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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

#321

Post by freddybobs »

throwaway0b1 wrote: post #230

This may be a very bad idea. But as (in the words of the at-present top comment) a fundamentalist adhering to scriptural literalism (aka a conservative Lutheran) [addendum: who does not hate everyone], I feel compelled to offer to answer questions anyone might have for me, so AMA. I don't really want to individually respond to everything throughout the rest of the comments, but I will begin by saying that most church…

What's your take on the dead sea scrolls ?

How do the aspects of the early church align with scriptural literalism? Specifically the split of the early church between Paul and Jesus brother James. James was Jesus's choice to lead the church in his absence. A direction which aligned more with Judaism - including circumcision, and kosher foods. Yet later Christianity revolves around Paul at odds vision. Paul was a Roman who 'saw the light' whilst being sent after Jesus. He never met Jesus. His version of 'Christianity' didn't require those aspects - not least because adult male Romans who were interested in Christianity, weren't too keen on circumcision.

If this is correct, it means modern Christianity, is not based on Jesus stated future direction of his church.

What does your 'scriptural literalism' say about this? If your literature doesn't cover these aspects - then what is decided is canonical and what is not? Presumably such a distinction has to be outside of said literature - and therefore not 'scriptual literalism'. Implying 'scriptual literalism' itself is not grounded.

I should probably also say that it seems to me that claiming 'scriptual literalism' is a defensive position against claims of subjectivity. It is 'literal' and therefore not subjective. This is a fallacy - as there is always subjectivity and interpretation in human understanding, and certainly in interpreting something as nuanced and contradictory as the bible.

This might come across as somewhat aggressive questioning, and I'm sorry for that - but I am legitimately curious how it works.

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

#322

Post by whatshisface »

IsopropylHarbor wrote: post #284
baryphonic wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "good person?" And do you really think people who believe in God are just listening to "fairy tails (sic)" so they can be face the reality of death? Is that really the best portrayal of Christians you can come up with?

> What is a "good person?" "How we ought to live," -Socrates

"How ought we to live?"

"How we ought to live."

I think that's a bit circular, Socrates.

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

#323

Post by luxuryballs »

xivzgrev wrote: post #273
throwaway0b1 wrote: post #230

This may be a very bad idea. But as (in the words of the at-present top comment) a fundamentalist adhering to scriptural literalism (aka a conservative Lutheran) [addendum: who does not hate everyone], I feel compelled to offer to answer questions anyone might have for me, so AMA. I don't really want to individually respond to everything throughout the rest of the comments, but I will begin by saying that most church…

Here’s some to kickstart things. Genuinely curious 1) did you grow up in the church you currently belong to or did you join later? If the former, did you ever explore other ones? Why/why not? 2) there can be doubt about what the Bible literally says given the number of authors, editors, and time involved. For example, someone chose x word when translating to English, that also could have meant y. Or, x book was inclu…

The entire point of the law was to show that it couldn’t be followed, they nearly always failed miserably, even the most famous and well regarded people in the Old Testament that were spoken very highly of like Abraham and David had their fair share of major fuck ups. The point was to show that we couldn’t do it, we were fundamentally flawed and needed Christ to take the burden on our behalf, and needed to be wholly remade through death, “born again” literally as a new creation, into a new lineage, that of Christ, after dying to the lineage of Adam that we inherited from our parents. It was never about doing enough right to outpace the wrong, it was always lineage and inheritance that determined our fate.

This paved the way for the Holy Spirit to come at Pentecost and basically kick off the church which has been growing and spreading from there ever since, and the church has only ever grown, never has it lost numbers, because it’s not an institution of man measured by attendance, those who are born again and counted cannot become “un” born again.

It also says that the path to life is narrow and few find it, there was never a heavenly expectation that they would ever be in the majority, despite that there is also a desire for all to be saved.

The difference is the human view and the God view. We were instructed to have the human view and act accordingly, spread the gospel far and wide because we didn’t know where the seed would fall and take root even though God knows, he didn’t want us to be choosy, that is his domain. All part of this grand cosmic theater that is infinitely beyond my limited perspective.

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

#324

Post by engineeringwoke »

sarabad2021 wrote: post #122
psychometry wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most "solid" theology is just shaky philosophy, though.

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.

I would advise you to head down to your local university and take a religious studies course covering a bit of the Bible. It's usually split into OT/NT.

What you will find there is that we know that the Bible is an amalgam of a script that was pieced together by many, many human authors. It is trivial today to tell because we can cross-reference Koine Greek versus translations and authors chose different words consistently for the same concepts.

So, no. Not really beyond the natural/physical world at all. Just one lie of many competing lies.

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

#325

Post by krastanov »

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #251
m0llusk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Witches? Seriously? That's just looney crap. I take it that "last straw" means the "straw that broke the camel's back". I just hope that stories like that won't be conflated with healthy practice of Christianity in people's minds.

I get your point, but isn't this the "no true Scotsman" fallacy? I know Christians like you exist and I like that most media portrays "good" Christians to look basically like the prototype you described. However, I have personally met only one Christian of this type and all my other interactions have been with the fundamenlist caricatures described elsewhere here. (Who is vocal about their Christianity might be skewing my observations, but this is a problem in its own: why are only the fundamentalists vocal around me)

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

#326

Post by Robotbeat »

__aintit__ wrote: post #221
shireboy wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Where are today's Inklings? As someone who has read and studied the Inklings extensively, I think the fact that these few misfit professors had such an impact is astounding in that they were able to do it. To be clear - their level of thought and depth was immense and powerful. All impact is merited. I think these sorts of collections of intellectual individuals are not as rare as we might think; they just don't bre…

The Inklings were overall extremely well-read and literate. Literally professors on mythology, linguistics/etc. Not necessarily fair to compare the general population to them. ;)

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

#327

Post by Balgair »

thechao wrote: post #243
m0llusk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For those that are confused as to what a 'Jefferson Bible' is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible

"The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible, is one of two religious works constructed by Thomas Jefferson. The first, The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, was completed in 1804, but no copies exist today. The second, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, was completed in 1820 by cutting and pasting with a razor and glue numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson's condensed composition excludes all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels that contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, and passages that portray Jesus as divine."

https://uuhouston.org/files/The_Jefferson_Bible.pdf Free here

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

#328

Post by xtracto »

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…

I was "in touch" with religion for 12 years (my parents sent me to a very catholic school even though both are atheists)

My experience was seeing huge amounts of falsehood and hypocrisy as religious people followed and repeated all the rituals of the mass but in the day to day life they just did not care about others and pretty much ignored what their religion taught them.

Thank God after those 12 years I saw everything I needed from religion to get as far away from it as I can.

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

#329

Post by MisterBastahrd »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #123
gwbas1c wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is, consistently, what I hear from friends and family as to why they have drifted away from the Catholic church, and is solidly my own reason as well. I was raised Catholic and decided, as a teenager, that I didn't want to be Catholic as an adult. > My theory is that people have always felt that way, but it was harder to nail down these awful people before social media. IMO, two things: 1: The changes in the 1…

At least the abortion thing makes sense: Catholics believe that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception, so abortion is effectively murder. It would be odd for the church to not openly oppose it.

They also believe that state sanctioned executions are murder, yet somehow the vast majority of Catholic adherents tend to be less willing to make political or advocacy decisions based on that.

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

#330

Post by umvi »

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.

You'll have a broken moral system imposed on you either way then, if not by a church than by the shifting values of politics and society. You'll never derive an absolute moral code by yourself, you are forced to accept the changing values of society or risk being ostracized. Most people just allow their morals to shift with society rather than dig in their heels or try to develop an absolute moral code.
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