We plan on doing so by keeping track of who has done what (and for how long) to help the peaceful and respectful transition.”, “There are many ways people think of God, and thousands of flavours of Christianity, Judaism, Islam,” Levandowski told Wired. They didn’t see any need to bring God into it – Irzak was brought up an atheist – but did start running regular “services”, including introductions, a sermon eulogising the awesomeness of nature and education on aspects of environmentalism. Woodhead and her co-author found that people were rapidly turning away from organised religion, with its emphasis on fitting into an established order of things, towards practices designed to accentuate and foster individuals’ own sense of who they are. Asia-Pacific is the most populous region in the world, and also the most religious. Like many cliches, it’s rooted in truth. This worldview makes sense for groups too small to need abstract codes of conduct, but who must know their environment intimately. In England, the Anglican church – the Church of England – is recognised as the official “established” church of the country with important roles relating to state occasions. When life is tough or disaster strikes, religion seems to provide a bulwark of psychological (and sometimes practical) support. “I’d be careful about calling capitalism a religion, but a lot of its institutions have religious elements, as in all spheres of human institutional life,” says Wood. The short answer is religion is on the wane in western Europe and North America, and it’s growing everywhere else. None of these are religions, of course, but they do share parallels with nascent belief systems – particularly that key functionalist objective of fostering a sense of community and shared purpose. Legislators in Argentina recently voted against legalising abortion under pressure from Catholic bishops and the pope. But it’s not all bad news. “But they’re always looking at something that’s not measurable or you can’t really see or control. In the secular West, such support is unlikely to be forthcoming, with the possible exception of the US. What do these self-directed religions look like? In fact, religions, even the defunct ones, can provide uncannily appropriate metaphors for many of the more intractable features of modern life. Followers of most major religions report increasing hostility and, in many cases, violence. And such changes are exactly what the founders of some new religious movements want. All rights reserved. Many people want to know where the world came … What’s more, around three-quarters of atheists and nine out of 10 agnostics are open to the existence of supernatural phenomena, including everything from astrology to supernatural beings and life after death. A Russian church in Antarctica, where climate change is playing out (Credit: Getty Images), Consider the “Witnesses of Climatology”, a fledgling “religion” invented to foster greater commitment to action on climate change. Before Mohammed, before Jesus, before Buddha, there was Zoroaster. Scientology was barred from recognition as a religion for many years in the UK because it did not have a Supreme Being – something that could also be said of Buddhism. The Silicon Valley mantra of “move fast and break things” has become a self-evident truth for many technologists and plutocrats. “A lot is measured against the Western Anglophone tradition of religion,” says Singler. The next category is people who practise folk or traditional religions; there are 400m of them, or 6% of the global total. Now there is, comes the reply. Festivals like Christmas and Easter, for example, have archaic pagan elements, while daily practice for many people in China involves a mixture of Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Christians can be Roman Catholic (the biggest group with almost 1.3 billion adherents), Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Anglican or many other sub-denominations. And while Christian women have an overall birth rate of 2.6, it’s lower in Europe where Christian deaths outnumbered births by nearly 6 million between 2010 and 2015. He cites research showing that people ignore authoritarian pitches until they sense a deterioration of social norms. But some religions do not have gods. 2. But ultimately the question of sincerity is a red herring, Singler says: “Whenever someone tells you their worldview, you have to take them at face value”. The broad idea that a shared faith serves the needs of a society is known as the functionalist view of religion. ), A flame burns in a Zoroastrian Fire Temple, possibly for more than a millennium (Credit: Getty Images). Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election with the overwhelming support of white evangelical Christians. Israel defines itself as the “Jewish state”, with an 80% majority Jewish population. The median age of the global population is 28. People often use the word religion to mean the worship of a god or gods. Religious instruction and belief remain today the lifeblood of society’s moral ethos. When we recognise a faith, we treat its teachings and traditions as timeless and sacrosanct. A Roman Catholic priest officiates mass on the first day of trading at the Philippine Stock Exchange in Manila (Credit: Getty Images). Jews can be Orthodox (or ultra-Orthodox), Conservative, Reform or belong to smaller groups. Conversely, we might expect similar societies to have similar religions, even if they have developed in isolation. Those with no religious affiliation increased to 9.8% – a jump of 71.8% in five years. Islam, too, initially attracted followers by emphasising honour, humility and charity – qualities which were not endemic in turbulent 7th-Century Arabia. One of the biggest upheavals on the religious landscape in the next few years is likely to be the death (or, possibly, retirement) of Pope Francis, who is 81 and has a number of health issues. Two religions have a median age below that: Muslims (23) and Hindus (26). In the European context, this sets the stage for a resurgence of interest in paganism. At Reverse Christmas, the Witnesses plant a tree rather than cutting one down; on Glacier Memorial Day, they watch blocks of ice melt in the California sun. The 17th-Century French mathematician suggested non-believers should nonetheless go through the motions of religious observance, just in case a vengeful God does turn out to exist. The psychologist Ara Norenzayan argues it was belief in these “Big Gods” that allowed the formation of societies made up of large numbers of strangers. Geography is important in religion. The full proposition is a complicated logic puzzle, but crudely put, it goes that when a benevolent super-intelligence emerges, it will want to do as much good as possible – and the earlier it comes into existence, the more good it will be able to do. On the other hand, official recognition of Ásatrú, the Icelandic pagan faith, meant it was entitled to its share of a “faith tax”; as a result, it is building the country’s first pagan temple for nearly 1,000 years.

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