Evolving Conversations on Belief and Faith Blogs

by Gary Berg-Cross

In an idle moment checking news on my "smart" phone I discovered that CNN online news has not only a Religion section but a Belief blog as part of its news categories (e.g. weather, special coverage, tech, CNN heroes). Do they really have a slogan "The faith angles behind the biggest stories? It seems so.

You can see what they cover, including the Belief Blog's Morning Speed Read for the current day. Groups can also post ads for with church sign photos . Wow, the humanist community has a way to go to compete with this melange. It's perhaps a bit like WAPO coverage on Faith or the faith angle to things including politics. So I learned that Cardinal Timothy Dolan has accepted an invitation to give the closing prayer at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC. I try to think of a future in which there might be humanist parallels used for our large national meetings. We seem a host of Ingersolls away from such a possibility.

Reading the Beief or Faith blog is not the way I would start my day but I was interested to see that Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor, has a blog article called: Bill Nye slams creationism"

As the article noted Nye posted a YouTube video that pointed out - denial of evolution is unique to the United States and that teaching of creationism in schools is undermining children and the future of the United States.

The video quickly has quickly picked up steam and by the time of the CNN article had been viewed more than 1,100,000 times.

There was an interesting angle to the CNN coverage. It was what they called "five schools of reaction that have emerged in comments."

The first was what the blog editor called "a small portion of the population", but which (interestingly) made up about half of their commentators!!! They joined with Nye to cheer him on. I'm in that group..

More article space was given to the other 4 categories which included a "wait a minute" crowd, a "stupid science" crowd (we have faith and don't need to debate science), a "Nye shouldn't comment on us" group and a "CNN is stirring up trouble" group.

The freethinking community and the half of the commentators that responded might open a debate with the first of these groups, but its less likely with the other 3. Nevertheless I applaud the half that joined with Nye and posted on that blog. It was, after all, the plurality of responses even if the editors gave it faint praise in their analysis.


Image Credit
Bill Nye: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/27/bill-nye-slams-creationism/

Ima

Getting the Word out on the Non-religious Trend among Millennials

by Gary Berg-Cross

A new Pew Research Center poll of millennials (those born after 1980)finds that 31 percent doubt the existence of God, and that figure has more than doubled in just five years among Americans age 30 and below.Jesse Galef, Secular Student Alliance, promoting atheism and non-religious views on college campuses spoke to this: “Our generation is causing a fundamental shift in how society will see religion,”

SSA now has 357 affiliates on American campuses - up from just 81 such affiliates in 2007.

Missed the CNN discussion with Secular Student Alliance's Jesse Galef about Millenial's doubts about God?

It aired on CNN recently and you may enjoy how Jesse gets his talking points out in the face of questions framed about atheist attempts to convert people. For example he had to deal with the vague, framing hypotheical:

“Some Christians MIGHT argue that because such groups are in high schools, you’re sort of indoctrinating young people at a time when, you know, it’s not proper because they’re not really old enough to handle questions like that.”

There are quire a few traps in here and the emotional word on Indoctrination but Jesse did a ood job of sticking to message.  A good sign for this generation and good for their fund raising effort.

 Well for Some Atheists who may say that the religious is doing some form of indoctrination on kids who aren't old enough to handle it.