Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by galangalalgol » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

eruci wrote: post #21

Maybe people are leaving church because they have started asking questions. Not the kind of questions religion 'asks', which are answers in disguise.

The notion that people have suddenly become smarter or more objective or more rational has been blasted tume and time again, both by uncovering new past instances of rationality and by new blunders reminding us that it is our reason that evolved to serve our intincts, and thinking our reason is actually in charge is thus delusional. When people's physical needs are being met well, they become less religious. Look at relgious growth in undeveloped countries as an example. Those people aren't less intelligent than us, and if we point to education, we have data indicating our quality of education is decreasing while religious affiliation falls as well. Even with physical needs being met, people have certain needs that religons were meeting. We should be careful what part of aociety picks up meeting those needs. Politics? Yikes we know what happens when the passion and absolute certainty of religion gets infused into politics, we are seeing it now. Science? Belief harms science, science requires skepticism even of our best axioms to avoid dogma. Don't drown people who ask questions your theory can't answer. If we dont find a safe outlet for those residual needs, we are better off keeping religion around to fill them without giving it any temporal power.

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

#242

Post by danpalmer » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

It looks like the U.S. is running along a similar trend to the U.K. (and I'd guess many other countries, but I'm from the U.K.). Church attendance falls, followed by membership, followed by people considering themselves "religious".

One of the tricky things in the UK over the last 3 censuses has been accurately capturing this, so that government funding and policy can be best targeted. People think "I celebrate Christmas so I'm a Christian", while never attending church, not identifying with any particular type of Christianity, not being able to talk about the content of the Bible even in a very general sense, and only generally thinking that there's probably some sort of god or something, and hopefully an afterlife.

This was so ingrained that the British Humanist Association (I believe humanism in the US is very different, here it's a secular belief system) had a big campaign during the previous census (2011) titled "If you're not religious, for God's sake say so!".

Despite not going to church or really taking part in any organised religion, people really don't want to be non-religious. I think we could better recognise this sort of generic "spiritualism".

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

#243

Post by thechao » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

m0llusk wrote: post #233

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…

My own experience being raised mainline Protestant was a bit different which might be illustrative: My parents were not at all devout, but still took wisdom and moral lessons from the Bible, especially from the teachings of Jesus. At the same time the preachers in town leaned right in their beliefs and focused on reading and interpreting more obscure passages. This resulted in a modest ongoing tension about what exac…

As a non-practicing Jew, I found the Jefferson bible very inspiring. Stripping the religious trappings from the teachings tempers the whole thing; I really like the humanity: it’s a story about a man with his own foibles, attempting to teach himself & others to be better people.

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

#244

Post by kypro » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

Although I believe religion is outdated and in many ways I'm happy to see it in decline in the West, I do worry about the side effects the decline of religion has.

It seems to me that people my age today (late twenties, early thirties) are extremely self-centred and struggle to see any higher pursuit in life than self-satisfaction. This is in contrast to the few religious people I know who are far more family focused and believe in self-sacrifice in the pursuit of what they believe to be morally good - charity, children, community, etc.

As a teenager who went to a catholic school I often found myself in trouble for mocking things we were taught from the bible, but as I've grown up I've come to appreciate religion and the role it has historically played in our society.

For example, my sister has made a lot of bad decisions in life - drug use, having a child to get a council house, arrested for violent behaviour, etc. Something that made me reflect on my attitude towards religion was that I realised my sister would likely be in a much better place today if we lived in a more religious society. Many of the legal things she did for self-satisfaction would have been look down upon just a few decades back and if that happened she may not be the way she is today. I see this all the time as someone who grew up in a poor area of my city, the lack of religion promoting family values and self-sacrifice is clearly hurting those on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder the most. Almost everyone young female in my family is a single mother living in government housing today, many struggling with drug addiction and mental illness. This just wouldn't have been the case in past decades.

If you educated and middle-class you're far more able to go a bit crazy in your twenties before you you settle down in your thirties. If you're able to responsibly navigate between self-satisfaction and self-sacrifice then religious values are less important and perhaps even seen as a burden in your life, but if you have less self-control and perhaps don't have the intellect to form your own secular spiritual meaning to life, then what else is lack but the pursuit of self-satisfaction?

Sorry for the ramble. This is a topic I think about a lot because I'm so split in my thoughts towards religion today. I don't think we should go back to religion, but I suspect we might need to find a substitute for it.

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

#245

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #205

sarabad2021 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no issues with Christianity from a philosophical standpoint. It explains things which our beyond our natural/physical world. Those things impact how we live in this world. I'm curious what you mean in your statement, please unpack your claim.

The parent is referring to the (actually, legitimately, really bad) philosophy that you can find in the most puffed-up theology books. It comes from the same process of domain envy that makes some philosophers put the worst math ever in their papers, except it started several hundred years earlier. To cut one slice through it, I can point you to a page of 100% fallacious arguments[0] that only survived as long as the…

Claiming that Anselm's ontological argument "survived" for centuries is rather misleading. Being known as a thing did not mean it was viewed as a viable argument. It was subjected to some harsh criticism literally as soon as it appeared, and whenever it was brought up in later centuries (and not very often, because it was something of a curiosity) it was treated more critically than reverently.

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

#246

Post by mustafa_pasi » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #226

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it was at best a massive waste of time Why? Can you expand on that?

Because I cannot recall a single good thing I got out of the whole experience.

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

#247

Post by ARandomerDude » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

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…

> ...bad theology...heresies...

Without "scriptural literalism" how do you know what bad theology and heresy are? Is good theology not simply that which most closely corresponds to Scripture? Your comment makes sense on a Roman Catholic view – in which the traditions of the church are authoritative – but not on the Protestant view (sola Scriptura).

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

#248

Post by bopbeepboop » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #209

CedarMills wrote: post #93

As a believer and someone who attends church regularly, this is sad but not unexpected. From my own personal experience - if the church cannot answer questions clearly, their members will look for answers somewhere else. A lot of churches unfortunately are so elementary in their teaching or turn to "feel good preaching" (see Elevation Church). The longterm effect is that a person ends up being tired of getting the sa…

I grew up attending church, and on the whole have nothing but good things to say about the whole experience. It gave me both spiritual and moral support when I needed it the most and some of the best people I have ever known, I got to know through church. In fact in ways I mourn the loss of both my faith and my 'church'. However once I realized that, on a very fundamental level, the core of what they where claiming a…

What would that be?

I’ve encountered this claim more often than I’ve encountered actual fundamentalist churches I think are making any sort of strong claim about the world.

So I’m curious to hear what people think is wrong.

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

#249

Post by IsopropylHarbor » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #211

paulryanrogers wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After being raised in a non-Fundamentalist denomination I'd say the progressive ones are more insidious and no less harmful. Their foundations are all the same text, no matter how literal or figurative they interpret it. IME they usually also teach the same bad ways of thinking: emotion over logic, testimony over hard evidence, authority beyond your understanding, etc.

I suspect you're setting up a false dichotomy. There are more choices on theology than ones that require you to check your brain in at the door, such as 1. fundamentalism and 2. feel-good pop psychology. I am not taught emotion over logic. In fact, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (a framework derived from but not described by him) has you evaluate beliefs with reason being a co-equal base. In confirmation and later in-dep…

Methodist Quadrilateral still teaches their followers to view issues and compare them to their scripture, then their traditions, then reason, and Christian experiences...

Those are literally the four pillars of Wesleyan, which are all emotion over logic.

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

#250

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

jordanmorgan10 wrote: post #222

It's interesting to read a HN thread regarding theology. It seems there is quite an interest in the topic, and affirms another thing I tend to see: That many in this field identify as a Christian but don't really seem interested in saying so unless it's in a thread which expressly mentions it. Maybe it's my own bias and I'm just viewing it that way, as a Christian myself, as it feels hard to talk about it within the…

> That many in this field identify as a Christian but don't really seem interested in saying so unless it's in a thread which expressly mentions it.

Wouldn't it just be off-topic in other threads though? It's not a surprise it doesn't come up when it's not the subject of a given conversation. I have all sorts of interests that I don't tend to bring up until there's a conversation specifically about them.