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How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

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Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#61

Post by baldfat »

Retric wrote: post #56
daveqr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The numbers show that more people attend church percentage wise then ever in history of America."

More people lie about attending church which is the only way you can get the 40% figgure. But actual attendance has not been keeping up with population growth. "Q: How many people go to church each Sunday? A: For years, the Gallup Research Organization has come up with a consistent figure — 40 percent of all Americans, or roughly 118 million people, who said they attended worship on the previous weekend. Recently, so…

This is a study of dishonesty more then attendance. You can't go and just ask, "Do you go to church every weekend. People will lie. Also read the table of church growth over the past 40 years on the page you just quoted. Christianity falling is just as much a "Known Truth" as much as above 50% divorce rate of first time marriages.

Care with studies. Most Christians "just know" Christianity is falling away and pay big money to people who predict the death of the faith (George Barna AKA father of Christians divorce rate is the same or higher then non-Christian divorce rate though the one issue is his numbers were all a lie). The truth is that it has grown in mind blowing numbers and really hasn't slowed down except in Mainline denominations and Catholic Churches. The vast majority of stats are if people were honest to the question did they go to church. The surprise is most people are dishonest that they attend church weekly. Case in point East Sunday attendance is huge compared to normal weekly attendance.

I think people are just being blind to the meteoric rise of Christianity in the past 100 years. In 1910 more then half the Christians in the world were European.

Here is a good academic study. http://www.gordonconwell.edu/resources/Center-for-the-Study-...

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#62

Post by Alex3917 »

afhdshufdufdo wrote: post #53
danbruc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atheism is a belief but not a religious belief.

Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.' Notice the word "especially". Scientology is based on the idea of what some might call aliens having superhuman powers. In atheism, a number of superhuman powers, i.e. things that humans cannot do, are ascribed to science- even though there is nothing that disallows that God could be involved in e…

> Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.'

No it's not. Your entire argument is based on a false premise.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#64

Post by donkeyd »

jey wrote: post #30
mullingitover wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also the greatest tool that has ever been created for destroying superstition and myth. We're in the golden age of critical thinking, something that is very destructive to religious belief.

> We're in the golden age of critical thinking Source/citation/justification? Seems just as easy to make the opposing argument, that mass media technologies are being perfected to the point where it'll soon be possible to use highly optimized Skinner boxes for disseminating propaganda, something like Zynga plus Fox News. The victims would be voluntarily opting in to their own brainwashing.

I think this kind of proves your point: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#65

Post by donkeyd »

afhdshufdufdo wrote: post #53
danbruc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atheism is a belief but not a religious belief.

Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.' Notice the word "especially". Scientology is based on the idea of what some might call aliens having superhuman powers. In atheism, a number of superhuman powers, i.e. things that humans cannot do, are ascribed to science- even though there is nothing that disallows that God could be involved in e…

"Darwin takes the place of a prophet"

Wait, what?

As an atheist, I never realized I believe in and worship Darwin as a superhuman controlling power. Thanks for pointing this out to me! I'll make sure to put a Darwinian altar in my house and pray to it daily, for giving me food to eat and keeping my family members healthy!

Also, talking about the actions of a small number of atheists, as if you're talking about all atheists, is just as ignorant as calling out all Christians for the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Well done, for confirming the prejudice of narrow mindedness that both your fellow countrymen and fellow Christians already have to deal with.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#66

Post by dllthomas »

donkeyd wrote: post #65
afhdshufdufdo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.' Notice the word "especially". Scientology is based on the idea of what some might call aliens having superhuman powers. In atheism, a number of superhuman powers, i.e. things that humans cannot do, are ascribed to science- even though there is nothing that disallows that God could be involved in e…

"Darwin takes the place of a prophet" Wait, what? As an atheist, I never realized I believe in and worship Darwin as a superhuman controlling power. Thanks for pointing this out to me! I'll make sure to put a Darwinian altar in my house and pray to it daily, for giving me food to eat and keeping my family members healthy! Also, talking about the actions of a small number of atheists, as if you're talking about all at…

"Superhuman controlling power" seems more "deity" than "prophet".

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#67

Post by dllthomas »

gonvaled wrote: post #60
afhdshufdufdo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.' Notice the word "especially". Scientology is based on the idea of what some might call aliens having superhuman powers. In atheism, a number of superhuman powers, i.e. things that humans cannot do, are ascribed to science- even though there is nothing that disallows that God could be involved in e…

"Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't." Of course they can co-exist, and atheism has nothing to say against religion: religion, by definition, is non-falsifiable, so atheism can not negate it. Atheism is, nevertheless, very sceptical about the actual existence of a supreme being. It can't prove its non-existence, but still considers it as veeeery improbable. As "there are a million…

Words have shifted a bit. In the strictest possible senses, "It's not possible to know for sure" is an agnostic position and the atheistic position would be either "I believe there is no god, whatever the evidence" or "I believe there is no god, here is the evidence". These strict uses sometimes confuse more typical uses, where "probably not, because I haven't seen sufficient evidence to make 'there is any sort of a god' more likely than other options" is called "atheist" and "shrug I dunno" falls under "agnostic".

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#68

Post by notastartup »

joeclark77 wrote: post #51
notastartup wrote: post #33

I remember reading a piece about how Catholic church is trying to ban people from using condom and thought it was pretty ridiculous that they were against safety. A fellow Android developer was catholic and started a long rant about how condoms promote infidelity and adultery -_- and he literally sat in front of the screen for hours writing a huge rebuttal to what I have said. Another time I advised him against purch…

So... did he make money on the mutual funds? If so, joke's on you, right? Evidence and hard facts seem to support his position on the other issue, now, don't they?

I think he's divorced now so it probably doesn't matter.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#69

Post by jamesaguilar »

baldfat wrote: post #58
jamesaguilar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are more people now than ever. Are you trying to make a parody?

Read the word percentage

Oh, that part is just factually inaccurate, at least as far as I could find in a brief search. The only reason it's even staying flat is because it's stealing from other religions. The overall amount of religious people is shrinking, especially in affluent/educated countries.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#70

Post by joeclark77 »

afhdshufdufdo wrote: post #59
joeclark77 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're in the golden age of critical thinking That's a hoot! There hasn't been as much tribalism and sloganeering in US politics as there is now since before the Civil War. Children graduating high school these days are barely literate and absolutely incapable of identifying a logical syllogism or evaluating an argument. Jon Stewart's joke news show is most of the country's prime source of information and analysis.…

+10000000. I totally agree with you. But, I don't know what to do about it. We've tried public and private schools, but I think a lot of the problem is our culture. Hard work and studying are not rewarded; group mind-think and standardization have taken the place of a good combination of rote memory learning and essay writing/debating. What if we were to establish schools the same way they existed in the 1800s with t…

I'd like to find a way to do homeschooling that wouldn't require my wife to be a full-time teacher. One possibility is something like a network of families where each one is responsible for a particular subject or a particular day of the week, and they take turns. Or something like Art Robinson's curriculum (http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com) where the children are basically self-teaching, and you can do other work as long as you're around to keep the schedule/discipline. It's tough, though. I wish I could trust the Catholic schools, at least, to stick to a classical education, but they're shaped more by the culture than by tradition these days.
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