“Johannesburg – The number of people in South Africa who consider themselves religious has dropped by 19%, an international survey revealed on Friday.
According to the latest polls released by the Win-Gallup International Religiosity and Atheism Index, which measures global self-perceptions on belief, religious South Africans dropped from 83% in 2005 to 64% in 2012.
The survey, conducted during November 2011 and January 2012, was based on interviews with 52 000 men and women from 57 countries in five continents.
South Africa was fifth behind Vietnam which dropped by 23%, Ireland, 22%, Switzerland, 21%, and France 21%.
According to the survey, 28% of South Africans do not consider themselves religious, 4% were convinced they were atheists, and 5% did not respond to questions.
The survey also indicated that globally the number of people claiming to be religious dropped by 9%, while atheism rose by 3%.
Ghana was the most religious country in the world with 96%, followed by Nigeria with 93%.
China had 47% of citizens claiming to be atheists, followed by Japan with 31% and the Czech Republic with 30%.
The survey further indicated that worldwide people in the bottom income groups were 17% more religious than those in the top income groups.
The low income group accounted for 66% of religious people and the high income groups accounted for 49%.”
From the above newspaper article and from the growing global changes within the world – towards and in relation to religion, we are starting to see that people are in fact realizing for themselves slowly but surely that whether we belong to a religion or not you still die, get hurt/ill, are dependent on money and are subject to the same laws, problems and concerns as the rest of the human population. It has taken a while, but here according to these statistics – we are starting to see a change. People are starting to use basic common sense to look beyond their fears of a god, or fear of some wrath being bestowed upon them for asking the questions – and they are actually daring to ask the questions and make the statements that all humans have feared making since the dawn of religion – questions such as ‘why do I belong to a religion, what difference does it make,’ ‘if there is a god, why does he really allow suffering and why would I believe in a god who has excuses for the suffering that people and animals have to endure on this planet?’ These were some of the questions that I asked many years ago, as I started questioning why I would continue to devote my life, time and energy into a god or religion, if my world around me proved to me, that no matter what theories, philosophies or even knowledge from books I could summon up in any given moment to justify WHY I could believe in a God – it just did not make any more sense than believing in the tooth fairy.
Somewhere along the line – a man walked the earth, which by his own design and programming could do amazing things. He represented the POTENTIAL future of mankind –an example if you may, of what is possible not if we worship outside of ourselves and use books as knowledge to convince others of our righteousness, but if we actually walk the talk – of self-perfection of man. Jesus said many wise things -none of which is lived and practiced by mankind today – YET what happened was the church used the coming of Jesus and the unanswered questions, to create religion. Which since then has been the limitation of mankind – even though it is proclaimed by the religious to be the answer to the human within our existence. All that we have seen since the dawn of religion – is the fact that people wrote books in the names of beings like jesus, and from these books conveniently we have seen the advent of the multi million dollar industry called religion. Not one human has actually lived the words of people like Jesus, and we know this is true because of the state of the world. So – we have the original words spoken by jesus, changed into the words we read in the bible – which once read – manifests the reader into an apathetic, nonplussed, consuming human consisting of a consciousness which is only concerned with its own well being, survival, and happiness. So somewhere along the line – we as humans have become what we are now – as that which we see in the world as the actions of man – which is the outflow of what exists within the minds of man. ALL humans exist like this – so before your mind goes ‘not me surely – I am a christian’ – stop for a moment and look into your own thoughts which just like your neighbor is about jealousy, comparison, fear, greed, addiction, to mention but a few of the millions of energetic moments that come up as thoughts that drive all humans all day into living action. And I am not saying that we as humans are necessarily in all ways ‘to blame’ for all our experiences – as we struggle to survive in the system. What I am saying is that not only have we accepted the world systems as they are – because they give us what we want and need – but we have also become dependent on them for our basic survival and thus are subject to the system. For example – we have already accepted capitalism as it is and the value systems from which it functions -and now we are stuck with capitalism no matter how much we hate having to go to our jobs each day or in how much fear we are every day whether we will be able to survive and provide for our children. So – fascinatingly enough you will notice that the current younger generations are more and more giving into things such as depression, emo-ism and substance abuse – as the current generations see that it is frivolous to also, like our parents have to graduate from high school and go and work in the system for the rest of your life, earning a basic income from all your sweat and tears, just to wait to die – just like the generations before us. We see the outflow of the children realizing they do not want to have to deal with what our parents did – so more and more we are seeing children trying to rebel and resist the inevitability of what they will have to do to live in this world. We are also seeing the evolution of the mind as ‘Crystal children’ and ‘Indigo Children’ as the newer generations are ‘mentally’ preparing themselves to resists the system, but in complete separation by becoming Ligtworkers/positive thinkers, who have NO practical insight to stop and change the systems that are here, but are programmed and designed as systems that talk a lot about world change and who are walking, talking feeling systems – they will love everything and radiate goodness – just don’t expect them to drop the act and change the world.
So – in essence we are seeing many new forms of resistance, adaptation and ways in which people are trying to escape from what is here. As I mentioned above some with manifest themselves into balls of light and love –to not have to stand knee deep in the shit and have to really see, realize and understand the extent to which we have manifested this world and the suffering that is experienced by a majority within the system. Some will become Emo and again – the opposite polarity will be presented of the dark, misunderstood beings who resists everything like hell, wear dark clothing, listening to dark music etc, etc – all attempts to train their own mind to ignore the real problem and to make sure others don’t ask of them to assist in taking responsibility for what we have already created. Then you have your alcohol and drug use on the rise and things like entertainment, are becoming more extreme and mind numbing – all ways we as humans design to keep us distracted from this painful ‘reality’ we have created.
BUT – no one is standing up to walk the journey that is required of all of us together – to change what is here. Changing what is here will require practical changes within the consideration of what is best for all – and this must be directly managed, decided and lived by all of humanity – or else we will always see this chaotic back and forth scenarios of a handful of human trying to change the world, while the rest only try and survive. If we all prepare the way for change together, and we all implement the change together – then there will be change as long as we change ourselves – so that the past as what we were when we allowed this mess – is not the determining factor – of what will recreate the future. If you watch documentaries like
‘The Trap’, ‘The Century of the Self‘ and
‘Psywar‘, you will get an understanding of how revolutions have always played out the same way, for example – where power was only shifted from one group to the next by using the humans who want to see a change but are not really willing to be the change, and expect governments to change the people for the people – while the governments use the revolutions to gain power. So no-body can blame the governments as they exist, because the human has not yet taken full self responsibility for ourselves.
This brings me back to my original point above – where the point that is not understood by any person claiming to want to change the world – is the point of SELF within it all. Change wants to be seen by those who claim to ‘want change’ as again making the individual happy. Therefore – for example – if one addresses the issue of the current money system and one highlights the abuse that is allowed so that the money system as the value within which it exists can function – then even your ‘good-hearted’ spiritualist and new age workers and activists will fall down on the floor and have a fit. You do not dare touch people’s money, you do not dare to ask people to consider what would be self responsibility – because if one has a secret life you want to live, which essentially consists of harming others – then of course one would not be up for stopping participation in anything abusive and the re-evaluation of our world systems and how they function. For example, one would ask yourself the question – ‘does it really bother me to see all these millions of beings starving and being abused daily in the name of money and entertainment – or does it only bother me as much as you wont dare take a way what I like and want in life? If it means giving up what ‘I want’ then sorry the suffering of millions may continue.’ This is where people confused the idea of an existence of a god – with ‘man can do anything’.
So back to my original point about people stopping the participation in religion. Yes –we are seeing more and more people ask the question of why they should belong to a religion. This we are seeing more and more as people realize that it is not God who decides who eats and who starved – it is man. It is not God who decides who will or will not be abused by another – it is in fact the relationships and actions and decisions existent within and between humans – and it is humanity who decides on a day to day basis who we will become, what we will do and within that what we accept and allow. So people are realizing that just like the tooth fairy, God does not actually exist and that perhaps there is more to our existence here on earth, than what has been written in books by corrupt power hungry people thousands of years ago.
Within Humanity we tend to laugh at how gullible humanity is. We tend to scoff at the thousands of stories we hear in our lifetime, at the way in which humans deceive each other. Usually we are the ones in the story being deceived. We never stop though to question why we would actually continue giving permission to any world system in which it has become customary to lie, cheat and deceive. We note to others and ourselves how it pains us that we
lie, cheat and deceive others – yet if asked ‘don’t you want to change this so it does not ever have to happen again’ – people respond with the question ‘ does that mean I have to change so that I don’t lie, cheat or deceive’ and when the answer is ‘yes’ – then people choose to keep everything the same, while still wanting, hoping and praying that other people by their own violation will stop ‘lying, cheating and deceiving’ – interesting dichotomy isn’t it?
Further Reading Support:
Original interview: http://eqafe.com/i/arosouw-life-review-a-doomsday-activist
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