hy does religious belief persist in the modern era, when science has answered almost every question the ancients invented gods to explain? Why do people still need to keep alive their ancient superstitions for comfort and familiarity when most of us know better, intellectually? Why is logic and reason of so little use to so many people?

This page compiles blog entries on the persistence (or not) of religion in the modern day. Check out the Religion vs. Reality page for some similar entries.

More recent additions are added on top.

February 9, 2004

People like myself, who have come to a place in their personal development and growth that they no longer require any sort of religion or faith to make sense of the world tend to think that everyone else is traveling a similar path to the one we traveled, and that it's only a matter of time until most everyone in the civilized/modern world is standing in our shoes.  In other words, atheists like myself have trouble understanding why anyone who isn't very old, or uneducated, still believes in all that medieval superstitious stuff. And we think that since we got past it and reached an understanding of how the universe really is, that everyone else should also, if not right now then within the next year or two.

And yes, I realize that most every atheist on earth has thought this since about 1742.

That sort of blind, faith-like belief (ironic, isn't it?) lives on despite all evidence to the contrary, especially in the United States, which is about the the only really religious Western nation left on earth.  Evidence such as this:

NEW YORK - An American Airlines pilot asked Christians on his flight to identify themselves and suggested the non-Christians discuss the faith with them, the airline said.

American's Flight 34 was headed from Los Angeles to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on Friday when the pilot asked Christians on board to raise their hands, Wagner said. The pilot, whose name was not released, told the airline that he then suggested the other passengers use the flight time to talk to the Christians about their faith, Wagner said.

Passenger Amanda Nelligan told WCBS-TV of New York that the pilot called non-Christians "crazy" and that his comments "felt like a threat." She said she and several others aboard were so worried they tried to call relatives on their cell phones before flight attendants assured them they were safe and that people on the ground had been notified about the pilot's comments.

The pilot also told passengers he would be available for discussion at the end of the flight. Wagner said the pilot had just returned to work from a weeklong mission trip to Costa Rica.

Or this:

BOSTON - Boisterous opponents of same-sex marriage sang, cheered and chanted Sunday at a rally to build support for a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

The demonstration on the Boston Common, a short distance from the Massachusetts Statehouse, broke out into chants of "Let the people vote!" while demonstrators held aloft banners with phrases such as "Marriage, ancient, sacred," and "Repent or perish." Police estimated the crowd at 2,000 people.

Demonstrator Ed Zicko, 69, acknowledged that gay marriage could become the law before residents in the state have a chance to vote on it. "We'll just have to wait for that time to vote, unless they find some way to delay it, which I hope they can," Zicko said. He said he came to the rally because marriage is a tradition going back thousands of years and "I think people should have the opportunity to vote on it."

Not that there's anything exactly atheist vs. religious in the Gay Marriage issue, but as far as I know all opposition to it is from religious people who don't like homosexuality in general, and are making a stand on this one particular issue, since they can do it about marriage without being all that openly homophobic.  The code words are pretty clear, I mean anyone how says male/female is the only way for marriage to be and says that it's "sacred" or "tradition" or whatever is obviously channeling the Christian interpretation of the Bible.

October 14, 2003

Interesting article that Malaya sent to me this morning is now one of the most popular on Yahoo.  It's about the steady decline of organized religion in Europe, and some possible reasons why.  Unlike the usual wire service article, it's more than about 500 words long, and really goes into detail about things, with facts, figures, and analysis.

Christianity has boomed in the developing world, competing successfully with Islam, deepening its influence and possibly finding its future there. But Europe already seems more and more like a series of tourist-trod monuments to Christianity's past. Hardly a month goes by when the pope does not publicly bemoan that fact, beseeching Europeans to rediscover the faith.

Their estrangement has deep implications, including the prospect of schisms in intercontinental churches and political frictions within and between countries.

The secularization of Europe, according to some political analysts, is one of the forces pushing it apart from the United States, where religion plays a potent role in politics and society, shaping many Americans' views of the world.

Americans are widely regarded as more comfortable with notions of good and evil, right and wrong, than Europeans, who often see such views as reckless.

In France, which is predominantly Catholic but emphatically secular, about one in 20 people attends a religious service every week, compared with about one in three in the United States.

For people such as myself, who have long since thrown off any need for religion, this sort of thing seems logical and inevitable. As man grows more and more able to explain things that used to be unexplainable and mysterious, and society evolves further and further away from how it used to be, back when the various ancient holy writings were put to paper, why should we continue to cling to ancient superstitions?  Poor people in third world nations do, since to grossly simplify the issue, they are primitives in terms of education and society, and require simple solutions to complicated problems.  They want people to tell them how to think and what to do, since their own lives are so desperate, and fairy tales about eternal rewards in the afterlife are about all they have to look forward to as they struggle to survive day to day.

For me, the wonder isn't that Europe has moved beyond needing religion, it's that the US hasn't.  The US used to be the world leader in so many areas, and while we still have the largest economy and most powerful military and most influential culture, for some reason the whole age of myth still lingers over the national discourse.

I feel (with basically nothing to back my feeling up) that far, far fewer Americans really give a shit about their church or religion in general than the surveys say do.  There is a small core group of people who really are religious, but they wield undue influence on a national level, and keep the whole concept of "you should be religious" alive.  This leads the vast majority, who are fence-sitters, to feel guilty about not really being religious anymore and to say that they are more devout than they really are.  Other fence sitters hear that, and think they should pretend to be religious since it's bad to not be, and so on.  It sort of self-perpetuates a misleading public front.

How or if this will change is open to debate.  I think it will, eventually, but that it will take role models and courageous people.  To draw a poor parallel, homosexuality didn't really become acceptable until there were more and more famous people willing to admit to being gay, and more and more average people who let it be known that they were gay.  Once the majority saw that there were plenty of normal gays, they got over their homophobia.  Or most of it, anyway.

The difference is that aside from those amusing Darwin Jesus Fish stickers, how does a normal person show their non-religious nature, so as to encourage others who may not have quite evolved to their level of free thought? There are lots of atheist celebrities, but very few of them make any effort to publicize this, and when it comes to politics it's even harder to be open about not walking the path of Jesus, at least in the US. So long as the illusion persists that morality and righteousness and decency are somehow tied in to being religious, almost all politicians (who are a gutless breed, for the most part) will feel a need to pretend to be devout in order to not offend voters.

I seem to lack a solution or conclusion to this topic.  It doesn't make me want to move to Europe or NZ or Oz (at least no more than I already wanted to), all of which are far less religious than the US, mostly since the supposed religious nature of the US virtually never enters into my life.  I think judges who put up Ten Commandments statues in courthouses and Christians who harass their schools about not pushing mandatory prayer on the children are idiots, and an embarrassment to America in the 21st Century.  But since none of that really touches my life, it's relatively easy to ignore.  I'm pretty charitable about the whole thing; I think religious people are deluded and wasting a lot of time and mental energy on fantasies that society should have long since outgrown, but if that's what they need to get them through the day, oh well.  I'm not of the "angry atheist" mentality anymore, where I feel like I've just thrown off the shackles of superstition and that everyone else should do so as well, or it's a personal insult to me.  I just figure that as I came through my superstitious leanings on my own, I should leave other people alone to get through them as well.

Of course this is exactly the opposite technique of most religions, where the faithful are urged to attempt to convert the non-believing, and rein in the straying flock.  Which probably explains why there are 50,000 nutty religious cults on earth, and approximately zero atheist ones.

January 12, 2003

You think we're living in a modern world, with most absurd superstitions gone.  And then you see stories like this from Africa.  Usually they're some wackiness about penis shrinking witches, but I've not seen vampires before.

Hundreds of angry Malawians hounded a senior political figure from his house and stoned him late Wednesday, accusing him of harboring vampires. Blantire Urban Governor Eric Chiwaya, a member of the ruling United Democratic Front, was the latest victim of a bizarre rumor that the country's government is colluding with vampires to collect human blood for international aid agencies.

The vampire rumors have sparked several vigilante attacks on suspected bloodsuckers in recent weeks, despite official attempts to stop the rumor. One man was stoned to death, and three priests were attacked by angry villagers in the south.

Political tensions are already high in Malawi. President Bakili Muluzi's attempts to stay in office for another five-year term have already sparked protests, while many face starvation in the face of a regional food crisis.

I think the last paragraph is the key to things.  As is par for most of Africa, the country is ripped by political chaos, famine, and near civil war. In times of such stress and uncertainty, people hunger for scapegoats and will believe any insane rumor if it promises them improved lives, or at least someone to blame for the hell they are living through.

Where the hell is Malawi anyway?  Good question.  Here's a small map, and here's a big map of Africa.  It's in the south east, near Madagascar, but has Mozambique between it and the Indian Ocean. I think we can safely add that to our "It's a horrible place to visit, and you wouldn't want to live there." list.

Someone asked me about that quote the other day, not getting that it was a joke.  There's an old saying, "It's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there." And I just twist that to a double negative for especially nasty places.

Hey, I didn't say it was a funny joke...

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