Americans: Undecided About God?

[SecularMotion]

THE holidays are upon us again — it sounds vaguely aggressive, as if the holidays were some sort of mugger, or overly enthusiastic lover — and so it’s time to stick a thermometer deep in our souls and take our spiritual temperature (between trips to the mall, of course).

For some of us, the season affords an opportunity to reconnect with our religious heritage. For others, myself included, it’s a time to shake our heads over the sad state of our national conversation about God, and wish there were another way.

For a nation of talkers and self-confessors, we are terrible when it comes to talking about God. The discourse has been co-opted by the True Believers, on one hand, and Angry Atheists on the other. What about the rest of us?

The rest of us, it turns out, constitute the nation’s fastest-growing religious demographic. We are the Nones, the roughly 12 percent of people who say they have no religious affiliation at all. The percentage is even higher among young people; at least a quarter are Nones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/opinion/sunday/americans-and-god.html

[MarkCharles]

1. Twelve percent, more than the gay folks, more than the black folks,

kind of interesting and disturbing to the Christian folks and the Jewish folks.

I'm also sure that that number is under-reported. Think of all the gay folks who don't come out, same for the non-religious.

In my extended family of over 35, 8 nieces and nephews, 4 grands, etc. About 6 actually go to church once a year or more, and of those, only 4 actually do something called belief in a god or a Christ figure.

[Kurmudgeon]

2. And some believers are non-denominational.

I don't feel any real need to go to a particular building with a particular insignia on it. I take Christ at His Word.
I may attend church one day, but I'm pretty much a hermit for the most part.
Folks like us tend to go uncounted.

[MarkCharles]

3. "I take Christ at His Word"...........and

so you call yourself a "Christian" based upon the writings about some prophet 50 or more years after his death in an ancient language poorly transcribed for 1500+ years into the language you now claim to speak?

Which "Christ at His Word" do you take, re-translated and re-interpreted and then interpreted to your own interpretation do you take?

Which "word" is that?

Is there no courage among Christians to stand up and say just exactly what that "word" is? Or is it open to thousands, if not tens of thousands of different interpretations of "His word"?

[provis99]

4. the author couldn't resist slurring atheists, could he?

[Leontius]

5. Where was the slur, I missed it but I did read the article quickly

so I may have just missed it.

[provis99]

6. "Angry Atheists"

probably the most common slur against atheists: they are just all angry.

[MarkCharles]

7. Angry selfish, immoral, unethical, the list goes on and on

Read sermons and opinion pieces from 100 or 200 years.

Atheists are terrible people, Christians and Jews are the best. I've been told this 1000 times.

Somehow it never stuck.