B
Bill M
Guest
The better educated and more knowlegable people become the more they abandon
the myths and fables of religion.
<NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org> wrote in message
news:1189932609.3518705828.1767662571@servebbs.org...
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> Revolt of the Rationalists: Nonbelievers Increasingly Vocal
>
> Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit
>
> The Washington Post - Sep 15, 2007
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/14/AR2007091402
501_pf.html
>
>
> In Europe and U.S., Nonbelievers Are Increasingly Vocal
>
> By Mary Jordan
> Washington Post Foreign Service
>
> BURGESS HILL, England -- Every morning on his walk to work, high school
> teacher Graham Wright recited a favorite Anglican prayer and asked God
> for strength in the day ahead. Then two years ago, he just stopped.
>
> Wright, 59, said he was overwhelmed by a feeling that religion had
> become a negative influence in his life and the world. Although he once
> considered becoming an Anglican vicar, he suddenly found that religion
> represented nothing he believed in, from Muslim extremists blowing
> themselves up in God's name to Christians condemning gays,
> contraception and stem cell research.
>
> "I stopped praying because I lost my faith," said Wright, 59, a
> thoughtful man with graying hair and clear blue eyes. "Now I truly
> loathe any sight or sound of religion. I blush at what I used to
> believe."
>
> Wright is now an avowed atheist and part of a growing number of vocal
> nonbelievers in Europe and the United States. On both sides of the
> Atlantic, membership in once-quiet groups of nonbelievers is rising,
> and books attempting to debunk religion have been surprise bestsellers,
> including "The God Delusion," by Oxford University professor Richard
> Dawkins.
>
> New groups of nonbelievers are sprouting on college campuses,
> anti-religious blogs are expanding across the Internet, and in general,
> more people are publicly saying they have no religious faith.
>
> More than three out of four people in the world consider themselves
> religious, and those with no faith are a distinct minority. But
> especially in richer nations, and nowhere more than in Europe, growing
> numbers of people are actively saying they don't believe there is a
> heaven or a hell or anything other than this life.
>
> Many analysts trace the rise of what some are calling the "nonreligious
> movement" to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The sight of
> religious fanatics killing 3,000 people caused many to begin
> questioning -- and rejecting -- all religion.
>
> "This is overwhelmingly the topic of the moment," said Terry Sanderson,
> president of the National Secular Society of Britain. "Religion in this
> country was very quiet until September 11, and now it is at the center
> of everything."
>
> Since the 2001 attacks, a string of religiously inspired bomb and
> murder plots has shaken Europe. Muslim radicals killed 52 people on the
> London public transit system in 2005 and 191 on Madrid trains in 2004.
> People apparently aiming for a reward in heaven were arrested in
> Britain last year for trying to blow up transatlantic jetliners. And
> earlier this month in Germany, authorities arrested converts to Islam
> on charges that they planned to blow up American facilities there.
>
> Many Europeans are angry at demands to use taxpayer money to
> accommodate Islam, Europe's fastest-growing religion, which now has as
> many as 20 million followers on the continent. Along with calls for
> prayer rooms in police stations, foot baths in public places and
> funding for Islamic schools and mosques, expensive legal battles have
> broken out over the niqab, the Muslim veil that covers all but the
> eyes, which some devout women seek to wear in classrooms and court.
>
> Christian fundamentalist groups who want to halt certain science
> research, reverse abortion and gay rights and teach creationism rather
> than evolution in schools are also angering people, according to
> Sanderson and others.
>
> "There is a feeling that religion is being forced on an unwilling
> public, and now people are beginning to speak out against what they see
> as rising Islamic and Christian militancy," Sanderson said.
>
> Though the number of nonbelievers speaking their minds is rising,
> academics say it's impossible to calculate how many people silently
> share that view. Many people who do not consider themselves religious
> or belong to any faith group often believe, even if vaguely, in a
> supreme being or an afterlife. Others are not sure what they believe.
>
> The term atheist can imply aggressiveness in disbelief; many who don't
> believe in God prefer to call themselves humanists, secularists,
> freethinkers, rationalists or, a more recently coined term, brights.
>
> "Where religion is weak, people don't feel a need to organize against
> it," said Phil Zuckerman, an American academic who has written
> extensively about atheism around the globe.
>
> He and others said secular groups are also gaining strength in
> countries where religious influence over society looms large, including
> India, Israel and Turkey. "Any time we see an outspoken movement
> against religion, it tells us that religion has power there," Zuckerman
> said.
>
> One group of nonbelievers in particular is attracting attention in
> Europe: the Council of Ex-Muslims. Founded earlier this year in
> Germany, the group now has a few hundred members and an expanding
> number of chapters across the continent. "You can't tell us religion is
> peaceful -- look around at the misery it is causing," said Maryam
> Namazie, leader of the group's British chapter.
>
> She and other leaders of the council held a news conference in The
> Hague to launch the Dutch chapter on Sept. 11, the sixth anniversary of
> the terrorist attacks in the United States. "We are all atheists and
> nonbelievers, and our goal is not to eradicate Islam from the face of
> the earth," but to make it a private matter that is not imposed on
> others, she said.
>
> The majority of nonbelievers say they are speaking out only because of
> religious fanatics. But some atheists are also extreme, urging people,
> for example, to blot out the words "In God We Trust" from every dollar
> bill they carry.
>
> Gaining political clout and access to television and radio airtime is
> the goal of many of these groups. With a higher profile, they say, they
> could, for instance, lobby for all religious rooms in public hospitals
> to be closed, as a response to Muslims demanding prayer rooms because
> Christians have chapels.
>
> Associations of nonbelievers are also moving to address the growing
> demand in Britain, Spain, Italy and other European countries for
> nonreligious weddings, funerals and celebrations for new babies. They
> are helping arrange ceremonies that steer clear of talk of God, heaven
> and miracles and celebrate, as they say, "this one life we know."
>
> The British Humanist Association, which urges people who think "the
> government pays too much attention to religious groups" to join them,
> has seen its membership double in two years to 6,500.
>
> A humanist group in the British Parliament that looks out for the
> rights of the nonreligious now has about 120 members, up from about 25
> a year ago.
>
> Doreen Massey, a Labor Party member of the House of Lords who belongs
> to that group, said most British people don't want legislators to make
> public policy decisions on issues such as abortion and other health
> matters based on their religious beliefs.
>
> But the church has disproportionate power and influence in Parliament,
> she said. For example, she said, polls show that 80 percent of Britons
> want the terminally ill who are in pain to have the right to a
> medically assisted death, yet such proposals have been effectively
> killed by a handful of powerful bishops.
>
> "We can't accept that religious faiths have a monopoly on ethics,
> morality and spirituality," Massey said. Now, she added, humanist and
> secularist groups are becoming "more confident and more powerful" and
> recognize that they represent the wishes of huge numbers of people.
>
> While the faithful have traditionally met like-minded people at the
> local church, mosque or synagogue, it has long been difficult for those
> without religion to find each other. The expansion of the Internet has
> made it a vital way for nonbelievers to connect.
>
> In retirement centers, restaurants, homes and public lectures and
> debates, nonbelievers are convening to talk about how to push back what
> they see as increasingly intrusive religion.
>
> "Born Again Atheist," "Happy Heathen" and other anti-religious T-shirts
> and bumper stickers are increasingly seen on the streets. Groups such
> as the Skeptics in the Pub in London, which recently met to discuss
> this topic, "God: The Failed Hypothesis," are now finding that they
> need bigger rooms to accommodate those who find them online.
>
> Wright, the teacher who recently declared himself a nonbeliever, is one
> of thousands of people who have joined dues-paying secular and humanist
> groups in Europe this year.
>
> Sitting in his living room on a quiet cul-de-sac in this English town
> of 30,000, Wright said he now goes online every day to keep up with the
> latest atheist news.
>
> "One has to step up and stem the rise of religious influence," said
> Wright, who is thinking of becoming a celebrant at humanist funerals.
> He said he recently went to the church funeral of his brother-in-law
> and couldn't bear the "vacuous prayers of the vicar," who, Wright said,
> "looked bored and couldn't wait to leave."
>
> Now, instead of each morning silently reciting a favorite nighttime
> prayer, "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy
> great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers . . . " (from the
> Anglican Book of Common Prayer), he spends the time just thinking about
> the day ahead.
>
> He said his deceased mother, a Catholic, was comforted by her faith:
> "It kept her going through difficult times," particularly when his
> father left her when he and his sister were young.
>
> "I really don't know how I will react if something really bad happens,"
> he said. "But there is no going back. There is nothing to go back to."
>
> Not believing in an afterlife, he said, "makes you think you have to
> make the most of this life. It's the now that matters. It also makes
> you feel a greater urgency of things that matter," such as halting
> global warming, and not just dismissing it as being "all in God's plan."
>
> He called himself heartened that the National Secular Society, which he
> recently joined, is planning to open chapters at a dozen universities
> this fall. The rising presence of the nonreligious movement, he said,
> is "fantastic."
>
> "It's a bit of opposition, isn't it?" he said. "Why should these
> religious groups hold so much sway?"
>
> (c) 2007 The Washington Post
>
>
>
> =================================================================
> NY Transfer News Collective A Service of Blythe Systems
> Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
> New York Transfer News Collective http://www.blythe.org
> List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
> Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
> =================================================================
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> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)
>
> iD8DBQFG7O5Biz2i76ou9wQRAuirAJ9J5i5+XyUGkohXYKIt9G5V1NprAwCfZndL
> MaNyoqHTOyerLUEeOTF5oBM=
> =ODwD
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
the myths and fables of religion.
<NY.Transfer.News@blythe.org> wrote in message
news:1189932609.3518705828.1767662571@servebbs.org...
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Revolt of the Rationalists: Nonbelievers Increasingly Vocal
>
> Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit
>
> The Washington Post - Sep 15, 2007
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/14/AR2007091402
501_pf.html
>
>
> In Europe and U.S., Nonbelievers Are Increasingly Vocal
>
> By Mary Jordan
> Washington Post Foreign Service
>
> BURGESS HILL, England -- Every morning on his walk to work, high school
> teacher Graham Wright recited a favorite Anglican prayer and asked God
> for strength in the day ahead. Then two years ago, he just stopped.
>
> Wright, 59, said he was overwhelmed by a feeling that religion had
> become a negative influence in his life and the world. Although he once
> considered becoming an Anglican vicar, he suddenly found that religion
> represented nothing he believed in, from Muslim extremists blowing
> themselves up in God's name to Christians condemning gays,
> contraception and stem cell research.
>
> "I stopped praying because I lost my faith," said Wright, 59, a
> thoughtful man with graying hair and clear blue eyes. "Now I truly
> loathe any sight or sound of religion. I blush at what I used to
> believe."
>
> Wright is now an avowed atheist and part of a growing number of vocal
> nonbelievers in Europe and the United States. On both sides of the
> Atlantic, membership in once-quiet groups of nonbelievers is rising,
> and books attempting to debunk religion have been surprise bestsellers,
> including "The God Delusion," by Oxford University professor Richard
> Dawkins.
>
> New groups of nonbelievers are sprouting on college campuses,
> anti-religious blogs are expanding across the Internet, and in general,
> more people are publicly saying they have no religious faith.
>
> More than three out of four people in the world consider themselves
> religious, and those with no faith are a distinct minority. But
> especially in richer nations, and nowhere more than in Europe, growing
> numbers of people are actively saying they don't believe there is a
> heaven or a hell or anything other than this life.
>
> Many analysts trace the rise of what some are calling the "nonreligious
> movement" to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The sight of
> religious fanatics killing 3,000 people caused many to begin
> questioning -- and rejecting -- all religion.
>
> "This is overwhelmingly the topic of the moment," said Terry Sanderson,
> president of the National Secular Society of Britain. "Religion in this
> country was very quiet until September 11, and now it is at the center
> of everything."
>
> Since the 2001 attacks, a string of religiously inspired bomb and
> murder plots has shaken Europe. Muslim radicals killed 52 people on the
> London public transit system in 2005 and 191 on Madrid trains in 2004.
> People apparently aiming for a reward in heaven were arrested in
> Britain last year for trying to blow up transatlantic jetliners. And
> earlier this month in Germany, authorities arrested converts to Islam
> on charges that they planned to blow up American facilities there.
>
> Many Europeans are angry at demands to use taxpayer money to
> accommodate Islam, Europe's fastest-growing religion, which now has as
> many as 20 million followers on the continent. Along with calls for
> prayer rooms in police stations, foot baths in public places and
> funding for Islamic schools and mosques, expensive legal battles have
> broken out over the niqab, the Muslim veil that covers all but the
> eyes, which some devout women seek to wear in classrooms and court.
>
> Christian fundamentalist groups who want to halt certain science
> research, reverse abortion and gay rights and teach creationism rather
> than evolution in schools are also angering people, according to
> Sanderson and others.
>
> "There is a feeling that religion is being forced on an unwilling
> public, and now people are beginning to speak out against what they see
> as rising Islamic and Christian militancy," Sanderson said.
>
> Though the number of nonbelievers speaking their minds is rising,
> academics say it's impossible to calculate how many people silently
> share that view. Many people who do not consider themselves religious
> or belong to any faith group often believe, even if vaguely, in a
> supreme being or an afterlife. Others are not sure what they believe.
>
> The term atheist can imply aggressiveness in disbelief; many who don't
> believe in God prefer to call themselves humanists, secularists,
> freethinkers, rationalists or, a more recently coined term, brights.
>
> "Where religion is weak, people don't feel a need to organize against
> it," said Phil Zuckerman, an American academic who has written
> extensively about atheism around the globe.
>
> He and others said secular groups are also gaining strength in
> countries where religious influence over society looms large, including
> India, Israel and Turkey. "Any time we see an outspoken movement
> against religion, it tells us that religion has power there," Zuckerman
> said.
>
> One group of nonbelievers in particular is attracting attention in
> Europe: the Council of Ex-Muslims. Founded earlier this year in
> Germany, the group now has a few hundred members and an expanding
> number of chapters across the continent. "You can't tell us religion is
> peaceful -- look around at the misery it is causing," said Maryam
> Namazie, leader of the group's British chapter.
>
> She and other leaders of the council held a news conference in The
> Hague to launch the Dutch chapter on Sept. 11, the sixth anniversary of
> the terrorist attacks in the United States. "We are all atheists and
> nonbelievers, and our goal is not to eradicate Islam from the face of
> the earth," but to make it a private matter that is not imposed on
> others, she said.
>
> The majority of nonbelievers say they are speaking out only because of
> religious fanatics. But some atheists are also extreme, urging people,
> for example, to blot out the words "In God We Trust" from every dollar
> bill they carry.
>
> Gaining political clout and access to television and radio airtime is
> the goal of many of these groups. With a higher profile, they say, they
> could, for instance, lobby for all religious rooms in public hospitals
> to be closed, as a response to Muslims demanding prayer rooms because
> Christians have chapels.
>
> Associations of nonbelievers are also moving to address the growing
> demand in Britain, Spain, Italy and other European countries for
> nonreligious weddings, funerals and celebrations for new babies. They
> are helping arrange ceremonies that steer clear of talk of God, heaven
> and miracles and celebrate, as they say, "this one life we know."
>
> The British Humanist Association, which urges people who think "the
> government pays too much attention to religious groups" to join them,
> has seen its membership double in two years to 6,500.
>
> A humanist group in the British Parliament that looks out for the
> rights of the nonreligious now has about 120 members, up from about 25
> a year ago.
>
> Doreen Massey, a Labor Party member of the House of Lords who belongs
> to that group, said most British people don't want legislators to make
> public policy decisions on issues such as abortion and other health
> matters based on their religious beliefs.
>
> But the church has disproportionate power and influence in Parliament,
> she said. For example, she said, polls show that 80 percent of Britons
> want the terminally ill who are in pain to have the right to a
> medically assisted death, yet such proposals have been effectively
> killed by a handful of powerful bishops.
>
> "We can't accept that religious faiths have a monopoly on ethics,
> morality and spirituality," Massey said. Now, she added, humanist and
> secularist groups are becoming "more confident and more powerful" and
> recognize that they represent the wishes of huge numbers of people.
>
> While the faithful have traditionally met like-minded people at the
> local church, mosque or synagogue, it has long been difficult for those
> without religion to find each other. The expansion of the Internet has
> made it a vital way for nonbelievers to connect.
>
> In retirement centers, restaurants, homes and public lectures and
> debates, nonbelievers are convening to talk about how to push back what
> they see as increasingly intrusive religion.
>
> "Born Again Atheist," "Happy Heathen" and other anti-religious T-shirts
> and bumper stickers are increasingly seen on the streets. Groups such
> as the Skeptics in the Pub in London, which recently met to discuss
> this topic, "God: The Failed Hypothesis," are now finding that they
> need bigger rooms to accommodate those who find them online.
>
> Wright, the teacher who recently declared himself a nonbeliever, is one
> of thousands of people who have joined dues-paying secular and humanist
> groups in Europe this year.
>
> Sitting in his living room on a quiet cul-de-sac in this English town
> of 30,000, Wright said he now goes online every day to keep up with the
> latest atheist news.
>
> "One has to step up and stem the rise of religious influence," said
> Wright, who is thinking of becoming a celebrant at humanist funerals.
> He said he recently went to the church funeral of his brother-in-law
> and couldn't bear the "vacuous prayers of the vicar," who, Wright said,
> "looked bored and couldn't wait to leave."
>
> Now, instead of each morning silently reciting a favorite nighttime
> prayer, "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy
> great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers . . . " (from the
> Anglican Book of Common Prayer), he spends the time just thinking about
> the day ahead.
>
> He said his deceased mother, a Catholic, was comforted by her faith:
> "It kept her going through difficult times," particularly when his
> father left her when he and his sister were young.
>
> "I really don't know how I will react if something really bad happens,"
> he said. "But there is no going back. There is nothing to go back to."
>
> Not believing in an afterlife, he said, "makes you think you have to
> make the most of this life. It's the now that matters. It also makes
> you feel a greater urgency of things that matter," such as halting
> global warming, and not just dismissing it as being "all in God's plan."
>
> He called himself heartened that the National Secular Society, which he
> recently joined, is planning to open chapters at a dozen universities
> this fall. The rising presence of the nonreligious movement, he said,
> is "fantastic."
>
> "It's a bit of opposition, isn't it?" he said. "Why should these
> religious groups hold so much sway?"
>
> (c) 2007 The Washington Post
>
>
>
> =================================================================
> NY Transfer News Collective A Service of Blythe Systems
> Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
> New York Transfer News Collective http://www.blythe.org
> List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
> Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
> =================================================================
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)
>
> iD8DBQFG7O5Biz2i76ou9wQRAuirAJ9J5i5+XyUGkohXYKIt9G5V1NprAwCfZndL
> MaNyoqHTOyerLUEeOTF5oBM=
> =ODwD
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>