Accounting for todays decline in religiousness (last updated: 19th August 2024)
Our amazing Earth designed by God to perfectly suit our every need. You may be wondering why God would design our weather system to give rise to hurricanes, well here is the answer: they bring rainfall to areas of drought, increase the flow of rivers and streams dragging waste, recharge aquifers, help balance heat in the oceans and drag nutrients into the sea.
Past influences
Belief in a Creator was down to a number of factors:
-> First and foremost the Bible which was not questioned.
-> Most people lived relatively simple lives, much more in contact with nature. People had to rely more on instincts to inform their judgement
which pointed to a meaning behind the Universe in the form of a Creator God.
The present day
Reduced faith in a Creator God can be attributed to a number of factors:
-> We still have the Bible but people are better educated today and this has provided them with the ability to question its contents. Less well educated people tend to believe what better educated people and the media tell them, and this is more often than not based on a naturalistic view of the World.
-> Life is now much more complicated with many more distractions. Most people live very busy lives and attending Church is no longer a priority. We live in a World where materialism is the dominent force and increasingly dictates the way we live out our lives. Spirituality now plays second fiddle.
-> We tend to be in awe of scientists and their discoveries rather than God. This is to a degree understandable because scientists are visible, and can be challenged, whereas God cannot. Scientists have made massive strides in the understanding of nature in recent years but listen to what the expert James Tour has to say about the true state of affairs. He brings us all down-to-earth with his detailed explanations of the complexity found within living cells. He leaves open the question as to how this complexity originated but makes it clear that it didn't happen by chance over long ages. This of course rules out any explanation based on evolution:
James M. Tour is an American synthetic organic chemist and nanotechnologist. He is a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, and Professor of Computer Science at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His talk stresses the immence complexity found in living cells and that research is discovering ever greater complexity on an almost daily basis. He argues that mankind will never, ever get close to being able to assemble even the simplest life form, such as a bacterium, from its constituent parts (biochemicals). It follows that the suggestion living organisms somehow assembled themselves over long ages, as evolutionists would have us believe, is preposterous in the extreme
Has Richard Dawkins, the great promoter of materialism and atheism changed his mind? Has he at last woken up to the fact that
pursuit of materialiasm and consequent abandonment of spiritual values leads irrevocably to the slow degradation of all that makes for
good in society, as has been demonstrated throughout human history? Scientific materialism is the Pandora's box that has opened
our culture to all the evils that he now laments:
The woke ideology that Dawkins detests did not arise in a vacuum but is the logical outworking of the scientific materialism
that he has championed. Woke ideology embraces two plus two equaling five, freedom of speech being an outdated relic, reason
being a tool of oppression, and merit being a conceit of the privileged. Dawkins opposes this nonsense. But it is nonsense
that his scientific materialism has invited. Woke ideology is not a betrayal of scientific materialism but its logical conclusion.
Read More:
What Dawkins seems not to have realized - or perhaps now is realizing too late - is that scientific materialism is the suicide of reason, even undermining science as reason's most compelling expression. Scientific materialism attempts to use science as a club to enforce materialism. Yet instead, scientific materialism is a snake that eats its own tail and in the end consumes itself. It destroys itself, collapsing of internal contradiction, and thereby ruining science, as we now see happening in real time.
-> The law requires that schools in England have a daily act of Christian worship. This is part of the legacy passed on to our
state schools; that Jesus Christ, and worship of him should be at the centre of all learning. But this is increasingly no longer
happening and little is being done by way of correction. Documents are being produced for use in schools that allow for the
increasingly diverse religious backgrounds of its pupils. The fact that we are a Christian Country no longer needs to be taken
into account in determining the worship content of school assemblies. We must for ever adapt our belief systems, area by area,
to fit in with the ever changing diverse nature of the prevaling culture. An example of this is the London Borough of Waltham Forest
SACRE guidance document. The school governors determine the religious content of school assemblies; it has become a free-for-all.
What can we expect of course when our Prime Minister who guides our Countries decision making is a practicing Hindu. Hindus believe
in three Gods: Vishnu is the universe's preserver, whereas Shiva's mission is to destroy everything so that it can be recreated.
Brahma's role was to create the planet and all living things. This is a far cry from Christianity. We cannot expect him to support,
and even less promote, Christian beliefs! Basically we have lost our way, we can no longer claim to be a Christian Country.
Inevitably, reduced exposure to Christian teaching leads to an ever diminishing belief in a Divine Creator.
And now the C of E commissioners have stepped into the arena adding to the churches woes.
They have discovered an ingenious further way to accelerate the decline of the Church:
'Pay huge reparations to peoples who suffered as a result of racial injustices in times past.'
This might seem like an entirely noble thing to do but in reality allowing income derived from sources such as donations, endowments,
and hard earned money placed in the collection box over many generations to be used in this way is likely to be viewed as wholly
inappropriate, amounting to little more than 'virtue signalling'.
It is highly likely reliable oversight will not be put in place to monitor how
the money is distributed and used. Most, if not all of it, will fall into the hands of unscrupulous individuals many of whose
descendants profitted themselves from the slave trade. If this plan goes ahead it either implies commissioner gullibility,
alternatively suggests ulterior motives are at work and since there are 33 commissioners from various different walks of life the
scope for the latter is not inconsiderable. In either case the effect is likely to be that churchgoers will leave in their droves
never to return. Let us hope the commissioners have second thoughts and prioritize the concerns of the majority of ordinary churchgoers
which would be to use income from accumulated funds to manage essentials such as maintaining church buildings and facilities, paying
clergy wages, providing pensions, Sunday School provision, Youth Group provision, etc.
The day to day running of parishes particularly those struggling to pay the parish share is what concerns churchgoers most.
Diverting funds in an attempt to right the wrongs caused by errors of judgement that may have occured in the dim and distant past and
had little to do with the Church anyway, would not be helpful. If this plan goes ahead it will further accelerate the decline of
the C of E because it will be seen as poor judgement, and will have the reverse effect of attracting more people into the Church which
should be the main priority.
Christian Concern Head of Education Steve Beegoo explains how Christian worship in schools is being replaced by humanistic self-worship
In judgments seen by The Telegraph, Gregory Jones KC, reviewing the case on behalf of the clergy discipline tribunal, said Dr Randall's case was "egregious" and the Church's "error gross".
Why people should return to their rootes, accept the Bible account of Creation, and live out lives in reverence to God our Creator
The way ahead:
-> We still have the Bible and it has not changed since it was written. Mankind on the other hand continually changes its mind on all kinds of issues, with vested interests playing a major part in its proclamations, therefore it cannot be relied upon in the sense that the Bible can. Noone has suceeded in discovering significant errors in Biblical history despite many attempts to do so.
-> Science, far from casting doubt on the Creation story now lends credence to it.
-> We need to be in awe of God as never before because we have evidence for his greatness in what science has brought to light. We no longer need to rely on faith alone, the evidence before the very eyes of scientists working in cell biology speaks for itself. We should stop believing Darwinian Evolution advocating scientists who subscribe to the alternative religions of atheism and secular humanism and accept the findings stemming from Intelligent Design theory which provides concrete evidence for Creationism.
-> And finally, a question which needs answering is, 'where do our born with instincts which point to a Creator come from'? Who knows, perhaps God put them there, in which case should we not pay heed to them?
Psalm 139
For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.
1
You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11
If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
12
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand-
when I awake, I am still with you.
19
If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20
They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21
Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22
I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
David was instictively aware of how 'fearfully and wonderfully made' we are, along with the rest of creation!
I wonder what King David would make of the knowledge currently available to us from cell biology research, if he was alive today?
To his great credit his judgement was not impaired by ignorance of what we now know, and understand.
Our amazing Earth designed by God to perfectly suit our every need. You may be wondering why God would design our weather system to give rise to hurricanes, well here is the answer: they bring rainfall to areas of drought, increase the flow of rivers and streams dragging waste, recharge aquifers, help balance heat in the oceans and drag nutrients into the sea.