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Question for all people who believe in God: Is the religious right mainly responsible for the increase of atheism in the US and Canada?

Asked by mattbrowne (31729points) June 6th, 2009

I’m asking this because this isn’t a European phenomenon. In addition young-earth creationism is virtually non-existent in Europe. Why is this so?

From Wikipedia: The Christian right, also known as the Religious Right and the Evangelical Bloc, is a term used predominantly in the United States and Canada to describe a spectrum of right-wing Christian political and social movements and organizations characterized by their strong support of conservative social and political values. The politically active social movement of the Christian right includes individuals from a wide variety of conservative theological beliefs, ranging from traditional movements within Pentecostalism, fundamentalist Christianity and Mormonism to the sections of Lutheranism and Catholicism that are theologically more conservative than their mainstream denominations.

As a right-wing political movement, the Christian right is strongly opposed to left-wing ideologies such as socialism and the welfare state. Support for homeschooling, and private schooling, generally as an alternative to secular education. In recent years the percentage of children being home schooled has risen from 1.7% of the student population in 1999 to 2.2% in 2003. There the promotion of the teaching of creationism and intelligent design as opposed to evolution. The Discovery Institute and their Intelligent design initiative, the Center for Science and Culture, has pursued the strategy of getting the schools to utilize the “teach the controversy” approach, by discussing both the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory in the curriculum. On the issue of sexual education in public school’s, a spectrum of views exist, from advocating no sex education in public schools to advocating abstinence until marriage, to advocating complete modesty and chastity. The Christian Right has been successful in promoting abstinence-only curricula; in fact 30 percent of America’s sexual-education programs are abstinence based.The Christian Right believes that separation of church and state is not explicit in the U.S. Constitution, but is a creation of activist judges in the judicial system. There also the promotion of conservative or literal interpretations of the Bible as the basis for moral values, and enforcing such values by legislation. Some politically conservative churches refuse government funding because of their restrictions regarding acceptance of homosexuality and other issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right

Do you think this is related to destroying the belief in God because of all the negative associations?

Do you have any ideas how to contain the religious right movement from spreading any further?

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