RationalWiki.org is a politically left-leaning website that skews towards atheism/agnosticism in terms of its worldview.
Many feminists contend that pornography exploits women. RationalWiki is a pro-feminism website.
In the blog comment section of the blog post Atheist PZ Myers says atheism has fizzled out Kristen wrote: "If anything has fizzled out it is Pharyngula, the blog that had thousands of followers but has only a few dozen after ElevatorGate." (for information about Elevatorgate please see: Elevatorgate).
Pharygula is a blog on the blog website Freethoughtsblog.com which is owned by the atheist and evolutionist PZ Myers.
So how is Freethoughtblogs.com doing in terms of Google referral traffic according to the leading web marketing website SEMRush.com? (Click the graphic below)
Internet atheism is dying
Please see: Internet atheism is dying
Google trends for the keyword atheist - Global searches (2004 to present)
Please click the graphic below.
Why?
In 2011, the investment strategist Jerry Grantham was included in the 50 most influential ranking of Bloomberg Magazine.
Grantham says there a super bubble in the stock market that will cause the stock market to fall 50% or more (see: Jeremy Grantham warns share market crash is likely underway - ABC News and The Long View: Jeremy Grantham - The U.S. Market Is in a Super Bubble and Calling a Super Bubble: Front Row With Jeremy Grantham).
A 50% drop in the stock market is akin to what happened in the Great Depression. On Black Monday, October 28, 1929, the Dow dropped nearly 13 percent. On the following day, Black Tuesday, the stock market dropped almost 12 percent. By mid-November, the Dow had lost almost 50% of its value.
If the United States has another Great Depression, it could easily turn into a worldwide economic depression.
Of course, economic depressions are hard to call, but with governments around the world stacking up debt, within 10-15 years major economic and social unrest certainly may certainly arrive in much of the world.
Also, consider this:
The economist Nouriel Roubini became weel-known for anticipating the 2008 financial crisis. He believes that the Third World War has already started because of the conflict in Ukraine. Currently, the economist is a professor at New York University, in the United States.
Roubini reports that in the 1970s, the ratio of public and private debt to Gross Domestic Product was around 100%. Now, in advanced economies, it’s at 420% and still rising.
In addition, consider this information:
Causes:
Below is a an excerpt from a 2009 article about religion in Germany:
Every hundred years or so, you have major social unrest in Europe. You have people longing, looking for new solutions. And at that situation God anoints or calls people who are good with communicating and meetings those needs. People are so lonely these days, and relationships are so fragile. We are living in pretty revolutionary times.
Henry More wrote: "In agony or danger, no nature is atheist. The mind that knows not what to fly to, flies to God." Some people may stubbornly refuse to deny the existence of God during times of extreme difficulty. However, there is no denying that many people turn to God in times of trouble.
During the Great Depression in America churches which emphasized holiness grew and so did pentecostal Christianity (I realize there can be considerable overlap as many pentecostal church also emphasize holiness).
The American sociologist and author Peter L. Berger introduced the concept of desecularization in 1999. According to Berger, "One can say with some confidence that modern Pentecostalism must be the fastest growing religion in human history." The atheist author and advocate David Madison, PhD wrote in March 2019: "I remain haunted—and terrified—by what I read on a Christian website, not long after the turn of this century: that by 2025, there will be one billion (yes, that’s with a “b”) Pentecostals in the world."
In Latin America, where many people are of modest means, evangelical Christianity is growing very fast. During these tough times, many Europeans could turn to God. I certainly hope so.
Excerpt from the academic paper entitled The Changing Face of Global Christianity by Dr. Todd Johnson & Sandra S. Kim:
As Latourette’s Great Century was coming to a close, churches outside of Europe and the Americas that took root in the 19th century grew rapidly in the 20th century.10 Africa, in particular, led this transformation growing from only 10 million Christians in 1900 to 360 million by AD 2000. Given current trends, there could be over 600 million Christians in Africa by 2025. Shortly after 1980, Christians in the South outnumbered those in the North for the first time in 1,000 years. In 1900 over 80% of all Christians lived in Europe and Northern America, however, by 2005 this proportion had fallen to under 40% and will likely fall below 30% before 2050. Projections for the future show that the Christian churches of the Global South (Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania) will likely continue to acquire an increasing percentage of global Christianity...
Another daily reality for Southern Christians is poverty. Much of the global South deals with serious issues of poverty and a lack of access to proper health care. Countries that have been hardest hit by AIDS, such as Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland, are also countries where Christianity is flourishing. Without access to the necessary medical care, accounts of healing and exorcism found in the Bible are taken more seriously. The work of the Holy Spirit exhibited in the ministry of signs and miracles of healing and deliverance from demonic powers has exploded in the ministry of Pentecostal/Charismatic churches in the global South. David Smith describes these churches as “overwhelmingly charismatic and conservative in character, reading the New Testament in ways that seem puzzlingly literal to their friends in the North,” and as “largely made up of poor people who in many cases live on the very edge of existence.” Thus the growth of Christianity in poorer regions implies not only an alternative reading of the Bible, but a different experience of the Bible.
Paul Adams wrote in his article The Rise of Evangelicalism in Mexico:
But with a country shadowed by the underground totalitarianism of the Mexican Drug Cartel and other drug-related violence which has killed over 50,000 people over the past five years, the visit was a bittersweet one. The Pope commiserated with those ravaged by this issue, urging the country to “fight this evil” while asserting to Mexico’s youth to step away from the recreational drug subculture.
...And look no further than the small town of Zongozotla, Puebla as the poster child for this religious shift. Public Radio International recently visited the town of roughly 5,000 people, finding Catholics being outnumbered by the Evangelicals. In contrast to the rampant violence and vices that circulate through Puebla, the town had a peaceful ambiance to it.
Local pastor Horacio Lopez asserted, “Our descendants say before the evangelicals arrived the town was in a miserable state.” The town has generally prohibited the selling of alcohol for religious reasons, and has found itself in a much more sobering and content mood....
Mexico has found itself becoming more poor, frustrated, and scared while it continues to show no signs of economical or political improvement. With its government inadequately supporting the social structure, the people are beginning to look elsewhere for salvation.
On top of the economic and social unrest that could come from an economic depression, the future is uncertain as far as the coronavirus pandemic. A new variant or variants could cause another wave or waves of the coronavirus pandemic. But hopefully, the worst is behind us.
For more information, please see: Will 2022 be the WORST year in the history of secular leftism?
On July 6, 2021 the atheist PZ Myers wrote:
Even before organized atheism imploded, “New Atheist” confused everyone — it wasn’t “new” after all, and it was only defined by listing a small group of people who were somehow representative.
For details see: July 2, 2011: The day the atheism movement died on the information superhighway
I argue that 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious.On the other hand, the secular West and East Asia has very low fertility and a rapidly aging population... In the coming decades, the developed world's demand for workers to pay its pensions and work in its service sector will soar alongside the booming supply of young people in the third world. Ergo, we can expect significant immigration to the secular West which will import religious revival on the back of ethnic change. In addition, those with religious beliefs tend to have higher birth rates than the secular population, with fundamentalists having far larger families. The epicentre of these trends will be in immigration gateway cities like New York (a third white), Amsterdam (half Dutch), Los Angeles (28% white), and London, 45% white British.
In 2010, Kaufmann wrote:
Worldwide, the march of religion can probably only be reversed by a renewed, self-aware secularism. Today, it appears exhausted and lacking in confidence... Secularism's greatest triumphs owe less to science than to popular social movements like nationalism, socialism and 1960s anarchist-liberalism. Ironically, secularism's demographic deficit means that it will probably only succeed in the twenty-first century if it can create a secular form of 'religious' enthusiasm.
In 2011, the scholar Eric Kauffman wrote the book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century and he published the academic paper Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century which argued that secularization would peak in the developed world by 2050.Overall, the picture suggests that the U.S. will continue to secularize in the coming decades. However, a combination of religious immigration, immigrant religious retention, slowing religious decline due to a rising prevalence of believers among the affiliated, and higher native religious birth rates will result in a plateauing of secularizing trends by mid-century.
We find considerable stability of religious groups over time, but there are some important shifts. Hispanic Catholics experience the strongest growth rates to 2043. Immigration, high fertility, and a young age structure will enable this group to expand from 10 to 18 percent of the American population between 2003 and 2043, despite a net loss of communicants to secularism and Protestantism. This will power the growth of Catholics as a whole, who will surpass Protestants by mid century within the nation’s youngest age groups. This represents a historic moment for a country settled by anti-Catholic Puritans, whose Revolution was motivated in part by a desire to spread dissenting Protestantism and whose populationon the eve of revolution was 98 percent Protestant (Huntington 2004; Kaufmann 2004). Another important development concerns the growth of the Muslim population and decline of the Jews. High Muslim fertility and a young Muslim age structure contrasts with low Jewish childbearing levels and a mature Jewish age structure. Barring an unforeseen shift in the religious composition and size of the immigrant flow, Muslims will surpass Jews in the population by 2023 and in the electorate by 2028. This could have profound effects on the course of American foreign policy. Within the non-Hispanic white population, we expect to see continued Liberal Protestant decline due to low fertility and a net loss in exchanges with other groups. White Catholics will also lose due to a net outflow of converts. Fundamentalist and Moderate Protestant denominations will hold their own within the white population, but will decline overall as the white share of the population falls.The finding that Protestant fundamentalism may decline in relative terms over the medium term contrasts with a prevailing view that envisions the continued growth of “strong religion” (Stark and Iannaccone 1994a). This is the result of an older age structure, which increases loss through mortality, and immigration, which reduces the size of all predominantly white denominations — all of which are poorly represented in the immigration flow. Fundamentalists’ relatively high fertility and net surplus from the religious marketplace is not sufficient to counteract the effects of immigration. Obviously, this could change if significant immigration begins to arrive from more Pentecostalist source countries such as Guatemala or parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Our work also sheds light on the religious restructuring paradigm, though we do not find a clear victor between secularism and fundamentalism. The secular population will grow substantially in the decades ahead because it has a young age structure and more people leave religion than enter it. The sharpest gains for secularism will be within the white population, where seculars will surpass fundamentalists by 2030. On the other hand, there are important demographic limits to secularism, demonstrating the power of religious demography. The relatively low fertility of secular Americans and the religiosity of the immigrant inflow provide a countervailing force that will cause the secularization process within the total population to plateau before 2043. This represents an important theoretical point in that demography permits society to become more religious even as individuals tend to become less religious over time."
