Materialism, theism and atheism are all religions.
When i pray to Amazon they deliver.
Wi-fi is my invisible power that surrounds me. Sometimes I ask it for guidance on things like what restaurants are open.
The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
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Re: The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
#22Materialism, theism and atheism are all religions.
I'm not sure what the intention of choosing to define "religion" so as to include atheism, but it might be more productive to directly state what you are getting at.
When I google "religion", I get: "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods."
It reminds me of when a friend once said, "World War II just happened", and I said, "Me tying my shoe just happened, World War II happened 70 years ago". It was both our faults for arguing about the definition of a word instead of both trying to understand each other. What my friend meant was that, since WWII, culture and education hasn't changed much, and another such disastrous event could happen again. Which is why I'm now asking you to rephrase your statement in a way I can understand your intent better.
Re: The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
#23Re: The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
#24Re: The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
#25I just wanted to come here and show some respect for religious communities that work very hard to help people and the world become a better place. On hacker news, I would hope we can be rational and respectful about beliefs that are important to (many real and good) people. There are many religious people/beliefs that I agree with - and many I disagree with - we can discuss that like adults. But sarcastic, unkind remarks in the HN comments are not productive.
Re: The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
#26Materialism, theism and atheism are all religions.
You're using the fact that all are ideologies to attempt to smuggle in the connotations we have with "religion" and apply those to atheism and materialism. Examine those connotations directly and you'll see they don't sensically apply. For example: religion requires faith without evidence, materialism and atheism do not. Almost all religions make demands on the actions of their adherents, atheism almost by definition does not, except as in that as a category defined by lack of belief, those in that category won't believe in supernatural powers. There are legitimate semantic boundaries here, and attempting to blur them is only useful if you're trying to wage a war of connotation and emotion, not if you're trying to argue in good faith or build a good model of the world.
Re: The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
a-theism literally means "lack of belief". Bald is not a hair color.
The point he is making is Religion is replaced by Ideology. lets not reduce ourselves to "word-play".
No the point GP is making is that atheism is a religion (it's not), which is in itself wordplay.
To try to stay on the subject of the article, I find it interesting that it's Protestants who are abandoning their faith which is most of the downward trend in the graphs presented. I find that makes sense as Protestants are generally less dogmatic and more questioning (at least historically they were from my understanding) than their Catholic brethren.
Another way to put it, I feel there are some structural differences between Protestants and Catholics which help to explain the downward trend in one, and less so in the other.
edits: bad grammar
Re: The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
#28Coming Apart by Charles Murray is an incredibly important book that goes into detail about this including immense amounts of statistical data. The core of American civilization is based on Judeo-Christian values and the fact that faith in those are rotting away is directly leading to slow-motion social collapse. I understand the average HN reader is probably areligious (the book goes into the class dynamics of why this is) and skeptical of anything not science-related, but the deleterious effects are serious and real.
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/...
Re: The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
#29I think it would be really interesting to look at regional differences in the growth of religious 'nones'. Does it track internet or cell phone penetration? Educational attainment? Incomes? Has this ever been studied?
Re: The U.S. Is Retreating from Religion
#30Mostly trailing the rest of the developed world I believe.
Correct. An interesting symptom: the US ranks 33rd out of 34 in the OECD countries for belief in evolution.