To the believers: to what to you attribute the growth in Atheism?

[lunasun]

7. more access to education- acquiring more knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning&judgment

of course if all the RWC like in TX have their way this will stop with the next generation!!

Often although not always, the less religious you are the more you will ask questions and try to find out information, and often the more religious you are, the more you believe that things are the way that they are because God made it like that and the questions are not needed or even heretical.

However, on the other hand ,in the end many looking for answers acknowledge their belief in some form for lack of better words, of a higher, or universal conciousness they did not seek when starting on their quest for answers.

So depends on the evidence you are seeking I suppose



"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.....
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism....
The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man......
To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties - this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.......
True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness."
- A. Einstein(all quotes)