We're number two!

Changes come slowly. We have been conditioned for such a long time
that it is extremely difficult to teach ourselves to challenge our
Beliefs. Especially where religion is concerned. Even though my Dad
was a self-proclaimed Atheist, and my Mother was not a practicing
Christian, nonetheless, my sisters and I were under the prevailing
beliefs of our community. And Mother did send us off to Sunday School
at least a time or two each month. But speaking for myself, I did get
caught up in Christian Beliefs. And because much of it was not
necessarily doctrine based, I had unspoken fears about what would
happen to me if I denounced any of the churches teachings. The
pressure was always on for us to accept the Word of God as Fact.
Questioning God's Word could be the first step on the road to Hell.
So it took time to unlearn that I should not question what was written
in the Bible. In fact, the Scriptures suggest that questioning the
Bible is a sin in and of itself. Thinkers and questioners are
considered to be under Satan's influence. Still, I do believe that
more and more people are viewing religion as a human effort to make
sense out of a very huge, and very old Universe. Very probably we
will never find all the answers to who and what we are, but if we
survive as a species, we will come closer to understanding through
questioning and examining, than through merely accepting the Ancient
Beliefs.

Carl Jarvis
On 5/25/15, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
> Study: Americans becoming less Christian, more secular New York The number
> of Americans who don't affiliate with a particular religion has grown to 56
> million
>
> in recent years, making the faith group researchers call "nones" the
> second-largest in total numbers behind evangelicals, according to a Pew
> Research Center
>
> study released Tuesday. Christianity is still the dominant faith by far in
> the U.S.; 7 in 10 Americans identify with the tradition. However, the ranks
>
> of Christians have declined as the segment of people with no religion has
> grown, the survey says. Between 2007 and 2014, when Pew conducted two major
> surveys
>
> of U.S. religious life, Americans who described themselves as atheist,
> agnostic or of no particular faith grew from 16 percent to nearly 23
> percent. At
>
> the same time, Christians dropped from about 78 percent to just under 71
> percent of the population. Protestants now comprise 46.5 percent of what was
> once
>
> a predominantly Protestant country. Researchers have long debated whether
> people with no religion should be defined as secular since the category
> includes
>
> those who believe in God or consider themselves "spiritual. But the new Pew
> study found increasing signs of secularism. Last year, 31 percent of
> "nones"
>
> said they were atheist or agnostic, compared to 25 percent in 2007, and the
> percentage who said religion was important to them dropped. Greg Smith,
> Pew's
>
> associate research director, said the findings "point to substantive
> changes" among the religiously unaffiliated, not just a shift in how people
> describe
>
> themselves. Secular groups have become increasingly organized to counter
> bias against them and keep religion out of public life through lawsuits and
> lobbying
>
> lawmakers. The growth of "nones" has political significance as well. People
> with no religion tend to vote Democratic, just as white evangelicals tend
> to
>
> vote Republican. The Pew study found a slight drop about 1 percent in the
> evangelical share of the population, which now comprises a quarter of
> Americans.
>
> But the overall number of evangelicals rose to about 62 million people. Pew
> researchers said Christian losses were driven by decreases among mainline,
>
> or liberal, Protestants and Roman Catholics. Mainline Protestants declined
> by about 5 million to 36 million between 2007 and 2014. Pew found 13
> percent
>
> of U.S. adults are former Catholics. The study put the number of Catholic
> adults at 51 million, or just over one-fifth of the U.S. population, a drop
> of
>
> about 3 percent over seven years. In 2007, Catholics made up about
> one-quarter of Americans. However, Pew researchers acknowledge those
> conclusions differ
>
> from those of some other major studies that found only slight declines or
> even a slight uptick in the numbers of Catholics in the last couple of
> years.
>
> Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which
> tracks American Catholicism, puts the U.S. adult Catholic population at 61
>
> million. Regarding other religions, Pew found an increase in membership of
> non-Christian faiths, driven mainly by growing numbers of Muslims and
> Hindus.
>
> Despite the increase, their numbers remain small. Muslims and Hindus each
> comprise less than 1 percent of the U.S. population. The number of Jews
> rose
>
> slightly over the period, from 1.7 percent to 1.9 percent of Americans.
> Overall, religious groups have become more ethnically diverse along with the
> broader
>
> population. Latinos now comprise one-third of U.S. Roman Catholics, although
> fewer U.S. Latinos identify as Catholic overall. One-quarter of
> evangelicals
>
> and 14 percent of mainline Protestants are racial minorities. Membership in
> historically black churches has remained relatively stable over the period.
>
> The survey of 35,000 people, titled "America's Changing Religious
> Landscape," was conducted in English and Spanish from June 4 through Sept.
> 30 of last
>
> year and has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.6 percentage points.
> Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.
>