Hello, everyone!
The new spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, declared his atheism openly four years ago.
He said: "I am an atheist, and I think that religion should not be in schools, it must be in churches. Schools should educate in citizenship, not in religious beliefs. That's for the private sector."
Things are going to be very difficult for him now, he won't be able to change anything about this in the next months, and we'll possibly have new elections sometime soon, but at least we can say now that we have an openly atheist president. It feels great!
As a start, he's been the first president in Spain without a bible or cross in his acceptance ceremony!
"Halleluja, go tell it on the mountain", Spain has an atheist president!!!
Manel
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Hey @Manel! My fellow patriot!
Oeoeoeoeoé! I hope we won't suffer more representatives entrusting unemployment rates to the Virgin Mary or who believe in guardian angels; no more flags at half mast in public buildings for the death of mythological characters; no more bs in general!
And stick around, it's good to read you back.
Congrats to Spain!
Let's all hope he is a successful president. Nothing would be worse than for him to turn out to be an idiot loser who ends up causing nothing but problems for Spain. Just saying, lets not celebrate too soon. Atheist or not, he still has to prove himself worthy of the office.
Sure, @Cognostic. He's not my ideal President in many other issues, but after the religious flood we've had, as atheists it's really good news.
This American can only dream of an event like that. Kudos to Spain!
New Zealand has an openly atheist (ex-mormon) prime minister.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/why-the-new-zealand-prime-m...
Let's hope this is a trend. Dare we hope that one day we'll see atheist leaders in the US, Iran, the Vatican...?
@Algebe, the Vatican? Hahaha.
Great to hear, hopefully a rise in more openly atheist elected leaders means that it can way day start to trickle in over here in the US. That seems to be sliding backwards in overall progress (in just about everything) lately...
Congratulations to Spain....and hopefully a less Catholic approach to governan\ce. Meanwhile back in Australia...https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/mormon-influence-rising-in-l...
(liberals are right wing conservatives in Australia)
*far away dreamy look*.....Wow...An atheist president.... *deeeep sigh*..... What a wonderful thought. Well, maybe one day....*continues staring dreamingly*...
Congratulations to Spain and her People!!! In my country, France, this is not so much of an issue (maybe just for the right-wing as usual), to have non religious person at the top of office. Meanwhile in the US, christian nationalists are on full legislative Blitz mode...
I am probably naively hopeful that:
Christian nationalist and their ilk are on full blitz mode because they sense the end is near for their power and majority.
The "nones" are quickly hitting overall majority in the 18-35 age range, even in the US. Every year that goes by, the "none" percentage in this age bracket goes up. The future is increasingly one w/o religion.
"The "nones" are quickly hitting overall majority in the 18-35 age range, even in the US. Every year that goes by, the "none" percentage in this age bracket goes up. The future is increasingly one w/o religion."
That is factually and scientifically incorrect. 18 to 35 year olds are turning to Islam in Europe in massive numbers. In just a single generation from now Muslims will outnumber Christians and atheists combined in the 18-35 year old category in France, with Spain following suit in two generations. It's a temporary victory, but make no mistake about it, Islam will win the war in the long run.
You are right, I mistakenly added in "even in the US" implying it is happening everywhere, (which it is, to some extent, just not about to hit majority in lots of places of the world and plenty of place in the world where islam or some other religion is growing even faster.)
In the last 200 years or so, religion "nones" went from being an extreme minority of people to a real percentage of people world wide. This is incredibly fast considering most religions have a basis that has been around for thousand or more years.
And I absolutely agree that islam is rising rapidly as well. People fear atheist, but what they really should fear is the extreme islam variants over atheist people. Atheist do not tend to organize or impose their will on others, they just want to be left alone and not have religion imposed upon them.
I actually feel the internet is in part fueling the rise of nones. For so long if you were in the wrong community, there was no other opinion to hear. Everyone was very strongly part of what ever religion they were in, and talk of "no god" and why never happened, where it can happen freely on the internet, and social media, (unless the internet gets heavily censored.)
I don't know if I agree or disagree about the Internet, but the "nones' were on the rise long before Al Gore invented the Internet. Interesting aside: in a city like Vancouver, pretty much the least religious place in Canada, the number of people going to church hasn't changed in 30 years (thanks in large part to immigration, I know).
Anyway, religiosity peaked in the the mid-1960s, and has been in decline ever since. That's right, the hippie decade where my parents and many others rejected religion and society at large, was the most religious decade in the past 150 years! There are so many factors involved that it's really hard to know which correlations are causations.
P.S. https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-math-of-causation-puzzle-20180530/
More good news from my country. Pedro Duque, astronaut and a very critic person to pseudoscience, new Ministry of Science in Spain. Besides women outnumber men in the new cabinet.
https://www.google.es/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-44382051