oboogie wrote:
Silkyman wrote:
One stat I'd love to know though, is a comparison between 'conversions' on reaching adulthood have more people changed from atheist to believer than the other way.
Don't know where you would get that info as I don't know who have access to it.
There'll be records of religious conversions of course, but the other way?
How many people formally renounce their faith?
Does such a procedure even exist formally?
I'm sure there are loads of atheists who were christened but 'lapsed' in adult-hood - I know several without even thinking about it.
Accurately quantifying them however would, I suspect, be impossible.
I'm sure it would be (perhaps the Dawkins foundation could commission another poll)
Which is a shame because I'd imagine that far more people have been indoctrinated into it all as kids, grown up and thought 'hang on... this is all shit isn't it' than have decided as a 35 year old that the sky fairy concept is a good'un.
THe 'is britain a christian country' discussion was on some programme this morning with Dawkins and a couple of supporters up against some religious lot. They didn't get much past 'well it is, because people in england are nice and all nice people have to be christians' bullshit, and purposefully failed to grasp the point of the Dawkins Foundation poll.
Point: if the majority of people who call themselves 'christian' on the census really only do it because they think they should, and because they haven't really thought enbough about it to put anything else, is it right that the more fundamentalist element - a real minority - can use that data to claim a majority?
counter argument: you're just an intolerant atheist fundamentalist