The 2% might be people who go there only for the social experience.

http://www.whychurch.org.uk/trends.php

There are some interesting graphs there. The main point being that while a high percentage of people say they are Christians it seems less and less are going to church.

Re-fixed. No need to thank me, I know you're not an atheist, I'm prepared to make allowances for your intellectual deficiencies.

More surprising to me is 24% of those who 'seldom or never' attend church accepting special creation within the last ~10k years. Bizarre.

A perfect description of higher education.

I know Francis Collins said he was jarred by the vitriolic quality of atheism while he was in his atheist period. The group hostility they expressed bothered him alot.

Sanctimonious self righteousness, on the other hand, is quite the appealing character trait.

Until the Gods or God introduces himself or we find out the universe had a creator atheism wont be in trouble.

I am not sure why, but one of the things that annoys me so much recently is when somebody opposes atheists to agnostics. Like, "there are X atheists in the world, but there are also Y agnostics". Why?! Many atheists describe themselves as agnostics. Is it really that hard to understand that agnosticism and atheism are not on the same dimension? So, it's not like this:

Theists ---- Agnostics ---- Atheists

but rather this:
...........Agnostics
................||
Theists----------Atheists
................||
...........Gnostics

Please people...

lol this thread.

how many christians are actually christians? I have an iranian uncle who is a "sunni muslim" however he drinks gambles and has christmas dinner (he lives in the UK now).

all these statistics are worthless.

Even if this is true (which I don't think it is), it would be more an indicator that scientific education is on the decline, not atheism.

Also, of course there are more Christians, Muslims, etc. being born every day. For one thing, they have more kids than secular families (birth control is taboo, remember?). There are also more of them to begin with to have kids.

Anyway, this website is either too dumb itself, or is intentionally twisting the figures to dupe the gullible religious. I agree that religiosity is on the rise in certain parts of the world (mostly suppressed areas), but atheism and secular thinking is also on the rise in educated and advanced parts of the world. I do agree it's worrisome and I think we all should be worried about the rise in Islam. Sorry if that sounds prejudiced, but they seem more likely to be fundamentalists and they scare me more than Christians who have at least seemed to drop most of the barbaric stone aged thinking and middle age traditions from their ideologies.

According to baptism records, he can count me in as also being a Catholic.

This is no doubt true. So what does this mean for the future? Forget religious/atheism for a sec. Let's say more Muslims were born than Christians or any other religion. Does this mean than Islam will take over the world? Can a smaller group remain influential? I would hope so, but it's worrisome.

Good luck with that, man. It's like building sand castles right at the edge of the ocean.

Grunching a little, but regardless of whether people who identify themselves as atheists are trending up or down or remaining steady, it seems to me that people who identify themselves are religious are trending toward secularism.

As science gets bigger, god(s) get smaller, and religious practices become less and less "holy."

How to officially leave the Catholic Church

Yeah cos Christian nations have been doing a great job. Oh wait!

If 100% of people believe something, that doesn't make it fact.

no but it would make it pretty tough to tell the difference

Heck, just last week I saw a professor promising temporary paradise to students in his sociology class if they beat fetuses to death with a copy of "Language and Mind".

That said, I think your rise in believers has likely more to do with population growth than conversion.

As is common in these silly debates however, we'll merely disregard sound method and common sense and say that the Earth's population of 1,815,400,257,090,000 individuals in 3250 is going to be a bigger problem than theological differences.

I go for all the whores.

A lawyer friend of mine is an atheist who attends church every Sunday. He does it to bring in new clients and to give himself the image of a "god fearing man" when he eventually decides to run for public office.

How can atheism be in trouble when it was always the underdog? Religions were losing the faithful ever since Copernicus. Science has opened the eyes of people and given them answers to questions otherwise thought to be the cause of the supernatural. For example, questions like why are there wanderers(planets) in our sky? Since nobody had a good answer, people developed supernatural explanations. Now we have new information and don't need supernatural explanations many questions. Also, that quote you got are statistics from a catholic website. How can that not be biased.

is his name saul?

I was watching the episode where that character is introduced with a mate of mine, and I cracked up as soon as I heard his name. Had to explain it to him. Best comedy lawyer since at least My Cousin Vinny IMO.