A combination of things spring to my mind, firstly apathy, my suspicion is that people haven't abandoned the religion because of a reasoned argument to do so more likely they just can't be bothered, secondly I fear the decrease in one flavour of superstition is simply being offset by an increase in others, for example Islam where the 2001 census shows the number of Muslims in the UK is now greater than the number of church going Anglicans (1.5M vs 0.9M approx.) Of course there is all kinds of woo woo that people believe; how many times have you heard someone say "well, I'm not religious but I am spiritual". I've never really understood what that means other than "there's a bunch of things I don't understand therefore gods/spirits/crystal healing/fairies/unicorns exist (delete as appropriate)" I'm not sure what's worse, if people must be superstitious, which brand of woo woo would I prefer them to believe?
In my personal experience I find that the Anglicans I know are on the whole are much more considered and tolerant than other variations of religion, there is always a spectrum of course (because it's all man made at the end of the day) but generally Muslims and Catholics I know are least concerned with the anti-arguments and most well educated regarding their own beliefs, Baptists and Jehovah Witnesses seem most selective regarding what their actual holy books say and generally oblivious to the anti-arguments but tend to be quite familiar with the faux arguments (why are there no transitional fossils etc.) the only Jews I know seem to agree with me that it's all hooey. I know a couple of Buddhists who just agree with everything in a contradictory manner but don't seem to care about that and I also know a few Hindus who are a bit like a mixture between Jews and Buddhists in that they should believe in a whole bunch of weird stuff but don't take it too seriously. Of course this is not a scientific survey the data set is too small, but here's a little straw poll analysis of what I think about superstitious people I know, the axis show how much they seem to believe their own flavour of woo versus how tolerant they seem to be of other people that don't.
To answer my own question I guess I would find most common ground with Anglicans or Jews..
PS if you look at this chart, squint and don't pull focus you should see the face of Richard Dawkins... ;)
6 comments:
I saw a vague £ sign. The sign of Mammon!
CB I'm BUSTED!
That's not Dawkins. That's Sir Keith Joseph. What are you on?
G, sorry I forgot my medication.. ;)
One might surmise from your post that it's not good to stamp out "woo." (sorry, I'm not familiar with the term)
It seems to be replaced with stuff that is worse, for example, apathy, or extremism, or even more nutcake "woo."
Tom, re. woo, not entirely sure where that one came from? It's a term the scientist and author Michael Shermer uses a lot and I like the economy of it. I mean stuff that people believe without evidence or in spite of evidence (and I don't mean the "evidence" that only they can hear inside their head etc.)
It seems to be a biological imperative for some people to believe in some woo, so it's almost irrelevant what woo is believed from a rational perspective and there is no desire on my part to "stamp out" anything legal, but from a citizen's perspective the more benign the woo and therefore more tolerant the woo believers are the better. I like and can respect the way that Anglicanism and mainstream Judaism has (on the whole) evolved in this regard; whereas I don't have similar respect for the more proselytising and aggressive woo's like Islam for example, I appreciate this is a generalisation.
I suppose it's relativism I'm having a dig at here.
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