Christianity has seen explosive growth in China which has state atheism under its communist regime
To see the magnitude of the explosive growth of Christianity in China, examine this graph about the growth of Christianity in China in a DW news story about Chinese Christianity (DW is a mainstream news outlet in Germany). There are now more Christians in China than Chinese who belong to the Communist Party of China.
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)
RationalWiki.org is a politically left-leaning website that skews towards atheism/agnosticism in terms of its worldview. RationalWiki has a small fraction of the web traffic it had in the beginning part of 2019 (see: RationalWiki and web traffic).
As can be seen below, RationalWiki users admit the election for its Board of Trustees is offering weak candidates so far.
If you click the two graphics below, you will read the following:
Will withdraw if two non-douche-bag candidates run ShabiDOO 09:55, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
Understandable, I also thought to run if there are not enough good candidates, but I still think I’m not ready yet. Maybe one/half year later. Good that you would jump in. MonetYe 13:36, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
RationalWiki has weak leadership now and its monthly Google traffic went down in the last 30 days according to the leading web marketing website SEMRush as can be seen below.
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.
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 articleThe 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.
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.
In 2018, the atheist Myers quotedan atheist activist who declared: "It’s quite depressing that movement Atheism has turned into such a joke. I valued it so much once." In addition, Myers said in 2018 that the atheist movement is in "shambles" and this is "quite depressing" for him.
Professor Eric Kaufman, who teaches at Birbeck College, University of London, specializes in the academic area of how demographic changes affect religion/irreligion and politics. Kaufmann is an agnostic.
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.
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.
