Majorities in several of these countries have particularly high levels of religious commitment, saying religion is very important their lives. This is the case in the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, where adults are more likely to say religion is not at all important in their lives than to choose any other answer option. On the other hand, more than six-in-ten respondents in Greece, Poland and Italy say religion is very or somewhat important in their lives.
When asked separate questions about the roles that prayer and God play in their lives, more respondents say that God is important than say that prayer is important, though strong majorities in half of the countries surveyed say that both are important to them.
Just as respondents in wealthier countries tend to disagree that it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person, people in wealthier countries generally say that God and prayer are not especially important in their lives For more on advanced and emerging economies, see Appendix B. People in emerging economies are more than twice as likely as people in advanced economies to agree that prayer is an important part of daily life.
Nine-in-ten or more respondents in all the emerging economies surveyed except for Ukraine say that God plays an important role in their lives. By contrast, less than half of respondents in 11 of the economically advanced countries surveyed consider God to be important in life.
In some countries, respondents are less likely to say that prayer is an important part of daily life than they are to say that God is important in their lives. Muslim Israelis drive much of this sentiment. Views on whether God plays an important role in life differ substantially based on religious affiliation as well. Still, around three-in-ten religiously unaffiliated people in Argentina and the U.
There is near unanimous agreement that God is important in life among people of all major religious affiliations in Brazil, the Philippines and Kenya, as well as among all Muslim and Christian respondents in Nigeria. Following well-documented trends that trace the decline of Christianity in Western Europe, the share of Europeans who say that God plays an important role in life has declined since Spain, Italy and Poland had the most dramatic decreases, with declines of 26, 21 and 14 percentage points, respectively.
This trend is mirrored in many other European countries, including Lithuania. Since the collapse of the USSR, Lithuania has seen a 12 percentage point drop in the share of its public that feels God plays an important role in their lives. At the same time, other former Soviet republics where religion was harshly repressed or effectively banned during the Soviet period have experienced an increase in the percentage of people who say God plays an important role in life. Both Ukraine and Russia have experienced double-digit increases in the share of people who agree that God is important to them.
In times of uncertainty, good decisions demand good data. Please support our research with a financial contribution. It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics.
Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work. President Michael Dimock explains why. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. Difficult questions often demand difficult answers.
That is a reasonable question, but we have been fundamentally misled by the success of scientific investigation into thinking the tools of science are the best way to answer any question. And then we ought to base our beliefs on the results of such tests. But God is not one physical object among other things in the world.
God transcends our world and experience, and hence lies outside the purview of scientific investigation. This can be tricky to understand, and there are several common ways of trying to explain it. One way is to say that God does not exist in the way other things might exist, but rather God IS existence itself. We could focus on the chain of causes: one thing happens, then another, then another.
Some people find this line of reasoning persuasive, and claim there had to be a god-like being to start everything up, otherwise we have an infinite regress of causes. Aquinas would say the billiard ball only exists because there is a game of billiards.
And then the game itself exists only because of something else, namely the people who invented it. And these people only exist because their being also derives from something else. The existence of all these things depends on something else.
So again, we get an infinite regress. There must be something that stops this chain of dependencies, and that is God who is being itself, not derived from or dependent on anything else.
That is not scientifically testable evidence for the existence of God. Rather, it aims to show that there must be something beyond the realm in which science applies, something which makes possible all of our experience. In that sense, God is not just the first domino that started the chain of causes, but God continues to sustain all things as the ground of their existence.
This is an abstract argument, and not what the questioner was looking for. Instead, God is what makes that realm of things possible in the first place. Now, this is not at all to say that our experience is irrelevant to our beliefs about God. But what it does is flip the order of the relationship, between our experiences and our belief in God. Many people, like those asking the original question, seem to think that our experiences ought to serve as the ground for belief in God.
They also know that he was crucified in the most barbaric way imaginable, and that his followers were convinced that three days later he came back to life. Many of those disciples were themselves put to death, refusing to back down on those claims. Why would they do so unless they were convinced Jesus had been resurrected? Jesus himself also claimed to be the Son of God - God in human form, sent to save us. It is impossible to say that he was just a good teacher, because he claimed to be more than that.
The simple answer might be that Jesus died because he was a preacher of radical ideas, who disturbed the religious and political leaders of his time, exposed their hypocrisy, aroused their jealousy - and so was condemned to death on a cross. It ignores the fact that Jesus willingly laid down his own life, that no-one took it from him. He died so that we might live. He became sin so that we might be freed from sin.
We all know that forgiveness can be costly and it was costly for God to forgive us. It cost God his own Son. We all do things that we know are wrong. Those things stop us from having a proper relationship with God. It is only as we approach God and ask for forgiveness that we can start that new relationship. As we begin to understand what that means, we also become aware of the love which God has for us and for all of his creation.
The popular view of the Church is that it is outdated, irrelevant, perhaps even reactionary. The boring sermon, the endless fundraising and the untidy churchyard are common images.
Here people are concerned about the world we live in and sincere in wanting to discover what it means to be a follower of Jesus today. These are not perfect people, but a community of flawed individuals asking God each week for forgiveness. Going to Church regularly allows us to learn more about the Christian faith and deepen our commitment to God. It is possible to be a Christian without going to church, but it would be like cutting off your oxygen supply when climbing Everest.
Much better to have the support and encouragement of others. Many of the parish churches in our diocese run regular Alpha courses, designed to provide an opportunity to explore questions of faith and the meaning of life. You may be surprised to know that a staggering 27 million people worldwide have now attended an Alpha course.
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