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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

#291

Post by Context_free »

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…

> adhering to scriptural literalism

What scripture? As Bart Ehrman has written in his books condensing scholarly tomes for the layman, there are many scriptures, and we don't have the originals. The Comma Johanneum being the clearest passage that there is a trinity is not found in the Greek until the 15th century. Mark thought to be the earliest gospel, it ends without a clear resurrection from the earliest manuscripts - a resurrection was tacked on later. The story of the adulteress Jesus refused to condemn is not found in the earliest scriptures. And on and on. Much of contemporary scripture were things invented centuries after the events recorded.

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

#292

Post by throw7 »

I think life, in general, is pretty good and has been in the U.S. As a result, it's not surprising to see the numbers decline over the years.

That said, religion isn't going anywhere. The metaphysical questions we have are still the same since the dawn of mankind.

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

#293

Post by kaybe »

luxuryballs wrote: post #267
api wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked to people of the younger generations (in the USA) who are not even aware that there is anything other than fundamentalist literalism. Either the Earth is 6000 years old and Jonah literally rode in the belly of a whale, or there is no God. This sets up a situation where you have to be willfully ignorant or lie to defend the existence of God, since this stuff is bollocks. In reality fundamentalist literalis…

Well given the logical definition of God 6 day creation and riding in a whale are not a problem at all, anything is possible. I never saw a 6000 year old Earth in the Bible though.

The idea is to assume we have an unbroken record of genealogy in the bible and add up all the lifetimes of people mentioned, which gives the ~6000 years. [0]

I'm not sure whether there is any basis for this assumption in the text though..

[0] https://creation.com/6000-years

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

#294

Post by jbluepolarbear »

I went to a Protestant Christian school for 9 years and church until I was 16. As someone with learning disabilities, Tourette’s, and (at the time) gender identity issues; Christian’s made my life a living hell for things I had no control over.

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

#295

Post by ben_w »

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…

I was raised liberal Catholic by an atheist father and an eclectic hippie New-Age-Catholic-Hindu-dowsing-crystals-homeopathy-and-runic[0]-divination mother, for the purposes of getting into a good school.

While it is fair to say that one specific fundamentalist young-Earth creationist Baptist certainly turned me from “it isn’t true but it doesn’t matter” to “it is actively harmful for people to believe this”, I should also say that the liberal version of Catholicism at my school — liberal enough to not explicitly condemn abortion or homosexuality, even though this was the U.K. in the 1990s and Section 28 still in force — had terrible sex education which completely ignored the existence of e.g. chlamydia, and I do think that was due to the religion given how quickly I learned about it the moment I moved to the next step in my education.

The open-mindedness may have been good for me as a teenager going through a goth-paganism phase, but it also meant she gave my dad homeopathic remedies when he got bowel cancer, and she got Alzheimer’s 15 years younger than her mother “despite” her use of Bach flower remedies for memory.

[0] naturally this meant I learned to read the outer border of the Allen & Unwin edition of The Hobbit, and the text in the hand drawn maps inside: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/...

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

#296

Post by engineeringwoke »

baryphonic wrote: post #214
toomuchtodo wrote: post #145

Late 30s here who was dragged to church by parents and grandparents but who isn't exposing our kids to religion. It’s pretty straightforward for us: you don’t need fairy tales to be a good person and to come to terms with death (which comes for everyone). “Be happy, be kind.” If others choose to observe, that’s their choice.

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?

Not OP, but yes, I think that any consumer of organized religion is doing it because fairy tales are easier than life and death is scary. That is all it really is, right?

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

#297

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

Church membership i think ignores the fact about the explosion in alternative beliefs and practices.

For example, meditation, san pedro, ayahuasca use etc has exploded tremendously and I think there is a significant cross section of the former religious population that have found relief from daily hustle via these alternative non-denominational activities.

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

#298

Post by justaman »

jimhefferon wrote: post #239
justaman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes beyond fairy tails. There is a sense of community that (for the most part) only religion has been able to maintain in the information age.

> a sense of community I'm sorry to see the downvotes since this as an intelligent point. I'm not religious but one thing I do envy in my church-going friends is fellowship. I'm a man in my 60's, and maybe all this is not applicable for the majority of folks here. But people don't have groups like clubs or bowling leagues very much anymore. Watching TV at home is fine, but not enough. (I'm in a club that is now break…

In my experience nothing has been able to replicate what religion does for communities. Every Sunday hundreds of people get together and chat over coffee before service. This mass gathering offers the opportunity to find other people with similar interests which in turn leads to small groups. Some will say, "That's what meetup.com is for.". I agree, meetup.com is great, but it doesn't have that central core of hundreds of people before splitting up into smaller groups. Meetup.com cuts out the larger group entirely and pushes people into smaller groups automatically. That's an important thing that gets lost.

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

#299

Post by soco »

bopbeepboop wrote: post #248
dagw wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up attending church, and on the whole have nothing but good things to say about the whole experience. It gave me both spiritual and moral support when I needed it the most and some of the best people I have ever known, I got to know through church. In fact in ways I mourn the loss of both my faith and my 'church'. However once I realized that, on a very fundamental level, the core of what they where claiming a…

What would that be? I’ve encountered this claim more often than I’ve encountered actual fundamentalist churches I think are making any sort of strong claim about the world. So I’m curious to hear what people think is wrong.

I mentioned in a parallel comment that I had similar experiences, so I'll jump in until the other commenter does. And to keep spirits cooler, I'll mention my experiences in martial arts. I gained my black belt in Aikido in a wonderful dojo, wonderful teachers, doing many activities together otherwise. I found a few lifetime friends there and love as well, so it was definitely more than "training", it was a real community. Yet I'm not going there anymore for a dozen years already. The entire teaching is based on life energies and ki flows which... just weren't there for me. I was able to progress nicely also without them - faking them to be more honest, I could have been continued growing in the technique, but what was the point continuing something I don't believe in? What was the point in rebelling and showing them how simple sportmanship gets the same peace of mind, does the same precision, builds the same attitude towards "martial" and life in general? People are good if they choose the good, and not everybody needs the supernatural element in order to stay good. And I don't mean a fear of supernatural punishment, but in my Aikido case, a belief in supernatural and benevolent support.

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

#300

Post by antattack »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #217

I see religion as being a useful counterbalance to government power. I'm a little concerned how cultish politics is getting in the US. Racism is the new original sin. You can just call anyone racist to publicly condemn them as unforgivable sinners. I was very concerned about Churches being burned down in last year's Riots, the cult of personality around Trump, and the new woke culture that sees individuals as only me…

Last thing one should want is to give religion power. People need better education, more tolerance and less judgement.
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