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Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

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Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#171

Post by Applejinx »

giantg2 wrote: post #58
whalesalad wrote: post #28

I had a unique experience growing up in a religious family (that is very tolerant and respectful of all world religions) while simultaneously being immersed in Scientology via a private school experience. The thing that underscores all of my experiences has been hypocrisy. So many people just want to belong to a group, or were raised in it and know nothing better. They don’t practice what they preach. I can’t help bu…

"I can’t help but think the world will be better off when we abolish big religion." So those people who want to belong to a group and believe in it without seeing what might be better can move into political groups for their identity? The actions and methods are human nature, so I think they will just move to a different domain.

The OP says 'U.S.'. US churches ARE political groups, in practical terms.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#172

Post by shireboy »

whiddershins wrote: post #89

In my opinion the main problem for religion right now is the failure to explain their arguments at the highest intellectual level, publicly, consistently. Once I was exposed to better theology and philosophy of Christianity I was blown away. Edward Feser’s ‘The Last Superstition’ helped open this up. I have no idea why the level of discourse is on average so primitive, I think church leaders have been systematically…

I haven't read Feser, but I do agree there is a huge gap between, say, the theology and level of discourse of C.S.Lewis and Tolkein and popular megachurch pastors. Culturally it's interesting to me - all but the most die-hard atheist will likely see some value and truth in Tolkein's work even if they disagree with his theology and choice of church. They may not agree, but would respect him. Where are today's Inklings?

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#173

Post by bobthechef »

whalesalad wrote: post #63
symfoniq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world will be better off when we abolish freedom of belief? That doesn't sound like a world I'd want to live in.

When I say abolish big religion I mean the way it’s integrated so tightly in society. The war on drugs, abortion, non profit tax avoidance, so many fucked up things stem from the belief that my religion is better than yours and you need to believe what I believe. You can believe whatever the hell you want - but it’s not for you or society or anyone else to decide how I can live my life.

> When I say abolish big religion I mean the way it’s integrated so tightly in society.

There has never existed a society that didn't have a religion. Everyone has a religion, what they take to be the highest good, what they worship. It just so happens that those who naively brush off what they take to be "religion" simply, probably tacitly, take on some vulgar and crude variety.

> The war on drugs, abortion, non profit tax avoidancee, so many fucked up things

You realize that your views are also views, right? You presume some kind of objectivity while denying that right to others. Sounds kind of intolerant to me, especially if we go by your own prejudices.

You also appear to have scapegoated religion for various things you don't like (mind you, things like the opposition to abortion is a moral question, not a sectarian one, though sadly, the myth that it is seems to persist, probably because it allows militant pro-choice types to exploit "religious freedom" as a way to frame it as a "private matter" since religion under a liberal regime is subordinated to liberal doctrine, which has the interesting effect of elevating liberalism to the rank of state religion).

> the belief that my religion is better than yours and you need to believe what I believe

Hold on. Two things are being conflated. First, if there is one truth, then either a religion is true (or at least contains some truth), or it isn't (or contains falsehoods). That which is true should be accepted, that which isn't shouldn't. The idea that religion is just a thing we believe simply because we wish to believe it is absurd. You believe something because you have good reasons to believe it, not because you wish it to be the case.

Second, what do you mean by "you need to believe what I believe"? This has nothing to do with what others believe. It has everything to do with whether something is true. Of course, you shouldn't try to force anyone to believe anything, even if it is or you think it is true, though any society will punish or constrain someone _acting_ on wrong beliefs in some cases. All legal and judicial systems do this, obviously, and they can do this with a tangible tenacity.

I'd also add that there what falls under "religion" differs enough that it makes no sense to criticize "religion" categorically. This kind of approach typically conceals a particular real or imagined religion that the person in question has in mind, perhaps particular experiences, and from which that person hastily generalizes to "religion" as a category. The error here should be obvious, especially if you take into consideration what I've already written, namely, that everyone has some kind of religion, however vague or crude or mundane or insane.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#174

Post by mustafa_pasi »

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #102

So many of the comments here are affirming what I have long observed: much anti-religious sentiment (“much”, not “all”!) is actually a reaction to fundamentalism, which is the bad theology of scriptural literalism, which brings heresies like hating LGBT, insisting the Bible is also a science textbook, superstitious views of certain Middle Eastern lands, and more. Growing up as a mainline Protestant, I thankfully didn…

And what did you gain out of it?

I grew up in a non-fundamentalist Christian cult (catholic) and it was at best a massive waste of time. I detest that part of my life.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#175

Post by wussboy »

sarabad2021 wrote: post #96
whiddershins wrote: post #89

In my opinion the main problem for religion right now is the failure to explain their arguments at the highest intellectual level, publicly, consistently. Once I was exposed to better theology and philosophy of Christianity I was blown away. Edward Feser’s ‘The Last Superstition’ helped open this up. I have no idea why the level of discourse is on average so primitive, I think church leaders have been systematically…

The same can be said of science in that science can't explain the supernatural or the after-life. Science was never meant to explain those things but we have tried to make it a replacement by trying to naturalize everything. Things that go beyond this realm of understanding and reason.

In my opinion it explains both perfectly well: The human mind is not perfect and sometimes it gets confused, believing that the supernatural is real and that there is life after death even though time and again these phenomena turn out to have completely naturalistic explanations. If you want to go one level deeper I encourage you to read Darwin’s Cathedral where you’ll learn this tendency to believe in the supernatural is not a bug but a feature.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#176

Post by igetspam »

987yghj wrote: post #17
datavirtue wrote: post #5

The spread of information has allowed people to form their own moralistic code and spiritual journey that doesn't rely on having an institutional infrastructure. They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods, a trend now going back for thousands of years starting with Zarathustra. I consider this progress.

They have chosen new religions and a new elite priesthood, they just have different names.

Perhaps that's for the better. I didn't "choose" the religion thrust upon me as a kid. Somewhere around the age of 10 though, the inconsistencies were too many to ignore and I "lost" my faith. I spent many years wrestling with that and the contradictions between what I was being told and what I was witnessing, even in my own family. The damage it did to me has never really been undone. There are things in this world that I recoil from because of dogma that I don't even believe. I became and actual good person, without being shackled to some deity or set of books, later in my life. I pushed everything away because of distrust and anger when I was younger. I can't begin to imagine the good I could have done, had not been stunted early on.

We don't need religion and shame on any parents that push it on their kids. They don't know better and they can't consent.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#177

Post by ncphil »

speeder wrote: post #100
Applejinx wrote: post #3

Now let's tax churches, like Frank Zappa suggested :)

I am from Brazil... To be honest this would be a complete disaster here. 1. My city main hospital, belongs to Catholic Church, same applies to many other cities. 2. Many of our leading universities, doing research and important work, belong to Catholic Church, notably PUC-RIO, the creators of Lua language. 3. Protestant churches here are the major organizations driving away drug dealers, some took the donations to bu…

Here in the US many major church organizations, including the Roman Catholic Church and mainline protestant groups (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran) used to invest seriously in the same kinds of things. I think they lost a lot of credibility to the extent that their conduct of those "public interest" activities were indistinguishable from their private sector competitors (e.g. in recovery of medical debt). Withdrawing from these activities (for whatever reason) only compounded that problem.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#178

Post by bko »

pmiller2 wrote: post #142
bko wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those questions for which you seek answers that you believe some churches are not adequately addressing?

Take a look at the popularity of "prosperity gospel" with poor and middle class individuals. This is as a response to the inequality and social immobility brought about since the mid 70s. I'll leave out explicit mention of the "C word," because I'll get downvotes for it, but the sociological analysis is fascinating on its own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology#Socioecono...

Whats the alternative for those less fortunate?

I mentored kids for much of my life and you can bet I told them they could be anything they want if they set their mind to it. What should I preach? That they're victims and screwed because of accident of geography/genetics? Is that a useful framework for life?

You can say that you teach them the system is unfair will help them break it. But that amounts to political indoctrination if you're not careful. Instead, teach them to change the world themselves by being kind to those around them.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#180

Post by tfehring »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #46

Having the Church community while growing up was great. But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre. Frankly, growing up in the church left me with a broken moral code. It was only once I left it in my teens and had to work things out for myself that I feel like I could properly ground myself ethically. Having a moral system imposed on you can do that.

In response to your first paragraph: I was raised Catholic, and for a long time I’ve been a little bit envious of my Jewish friends’ ability to still associate themselves with their religious identity even after they no longer identify with the theistic elements of it. “If you leave you’ll burn in hell for eternity” was effective for a long time, and it worked on me for much of my childhood, but it doesn’t seem like a very effective retention strategy at this point.

Of course, I don’t really care to associate with most Catholics as they stand today anyway. But that might be different if Catholics and “I was raised Catholic”s had a more formal shared identity in the same sense that religious and secular Jews do.

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