From the  New York Times :    The USA has 63% Christians, a decline of 15% in 18 years: However, people have stopped leaving churches en masse, according to   a new study released   by Pew Research. Further from the  Pew Research Center : 22%  of Americans are categorized as   spiritual but not religious (SBNR)  because they say they think of themselves as spiritual or they consider spirituality very important in their lives, but they neither think of themselves as religious nor say religion is very important in their lives. 58%  of Americans fall into an overall or   “NET” Religious   category because they say they think of themselves as religious or they consider religion very important in their lives. This group can be subdivided into U.S. adults who are   both religious and spiritual   (48%) and those who are   religious but not spiritual   (10%) 21%  of Americans are categorized as   neit...

Learned minds for more than 10,000 years have written about Heaven.  Every religion has some form of Heaven or life after death.  According to a  Pew Research Center  study in 2012, approximately   84%   of the global population is considered theistic, meaning they are affiliated with a religion and believe in a higher power;   this is based on data from a comprehensive study across over 230 countries and territories.   The remaining 16% are called atheists.  To some degree, atheism is forced on the population by dictatorial governments. 157 of 232 countries have Christian majorities. Earlier this year, a Pew survey revealed that 70% of Americans as spiritual. While 28% of U.S. adults claim no affiliation with organized religion, this number jumps to 43% for those under the age of 30.  The younger generation is less inclined to be theistic. Seven in ten believed in Heaven, the same percentage as being spiritual.  In most ways, they ...

Chances are that a lot more people in the world believe that God had some role in the creation of Humanity than the scientific version, which begins with the Big Bang.  As such, then, God is the most popular choice for First Contact, or interaction with an extraterrestrial.  Actually, he has no competition in this vote because no intelligent life form has yet ever made contact, as confirmed by any reliable source. This might well be my shortest posting, for what would be the point of confirming or refuting the title?  Well, this gives me another opportunity to compare religion with science. I start with  Global Religion 2023 , a 26-country Global Advisor survey by Ipsos. These countries were all reasonably developed, with 46% of the respondents believing in some form of Christianity.  Only 7% Buddhist, 6% Muslim, mostly Sunni, and 4% Hindu.  Interestingly enough, 29% with no religion or not religious. India, Turkey, Japan and Thailand were surveyed, but the...