Heaven and hell still high on the believers list showing a religion gender gap

Typological groups according to the Pew Research Center. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A new Pew Research Center analysis of international census and survey data finds that there is a religion gender gap: Women generally are more religious than men by several key measures of religious commitment, although this pattern is not universal and can vary by religious tradition.

In some countries and faiths, men are more religious than women, at least by some measures. For instance, among Muslims and Orthodox Jews, men are more likely than women to attend worship services at least weekly, the new study finds.

Religiousness also can be measured by asking people how important religion is to them personally. In more than half of the 84 countries surveyed (46), roughly equal shares of men and women say that religion is “very important” to them. However, in 36 other countries, more women than men say religion is important in their lives – and usually by wide margins. As a result, across all 84 countries, women surpass men in this aspect of religious commitment by an average of 5 percentage points (65% vs. 60%). Only in Mozambique and Israel do men say that religion is very important to them more often than women do.

The biggest exception to the general pattern of women being more religious than men occurs in weekly attendance at worship services. Across the 81 countries where Pew Research Center data are available for this measure, more men than women attend worship at least once a week (48% vs. 42%).

This attendance gap is largely driven by 27 countries in the survey with large Muslim populations. In many Islamic societies, men are expected to attend communal Friday worship services in the mosque, while women can fulfill this obligation either inside or outside the mosque. There are similar religious norms regarding worship attendance among Orthodox Jews in Israel. As a result, men in these 28 countries report far greater rates of attendance than women, often by margins of at least 20 percentage points.

By contrast, in countries that have large Christian populations (30 of the 81 studied on this measure), women are more likely to report attending services weekly. And in 23 other countries, men and women report attending about equally.

According to an other Pew Research Center published last month, surveys in 63 countries have asked Muslims and Christians about belief in heaven, hell and angels and showed that lots of people are still convinced that they might be tortured for ever after they die or that they go to heaven when they are finished here on earth.

In 47 of the 63 countries (75%), men and women are about equally likely to profess a belief in heaven. Women are more likely to believe in heaven in 15 countries, often by margins of 5 percentage points or more. 

Men and women in 52 of 63 countries (83%) are about equally likely to say they believe in hell. Women hold this belief more than men in 10 countries, while men surpass women in this belief in Lebanon. Overall, when the 63 countries are taken together, an average of 81% of women and 80% of men believe in hell.

Across all 63 countries, a greater share of women than men believe in angels by an average gap of 3 percentage points.

Looking at Christians only, there are just a handful of countries where the genders differ significantly in their beliefs in these concepts. A larger share of Christian men believe in heaven in only one country (Lebanon); Christian men are more likely than Christian women to believe in hell in two countries (the United States and Lebanon) and to believe in angels in one country (Zambia). On the other hand, more Christian women than Christian men profess belief in heaven in five countries (Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chile, Botswana and the United States), in hell in four countries (Kazakhstan, Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chile) and in angels in nine countries (Kazakhstan, Russia, Uruguay, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Uganda and Guatemala).

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The 17th annual White Privilege Conference a militantly Christophobic conference held in Philadelphia

A simplified chart of historical developments of major groups within Christianity. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From April 15 to 17 the 17th annual White Privilege Conference was held in Philadelphia.

Activist and author Paul Kivel identified three particularly severe problems in the modern world that are caused or worsened by Christianity.

I could agree with his idea about certain people storming for their faith, bringing crusades, like we can see the crusades of the Muslim brothers of today. Though I would not call it Christianity's effort to spread Western ideas and influence but love to ask people to see the big difference between Christianity and Christendom, the first one preaching world peace and equality for all people, leaving everybody to choose for their own God or gods, whilst certain people in Christendom thinking all should be part of their religion and belief in their threeheaded god.

Paul Kivel lecturing in front of his homemade posters explaining Christian hegemony [Blake Neff] On one poster, he showed “Christian hegemony” at the center of a web that included ideas like “racism,” “sexism,” and “ableism.”

Perhaps Kivel had in mind how certain evangelicals tried to bring their faith to the African communities and how Christian groups or Christian nations went to war in the East.

I would agree with the economical aspect brining people at war, but that has nothing to do with Christianity. Most wars are a matter of power and of getting more material wealth, not spiritual wealth.

As third problem was mentioned that

under Christianity mankind has dominion over the Earth, rather than requiring that humans treat the Earth itself as 'sacred.'"

Once again here could be better spoken of Christendom. In Christianity all teaching is directed to respect for the Work of the Divine Creator and as such every creature has to be respected and man has to treat nature as good has he can. In Christianity each lover of God should understand that we as human beings are only here on acceptance and have the world in loan. It does not belong to any one person in particular, except God.
It is by human's wrong doing that we are now facing the problem of "climate change" and not because of those believing in Jehovah God and in Jesus Christ, the son of God.

It is not because it is said in the Bible that man has been given dominion over all other living things, that it would sanction man's abuse of the environment or other creatures.
(Genesis 1:28; Matthew 25:14-30; Exodus 23:10-11 and Leviticus 25:1-7).

Kivel argued also that

Christianity orients us to distinguish between good and evil, which forces us to adopt a "with us or against us" mentality. "There's nothing inherently good or bad about the weather or about people,"

he insisted.

Good versus bad does not mean with us  or against us, and such mentality has not to be provoked by being a Christian.  Kivel makes an irrational leap that to distinguish between good and evil leads to condemnation of various things as worthy of destruction.There are Christians, who are trinitarians, and cannot cope with people who have an other faith than they, but more often it are non-religious people from certain political groups, who have much more difficulties with believers in God and who are most intolerant toward people and ideas of other religions or secularists.

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Find also to read:

White Privilege Conference: Almost Everything Bad Is Tied To Christianity

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Russia's battle against the Jehovah’s Witnesses

Last Friday Russia’s Supreme Court declined to ban the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Tyumen as extremist organization, RAPSI, the Russian Legal Information Agency, reports from the courtroom.

Already 12 years ago a Jehovah’s Witnesses group in Moscow was charged of recruiting children, encouraging believers to break from their families, inciting suicide and preventing believers from accepting medical assistance and had to be dissolved and banned.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights overturned that court ruling and ruled that Russia should pay 70,000 euros to the defendants.

Late December 2013 already the leader of thereligious group in Tobolsk, Siberia was charged with extremism and the prevention of a blood transfusion that nearly led to the death of a female member of the group.

In January 2014, after one year of debates the court in Kurgan ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by the prosecutor’s office of Kurgan in the Urals to declare the Jehovah’s Witnesses book Keep Yourselves in God’s Love and the booklet Resist the Spirit of a Changing World extremist.
The decision was  forwarded to the Justice Ministry for inclusion in the ministry’s list of extremist materials.

The books talk about how to have a happy life, what you can hope for, how to develop good relations with God and what you should know about God and its meaning.

In March 2015, a court in Tyumen fined the organization 50,000 rubles ($752) and seized prohibited literature.

The Tyumen Regional Court ordered the liquidation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses branch in 2015. The court granted a motion filed by prosecutors and declared the group extremist.The Supreme Court thus reversed the lower court’s ruling.

According to a representative for the Jehovah’s Witnesses branch, the case has been framed up.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have had many legal problems in Russia.



>
Find to read:

Jehovah’s Witnesses literature declared extremist

Jehovah’s Witnesses website, books declared “extremist” in Russia

 

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Evolution of life but not according to Darwin's evolution theory

Caricature of Charles Darwins theory of evolution. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Watchtower Society presents videoclips. The April 2016 broadcast sees William Malenfant introducing a new feature in which scientists who happen to be Jehovah’s Witnesses are interviewed about their views on evolution. Yaroslav Dovhanych, a Russian zoologist, and Professor Raj Kalaria, a brain researcher at England’s Newcastle University in England.

Describing his pre-creationist experience Dovhanych says:

“The evolutionary theory, in my opinion, quite reasonably argued that there is no creator.”

According to him the evolution theory argues that everything was shaped by a series of random changes and combinations.

For many it seems difficult to see that evolution is a guided process, even if natural forces rather than a supreme celestial supervisor are doing the guiding. when you look around yourself, in your family, you will notice many changes by you against your ancestors. Continually we are evolving.

Dovhanych started to wonder about the evolution theory and noticed things that contradicted the Darwin theory of evolution.

“Can anyone say that some computer programs appeared simply by chance? In contrast, evolutionists would like us to believe that DNA was formed by evolution. To illustrate, say you take some letter blocks, pour them on to the table, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica is formed. There is an even smaller probability that DNA originated by evolution.”

he says.

Raj Kalaria does find that

“We were taught about evolution of life, and this was just part of the curriculum,”

and looks at his years of training when scientist tried to look at all things withouth taking God in the picture.

“At the time there were no other options, as it were. God did not come in the picture at all, or God creating the heavens and the earth, as it were, never came in the picture.”

Kalaria supports the belief that human life can continue once a brain dies certain people will be able to live as spirit creatures in heaven, and these kingly entities will rule over a future Earth populated solely by Jehovah’s Witnesses, many of whom will be resurrected with new brains to replace the ones they lost at death.

“We started looking at the nerve cells themselves in terms of the volume and the number,”

 says Kalaria,

“And it’s phenomenal that in that small area of the brain there are some 1.4 billion neurons. So the number of connections that make us, synapses they make, is phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. And so when you think about the complexity of all that, how is it possible that that is just by random chance? It has to be guided.”

Those scientists who find such ideas ludicrous because for them it is impossible that there would exist such a deity because it must have been vastly complex in the first place. they seem to forget that makes Him the Omnipotent One.

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Shuafat and Arad Judahite literate places

Though in the Chalcolithic period humans were still using stone tools, they also began to create high-level ceramics and for the first time, copper tools as well, plus from findings found at the old Arad showed that there might have been a high literacy rate in Judah at the end of the First Temple period

The Chalcolithic period is by some considered a bridge between antiquity and modern human communal existence.

While scholars agree that key biblical texts were written starting in the 7th century BCE, the exact date of the compilation of these books remains in question.

A profusion of literate individuals in Judah may have set the stage for the compilation of biblical works that constitute the basis of Judahite history and theology, such as the early version of the books of Deuteronomy to Second Kings, according to the researchers of the Tel Aviv University who published some new resutls from excavations in the old city of Arad.

As far back as 7,000 years ago there were settlements in Jerusalem.
A dig in the annexed east Jerusalem neighbourhood Shuafat revealed two homes with parts of walls and floors intact, as well as “pottery vessels, flint tools, and a basalt bowl” characteristic of the Chalcolithic era, the Israel Antiquities Authority said at the beginning of this year.

A section of Israel’s separation barrier in east Jerusalem divides the Palestinian Shuafat refugee camp (right) from the Jewish settlement Pisgat Zeev.
© Provided by AFP

Putting the results together we may assume that literacy by certain groups existed at all levels of the administrative, military and priestly systems of Judah and that reading and writing were not limited to a tiny elite.

This handout photo released by the Israel Antiquities Authority on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2016, shows work on uncovering of an ancient settlement in Jerusalem. Israeli archeologists have discovered a 7,000-year-old settlement in northern Jerusalem in what they say is the oldest discovery of its kind in the area. (Israel Antiquities Authority via AP

> Read more about it in:

Old Arad and Widespread literacy in Judah in 600 BCE

Arad

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