Dear skeptical colleagues and ECSO Members!
Dr. Peter Boghossian, philosopher, skeptic, atheist, and author of “A Manual for Creating Atheists”, plans on doing a talk-tour in Europe in
September 2018.
Keywords: religion
Blasphemy laws repealed in Denmark
On June 2, the Danish parliament (“Folketinget”) repealed the 334 year old blasphemy law.
The debates about repeal where among other things shadowed by the Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005, and also came to the rescue for one individual who in December 2015 published a video on-line showing the burning of a copy of the Quran. These charges were now dropped due to the change in legislation.
Science facing up to religious beliefs
On the 4th of May at the University of Granada, the biochemist Juan Antonio Mochón, will be giving the talk “Science facing up to religious beliefs” as part of the monthly series of talks Knowledge, rationality and secularism that is running till June of this year.
The talk will be followed by a discussion among the attendees.
Netherlands: 50% officially not religious
For the first time in Dutch history, the official number of religious and irreligious people is equal, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports. The percentage of religiously affiliated citizens above age 18 dropped from 55% in 2010 to 50% last year, a turning point in the ongoing process of secularisation. The current figures are:
- Roman Catholicism: 24%
- Protestantism (various denominations): 15%
- Islam: 5%
- Other (incl. Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism): 5%
- Unaffiliated: 50%
There are large geographical differences, with the more urbanised West (North and South Holland) being the most secular, the southern provinces of North Brabant and Limburg being the most (nominally) Catholic.
Only 1 in 6 people still regularly attend religious services though. In the conservative Protestant Bible Belt, running across the country from the southwest to the northeast, this figure is higher, sometimes over half, and in the case of Urk 94%.
The actual percentage of believers is much lower than 50%, however. A lot of people still registered as members of a church are actually not religious (anymore), but for various reasons have not officially renounced their membership (yet) – a phenomenon known as ‘belonging without believing’. An earlier 2016 survey by Bernts & Berghuijs showed that people’s actual religious convictions were as follows:
- Roman Catholicism: 11.7%
- Protestant Church in the Netherlands: 8.6%
- Other Christian denominations: 4.2%
- Islam: 5.8%
- Hinduism and Buddhism: 2.0%
- Unaffiliated: 67.8%
This shows a big disconnect between membership and actual adherence. Especially the Catholic Church often claims that a quarter of the Dutch population is Catholic, pointing to the official stats, but when questioned, fewer than half that number associate themselves with the Roman faith.
According to Bernts & Berghuijs, their attitudes regarding the existence of (a) god(s) were:
- Atheism: 24% (I don’t believe in gods)
- Agnosticism: 34% (I don’t know if there are gods or not)
- Ietsism: 28% (I don’t believe in gods, but there must be something higher/supernatural/more than we can observe)
- Theism: 14% (I believe there is a God / are gods)
A December 2014 survey showed a similar reversal in public opinion, when for the first time in the Netherlands’ history, more than half of people (63%) thought that religion does more harm than good.
Why fact-checking news reports is important
Viralgranskaren (‘The Viral Monitor’) is a standing column of the Swedish branch of the international freesheet newspaper Metro (that is also originally from Sweden). They specialise in finding out whether viral videos and stories are actually true, and encourage people to fact-check before sharing something on social media.
On 18 November 2016, they created both a Swedish and an English version of a video explaining why fact-checking news reports is important.
The example they give is of a story that went viral in late October 2016. It was based on a real news article from Sveriges Television (SVT). However, xenophobic conspiracy right-wing websites, blogs, shock-logs etc., especially outside Sweden (e.g. Infowars), seized upon the article – that didn’t even mention Islam, Muslims or refugees – to claim that decorative Christmas lights were ‘banned to avoid offending Muslim migrants’. (more…)