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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

#341

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?

> What is a "good person?"

I know why you are asking this, but honestly it's a silly question.

Most humans have empathy. Most humans know "things and people that hurt others are bad. Humans helping others are good". For the few that don't, we've got legal codes built on the same principles.

The bible has very little morality in it that's "good" and a lot of really questionable moral statements. For example, beating slaves is OK so long as they recover in a day or 2 (Exodus 21:20-21). These questionable moral passages have been used to make a lot of good people, bad people. From justifying slavery, anti-"race mixing", anti LGBT+ rights, etc. So why hold it up as a good moral code? Because Jesus said "love one another"? He also said "No, I have come to divide people against each other! 52 From now on families will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against—or two in favor and three against." (Luke 12:49-56)

> 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?

That's a large part of it. Most believe in god because their parents taught them to believe in god. They continue to believe in god usually because of the fear of what happens if that world view is challenged or changed. A lot take "Pascal's Wager" very seriously, the believe because "If I'm wrong, I'll go to hell". Many believe because they are constantly reinforcing that belief, they surround themselves with others that believe.

Unless you are a fundamentalist, you'll look at the bible and see it's mostly a bunch of impossible tales. Most people don't seriously believe that god decided to kill the population of the world in a great flood because they broke his rules, they try and make it an allegory (or fairy tale).

So, stripe out all the tales that are allegories and what are you left with?

> Is that really the best portrayal of Christians you can come up with?

It's a pretty charitable portrayal. A less than charitable one is one that sees them as trying to force everyone into christian law. It's watching as they constantly push hate filled rhetoric into the public space because "The bibles says this is a sin". A less than charitable view of Christianity is one that sees all the megachurch pastors preaching a prosperity gospel to bilk old women out of their retirement savings. Those of us outside of religion see the most popular religions as cons draining capital while providing little in return other than "feel good"s. For all the good you can point that a religion might do, the most successful religions have multimillion dollar buildings, large salaries for their preachers, and starving parishioners.

You opened asking what is a "good person". I'd say a good person is one that doesn't take money from the poor and give nothing in return. Most christian churches can't be called "good".

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

#342

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 inclu…

I can help here as I have a similar background.

1) yes I did. I did not join later. I have attended many other church's. Many are trying to put butts in seats and are focusing on which distortion peddle gets more people in than using the scriptures and lessons in those words to do it. If you read the gospels you will find them full of life lessons you can apply right now, today.

2) This is an issue. What is more of an issue is the way words can and do change meaning over the years. So you can have a translation from 100 years ago and it takes on a different meaning. All because the choice of words they used just happens to mean something similar now vs then. The cure is to read many translations. Also keep things in context. There are online resources which you can use if you are unclear on a particular meaning in that context and go back to the original texts. Context for many translations is also the context of the year it was translated. There are also some translations that leave things out, or change the meaning, because they decided for you what you should hear so you have to watch out for those.

3) Many of those rules are wiped clean at the end of the 4 gospels. As the price has been paid. But there is a simpler price to pay.

4) It is good to find a church in your area that sticks to the gospels. Does not try to be trendy and use worldly lessons replacing gospel. That does not mean they do not talk about world events, but that they do not take on fads. There is also a huge amount of youtube and individual pages you can go to. In many ways the internet has made it even easier to converge all of these resources. Remember many searching engines try to tailor your search to what you like. So you may not even be seeing them.

I would also add many times you find that if it is out of context it is someone trying to distort a meaning. The trick is do not feed the trolls and ignore them.

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

#344

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…

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

#345

In my opinion the main problem for religion right now is the failure to explain their arguments at the highest intellectual level, publicly, consistently. Once I was exposed to better theology and philosophy of Christianity I was blown away. Edward Feser’s ‘The Last Superstition’ helped open this up. I have no idea why the level of discourse is on average so primitive, I think church leaders have been systematically…

I agree.

I grew up in a conservative congregation with a difficult-to-understand theology. I went through some dark and nihilistic points in my life but after being exposed to Jordan Peterson's study of Christianity as the mythology that underpins the culture of the west I developed a deep appreciation for these ideas and now consider myself a Christ follower.

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

#346
post #295

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 shoul…

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

#348

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’…

> Point is, I’m not sure there is any middle ground that’s acceptable.

I grew up fundamentalist, then swung hard atheist, then ended up, as one friend who went to seminary described it, "the most christian atheist he's ever met". I've known Christians ignorant and intellectual, hateful and openly loving, urban and rural, liberal and conservative, and everything in-between.

Here's my take: A healthy faith is not about rules at all, or about finding a system for understanding the physical world or anything like that. If you get obsessed with rules you become a bitter fundamentalist; if you get fed-up with religion but stay obsessed with rules you become a bitter atheist.

A healthy faith is about people. Yourself, your community, the world. Cultivating habits of forgiveness and growth toward yourself, and openness and love toward others. Having a specific segment of your life dedicated to contemplation of the most important things in life, and doing so in a community on a regular basis. The iconography and the texts, ideally, are just a communal conduit for those ideas; symbols people can point to and use to talk about their thoughts and feelings around this stuff with others, and also to spark new thoughts and points of discussion.

Many (not all) of my close friends are christians, and none of them have ever tried to convert me. Some of them don't really think hell exists; most of them don't think some magic prayer is all that's needed to keep you out of it. Most, I think, see that even if it does, the best thing they can do for others is simply to love them and to help them be better through example and osmosis, if anything. They know they don't control others and they can't force them into whatever. They can only be Good and hope that it spreads.

I like this quote from Pope Francis:

> We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.

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

#349

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…

My own experience being raised mainline Protestant was a bit different which might be illustrative: My parents were not at all devout, but still took wisdom and moral lessons from the Bible, especially from the teachings of Jesus. At the same time the preachers in town leaned right in their beliefs and focused on reading and interpreting more obscure passages. This resulted in a modest ongoing tension about what exac…

This demonstrates the big flaw of Christianity. Even thought there are millions of sincere, loving and friendly Christians around the world, the whole thing is based around a book that espouses views that are exactly what you call fundamentalism. Sooner or later someone will be confronted with the fundamentalist ideas about women, non-christians, and sexual diversity (for example), and start spreading the hate ideas contained in parts of that book.

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

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference in politics is interesting too - in the USA politicians have to be shown to be religious - people discuss the possibility that Bernie Sanders' might be atheist like its a potential major scandal. In the UK its the exact opposite, we don't want our leaders to be religious. Its ok for them to go to a big church service or lay a wreath or something but if they start talking about their 'faith' (as Tony Bl…

If you're running for major office in the US, announcing your fealty to God is a kind of real-world implementation of Pascal's wager. That is, if you are openly atheist you will earn the condemnation of a large cohort of believers, and lose many votes. But if you're religious, only a small few atheists will write you off as a candidate. So it's always to your political advantage to claim religious adherence, even if…

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