Surveying the landscape => A paranormal, religious future?

Malf and I agree far more than we disagree...sadly the point of our disagreement is the very subject matter of this forum.

Malf and I agree far more than we disagree...sadly the point of our disagreement is the very subject matter of this forum.

Ditto

Malf and I agree far more than we disagree...sadly the point of our disagreement is the very subject matter of this forum.

Tell us some of the points on which you agree with him!

Tell us some of the points on which you agree with him!

Ah that was based more on instinct than anything in particular.

The pagan boom – why young people are turning to non-traditional religions

Census trends tell us the UK is an increasingly secular place, with atheists now outnumbering Christians in England and Wales. Organised religion is also in decline across the pond in the US. In both cases, data reveal that young people are responsible for this trend. Statistics show that millennials are increasingly likely to abandon the monotheism (a belief in one, often male god) they were socialised into as children for more self-determined, spiritual paths during their teens and early twenties.

Dovetailing with this decline is compelling evidence suggesting that, while monotheism declines, an increasing number of young people – ex-faith and otherwise – are identifying as pagan.

It's interesting to see spirituality alternatives arising in - according to the Pew poll referenced early on in this thread - the limited area where "nones" would thought be increasing.

Would be interesting to get a better breakdown of the "nones" as a group.

Why So Many Americans Are Turning to Buddhism

Olga Khazan

"The ancient Eastern religion is helping Westerners with very modern mental-health problems."

From my experience, it is not Buddhism itself. The meditative practices taught in Buddism are essentially the same as those taught by other systems of thought. Buddism is older and its practices are couched in more mysticism, but the results are essentially the same. Perhaps associating with Buddhism helps the practitioner be more consistent in the practice.

A more contemporary approach is to teach the person a broader approach to meditation, for instance, the mindfulness practices or Monroe's Hemi Sync.

A thread for this article already exists created by Ninshub, but posting here for reference.

Psychic Mediums Are the New Wellness Coaches

These are all the world's major religions in one map

Frank Jacobs

Of course, clarity comes at the cost of detail. The map bands together various Christian and Islamic schools of thought that don't necessarily accept each other as 'true believers'. It includes Judaism (only 15 million adherents, but the older sibling of the two largest religious groups) yet groups Sikhism (27 million) and various other more numerous faiths in with 'others'. And it doesn't make the distinction between atheism ("There is no god") with agnosticism ("There may or may not be a god, we just don't know").

And then there's the whole minefield of nuance between those who practice a religion (but may do so out of social coercion rather than personally held belief), and those who believe in something (but don't participate in the rituals of any particular faith). To be fair, that requires more nuance than even a great map like this can probably provide.

The Return of Paganism: Maybe there actually is a genuinely post-Christian future for America.

Ross Douhat

But the secularization narrative is insufficient, because even with America’s churches in decline, the religious impulse has hardly disappeared. In the early 2000s, over 40 percent of Americans answered with an emphatic “yes” when Gallup asked them if “a profound religious experience or awakening” had redirected their lives; that number had doubled since the 1960s, when institutional religion was more vigorous. A recent Pew survey on secularization likewise found increases in the share of Americans who have regular feelings of “spiritual peace and well-being.” And the resilience of religious impulses and rhetoric in contemporary political movements, even (or especially) on the officially secular left, is an obvious feature of our politics.

...There has to come a point at which a heresy becomes simply post-Christian, a moment when you should just believe people who claim they have left the biblical world-picture behind, a context where the new spiritualities add up to a new religion.

Which is why lately I’ve become interested in books and arguments that suggest that there actually is, or might be, a genuinely post-Christian future for America — and that the term “paganism” might be reasonably revived to describe the new American religion, currently struggling to be born.

A fascinating version of this argument is put forward by Steven D. Smith, a law professor at the University of San Diego, in his new book, “Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars From the Tiber to the Potomac.” Smith argues that much of what we understand as the march of secularism is something of an illusion, and that behind the scenes what’s actually happening in the modern culture war is the return of a pagan religious conception, which was half-buried (though never fully so) by the rise of Christianity.

What is that conception? Simply this: that divinity is fundamentally inside the world rather than outside it, that God or the gods or Being are ultimately part of nature rather than an external creator, and that meaning and morality and metaphysical experience are to be sought in a fuller communion with the immanent world rather than a leap toward the transcendent.