How Many Americans Believe There Is A God?

Gnosticism means rebelling against and breaking free of the conformity set forth to us by religious dogma. That same dogma that, for centuries, has instilled unbelievable fear and guilt upon the masses. It means dispelling all the fear based untruths about God and our eternal Souls by bringing reasoning and intelligence into the equation. Gnosticism has been linked to the New Age movement. This so-called New Age movement isn’t so new. In fact, it is older than time. Gnosticism was around long before the time of Buddha or the time of Jesus, and it came about way before the Old Testament. The whole world believed in it, totally and completely--we have had many lives. The term "gnostic" derives from "gnosis," which means "knowledge" in Greek. The Gnostics believed that they were privy to a secret knowledge about the divine, hence the name.

Gnosticism is nearly as old as Christianity and some would argue very similar to Christianity in beliefs. However, there are distinct differences to Gnosticism in beliefs, doctrines, and practices from, and practices of Christianity. Gnosticism had several key leaders during its early years, few of whom we will discuss at further length later in this paper. There were also several key leaders of the early Christian church who denounced Gnosticism for heresy and claimed that it was pseudo way to Christianity. Up until the 1900’s, very little was known about the precise beliefs of Gnosticism, then this changed with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi works which may have been written by Valentinus. Gnosticism is a more distinct religion than it

Americans have been believing in God less and less in recent months, and new research is shedding light on why that may be.

Atheism is disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods, they reject religion as apart of not only a rejection of ignorance, but also a rejection of their religious family and association of religion itself, says Catherine L. and Caldwell-Harris who are published in the Department of Psychology for Boston University, Lesley College,University of Haifa, and Trinity College. This is a stark contrast to theism, which is the belief in god and is the case for many Americans. This demographic is about 83% of America’s population, according to the most recent census. About 16% of the population, or about 34,169,000 people are of an unaffiliated position, which would include Atheists,

One Nation under GOD Since 1952 when these four words were first drafted into the Pledge of Allegiance, that phrase has remained synonymous with the United States of America and the spirit of the American People. But what does that really mean? And more importantly, what do those four words have to do with us today? Ronald Reagan once said, “If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under”, which raises the question, “why?” Why is GOD so important to the United States of America? To answer that, one must journey to the start of our Country, July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was presented and signed by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of a nation. The next question is, if GOD is

1. Because of man’s ignorance and curiosity, arguments for the existence of God have been made over the years. Basically, these arguments are divided into two large groups i.e. logical and metaphysical. Actually, these arguments seek to prove that the existence of a being or having faith with at least one attribute that only God could have is logically necessary.

The term Gnosticism originates from the word gnosis, which means knowledge. It is a religious movement that became popular during the first and second centuries. The school of thought behind the Gnostic movement has not been able to be traced to its exact origin. However, some of the influences on this movement go as far back as the second and first centuries BCE. Among those influences would be the early treatises of the corpus Hermeticum and the Jewish Apocalyptic writings. The greatest source for the movement came through the Platonic philosophy and the Hebrew Scriptures (Moore). The movement is a controversial one with scholars being unable to put it in a definitive category. In one instance it is called “the label for an ill-defined category” that is “under heavy criticism” (Olsen). A major problem with Gnosticism lies in the fact that there are very few absolutes where questions and answers are concerned. This makes it problematic to have a dialogue that can bring everyone into agreement on the subject.

Current religious beliefs and practices are very different in Britain from 100 years ago. No longer do the masses attend the established church, attendance is down to 6% of the population and the 2001 Census identified 170 distinct religions in Britain. 72% claim to be Christian but less than half of the population believe in God and only 18% claim to be a practicing member of an organised religion.

Although nearly 88% of the United States population believes that there is a God, this does not make them all religious people (Religious Beliefs and Practices). Religion is defined as being the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. The reason why many people might believe in a god or gods is because God is a social construction; the talk of a god is in all forms of media and everyday life, including the Pledge of Allegiance in the United States. For many people who are religious, like myself, they are taught that there is a God from an early age by various social institutions, including their family, peers, media, and in some cases, private schools.

Eighteen options were offered as choices for this question, excluding the categories of atheist and agnostic. The responses to each category have not been captured in the survey results, owing to certain privacy concerns. However, the percentage of none as a choice was calculated from the annual survey results. Moreover, the sample for this question excluded the Californians after 1997.

Stephan A. Hoeller defined Gnosticism as a system of ‘teachings based on gnosis: the knowledge of transcendence arrived at by way of interior intuitive means’. The Greek words gnosis is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‘a special knowledge (or wisdom) of spiritual mysteries’. An individual or group that possesses gnosis as a part of Gnosticism is labelled with the Greek word Gnostic. ‘Historical context indicates that Gnosticism’ ‘was originally a Jewish esoteric (secret) spirituality that assumed a Christian form after the coming of the Christian dispensation’. Gnosticism is a significant example of Western Esotericism.

       In a recent survey the American Religious Identification said that 15% say they are unaffiliated about 18-34-year-old people claim to have no religion. Professor of the University of Akron John Green says that Brand loyalty should not be confused with faith.

The number of atheist and agnostic has been expanding there have long been predictions that religion would fade from relevance as the world modernizes, but all the recent surveys are finding that it’s happening startlingly fast. An atheist is a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings along with an agnostic, an agnostic person is a person who holds that the existence of an ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2009, over 228 million Americans classified themselves as practicing some type of religion. Due to

Sir Thomas Huxley coined the term “agnostic” in 1869. Popularly the word agnostic is felt to mean that the nature of god cannot be known but that there is a god. Therefore the agnostic is accepted in the community and he is accepted by the church, unlike those labeled or known as “atheists”. Agnosticism is very closely related to the religious doctrine that the ways of god are incomprehensible, that human reason is deceptive and that man requires a