The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160422-atheism-agnostic-secular-nones-rising-religion/

by wslh • 10 years ago

51 28 10 years ago

news.nationalgeographic.com

taksintikk• 10 years ago

Cheers to that..

TazeTSchnitzel3• 10 years ago

This is, arguably, good news.

Though I lament the rise of the people who centre their identity around their lack of religion and go on the offensive against believers. They're not much better than the religious. Religion is not the source of all evil.

fullshark• 10 years ago

Those people are just annoying. The most extreme religious people can be actively harmful to society/their children.

TazeTSchnitzel3• 10 years ago

That's not a property exclusive to the religious.

coldtea5• 10 years ago

The same can be sad for the most extreme atheist people -- communists for example were not particularly religious, nor were the Nazis.

dominotw• 10 years ago

Its a little hypocritical to hate religion when you yourself are part of many religious cults. religion of family, cult of love, religion of shopping, cult of money and success, religion of beauty and youth.

TazeTSchnitzel3• 10 years ago

These are strange choices of 'religion' but I think I agree with your comment in spirit. It's saddening to see people who claim to be skeptics, but whose skepticism apparently only extends to organised religion, and not to other harmful widely-held beliefs about the world.

rapha22_1• 10 years ago

What do you mean by "cult of love"?

unchocked• 10 years ago

In light of the rise of political christianity, the rise of militant atheism is both expected and culturally justified.

mc32• 10 years ago

I don't think so. I prefer people simply not identify. I don't prefer associating with other atheists just because they are other atheists. I rather loathe proselytizing evangelizing atheists they irk me as much as the young adults in white shirts black slacks and black ties.

Now, I welcome an ebb in Christianity and Islam. As well as the expansion of atheism, I just prefer soft atheism over the more Religious-like atheism. It's antithetical to being an atheist.

proksoup• 10 years ago

I consider my protests and vocal opposition to christianity being enforced on my family from my family, and my vocal opposition to its ongoing role in politics as a defensive tactic.

I am often labeled as being on the offensive, and it'd be nice to talk about this line more (when is it offense, when is it defense).

adrianN• 10 years ago

I think they are mainly found in areas where being atheist is still "edgy". With the decline of organised religion, those people will probably go away on their own.

mlpinit• 10 years ago

Although I sympathies with your first point this claim "Religion is not the source of all evil" really dims down the evil.

Amorymeltzer2• 10 years ago

For those curious, they're using a Dymaxion map, also known as the Fuller projection[1]. It's named for Buckminster Fuller, and the goal is to reduce skew of shape and size. Notice, for example, the sizes of Greenland and Africa as compared to their heavily-skewed sizes on the Mercator projection.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

martythemaniak• 10 years ago

2: https://xkcd.com/977/

slazaro• 10 years ago

I assume they think this is a good choice, but I disagree. It's just confusing. Why add such friction to data display?

Amorymeltzer2• 10 years ago

It took me a moment or two as well, but you won't get change without making change. The Mercator was historically good for navigation, but is a poor representation of the globe. You need only look at their last figure, with the more granular data, to see the level and ease of detail would be lost in Africa and Eurasia.

CaptSpify• 10 years ago

It was confusing to me too. Maybe they should list the reason they used that map in the caption

akkartik• 10 years ago

I wanted to comment on that as well. Very cool to see. I really hope the Fuller projection goes mainstream.

"Fuller argued that in the universe there is no "up" and "down", or "north" and "south": only "in" and "out". Gravitational forces of the stars and planets created "in", meaning "towards the gravitational center", and "out", meaning "away from the gravitational center". He attributed the north-up-superior/south-down-inferior presentation of most other world maps to cultural bias.

"Fuller intended the map to be unfolded in different ways to emphasize different aspects of the world. Peeling the triangular faces of the icosahedron apart in one way results in an icosahedral net that shows an almost contiguous land mass comprising all of Earth's continents – not groups of continents divided by oceans. Peeling the solid apart in a different way presents a view of the world dominated by connected oceans surrounded by land.

"Showing the continents as "one island earth" also helped Fuller explain, in his book Critical Path, the journeys of early seafaring people, who were in effect using prevailing winds to circumnavigate this world island."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

bostik• 10 years ago

About time.

Because religion often enjoys legal protection, in my eyes proclaiming to be religious does not differ much from stating: "I am legally delusional!"

In the same vein, one can hope that eventually nations also realise that churches do not deserve tax exemptions. They are businesses, and to be more precise, they are in the protection racket business.[0] The logical difference to mafia is miniscule.[1]

0: "Say, that's a nice soul. Would be awful if something happened to it..."

1: "Say, a nice shop you have here. Would be awful if something happened to it..."

coldtea5• 10 years ago

That's a rather naive, if popular, view of religion.

Probably made even more popular by the fact that in the US any kind of fringe BS can pass as a religion, from Scientology to what have you.

And by fringe I don't mean less true in the "god exists" way (well, he doesn't exist, at least not in any religious guise), but less historically established and having served an important societal role.

Because religions were an early cultural framework for formulation of a code of ethics, building ideas about society, life, etc. That we today deem some of those ideas bad doesn't mean they were bad when they formed (or even now), or that they didn't play an important (positive I mean) role in society's development.

(The inverse idea is usually based on two naive beliefs: religious people were just dupes manipulated by priests, and religion is useless since its myths don't correspond to objective truth).

Heck, there are even evolutionary studies on the benefit of religion to human development...

throwaway2016a2• 10 years ago

Anecdotally, these stats are probably understated. For example, when asked I answer Catholic. In reality I am a "none" but we would skew the numbers for Catholic in this study because I want my child to grow up knowing her grandparents and they would disown me if I came out as Atheist. I imagine a lot of people are in the same boat as me.

slantaclaus• 10 years ago

That is an atheist coordinate reference system!

The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion

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