851–860 of 1001 posts
Maybe an individual church can't tell us much about the broader trends, but it would be interesting to see if people are moving to more extreme churches, or more liberal, etc.
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.
> But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre. I don't think it's bizarre at all. With the church removed from western society something will fill the vacuum. And truly it already has. Our society requires complete unquestioning philosophical adherence to its new religion. What happened during the French revolution? They turned the churches into "Temples of Rea…
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…
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…
One of the high points for me regarding religion in the past couple years was finding The Holy Post podcast. One host is Phil Vischer, AKA Bob the Tomato, the creator of Veggie Tales. I have some fundamental (heh) disagreements with their perspective at this point, but they remind me of what I thought the church was while growing up within it, and they still largely reflect what I think it should be. They acknowledge that there’s lots of room for disagreement, they don’t think they have all the answers, and they strike me as genuinely loving people.
If I had heard more people talking like them 20 years ago, I might not have left the church. It’s not a question of “baby food” so much as “cultural identity,” and the cultural identity of the American church is largely flag-waving rah-rah nationalism. Not sure what stats you’re referencing, because megachurches are still quite popular here and quite clear on their “theology.”
If you the parent poster are not located in America, please disregard this post entirely.
For comparison, UK church membership is Numbers for those claiming to be of "No religion" range from from 50 to 60% depending on region. 38% don't believe in God or any higher spiritual power. The interesting thing is people will identify as Christian on the census while also not claiming to subscribe to any particular religion in other surveys. 2021 census (just completed this month) results will be interesting http…
Growing up in the 80's (UK) as a Roman Catholic, I remember the services being full on Sunday mornings. Not been since I left home at 18, because frankly I stopped believing in God the same time I stopped believing in Father Christmas (7?). The only reason I went was to make my parents happy. Now I'm in my 40's I do wonder if the lack of religion in society is leading us to a bad place. We know from numerous studies…
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where is the pull for good old family values? That's a term that everyone interprets their own way, without even realising that they have different values to the person standing next to them; different people's "family values" can conflict in significant and very incompatible ways. So what are "good old family values"? If your young, unmarried daughter falls pregnant, should you cast her out or should you double-down…
Good old family values would discourage young, unmarried women from getting pregnant in the first place. That is absolutely not how society works today, so let's start there instead of your absurd example.
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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 o…
You're bemoaning a lack of empirical evidence when the problem is actually a philosophical one.
>there is nothing to refute
Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like your stance is that God doesn't exist because God doesn't exist? Circular argument much? Atheism is a positive statement, too.
>It's not the job of atheists to disprove your assertions.
Of course it's not your "job". But I'd rather talk to someone who can actually explain why they think what they think.
> It either exists or it doesn't.
We are not omnipotent beings. We must strive to gain knowledge and understanding of the universe we live in. How do you know whether or not it exists?
>None of the aforementioned scholars ever presented evidence for their god or demonstrated supernatural causation.
Disagree completely, they all presented interesting arguments.
“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…
These things are SHARED among many things, along with religion;
- we humans tend to form social hierarchies
- we all want to be belong
- we want to be the hero of our story
- life is hard, and death is terrifying, so we need lullabies
- some rules/codes required wherever there are more than 1 person alive. Be it religious, moral or written/legal.
- we all need some ideal to work towards
This however, is SPECIAL to religion;
Religion makes it a habit in believers to believe without evidence, forbits questioning, and delays answers to "afterlife". Hence takes away the power of understanding and reasoning.
It installs a backdoor to people's minds so to speak. From which all the other bullshit are welcome to come in and also take a seat in their mind.
Oh wait, there was this video that was explains these more elegantly than I can. Okay I've found it: https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1357915846731997185
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I could never take this guy seriously. I mean, he killed himself. Why should we listen to what he has to say?
Do you also not take Alan Turing's works seriously?
Consider all the love and respect directed at Robin Williams after he died. The perverse reality is that for someone in a suicidal frame of mind, that kind of love makes "I'd be better off dead" far more credible.
I think the other extreme, outright condemning someone, probably doesn't work either, as it's liable to make a person with suicidal feelings feel trapped.
So I settle for disapproval, that suicide is a permanent stain on someone's legacy, in the hope that it nudges someone to stick it out for another day.