Archive for the ‘secular’ Category

May 25 2011 ![]() |
Date-setting for the end of the world has never worked out too well for biblical prophets. Some social scientists, however, say increasingly sophisticated demographic tools can provide vauable insight into the future of religion. Under one scenario for the U.S., Hispanic Catholics and non-Christian religions will be big winners, while predominantly white religious groups will lag behind. Other researchers, however, are skeptical of such attempts to predict the future.
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Mar 31 2011 ![]() |
Add another important voice to the debate over the health of religion in the United States, a nation that is a symbol of the staying power of faith in the West. In a paper for the Association of Religion Data Archives, Duke sociologist Mark Chaves finds “it is reasonable to conclude that American religion has in fact declined in recent decades — slowly, but unmistakably.” Others say the religious beliefs and practices of Americans have been remarkably stable..
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Jan 18 2011 ![]() |
One of the last great efforts at state-sponsored atheism is a failure. No more than 15 percent of adults in the world’s most populous country are “real atheists;” 85 percent of the Chinese either hold some religious beliefs or practice some kind of religion, according to the Chinese Spiritual Life Survey. In a nation with few sources of independent data on religion, the spiritual life survey represents one of the best pictures to date of the Chinese religious landscape.
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Apr 23 2010 ![]() |
The more competition, the better for American religion. Major immigration from Asia, the growth into the thousands of religious movements within and outside the church and an active and influential secular community have not stopped the growth of the nation’s largest faith — Christianity. Instead, the expanding religion marketplace is proving to be a win-win situation for all faiths, according to J. Gordon Melton, founding director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif.
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Nov 3 2009 ![]() |
One of the goods emerging from the debate over health care in the United States is all the healthy information emerging amid the often polarizing political rhetoric.Research on religion and well-being can play a key role in the conversation on public and private health issues. Some new research sheds light on mortality rates and religion, where religious consumers turn to in moments of crisis and the growing number of Americans unaffiliated with religion who say they want their funeral to be a secular affair.
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Sep 30 2009 ![]() |
A new book, “The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion,” brings together research from international scholars on subjects ranging from the genetics of faith to religion’s role in developing altruism. In a world struggling with tribal warfare and unfettered globalization that shuns the common good, the contributions of the biobehavioral sciences on religion can point the way toward a more peaceful, compassionate global culture, the authors say.
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Jul 22 2009 ![]() |
These are heady days for secularists. Increases in the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation along with the success of books promoting a militant anti-religious agenda such as Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” give some hope of a secular great awakening. But getting rid of religion will not be as easy as it seems. It has been tried before.
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