Any Danes or Swedes want to weigh in on this? I don't understand this at all.
The tradition of getting married in church is no different from a habit of screaming "jesus motherfucking christ!" when faced with a scary chance of seeing Texas Tech playing in a national championship game: no reason to call someone religious on both grounds.
People identify themselves (& others) as Jews regardless of their beliefs. In areas where religion has become the current tribal banner such as N. Ireland, India, Iraq, etc., people do something similar.
Often they mean association with a group. Sometimes they mean ancestry/heritage. 'Identify as a Christian' tends to mean different things in different places.
What would be the alternative to identify oneself as Christian? As atheists? Where non-belief is overwhelmingly common there is little need to spell out you non-belief (that's taken almost for granted) and focus is instead put on what cultural aspects you feel in line with and which you don’t. Although people don't believe in God they still acknowledge that the Scandinavian cultures are heavily influenced by Christianity.
Many institutions including Universities, States & many others have their roots in a religious foundation. If you asked 200 years ago, they may have been considered completely inalienable from each other.
What happens if you take a Church & surrounds & remove God? You keep the building where a community of mixed age demographics but roughly stable across the long term meet weekly and talk about ways of living ethically or just hang out? People are welcome to join. Community activities are run there. There are a few people responsible for keeping the community together, caring for members in temporary or permanent need, spiritual well being of the members (can mean psychological well being if you're more comfortable with that). They do this full time & are committed to it. This religiony thing has ceremonies & traditions attached to it. Particularly those that are 'public' like weddings & funerals.
What has belief in God got to do with any of that?
I know that in many other countries some a lot of people say they are Christian even though they are not very religious.
By the way it has been my experience that people in the US are very hospitable and offer to help strangers. I think more so than in Denmark. Additionally people in the US are more polite, which is nice, even though some people say it's just a superficial thing.
I don't think this article is very good. It states that there is a welfare state in Denmark, but what does that have to do with being nice? The majority are beneficiaries, so they just vote that the minority should fund the system. I don't think it's being nice. The welfare state works on the basis of coercion, not voluntary help.
- a Dane living outside of Denmark
P.S. Are people going to upvote lolcats next? I think lolcats are funny, but for I can go to icanhascheezburger for that.
In the looser sense of common usage, people often call themselves atheists if they do not believe in a formalised or institutionalised set of beliefs & do not explicitly believe in (a) god.
You needs to take this down a notch from the pure philosophical theory. As an atheist, saying you don't believe in god or that you are sure the He doesn't exist is OK. Even if you couldn't convince Des Carte (he went the other way).
You are sure as you are that celestial teapots or fairies do not exist. Or more to the point, as sure as a Muslim is that Apollo does not drive his chariot across the sky or a Christian is that there are not multiple gods. That is the level where the discussion needs to be conducted.
Not fair to make atheists conduct their analysis at the level where you might be a brain in a vat while eveyone else gets to live in the world where the floor is solid, gravity pulls down & today is followed by tomorrow. The point is to treat the debate just like any other. The existence of god & fertilisation methods for turnips. Use the normal set of tools we use to evaluate everything else.
At the level that you are (rudely) probing atheists, the atheist is agnostic not just about the existence of god, but the existence of dogs, aliens, angels, pyramids & burglars. Certainly agnostic about any of the unseeable uknowable objects of the world. On any level that is meaningful, many skeptical agnostics (after some gentle probing) are atheist.
At least, that's one of my answers on the rare occasion I'm prodded. The other has to do with the lack of usefulness. ;)
I've met ones that didn't discount it as a possibility, but not any that professed a belief in it.
But a lot of people that do not believe in god are interested in 'spiritual energies' or something similar that really amounts to a supernatural belief.
The term itself doesn't exclude belief in the "supernatural", but it is (as far as I can tell) claimed largely by people who don't have any belief in the "supernatural".
For something to be inflammatory it only needs to inflame.
Wait, what? How does that make sense?