Epigraph:
Say, ‘O People of the Book! come to a word equal between us and you — that we worship none but Allah, and that we associate no partner with Him, and that some of us take not others for Lords beside Allah.’ But if they turn away, then say, ‘Bear witness that we have submitted to God.’ (Al Quran 3:64)
Collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times
Charles Darwin had procrastinated for 20 years before publishing his epic making book for good reason. William Tyndale, Michael Servetus and Giordano Bruno had been burnt on the stake for lesser offences in the previous centuries in Christendom. William Tyndale was burnt on the stake for translating the Bible into English on 6th October, 1536. Michael Servetus was burnt on the stake on October 27th, 1953 for writing two books refuting trinity and finally Giordano Bruno was burnt on the stake for more than one count of heresy on 17th February, 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th and early 20th century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science.
According to Richard Dawkins, who is well known for his advocacy of atheism, “Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Since the writing of his book, On the Origin of Species, in 1861 there is a constant tug of war between atheism and Christianity in the West.
Let us examine this duel in USA, a similar conflict is playing out in Europe and Australia.
The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.
Church attendance has declined substantially in recent decades. The U.S. is seeing an unprecedented increase in the number of “nones,” those who do not identify with any religious tradition. As of 2023, this population is 28% of U.S. adults! The “nones” include ex-evangelicals, ex-mainline protestants, ex-Catholics and more. About a third of the “nones” do not have any religious background. The departures are happening for all ages, especially young people.
For all of these groups, science issues are a substantial factor in why they doubt Christian beliefs. People stop attending church for many reasons, as explored in books like “The Great Dechurching” by Jim David, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge. What many ministry leaders don’t realize is that the “nones” cite science as one of the top reasons they doubt Christianity. By handling science issues better, the Church can lead young people to a more robust faith and invite the “nones” to (re)consider Jesus Christ.
The impact of “science” on people’s beliefs has been growing since well before the pandemic. In 2019, the Barna Group surveyed young people all around the world, ages 18-35, asking “What causes you to doubt things of a spiritual nature?” Young people of all religious views and backgrounds listed “science” as one of the top reasons they doubt. In fact, “science” was second only to “the hypocrisy of religious people.” This was confirmed in 2022, when the Barna Group surveyed Americans of no religious affiliation, age 13 and up. Science is one of the top reasons they gave for doubting Christian beliefs.
The above two surveys didn’t ask in detail what exactly about science is causing people to doubt, but other research has. In 2020, John Marriott in “The Anatomy of Deconversion” reported on in-depth interviews with 24 ex-evangelicals, aged 20-55. He determined the top 3 cognitive reasons people leave: problems with the Bible (including Genesis, miracles, and the resurrection), the acceptance of Darwinian evolution, and the influence of new atheists like Richard Dawkins. All three of those areas are tied to science! Now, it is possible that some of the “nones” have left religion for other reasons, but now blame it on science. But the interviews by Marriott don’t sound like that.
Is atheism pulling people away from Chrisitanity? Some Christians say yes. They talk of science vs the Bible, framing it as a battle between “man’s word” and God’s word. They say that learning science will cause you to doubt scripture and lose your faith. For some of the “nones,” this is unfortunately the case. Marriot writes: “While many believers, when presented with the evidence for Darwinian evolution, manage to retain their faith by becoming theistic evolutionists, the deconverts in this study appear to have presupposed that, for various reasons, if evolution were true, then God could not exist. Convinced of the truthfulness of evolution, they believed they were forced to reject belief in God’s existence.”
But there is another dynamic here. While some of the “nones” are pulled away from Christianiy by atheistic arguments, more are pushed away by the posture of the church toward science. In 2011, Kinnaman in his book “You Lost Me” surveyed millennials who had grown up in the Church and then left. He found that 29% said “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in,” 25% said “Christianity is anti-science,” and 23% said they were “turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate.” And it’s not just the millennials. In 2018, Barna surveyed teenagers still attending church and reported their findings in GenZ. They found that 49% of GenZ teenagers felt “the church seems to reject much of what science tells us about the world.” That’s half of GenZ in church! An entire generation is being impacted.[1]
Whey born Christians learn biology and evolution what challenges do they face? These are examined in separate articles:
Charles Darwin: An Epiphany for the Muslims, A Catastrophe for the Christians
Video About Historical Adam: Is it a Landmine for the Christian Dogma?
The Pew Research Center estimates that in 2020, about 64% of Americans, including children, were Christian. People who are religiously unaffiliated, sometimes called religious “nones,” accounted for 30% of the U.S. population. Adherents of all other religions – including Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists – totaled about 6%.1
Depending on whether religious switching continues at recent rates, speeds up or stops entirely, the projections show Christians of all ages shrinking from 64% to between a little more than half (54%) and just above one-third (35%) of all Americans by 2070. Over that same period, “nones” would rise from the current 30% to somewhere between 34% and 52% of the U.S. population.[2]
But, what will in reality happen over the next fifty years will also depend on another powerful phenomenon in the West, which is introduction of Islam and Muslims. There are possibly 40 million Muslims in Europe and up to 5 million in USA.
Among those who have converted to Islam in USA, a majority come from a Christian background. In fact, about half of all converts to Islam (53%) identified as Protestant before converting; another 20% were Catholic. And roughly one-in-five (19%) volunteered that they had no religion before converting to Islam, while smaller shares switched from Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism or some other religion.
When asked to specify why they became Muslim, converts give a variety of reasons. About a quarter say they preferred the beliefs or teachings of Islam to those of their prior religion, while 21% say they read religious texts or studied Islam before making the decision to switch. Still others said they wanted to belong to a community (10%), that marriage or a relationship was the prime motivator (9%), that they were introduced to the faith by a friend, or that they were following a public leader (9%).
In recent years, the number of American Muslims has been growing steadily, by around 100,000 annually. But the fact that the shares of people who enter and leave Islam are roughly equal suggests that conversions to and from the faith are having little impact on the group’s overall growth.
But a large number of those born in Islam leave the religion as well.
About a quarter of adults who were raised Muslim (23%) no longer identify as members of the faith, roughly on par with the share of Americans who were raised Christian and no longer identify with Christianity (22%), according to a new analysis of the 2014 Religious Landscape Study. But while the share of American Muslim adults who are converts to Islam also is about one-quarter (23%), a much smaller share of current Christians (6%) are converts. In other words, Christianity as a whole loses more people than it gains from religious switching (conversions in both directions) in the U.S., while the net effect on Islam in America is a wash.
A 2017 Pew Research Center survey of U.S. Muslims, using slightly different questions than the 2014 survey, found a similar estimate (24%) of the share of those who were raised Muslim but have left Islam. Among this group, 55% no longer identify with any religion, according to the 2017 survey. Fewer identify as Christian (22%), and an additional one-in-five (21%) identify with a wide variety of smaller groups, including faiths such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, or as generally “spiritual.”
The same 2017 survey asked converts from Islam to explain, in their own words, their reasons for leaving the faith. A quarter cited issues with religion and faith in general, saying that they dislike organized religion (12%), that they do not believe in God (8%), or that they are just not religious (5%). And roughly one-in-five cited a reason specific to their experience with Islam, such as being raised Muslim but never connecting with the faith (9%) or disagreeing with the teachings (7%) of Islam. Similar shares listed reasons related to a preference for other religions or philosophies (16%) and personal growth experiences (14%), such as becoming more educated or maturing.[3]
Majority of the Christians leave Christianity because they find it in conflict with science. Many Muslims leave Islam because they have a problem with it in general. Rationality will win in this century in a three way struggle between Christianity, Islam and atheism.
Are the Muslims ready for a rational and scientific construction of our faith and our understanding of the Quran, the literal word of God?
Reference
- https://biologos.org/articles/science-a-major-reason-nones-are-skeptical-of-christianity
- https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/
- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/26/the-share-of-americans-who-leave-islam-is-offset-by-those-who-become-muslim/
The Quranic Compassion 