Thanks Josy. Residual energy is a brilliant term for what I was trying to say.

They dont and that is why in every developing and educated country religion eventually dies out

Well said Kizzy. :wavey::clap1::clap1:

open your mind too much and your brain will fall out...


:clap1::clap1::clap1:

Given what's going on in my life at the moment I hope that there is something in a person that carries on

That doesn't sound too good annie :( hope you're ok.

In what country has that happened in on which to base your hypothesis?

:joker::joker:Marsh,lol trust you

Trends

Church attendance in advanced industrial societies is in gradual general decline with people shifting from weekly to monthly or holiday attendance. Sociologists have attributed this trend to a number of reasons, starting from a simple boredom during services and lack of motivation, to generational incompatibility of belief systems and social changes attributed to modernity.Research across 65 different nations showed that out of 20 advanced industrial countries - 16 demonstrated a declining rate of monthly church attendance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_attendance

1st world problems, people are becoming less spiritual according to the gospel of St wiki?

There is and always has been a flux in religious observance.

Bang On Right

There Is No God

God, ghosts, little green men from mars... We mock what we don't understand.

No we dont, science tries to solve what we dont understand and logic exposes fraud and superstition.

There is a very good reason why, in courts up and down the land, they deal in fact -saying that god told you to steal a car or that a ghost put a bag of crack in your back pocket will get you nowhere.

(and swearing on a bible is tradition)

Bravo.

What's more any drop in the number of people of orthodox religions attending church or synagogue or mosque, is no indicator of any reduction in the numbers of people who have beliefs or faith.

That's like saying that there are more people who do not drink alcohol now because the numbers of people visiting pubs and clubs have dropped.

Perhaps it's just that people continue to drink just as before but at home watching TV or having friends round because they no longer see the need or have the desire to go out to enjoy a drink.

I firmly believe in God and Jesus as the Christ, but I don't feel the need to go to any church, and I'd bet there are millions of people who believe in something who don't feel the need to either.

Sadly for the lone ranger christians the Bible says otherwise. The bible calls for christians to meet and worship together, hence the reason why churches exist.

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-acb/acb-t009.html

I believe your spirit goes on after death, I don't know how, I can't explain it... if I could there would be a church of Livia. But I don't think that anyone can contact people "on the other side". Mediums, as far as I am concerned, are charlatans preying on the vulnerable. I can't imagine how anyone who's seen Derren Brown perform, and hear that he says he has no psychic powers at all, can still think mediums are for real.

You do realise that stars are;

1) absolutely lightyears away, we wouldn't be able to travel anywhere near one.
2) stars are formed from protostars which come from stellar nebulas.

At the time the Wright Brothers first flew, the idea of a man walking on the moon would have been preposterous. And yet it took only sixty years. Who knows what technologies will be unlocked in the future?

Church attendance in the UK has been declining for years. In what circumstances do you see that trend being bucked?

the only upturn is in the african dominated charismatic churches in London

The only way i see that trend reversing would be with the second coming of Christ.He would literally have to walk on water and feed the five thousand live on national TV.

Yes Josh BB I do realise that stars are light years away, but I don't see what relevance that has with the subject? I only used the light from dead stars as a kind of analogy and never mentioned reaching any stars.

In any case - as Livia pointed out - interstellar flight is only an impossibility now, because of our lack of adequate technological knowledge, but that could all change with each new breakthrough in science.

I just wish it was in my lifetime but that possibility's remote. :wavey:

Ah.... Then I would start attending church to worship:blush:

By which time it would all be too late.

..I believe this as well..when someone dies it's just an 'empty body' but where does the 'essence' of that person go..what made them laugh/cry/feel emotion...that thing that made them unique and what they were..I don't think that just disappears, it's too strong and I do believe it can be felt as well...

Ghosts etc is a murky topic for me, there could be some truth to some of the bollox you hear/see out there, but it's not related to religion, religion is a complete farce. Hopefully one day it's stamped out, imagine if all that time/effort spent on religion over the past 1-200 years had been devoted to science instead... We'd of colonized the entire solar system by now, ****ing religion... What has religion actually done for the human race? The crusades, the gulf war, Hitlers tyranny, extremists, the inquisition, human sacrifice... It's nothing more than an excuse to control people and commit atrocities.

:fan:

:lovedup:

And who first brought 'religion' into this topic?

I think that if man had lived by the 10 commandments over the past few thousands of years then we would have maybe conquered the universe at least, but would definitely have conquered disease, famine, drought, and even the ageing process, because - had man abided by the commandments - then there would have been no murders, thefts etc, and therefore, the zillion, sqillion, trillion billions which have been wasted,and are still being wasted, on fighting crime and wars, would have been instead invested in all types of research.

Anyway, all of the things you point out are man's doing and man's alone. Religion is man's invention.

If man had lived by the 10 commandments we would conquered the universe?


:joker:

Maybe if we'd have put all the energy, money, time and knowhow that we've put into hating and killing each other and used those resources for something more constructive and beautiful the world would have been a very different place now. I'm not saying if everyone was religious that would have happened - we all know that religion doesn't have the monopoly on good, moral people - just that if we'd been the kind of species who didn't steal, murder, lie and covet our neighbour's ox, mankind might have been a greater species than we've turned out to be. Also, maybe science and technology might not have been as destructive as it's been because people could have been more ethical. We've gobbled up resources in our pursuit of technological advancement, almost exclusively driven by war and/or money, and in some cases that's resulted in devastation as great as war itself.

Great post.

Like Marsh said, brilliant post Livia :clap2:

Yeah but people as a whole, are corrupt. Something like Religion would perhaps work if chimps figured out what it was :joker: but people cannot have something like religion without all of the sh!t that's happened over the years due to religious zealotry. If something is corruptable, we will corrupt it. Religion is the most vulnerable thing to corruption going and really shouldn't be allowed.

Isn't it strange though that the majority of killing and hating has been because of religion? Don't get me wrong we as a whole will use any excuse to commit atrocities but if it wasn't for religion they'd of been much harder to cover up.

Yes but life is not like that and never will be. One of the great problems of religion is this quest for nirvana rather than reality.

Its easy to see the problems but the solutions are hard to find. Education and population control is one of the answers.

WW1 & 2 didn't have anything to do with religion. Japan massacring its way through south east Asia didn't have anything to do with religion. Vietnam didn't have anything to do with religion. Stalin slaughtered millions, but not in the name of religion. Although a lot of killing has been done in the name of religion, if we didn't have religion we'd still have spend a good part of history killing each other for power and/or money.

... was my point. Humans are greedy, covetous and violent, religious or not.

Indeed and only humans could have dreamed up a scheme like religion to justify all of the above and do so wearing silly clothes

So perfectly put. :flowers:

:umm2: