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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

#271

Post by michaelt »

sarabad2021 wrote: post #122
psychometry wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most "solid" theology is just shaky philosophy, though.

I see no issues with Christianity from a philosophical standpoint. It explains things which our beyond our natural/physical world. Those things impact how we live in this world. I'm curious what you mean in your statement, please unpack your claim.

It depends what philosophical questions you want an answer to.

If you're asking "What happens to us after we die?" then the church has as good an answer as anyone, because nobody's bringing any hard evidence to the table.

If you're asking "How should I act and think to be a good person?" then religion has some ideas - some of them really good ideas, like the golden rule - but it's a huge question touching on almost everything. And some of today's questions require a lot of extrapolation over and above the words of the bible.

If you're asking natural philosophy questions, like "what is lightning" or "what do we need to do to prevent future flooding" then you probably won't reference religion at all (except perhaps when you get back to moral questions, like if your flood defence displaces people)

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

#273

Post by xivzgrev »

throwaway0b1 wrote: post #230

This may be a very bad idea. But as (in the words of the at-present top comment) a fundamentalist adhering to scriptural literalism (aka a conservative Lutheran) [addendum: who does not hate everyone], I feel compelled to offer to answer questions anyone might have for me, so AMA. I don't really want to individually respond to everything throughout the rest of the comments, but I will begin by saying that most church…

Here’s some to kickstart things. Genuinely curious

1) did you grow up in the church you currently belong to or did you join later? If the former, did you ever explore other ones? Why/why not?

2) there can be doubt about what the Bible literally says given the number of authors, editors, and time involved. For example, someone chose x word when translating to English, that also could have meant y. Or, x book was included and y book was not. What are your thoughts on this?

3) there are a lot of rules in the Bible, especially one like Letiviticus (sp?). As someone adhering to literalism, do you aspire to follow them all? If not, which ones do you? If so, how do you deal with (likely) not following them all?

4) how do you keep your faith nourished / going in today’s society, where membership in churches is declining and Internet denizens can have a lot of skepticism toward religion?

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

#274

Post by wwarner »

For the life of me, I cannot remember his name and I cannot find a reference, but there is a post-war German theologian who celebrated the kind of personal Christianity that doesn't require a church hierarchy, arguing that acting independently with the values of the faith without being told what to do is the best outcome.

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

#275

Post by avasylev »

I've never been religious but for 30+ years I always considered myself christian. If asked on such survey, I'd answer with the church I used to go twice a year for Christmas and Easter. One day I watched Ricky Gervais give interview on Cobert show (who's religios). And geez those jokes made me realize I'm actually and atheist. Now I would answer with no affiliation. From my friends observation, many are on the same edge, where practically they are gone from church, but may still show up on survey. In such cases those membership rates are going to drop a lot and fast.

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

#276

Post by kodah »

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…

Fundamentalism is still a vague description. I left the Catholic church in my teens and was angry for the experiences I'd had. As I grew as an adult my ire went from "religious institutions" to "certain moral communities".

In any moral community there will be outliers and some of those outliers can take hold of a message. You can see this in modern day with secular moral communities as well. My main takeaway, after 20-some years of evaluating this is that morals are something okay to evaluate your group on, but they are not ethics. They cannot apply widely, make their way into law, or try to shape society because by their very definition they are intrinsic to small groups. That doesn't mean these groups can't teach us something, but the foundation of their ideas requires subscription and often holistically.

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

#277

Post by psychometry »

sarabad2021 wrote: post #122
psychometry wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most "solid" theology is just shaky philosophy, though.

I see no issues with Christianity from a philosophical standpoint. It explains things which our beyond our natural/physical world. Those things impact how we live in this world. I'm curious what you mean in your statement, please unpack your claim.

What exactly is there to unpack? You have modern-day humans going around believing that an omnipotent God impregnated a human female so that his son could sacrifice himself for the sins of humanity. It's patently absurd (though really no more absurd than any other religion).

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

#278

Post by AuthorizedCust »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #256
baryphonic wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "good person?" And do you really think people who believe in God are just listening to "fairy tails (sic)" so they can be face the reality of death? Is that really the best portrayal of Christians you can come up with?

Christians base their belief system on a collection of stories from 2000+ years ago and the idea of a deity and other planes of existence (edit: “Heaven” and “Hell”) of which no proof exists. Please correct me if any of the above is inaccurate.

Sounds accurate, from a super high level, except for the "other planes of existence" part. I'd need to dig into that with you to understand more.

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

#280

Post by ramraj07 »

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…

1. Stance on abortion among your brothers in church? As if brothers should even have one that matters?

2. Do you follow the edict that if you’re not baptist then by definition you go to hell? How do you reconcile this with having friends or anyone at all you care about who are then going to hell?

Point is, I’m not sure there is any middle ground that’s acceptable. I don’t come here as an atheist, just as someone who’s trying really hard to believe but finding no acceptable ground to stand at all. The only smart people I find religious (especially Christian) are ones who were born and grew up forced to go to church. Typically they’d give up on practising it in their teens, basically break every rule in their book for two decades and then somehow rediscover it because now it’s convenient to find some community and higher purpose in their life. The ones who convert from elsewhere when they are adults are almost always gullible and did so for the most transactional reasons you can think of.

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