
> It's bitterly ironic (to me, anyway) 
> that avowedly hi-tech widely educated societies such as the USA and Russia 
> have so many citizens reaching for the god pill, while their antagonists 
> are swigging madly from the god bottle, all factions boiling away with 
> contrived and almost arbitrary iconologies of bigotry. It starts to look as 
> if people really *do* find secular scientific cultures too `cold' and 
> `impersonal' and even `inhaman' to sustain the glow of life. True, there 
> are parts of Europe and Australasia where Religion Incorporated has been 
> sidelined for a few generations, but I'll bet it comes ripping back in the 
> clutches. Time for humanism and transhumanism to start thinking seriously 
> once again (as Bertrand Russell and Wells and others did nearly a century 
> ago, without getting anywhere) about some sort of secular equivalent of 
> worship (ugh; whatever) and mutually supportive emotionally enriched 
> fellowship. But I don't imagine it will emerge from any bunch of INTJs like 
> this list...


There was an article in the Los Angeles Times last week,
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/state/la-me-beliefs30oct30,1,223262.story?coll=la-news-state
(for subscribers):

:   Nation's Unchurched Doubled in Decade, Poll Finds
:
:   The proportion of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation
:   doubled over the last decade and now stands at 16% of the population,
:   according to a new study on religious identity.
:
:   Only Catholics (24%) and Baptists (17%) outnumber the so-called
:   "non-identifiers," or "nones," said the report - "The Decline of
:   Religious Identity in the United States" - by the Institute for Jewish
:   & Community Research in San Francisco.
:
:   The nationwide survey, based on telephone interviews with more than
:   10,000 randomly selected people, said about one in six answered
:   "none" or "no religion" or described themselves as secular, humanist,
:   ethical-culturalist, agnostic or atheist.
:
:   Their ranks will continue to grow, and they'll soon outnumber Baptists,
:   according to Gary A. Tobin, president of the institute and a coauthor
:   of the study.
:
:   "They may believe in God," he said of the unaffiliated. "The
:   question is: Why don't they want to be associated with some religious
:   denomination? It's probably time for organized religion to take a look
:   at itself and see what they should be doing differently or better to
:   involve more people."
:   ...
:   Americans younger than 35 are most likely to be nonidentifiers,
:   and those over 65 are least likely to be unaffiliated, the study
:   said. Residents of the West lead the nation in the proportion of those
:   who don't identity with a religion - 24% compared to 14% for the rest
:   of the country except New England, which had 21%. Men are less likely
:   to identify with a religious denomination than women, 20% to 13%.

This could be a further sign of the much-noted American polarization,
with religious people perhaps becoming more entrenched in their beliefs,
while the "no religions" are expanding their numbers as well.

Hal