This may be relevant to the US situation: I was brought up Baptist and fled in my late teens. Among the reasons for fleeing was esthetic: the worldview was constricted and stifling -- it deliberately ruled out the sense of wonder and delight that comes with a science-based view of the world (evolution, cosmology, etc.). A more banal reason for flight was deep dissatisfaction with all the mumbo-jumbo. I became a Unitarian (now called Unitarian-Universalist, or UU). For those on this list unfamiliar with UUs, it's a non-credal "religion" that includes atheists, Christians, Buddhists, pagan, whatever -- there is a set of excellent principles but no creed. UU was a place that people like me, born when I was (1938), fled to.
Only very recently was it brought to my attention that nowadays new UUs typically are NOT fleeing a Christian upbringing. Rather they come from the "not-affiliated", a rapidly growing group in the US. They come with little or no Christian baggage of the kind that I still drag around like Marley's chains. God or no god isn't a big deal with them. They're just looking for a community in which the deep questions of life can be thought about together in a serious, unloaded way. Bruce ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
