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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

#731

Post by ur-whale »

eszed wrote: post #726
ur-whale wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This approach, "religion as an operator's manual to living one's life" is one of the very rare arguments in defense of religion I can vaguely resonate with. Unfortunately this argument entirely fails to support all the rest of the luggage, especially the metaphysical hokum: you can perfectly chose to live your life according to a set of rules that will help you (and others) without having to justify it via the existe…

You're right, but there is value in the community of accountability that churches provide. Fasting, tithing, charity work, and self-examination are objectively worthwhile, but not things I'm likely to muster up the will-power to do on my own, at least not regularly. It's like physical exercise: easier to get yourself off your ass when you go to the gym with a friend, or join a regular class. Also, even though I don't…

> easier to get yourself off your ass when you go to the gym

Yeah, I hear you, but this is where we part ways: to me it's not a matter of willpower, but rather one of - a sin, I know - pride: I can't bear the idea that I'm walking the path of my life using the equivalent of moral crutches.

As to your second argument: no argument there, not everything about religion is bad, even if, in the case of beautiful churches, you could argue that the way they were erected wasn't necessarily "ethical".

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

#732

Post by christiansakai »

phd514 wrote: post #461
_nckn wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I knew what Christianity was, growing up in church. After I attended a theological seminary, I realized I knew nothing. Also I stopped debating religion with people online because I realized majority of religion debates are extremely shallow, yes even those with popular sciences like Richard Dawkins are shallow. On the other hand, being just a regular member of my church, I also don't want to bring my backg…

I've come to a similar place after doing graduate work in Christian theology. The theology, philosophy, and literature of the Bible is the most-studied of any book in the last two millennia and pretty much any question or objection that can be raised about it has been addressed by some of the greatest minds in history. You might not find their conclusions satisfactory, but a serious criticism of Christianity must at…

Pretty much. 100%

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

#733

Post by gobrewers14 »

dawg- wrote: post #336
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…

I became an atheist/agnostic as a teenager and now in my late 20's I have slowly come back to religion. So I am really interested in this topic. My comment is specifically about online atheist communities, because I think they are often toxic to both religion and to atheism itself. A lot of these communities are hyper-focused on fundamentalism, to their own detriment. These online atheists communities can be very unf…

> "that you take your atheism on faith, too." This is a nonsensical statement. Atheism is a recognition that there is zero evidence for the existence of any gods. It requires no faith.

> "Origen, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Kierkegaard, or even contemporary thinkers like Alasdair McIntyre ... should be super easy to refute, right?"

You're shifting the burden of proof; there is nothing to refute. It's not the job of atheists to disprove your assertions. Regardless of a persons' intelligence, they cannot argue their deity into existence. It either exists or it doesn't. None of the aforementioned scholars ever presented evidence for their god or demonstrated supernatural causation.

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

#734

Post by ggggtez »

lootsauce wrote: post #606

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble…

Spoken like someone with white privilege.

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

#735

Post by philsnow »

fullstop wrote: post #619
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…

I was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools until college. When I was in high school I recall having serious issues with what they were teaching. Here's a few of the gems they left me with: 1. You should only get married if you intended on having children. 2. If you were unable to have children, the marriage should be annulled. 3. Homosexuality was abhorrent and sinful. 4. Women should not obtain positi…

> If you were unable to have children, the marriage should be annulled.

This depends on a lot of things. If two people get married, and one of them already knows that they are sterile or for whatever reason cannot have children, but they don't reveal that to the other until after they are married, that is grounds for the other person to seek an annulment. This is not the same thing as saying that the marriage "should" be annulled.

If on the other hand, knowledge of the person's sterility doesn't arise until after they are married, I don't think that's grounds for an annulment.

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

#736

Post by stjohnswarts »

lootsauce wrote: post #606

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble…

This is just some philosophical mental masturbation and many others have done it better. To say everyone worships something is to conflate worship with desire, ambition, and god knows how many other emotions. It's all kind of silly and just plain oversimplification.

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

#737

Post by [deleted] »

baryphonic wrote: post #195
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.

> 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. How did you derive your moral code yourself? Any action you take has side effects in the outside world, and so some minimal, common understanding of morality is nec…

[deleted]

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

#738

Post by ggggtez »

elmomle wrote: post #691
rmah wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that quote, Wallace is just morphing, conflating, and fudging the definition of the word "worship". He says people "worship" (with a variety of subtly different meanings) a variety of things and then, implies that because we can use the same word, "worship", to describe those activities, they are equivalent. I despise this rhetorical technique. I find it both insulting, intellectually dishonest and useless.

It's pretty clear that that "worship" here refers to where we practice focusing our heart's yearnings, not to a set of religious rites. Synonyms of this meaning of "worship" include "revere" and "venerate".

No. Because he opens his thought with saying that "Atheism" doesn't exist. Atheism isn't a rejection of "yearning" or "reverence". It's a rejection of religion.

He's just playing word games, and you are falling for it.

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

#739

Post by [deleted] »

baryphonic wrote: post #195
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.

> 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. How did you derive your moral code yourself? Any action you take has side effects in the outside world, and so some minimal, common understanding of morality is nec…

[deleted]

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

#740

Post by stjohnswarts »

marcosdumay wrote: post #721
jandrese wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the idea that faith can't eat you alive to be strange given that we have so many examples of that happening in real life. Faith is no different than money, power, allure, etc... in that regard. That's one reason people turn to atheism in the first place, to avoid getting gobbled up by religion.

Personally, I've seen churches eat way more people alive than greed or any other power allure. Beauty consumes people at the beginning of life, but most get away from it at the start of adult age. The only other things that come close are political ideologies and personality cults.

I have minor criminal cousin named Jake, Jake doesn't claim to be anything else, unlike most Christians I've known who feel morally superior yet hold some of the least humanitarian ideas I've ever known. At least cousin Jake doesn't lie to himself about what he is.
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