Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
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Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#2For many people in post-Soviet countries, it was the other way around: raised as atheists, many of them found religion when it became allowed.
I wonder if the same thing will happen with China.
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#3I'm switching back to religion. I used to not believe but after the pandemic and researching the immune system, I don't believe that a complex system like simply the immune system can be not only created by chance but can be spread across an entire population. There are many components of the immune system and even the endocrine system that requires things to be designed together, not randomly across millions of years and I've decided that we were designed at some point because it's too perfectly intertwined across different body parts.
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#4Good, I'm strongly against supernatural beliefs and any trend towards greater secular thought is a welcome one.
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#5I left in my teens. Religion seemed, at that time and still does, appears to reinforce systems of power and conformity rather than do good.
Non-believers often ask themselves, "what god would have the ability to eliminate suffering and choose not to?" We should also ask, "What religious institution and followers, having amassed the riches of the world, would choose not to eliminate suffering when they could?"
The weight of these contradictions eventually breaks belief. There's one way to win back believers and it's to eliminate in-group/out-group dynamics and replace it with material acts of benevolence - akin to large scale public works projects to eliminate suffering.
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#6One important detail in the article, but not the headline, is:
> In short, these age patterns might be signs of secularization... However, it’s also possible that some of the age differences in religious affiliation revealed in a single survey could result from people becoming more religious as they grow older.
Here's an article from the same research firm last month that examines a different measurement: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/decline-of-c...
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#7I'm switching back to religion. I used to not believe but after the pandemic and researching the immune system, I don't believe that a complex system like simply the immune system can be not only created by chance but can be spread across an entire population. There are many components of the immune system and even the endocrine system that requires things to be designed together, not randomly across millions of year…
It's unfortunate that your research led you to religion instead of learning more about evolution
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#8I was born atheist as I think we all are. But I rejected the kind of indoctrination that follows pretty early on. More or less when I found out Santa Clause was a social construct that everyone agreed to lie about I started to question everything really. But also asking myself, "If this is bullshit, why would people lie about it?" I was satisfied in my atheism.
Weirdly though, my mom took my sister and I to a Quaker meeting when we were 10, 11 years old and I thought it was kind of cool. Still didn't believe in a god or whatever but I liked the people and the kind of lack of hierarchy of Quakerism (no priest, just people sitting in silence facing one another, etc.).
I was surprised to find myself seeking out a Quaker meeting again recently — here now 50 or so years since. Perhaps memories of that time came back when reflecting on the past after my mother's death a couple years ago. Perhaps the times we are living in caused me to look for "community".
And I have enjoyed finding the small group of Friends I could in Omaha. When I told one of the regulars that I was atheist, he was cool with it. "Atheism is a necessary step on the way to enlightenment," he told me.
Still puzzling over that.
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#9I left in my teens. Religion seemed, at that time and still does, appears to reinforce systems of power and conformity rather than do good. Non-believers often ask themselves, "what god would have the ability to eliminate suffering and choose not to?" We should also ask, "What religious institution and followers, having amassed the riches of the world, would choose not to eliminate suffering when they could?" The wei…
I don't think this is religious institution v non-religious institutions scenario where the first stopped caring and the second cares. I think it's: more comfortable/complacent societies don't care about eliminating suffering so established institutions (religious or not) just stopped caring too. Plenty less-established religious institution are (at least) convincing enough people they are focused on reducing suffering. (in Christianity look at the evangelical movement around the world)
Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
#10I'm switching back to religion. I used to not believe but after the pandemic and researching the immune system, I don't believe that a complex system like simply the immune system can be not only created by chance but can be spread across an entire population. There are many components of the immune system and even the endocrine system that requires things to be designed together, not randomly across millions of year…
It's unfortunate that your research led you to religion instead of learning more about evolution
It didn’t. Just typical religious lies about how various things are too complex to have been “random”. The use of the word random gives it away.