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Washington's Blog reports
The Pew Research Center on Religion & Public Life is reporting, in their poll of 35,000 Americans, that during the seven years from 2007 to 2014, the numbers of religiously "Unaffiliated" were soaring, the numbers of Christians were plunging, and the numbers of adherents to non-Christian faiths were rising substantially but not nearly as much as were the numbers of "Unaffiliated".
This report, issued on May 12th, is headlined, "America's Changing Religious Landscape: Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population; Unaffiliated and Other Faiths Continue to Grow".
It shows that: the percentage of Americans who are unaffiliated rose from 16.1% in 2007 up to 22.8% today.
[...][The USA] is becoming a less [religious], and a more religiously diverse, country.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday May 14 2015, @02:25PM
You have listed everything that makes a religion BUT a god!
I'm not an expert but I'm pretty confident that Buddhists do NOT believe:
That the Buddha created the universe
That the Buddha is omnipresent
That the Buddha is infinite
That the Buddha is omnipotent
The Buddha did give people a set of rules to live by but not commandments made up by himself like a god would. They were more like natural laws that he discovered and shared to help others.
This is where my knowlege of Buddhism gets pretty thin. Maybe the Buddha has some attributes of a god? He doesn't exactly die although as a non-Buddhist samsara is kind of difficult to understand. Is one who achieves enlightenment all knowing? I don't know. But.. even if so.. he only has those attributes because he is enlightened. According to Buddhism that is something that everyone can eventually achieve by following the path. So if the Buddha was a god wouldn't everyone be one?
Did I get this right? Am I misunderstanding or misrepresenting Budhism? If so it was not my intent! I'm not claiming to know it all! Let me know what I got wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @05:16PM
You have listed everything that makes a religion BUT a god!
I'm not an expert but I'm pretty confident that Buddhists do NOT believe:
That the Buddha created the universe
That the Buddha is omnipresent
That the Buddha is infinite
That the Buddha is omnipotent
How oddly monotheistic of you to think that any of those are requirements for godhood.
There is only one requirement for godhood - that people worship you, and even that might be not be necessary. When you look at all the minor dieties in all the polytheistic religions worshipping itself doesn't seem to be necessary to qualify, perhaps simply having people believe in you is enough.