Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by JKCalhoun » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

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.

We raised our kids the same. Even allowing that they might want to go to church themselves. While I suggested it only once or twice they were not interested.

I think we all know what is right and wrong. And regarding death, none of us know anything at all.

Religion then might offer a sense of community and also solace for those times when there is nothing you can do but suffer. And for that I wish I could have found a religious community that I was comfortable with and could have shared with my children.

The closest I ever came was a Quaker Meeting my mother took my sibling and I too when we were young. Perhaps I should have tried harder to find another but it didn't seem as important as other aspects of raising children — finding as much time to do stuff with them, take them traveling, etc.

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

#422

Post by gher-shyu3i » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

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.

> to be a good person

It's the other way around. The religion needs to be investigated to see if it provides proof of its correctness, and if it does, there really isn't reason not to accept it other than wanting to follow personal desires.

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

#423

Post by Alenycus » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

jwalgenbach wrote: post #382

bobthechef wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, yes. Quoting Fulton Sheen: "There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be." In this case, I would include the majority of Catholics who are oblivious today about the very basics of what the Church believes, much less why, and practice it seldomly on one hand or cliquishly on the other. When t…

"There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be." Oh, that's crap. There are more than 100 victims of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy where the Church itself covered up the crime. You can play with definitions however you want, but that is not a misperception of the Church, but a realistic v…

Catholic priests are less likely than the general population to be predators. You only hear about it because the media Is hostile to the church. School districts across the country have done similar things in terms of cover ups but I don't hear the outage there.

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

#424

Post by sudosteph » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

throwawaygal7 wrote: post #415

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…

Since mainline protestantism is in full collapse, is it really true the progressive christianity has any chance of surviving long term?

I wouldn't write it off yet. The popularity of protestantism is very prone to wax and wane with the times. A really charismatic preacher or two can make a big impact. Most of the mainlines we see in the US today started from just itinerant preachers and camp meetings. Personally, I think that's because the emphasis on "personal relationships" with God lends itself to more of a "social contagion" model of popularity, as people seek to imitate friends and neighbors who share spiritual experiences. That's not a negative thing necessarily. But they can't lean on tradition like the Orthodox or Catholics do.

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

#425

Post by thrww20210329 » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

49531 wrote: post #152

CedarMills wrote: post #93

As a believer and someone who attends church regularly, this is sad but not unexpected. From my own personal experience - if the church cannot answer questions clearly, their members will look for answers somewhere else. A lot of churches unfortunately are so elementary in their teaching or turn to "feel good preaching" (see Elevation Church). The longterm effect is that a person ends up being tired of getting the sa…

As someone who was raised in a religious home who no longer attends any church I think it's less to do with not answering questions and more to do with a hostile rejection of religion generally. It wasn't until I had children of my own that I realized I needed to distance myself from religion. I know there is a large variety of what is taught from religion to religion and sect to sect but I'd like to steer clear from…

You might enjoy this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vw_X7IkXB0

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

#426

Post by throwawaygal7 » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

freddybobs wrote: post #321

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…

What's your take on the dead sea scrolls ? How do the aspects of the early church align with scriptural literalism? Specifically the split of the early church between Paul and Jesus brother James. James was Jesus's choice to lead the church in his absence. A direction which aligned more with Judaism - including circumcision, and kosher foods. Yet later Christianity revolves around Paul at odds vision. Paul was a Roma…

the universally considered authentic Pauline epistles are commonly dated from the mid 40s to the late fifties AD.... So any arguments made about church leadership 'before' then are arguing from a very small body of evidence (luke/acts) ... rather a less persuasive argument than the iron clad one you present here.

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

#427

Post by bushbaba » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #235

paulryanrogers wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After being raised in a non-Fundamentalist denomination I'd say the progressive ones are more insidious and no less harmful. Their foundations are all the same text, no matter how literal or figurative they interpret it. IME they usually also teach the same bad ways of thinking: emotion over logic, testimony over hard evidence, authority beyond your understanding, etc.

Not sure I follow. If the religious outfit is teaching things like: - This book is a set of moral guidance aimed to cause favorable social outcome. - These stories are myths. - We should analyze these books to critically determine their relevance to our modern lives. - Your personal understanding of spirituality is unique to yourself. It seems only productive? It seems a much more dangerous stance, one even paralleli…

I’ve met a handful of Jewish rabbis who teach exactly this btw.

However their comment is not the stories are “myths”. But instead are verbal stories that likely greatly exaggerate the situation to teach us a lesson and keep us engaged.

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

#428

Post by gonehome » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

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 grew up mainline Protestant too before throwing it away (I was young ~12 which makes it easier). My objection is to the broken nature of the reasoning and how that tends to corrupt evidence based reasoning elsewhere most of them time (though weirdly not always - people are inconsistent).

If the fundamentalists are a problem, maybe there’s a problem with the fundamentals?

Obviously religious people remain the vast majority and being a good person or not is largely disconnected from religiousness. It’s difficult for me though to not think that a religious person’s reasoning is broken in some way, and to be more skeptical of how they verify ideas in general.

If they can’t get something basic right, why would they be right about something more complicated?

A lot of the rationalization of religious people is complicated in a way that suggests they have some underlying idea of what the accurate world model is (they just want to believe otherwise): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-...

One thing I credit the internet for is allowing me to read and learn enough to escape it. I think most people will end up with whatever belief system they grow up surrounded by.

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

#429

Post by Alenycus » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #89

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…

Reading dostoesvsky brought my back to the church on a spiritual and emotional level, and the Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity bt CS Lewis brought me back on an emotional level.

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

#430

Post by oblio » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:55 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #143

psychometry wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a question of whether or not you buy into the set of assumptions. If you do, you can avail yourself of any one several strong, coherent, self-consistent philosophies and world-views, which many of history's great minds have reasoned about and scrutinized. Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam: all of them spend a lot of time on this stuff. It's the on-the-fly, off-the-cuff, brand new, modern theo…

> Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam: all of them spend a lot of time on this stuff.

They did spend a lot of time and they mostly failed. In many cases those school of thought that ultimately failed were also squashed during a religious power struggle (which is gives organized religion a bad outlook).