Secular Britain
:
: A new survey finds most Britons don’t believe in God. Compare with Americans here.
To say that Britain is rapidly becoming a godless country would be too strong, but a YouGov survey provides overwhelming evidence that the British are now a largely irreligious people.
Only a minority believe that God exists and almost everyone acknowledges that Britain is becoming an increasingly secular society.
There is little or no evidence of active hostility towards either religious people or religious beliefs.
Instead, the national mood appears to be one of benign indifference. Most people give the impression of regarding religion almost as a consumer good, one to be consumed by those who happen to have a taste for it.
Now I’m sure some of the folks who argued with me over religion will see this as a sure sign of the path down which we’re headed, now that we’ve happy-holidazed ourselves, a sure sign of a worldwide war against religion. I don’t. America still thinks of itself as a religious nation (though a heckuva lot more people say they’re religious than go to services; a heckuva lot more people belong to churches than go to services in many places). And I note in this story a strong tolerance of religion by the nonreligious; in the recent discussion here, the assumption by many — wrong, I believe — is that the secular are hostile to the religous. Live an let live — eternally or not — that’s the attitude I see.
