Lesson 7 Social work

I forgot the agreed themes, the optional theme would be: Theme: Religion http://www.religioustolerance.org/index_tren.htm Q1: What development does prevail regarding the number of religious people? Q2: Do people change their religion or they become atheists? Q3: What is interesting about Denmark? http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/agnostic-religion-faq.htm Q1: What is the position of people that you know? Is it possible, that many of them are agnostic believers? Q1: What is the difference between a faith and agnostic perception of god?
Agnostic perception beliefs that we can neither know there is a God or know that there is no God, but faith is when someone believes in god.

Religious trends in the West:

United States: At about the year 1990, Christianity started to lose market share in the U.S. The percentage of American adults who identify themselves as Christians dropped from 87% in 1990 to 77% in 2001 -- about 1 percentage point per year. The rate of decline then slowed; identification as Christian dropped to 76% in 2008. Sometime during the first decade of the 21st century, Protestant Christians became a minority in the U.S. The percentage of adults who say that they attend church on most weeks is close to 40%. But, half are lying; a counting of noses reveales that the true value was about half of this amount.

Adults who identify themselves as having no religious affiliation are largely taking up the slack. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey 1 in mid 2007, 16.1% of the adult population reported being unaffiliated with any faith group. They consist of "Nothing in particular," Agnostics, Atheists, Secular unaffiiliated, and religiously unaffiliated persons. Some small religions are growing rapidly. One example is Wicca, an Earth-based Neopagan religion. It is doubling about every 30 months. If current trends hold, then sometime during the early 2030's, Christianity will become a minority religion in the U.S. North America is rapidly becoming more religiously diverse. The Northeast is largely mainline Christian, liberal Christian, and secular. The South is largely conservative Christian. The West coast has many followers of eclectic and mystical religions. There may not be a strong enough foundation of religious tolerance in the U.S. and Canada to support this growing future diversity without significant conflict. A major problem within many Christian churches is the disenchantment by many older teenagers and young adults. That does not bode well for the future of Christianity in the U.S.

Canada: Christianity has partly faded in Canada, where only 20% of adults say that they attend church regularly, and only about 10% actually do. United Kingdom: Christianity has been largely abandoned in the UK. The decline started in the 1950's. By 1980, only about 12% reported that they attendeded church weekly. This is expected to drop to about 5% by 2015. Meanwhile, the average age of an attendee rose from 40 years in 1985 to 50 in 2010 and is expected to reach 66 by 2020. As of early 2007, one survey showed that although 58% of UK adults still identify themselves as Christian, only about 15% of adults say that they attend any type of religious service once a month. Atheists and Agnostics have grown to about 33% of the population. The religion/philosophy claimed by the Jedi Knights of Star Wars fame is now the fourth largest religion in the UK! 2

Elsewhere in Europe: One 2007 survey showed that five countries that are predominately Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox have high church attendance: 76% in Poland, 67% in Ireland, 55% in Greece, 47% in Portugal, 44% in Italy. The lowest rates of churchgoing is found in Denmark, 9%; France: 14%; Hungary: 18%; Belgiium: 19%; Germany: 20%; Netherlands: 21%. 2 It may be significant that Denmark was found to be the happiest place on Earth; the U.S. was rated the 23rd happiest country.

What are the basic views of the Agnostic religion? What are the basic views of the agnostic religion? Agnostics claim to have no knowledge about the existence of God. In fact, the term agnostic literally means no knowledge. There is not one commonly-accepted set of views of the agnostic religion. There are actually a variety of different agnostic views as outlined below.

Agnostic Religion: Views and Viewpoints There are two basic forms of agnosticism. Weak Agnosticism holds that God is unknown. It accepts that God may be known, and some people may possibly know God. The second form, Strong Agnosticism, maintains that God is unknowable, that God cannot be known. There is an additional breakdown of views on the ability to know God. Limited agnosticism says that God is partially unknown because of our finitude. This view holds that we can know some things about God, but we cannot know everything. Unlimited agnosticism claims that God is completely unknowable. That is, its impossible to truly know anything about God. Agnostic Religion: Views of Reality The agnostic views about the existence of God stem from views about the ability to know reality. These views of reality were most strongly advocated by David Hume and Immanuel Kant. David Hume was technically a skeptic, but his views led to agnosticism. One of his main ideas was that everything we experience is totally separate and unconnected. The cause-and-effect relationships that we observe can never really be known with any certainty. Instead, Hume thought, causal relationships are based solely on observation, and we see causality as we link events that occur together. Immanuel Kant was greatly influenced by the ideas of Hume. Kant held that knowledge is provided by experience through the senses. The conclusion is that we can never know actual reality as it truly is if we are dependent on our senses. We can only know something as we experience it in ourselves. Since everyone experiences the same event differently, we can never know the event as it actually happened outside of ourselves. The views of Hume and Kant impact a persons views about God. If we cannot know reality as it actually is, then we really cant even know events as they are independent of our senses. Also we cant really know the true causes of any given event if everything is unconnected. With this in mind, therefore, the agnostic claims he does actually know the possible Cause of the Universe. Hence, for the agnostic, Gods existence is in question.

Business
I forgot the agreed theme, the optional theme would be: Read and listen to this:

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/12/gps-this-sundaykrugman-calls-for-space-aliens-to-fix-u-s-economy/ Do you agree with Paul Krugman of how to fix the world economy? Read the specs and go through some selected comments. Explain why yes or not.