Sunday so we’ll talk some religion beginning with a little entree pop quiz for you: what is greater than God, more evil than Satan, the poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it you die? (Answer below.)
Now, for the main course – name a country where atheists comprise 75% of the population.
If you said the U.S. then you are very incorrect. Fact is, the U.S. is way at the other end of this religious/non-religious spectrum in that approximately 70% of the U.S. population regards religion as important (click here.)
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| St. Stephen’s Church In Prague |
On our recent visit to the Czech Republic, every tour guide we encountered was quick to note that in their country 75% to 80% of the population are atheists. One of their explanations had to do with the Nazis and then the Communists having controlling them for so long that a generation or two has grown up with little to no emphasis on the importance of religion.
Other explanations go back even farther into Czech history to explain their distrust of religion:
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Religion is simply not part of the Czech national identity. In Poland and Slovakia, countries with very similar cultures, for instance, being Catholic is part of being a Pole or a Slovak (even if a lot of these “Catholic” Poles and Slovaks are these days not actually religious in anything but name). But when the idea of the Czech nation was being developed in the 19th century, organized religion just wasn’t a part of it. Most of the big events in Czech history that endure in the national consciousness were rebellions against or oppression by religious authority, whether its the Hussite rebellion or Battle of White Mountain (and the execution of the (Protestant) Czech nobility by the Habsburgs). The church has always (since the 15th century at least) been seen as a symbol of oppression in the Czech Republic, and so opposing the church is in many ways part of being a Czech. (From click here.)
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And speaking of having little use for organized religion, Mark Twain had several great quotes along those lines (click here.) Here is one:
“By temperament, which is the real law of God, many men are goats and can’t help committing adultery when they get a chance; whereas there are numbers of men who, by temperament, can keep their purity and let an opportunity go by if the woman lacks in attractiveness.”
