16-Jan-2011, 12:33 AM
There is no such thing as a 'part-time freethinker', but since we cannot all afford to be 'full-time debaters', we need some way of deciding which debates are really urgent and worthwhile to engage in. The Google Ngram viewer, introduced here, promises to be a useful aid here, to somewhat gauge which of the manifestations of religion are prevalent and on the upswing, and thus deserving of increased critique.
1. Lest we lull ourselves into think that 'religion' with its literalism and explicit theism is now largely a spent force, and it is the fairly benign-seeming, denatured variants of 'mysticism' and 'spirituality' that freethinkers must now debate, we must take a look at this plot to see how religion still overwhelming dominates literary discourse among these three.
![[Image: chart?content=spirituality%2Creligion%2...r_end=2000]](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=spirituality%2Creligion%2Cmysticism&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000)
So, notwithstanding the high visibility of the 'spiritual-but-not-religious' brigade, this might mean that while freethinkers grapple with new-age woo, they cannot afford to do this at the expense of grappling with more old-fashioned religion.
2. If we think that the New Atheists are unduly pre-occupied with Christianity when they ought to frame their stances in opposition to religion in general, this plot may serve to suggest that this pre-occupation of theirs is very much in proportion to the requirement. Notice how the generic 'shrine' hardly makes its presence felt, while 'church' predominates.
![[Image: chart?content=shrine%2Cchurch%2Cmosque%...r_end=2000]](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=shrine%2Cchurch%2Cmosque%2Ctemple&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000)
Having said that, an unmistakable recent trend of interest in Oriental faiths can indeed be found in these plots, where Dharma enjoyed a spell of ascendancy over the Bible and the Buddha outruns Christ!
![[Image: chart?content=bible%2Cdharma%2Cislam&co...r_end=2008]](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=bible%2Cdharma%2Cislam&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2008)
![[Image: chart?content=jesus%2Cchrist%2Cbuddha&c...r_end=2008]](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=jesus%2Cchrist%2Cbuddha&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2008)
As an aside, the ordinary, human-sounding 'Jesus' seems to be catching up with the anointed, deified 'Christ'.
1. Lest we lull ourselves into think that 'religion' with its literalism and explicit theism is now largely a spent force, and it is the fairly benign-seeming, denatured variants of 'mysticism' and 'spirituality' that freethinkers must now debate, we must take a look at this plot to see how religion still overwhelming dominates literary discourse among these three.
So, notwithstanding the high visibility of the 'spiritual-but-not-religious' brigade, this might mean that while freethinkers grapple with new-age woo, they cannot afford to do this at the expense of grappling with more old-fashioned religion.
2. If we think that the New Atheists are unduly pre-occupied with Christianity when they ought to frame their stances in opposition to religion in general, this plot may serve to suggest that this pre-occupation of theirs is very much in proportion to the requirement. Notice how the generic 'shrine' hardly makes its presence felt, while 'church' predominates.
Having said that, an unmistakable recent trend of interest in Oriental faiths can indeed be found in these plots, where Dharma enjoyed a spell of ascendancy over the Bible and the Buddha outruns Christ!
As an aside, the ordinary, human-sounding 'Jesus' seems to be catching up with the anointed, deified 'Christ'.