By Andrew Drummond
July 04, 2008 11:44am

THE majority of Australians consider themselves religious but say faith does not play a big part in their life, according to a new survey showing few regularly pray or visit church.

The news comes less than two weeks before the world's Catholic leader, Pope Benedict XVI, heads Down Under for World Youth Day.

The survey of 21,000 people from 21 countries, which names Australia as one of the world's least religious countries, was conducted by the independent, not-for-profit, German-based Bertelsmann Foundation.

It found 28 per cent of Australian respondents are not religious, 25 per cent are "deeply religious", and 44 per cent are religious but say faith does not play a central role in their lives.

Of the 21 countries surveyed, Australia was placed 17th for religious adherence, with only Russia, France, Germany and the UK less godly.

Religion ranked as less important than family, partners, career, leisure time or politics for 50 per cent of Australian respondents, while 48 per cent said they did not partake in personal prayer and 52 per cent never or very seldom visited a church.

"This is not to say that the Pope will be landing in a religious desert on his visit to the World Youth Day in Australia," research leader Martin Rieger said in a statement of the survey results.

"On the eve of World Youth Day, it is interesting to note the strong religious vitality recorded amongst the nation's youth."

Some 72 per cent of Australian respondents aged under 30 said they believed in God or a divine power and/or life after death, the survey showed.

Catholics are Australia's largest faith group and Christian denomination, but are not the most religious, according to the survey, which shows 37 per cent are "deeply religious" and 52 per cent are "religious".

Religion was found to be strongest among the small group of free-church and Pentecostal Protestants, including charismatic movements. Fifty per cent of that group were found to be "deeply religious".

"Christianity and Catholicism in Australia are not blossoming, but equally are not in danger of losing their core roots," Dr Rieger said.

"The big polarity between religious and non-religious people is very defined here.

"Typical is the trend towards a loose, perhaps seeking, spirituality that no longer has any clear relationship to the different churches and denominations. This reveals a great potential for religions and all churches that has so far been neglected and perhaps overlooked."

If you look to the left here on my blog you will see the Google Reader generated .xml feed presentation of articles from ISKCON News Weekly.

Please copy the code in this file to put a block on your site and help promote this resource.

This is so interesting.

"APPEALS have been made to leave alone the members of one of Brazil's last uncontacted Indian tribes, spotted in the Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border.

The Indians were sighted and photographed from an aircraft or helicopter during flights over the rainforest in remote Acre state, said Brazil's National Indian Foundation, known as Funai."

LUCKILY the annual Australian Unity wellbeing index – the statistical smile tracker – was released this week, which helped shed some light on this consumerist conundrum.

The what-makes-us-happy report discovered that happiness starts to stall as household income passes $100,000.

According to the authors, once you crack six figures "money loses its ability to reliably raise wellbeing and does not increase in line with increasing income".

Which makes perfect sense. It's a fancy way of describing what I call the economics of enough.

This is when we reach a point where we have enough money to comfortably keep a roof over our heads, food on the table and clothes on our backs.

After achieving this, much of our economic stress and angst is eliminated.

Each dollar thereafter is a sliding scale of diminishing returns, which no amount of stuff can fill.

Read the full article here.

On the ISKCON News site we've set a goal to compile a multimedia presentation of 108 photos of Gaura-Nitai deities worshiped in the homes of ISKCON members around the world.

If you'd like to give our current readership a view of your home deities, then dress them gorgeously, get the lighting just right and snap us a digital photo. (Try to avoid using a flash please.)

When you submit your entry you'll need to include the following details:

- What's your name? (Please make sure you spell this exactly how you'd like it to be presented.)

- Where do you live? (Include the name of the city and country.)

Send just one photo as an attachment to: editor@iskconnews.com Please try to keep the size of the file under 1 Megabyte. The best image resolution for our purposes is 800px by 600px.

Alternatively you could upload to a photo hosting site such as www.flickr.com and send us a link.

Time is of the essence so please send your photo in today.

Where: National Gallery of Victoria (180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne)
When: Until 16 March 2008
Admission free

Krishna is one of the most popular of the Hindu gods worshiped throughout Asia and in particular India. The exhibition Krishna: Love and Devotion will explore Krishna iconography, through approximately 70 works including paintings, sculpture, textiles, photography, and jewelery.

The scope of the exhibition includes both historical and contemporary interpretations of Krishna worship and devotion, and explores the narrative of Krisha’s life story in works from across India.

more info here

Oooh. This is a reality every school teacher faces ....

"HUNDREDS of popular Australian children's snack foods and sweets are laced with suspect additives which international researchers have linked to adverse behavioural reactions.

Food companies are using children's characters, including the new Bee Movie produced by Jerry Seinfeld, to push the additive-laden products in supermarkets.

Unsuspecting parents are buying their children food containing compounds, UK scientists identified, that cause adverse reactions such as allergies, asthma, hyperactivity and rashes."

 Read the whole article here and please stop feeding your kids this garbage. 

Interesting article here: 

"In 2005, at the height of the controversy over the site's accuracy, Mr Wales told the BBC that students who copied information from Wikipedia "deserved to get an F grade".

Mr Wales said the website still lacked the authority to be used as a citeable source for college-aged and university students.

But he said new editing and checking procedures had made Wikipedia more trustworthy.

Changing procedures

Since the controversy, in which it emerged that the "free editing" policy had allowed articles containing inaccuracies and bias to appear, the site has introduced a system of real-time peer review, in which volunteers check new and updated articles for accuracy and impartiality."

 

Nick Hall sent a message using the contact form at http://news.iskcon.com/contact.

Please make all of your readers aware of these sites that explain your rights when dealing with the RSPCA and the many criticisms of their behaviour.

RSPCA-Animadversion

http://cheetah.webtribe.net/~animadversion/

SHG

http://the-shg.org

This is reposted from Gauranga Kishore Prabhu's blog.

 Look at the picture below and you can see where this guy broke through the guardrail, right side where the people are standing on the road. The pick-up was traveling from right to left when it crashed through the guardrail. It flipped end-over-end, across the culvert outlet, and landed right side up on the left side of the culvert, facing the opposite direction from which he was traveling.

Now look at the 2nd picture below...