| dsgrue3 said: That actually doesn't surprise me about the maga-churches, but I'd like to see some hard data. The overwhelming trend is a growth in the unaffiliated group.
It goes on to report nearly a third of people under 30 are unaffiliated. This, to me, makes sense as we are better able to educate people on the absurdities of fundamentalism. |
That chart seems to be taken from this report/survey:
http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/
So it's just for the US. And as I said, it's well known that religious affiliation is falling in almost all rich western countries.
That report itself states:
"Societies where people’s daily lives are shaped by the threat of poverty, disease and premature death remain as religious today as centuries earlier. These same societies are also experiencing rapid population growth. In rich nations, by contrast, the evidence demonstrates that secularization has been proceeding since at least the mid-twentieth century (and probably earlier) – but at the same time fertility rates have fallen sharply, so that in recent years population growth has stagnated and their total population is starting to shrink. The result of these combined trends is that rich societies are becoming more secular but the world as a whole is becoming more religious."
| dsgrue3 said: Don't get me wrong, I think there are quality aspects of religion, I just find the indoctrination of children to be quite detrimental to their mental faculties. |
Sure, indoctrination has negative effects. But the amount of indoctrination varies greatly among various religions/sects. And it's almost impossible to avoid indoctrination altogether - children for example are just as well being indoctrinated in school, where they are usually expected to squeeze certain "truths" into their brains that should not be doubted. The semantic differences between "indoctrination", "socialization" and "education" are rather small.












