There are actually close links between churches in the US and Argentina. The church where I spent my early childhood (a power player in Republican politics) has very close links with a megachurch in Buenos Aires. The NAR extremists are active in both countries. They claim they destroyed Catholic statues in Resistencia, Argentina. They're coming dangerously close to sedition in the US.
Well I still do not believe in gravity, so I am not sure what that makes me, but maybe some day I will Believe.
An anti-newtonian-apple-floater or einsteinian-arelativistic-flying-carpet-chaser (or something equally silly).
A lot of missionaries went to Argentina in the 20th century. It was a cool destination, they could claim to their supporters that they were "roughing" it in the third world, while in reality most of them were living in nice modern cities and -with their support in dollars- living quite comfortably indeed. But to be fair, some of them did a lot of good, in terms of setting up schools, orphanages, charities for the poor and the like. Towards the end of the last century the evangelical church started to grow significantly, and now there are indeed a large number of megachurches, mostly among the poor. It's a bit different than the US, though because people become religious conservative but for the most part not politically conservative, as is more common in the US. I mean, they may believe in prophesy and the imminent return of Christ, speak in tongues and all that, but they remain left-wing Peronists/Kirchnerites. But the evangelical community is still a significant minority, most of the people -and in particularly the more wealthy/educated/conservative - remain traditional Catholic.
I spent my early childhood at Rock Church in Virginia Beach under the late Pastor John Gimenez. He and his wife Anne (still alive and active) spoke at the church run by Hector Gimenez (no relation) in Buenos Aires. I hear Hector claims to be a hincha of Racing. Any idea if he's a Kirchnerite?
Yeah, I heard of Jimenez. He's made a name for himself as a faith healer, sort of like Benny Hynn in the US. Not sure if he's still around, but I would bet he is, those healing guys tend to have job security for life.
He is still around. Pagina 12 had a scathing article about how he traded his wife in for a newer model. That tactic is used in the US as well.
Hey, if you can get the lame to walk and the blind to see, who's going to care about a little wife swapping?
There' no way Mexico is more religious than the US, most Mexicans are culturally Catholic, but very very few go to church or know anything about the bible, the vast majority believe in evolution (well the ones under 30) mexican americans tend to be more religious than Mexicans since they have parents who come from small towns in Mexico or come from there themselves.
This Gallup Poll disagrees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_country And your comment about evolution is a non sequitor as the average american catholic is more than twice as likely to believe in evolution as the average american evangelical and I believe that number is even higher in Mexico, so you really cannot correlate the two variables : http://www.pewforum.org/Science-and...Differences-on-the-Question-of-Evolution.aspx
I live here so I think I know what I am talking about. There's absolutely no way Mexico is more religious than the US, Mexico is nowhere near the Scandinavian countries or even Uruguay but between Mexico and the USA, I've got to say that religion is more important to people in America than in Mexico. I Have lived in Tennesse , California and Utah. From my own experience and from a scale from 1-10 (10 the most religious) , Tennesse was a 8 , Utah a 7 and California a 5, I mean people pray at the Nascar races and other social gatherings. Where I live in Mexico I'd say it is a 5. And Mexico is probably a 5.5 as a whole and the US a 7, I'd say. ( Ok that was a bit off topic)
So do I. But I acknowledge that my personal experience might not allow me to make such a wide sweeping claim about the religiosity of a group of people (even though I am in that group), therefore, I cited a poll that has a much more accurate representation of that group. Are you really making the claim that your personal experience is more accurate?
What we have to take into account, and what is probably difficult to represent in a poll is what religiosity means for an individual. My personal experience leads me to believe that Protestants and Catholics have a very different approach to religiosity. First of all, keep in mind that I'm heavily generalizing here. But it appears to me that being Catholic isn't so much about dogmas, but about being part of the community. The Bible isn't the central element in Catholicism as it is with Protestantism. That's why protestants have a much harder time to with science for example. As a result, often times they either go fundamentalist, or they leave their faith alltogether. Catholics on the other hand just shrug these problems away. For a Catholic to be "religious" it's enough to somewhat believe in a god and to go through the motions, whereas the Protestant needs to believe the Bible. So when average Protestant calls himself religious, he's talking about a very different thing than the average Catholic. I think that's the main reason that Catholic countries/regions are usually more religious than Protestant countries/regions (the US and France being big exceptions, for which there are explanations though), because it takes much less to be a religious Catholic than to be a religious Protestant. So while the average Italian or Mexican might be as religious as the average American, it won't influence their daily lives to the same degree.
If by ¨much less¨ you mean that it is less difficult to reconcile scientific and cultural trends with religoius belief, then I agree with you. England has about 53 million people, out of which only 4M are catholic (8%). If you were raised to believe a literal interpretation of the bible, then you are much more likely to leave that faith. Ironically, it is fundamentalists who are more likely to become atheists.
I have no idea if this is true but I do know that the best place to find atheists is in a school of Theology.
Have not seen many pols regarding this so I do not know. I may depend on many factors. Europe for example was not fundamentalist and yet it is becoming very secular. Also Ireland, it took a while but as the thread has shown they are becoming more secular. I think Education is more important than fundamentalism, other wise many Muslim countries would be producing tons of Atheist (and they may be it is just to dangerous to admit it). But I can see this as the “Jewish” effect, where many Jews are atheist but still function as Religious Jewish and follow some of the religious traditions mostly due to cultural reasons, or if not atheist they have on their minds more of the Espinosa type of god than the Biblical type of god. So unless I can see some numbers I can not say. Personal experience, I do not think any of my atheist friends were ever fundamentalist. Then again that is probably because outside a couple former military people I am friends on facebook I don’t hang out with fundamentalist, just some light religious secular people and Roman Catholics (family). They do say the best way to become an atheist is to read the bible (or religious text) so maybe solid is into something, most Roman Catholics I know hardly ever read the bible. So maybe the more you study a religion the more likely you find out is bullshit.
Well, I dont agree with this at all. Reading the bible does absolutely nothing by itself, it is the belief about what you are reading that might lead to an internal problems for the reader. To think that Roman Catholics are spared this because they just dont know what is in the bible is a little naive. About the denominations that represents the most atheist converts, like you said, it is very hard to say. I once read a story (i have searched and cannot find it) that the most fundamentalist christian denominations are experiencing decline while there has been a (slight) increase of jews and catholics in the US and Europe. Your point about muslims might have more to do with the fact that renouncing your faith might lead to death in some places.
Well the "fastest" growing thing is iffy all denomination claim they are and numbers are iffy. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2011-03-18-Adventists_17_ST_N.htm As far as I understand Evangelicals are growing pretty fast in Latin America. Islam is growing fastest mostly to demographics (high Birth rates). Then there is this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/26/whats-the-fastest-growing_n_88540.html
While I wouldn't necessarily say that fundamentalists are more likely to become atheists, given that protestantism is traditionally based solely on the Bible, if they want to take it seriously, they basically have the choice of either turning fundamentalist or turning away. Generally, people in regions that are dominated by protestantism are more likely to turn away from religion. As I said, the US is a notable exception there, which I think can be explained by its history though, starting from its origin as a safe haven for religious refugees, over the strict separation of church and state, to the antagonism with communism. Americans have always had the mindset of choosing/making up a religion that fits their personal beliefs, while Europeans always had to reconcile their religion with the dominant religion of their region. And in that regard, Catholicism had the advantage of providing more "wiggle room" so that there's room for a wide variety of beliefs, whereas protestant denominations are usually a lot narrower regarding their doctrines. That of course doesn't necessarily contradict the claim that the Catholic church is losing members most rapidly, they started from a much higher level after all. But my guess is that these numbers aren't so much due to religious convictions, but rather due to the organization itself and the various scandals it produced, most notably the child abuse cases that were covered up around the world. That has probably made a lot of Catholics turn away in disgust (e.g. in Ireland) but that doesn't necessarily mean that these people changed their beliefs. Since I'm from Germany, that's the frame of reference I have. The interesting thing here is that due to historic reasons (Reformation, 30 Years War, Peace of Westphalia) Germany has traditionally been religiously split: roughly 50% Catholics and Lutherans each. Also an interesting piece of data are the registrations by religion. In Germany, churches can collect their "membership fees" with the help of the state, i.e. via your taxes. That's why everybody is registered with his religion. Today, we have roughly 30% who are registered Catholics, 30% who are registered Protestants and 30% who have registered as non-religious. Of course that doesn't perfectly translate to actual beliefs. Some people who don't want to pay the church tax may register as non-religious despite being Christian, while atheists might still register as Christian because of cultural or social reasons. But it's a good indicator non the less. And there are regularly polls made that show that about 12% of Catholics regularly go to church while only about 2%-4% of Protestants do the same. From my experience, those 2-4% of Protestants are a lot more religious and take their religion a lot more seriously than any of those 12% of Catholics, but the rest has pretty much turned away from religion. They'll still identify as Protestants, they probably believe in God and possibly even that Jesus was his son, but in reality, religion has no influence on their lives any more, they really don't care and only have a very vague idea of faith.
Jesus is back in Britain to fix the problem: http://www.examiner.com/article/man-finds-jesus-fabric-softener-shares-photo-of-his-unwashed-t-shirt