A Heart-Warming Moment.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

On the way back from Edinburgh in CJ's car, we dropped LordP off in Glasgow. By coincidence, we happened to pass by the church where she had been a member during her brief flirtation with insanity xtianity. We parked up and took a few photos outside and then decided to go in for a look and a few more snaps (see the Edinburgh meet thread for the evidence.) A very nice old chap showed us in and chatted about old times with Her Lordship, even turning on the lights for us so that we could see the inside a bit better.

LordP mentioned that an alcove area on the left hand side of the nave had been blocked off to be used as a hall. At this, the old guy said something that warmed the cockles of my heart. "We use the hall for services as well now," he said, "It costs too much to keep this place heated."

I had to physically restrain myself from punching the air and crying, "Yes!" If anyone needed any evidence of the decline of organised, religious woo in this country, there it is in a nutshell. We had a walk around and LP chatted with a few more of the regulars that were there for a jumble sale - a healthily aged bunch for the most part, with only a handful of younger faces bucking the trend.

Give it a couple more generations and they will be holding their services in someone's garage!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

On the way back from Edinburgh in CJ's car, we dropped LordP off in Glasgow. By coincidence, we happened to pass by the church where she had been a member during her brief flirtation with insanity xtianity. We parked up and took a few photos outside and then decided to go in for a look and a few more snaps (see the Edinburgh meet thread for the evidence.) A very nice old chap showed us in and chatted about old times with Her Lordship, even turning on the lights for us so that we could see the inside a bit better.

LordP mentioned that an alcove area on the left hand side of the nave had been blocked off to be used as a hall. At this, the old guy said something that warmed the cockles of my heart. "We use the hall for services as well now," he said, "It costs too much to keep this place heated."

I had to physically restrain myself from punching the air and crying, "Yes!" If anyone needed any evidence of the decline of organised, religious woo in this country, there it is in a nutshell. We had a walk around and LP chatted with a few more of the regulars that were there for a jumble sale - a healthily aged bunch for the most part, with only a handful of younger faces bucking the trend.

Give it a couple more generations and they will be holding their services in someone's garage!

And then in somebody's crypt.

[lordpasternack]

It was the thrift shop. It's a weekly event, and the biddies do predominate it.

When I attended, there was a little clique of youths. Although I did once hear the minister's son essentially put forth a short dialogue that amounted to his personal uninfluenced reinvention of Pascal's Wager - which can be taken as indicative of some wavering faith.

[The Curious Squid]

That does pretty much sum up this country, religion is such a non point now that we won't have to deal with it a few generations down the line.

Makes you wonder why there are so many people from the UK here though since I have no personal reason to be as anti-theistic as I am.

[Pappa]

That does pretty much sum up this country, religion is such a non point now that we won't have to deal with it a few generations down the line.

Makes you wonder why there are so many people from the UK here though since I have no personal reason to be as anti-theistic as I am.

+1

I'd never even heard the term fundie until I joined RDF.

Religion is a non-starter here. Politicians regard it as embarrassing to admit to, the dwindling Anglicans do it quietly, the Catholics don't evangelise, and pretty much nobody takes it literally (not even the Archbishop of Cantebury). It's whither away eventually*.



*Possibly to be replaced by Islam.

[Ace]

Religion is totally unheard of here. Only the very very few go to church and a vast majority of the towns population is non-religious. I guess you could say religion is old fashion here.
Religion is almost dead here and I only first heard of religion being a problem from RDF. I was supprised when I first learnt about how strongly religious america is, and how fortunate I was to not have any of that.

There is an old church in my town and it's now just an empty building. The last time it was properly used was in the mid 90's. Religion is dying quickly in the UK I think.

[The Curious Squid]

This is making me think of my intro post from RDF

I'm finding it difficult to believe what i'm reading here.

I've never really been outside the UK long enough to mingle with other people but I was under the impression that although there are a lot of Christians in America the overall situation was the same as here (Glasgow) where most people are agnostic at best. It's almost the opposite of what you're describing here where religious people keep their beliefs to themselves in fear of coming across as stupid.

I'm nowhere near as strong in my need to discredit religion as Richard is but whenever I discover that someone I know is religious I plague them with questions in order to understand where exactly they stand. My past experience is that a lot of people say they are religious because they don't know that they can't say otherwise due to family pressures or simply because they haven't spent time contemplating the nature of life.

There is one friend of mine who is a devout Christian and a molecular biologist which confused me more than anything in the past, he actually believes that we are seperate from animals because God gave us souls which they lack. He's also the only person to wind me up so much because of his belief that I lost my temper.

As Hanescymru already mentioned, any situation where religion crops up in conversation tends to be civilised and can become quite engaging.

http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtop ... 10&start=0

Getting a weird flashback to when I realised how big a problem we are actually dealing with.