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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

#551

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

dcolkitt wrote: post #466
gonehome wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> Obviously religious people remain the vast majority and being a good person or not is largely disconnected from religiousness. Religiosity is highly inversely correlated with criminality amount Americans.[1] Religious people also donate significantly more money to charity. To a large extent religious participation does seem to make people behave more pro-socially. It's certainly not the only way to promote ethical…

Charity - religious people are more likely to donate to religious organisations. In fact roughly a third of all donation money in the US goes to supporting religion.

Large churches are quite astonishingly wealthy and also tax exempt, so it's not clear why they need the money more than any number of smaller charities and social programs.

Crime: There isn't any reliable evidence that religion reduces crime in general. It may make certain kinds of crime less likely, but it's very difficult to disentangle all of the influences - because of course religion also affects crime reporting, and defines which actions can even be considered crimes. This can be a huge problem for victims who live in the same religious community as perpetrators.

One textbook example is the history of child abuse in Catholicism. It didn't show up in crime figures for a very long time because the Church worked hard to cover it up. The truth didn't come out until the political power of the Church was reduced to a level where it could no longer do that.

Another example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland

There's a good case for considering the possibility that religion actually encourages these kinds of abusive cultures - whether or not they're considered criminal at the time.

So there really isn't an argument that religion serves a beneficial role. It has some benefits, but it also causes a lot of social and political distortions, some of which are extreme and persistently harmful.

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

#552

Post by jeffwass »

anonAndOn wrote: post #514

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me…

Emo Philips has another joke which I think was voted somewhere as funniest joke ever, and is a great take on western religion :

“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.”

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

#553

Post by germinalphrase »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #550
anonAndOn wrote: post #514

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me…

This is a somewhat funny joke but it doesn't actually map to reality. Inter-Christian conflict is almost nonexistent in 2021 and has been so for probably a generation. Edit: by “conflict” I mean actual real violent conflict. Not people arguing on Reddit. People literally killing each other (or pushing them off bridges) because they are “heretics.” This doesn’t happen much at all anymore in the Christian world. Even t…

Idk, man... about two years ago, I heard an evangelical dude say Catholics aren’t even Christians. As a Catholic, I found it a bit startling to learn that I am - by default - going to hell.

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

#554

Post by haberman »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #550
anonAndOn wrote: post #514

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me…

This is a somewhat funny joke but it doesn't actually map to reality. Inter-Christian conflict is almost nonexistent in 2021 and has been so for probably a generation. Edit: by “conflict” I mean actual real violent conflict. Not people arguing on Reddit. People literally killing each other (or pushing them off bridges) because they are “heretics.” This doesn’t happen much at all anymore in the Christian world. Even t…

I don't think that's true. Churches are deeply divided on some core issues, and in some cases are splitting over these differences: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/united-methodist-conserv...

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

#555

Post by tootie »

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 corrosive and detrimental to society. I don't get angry at moderate religious views but I still think they're laughable superstition. I respect your right as a human to believe I just think it's silly.

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

#556

Post by RankingMember »

ccn0p wrote: post #77

The Christian church has gone through an interesting time in 2020. Many churches have lost attendance as pastors closed their doors or tried to stay out of politics, while other stronger pastors who have kept their doors open despite lockdowns and are speaking up against the US government with respect to threats against religious freedom (eg see H.R. 5) -- those churches are stronger and more vibrant than ever.

Do you have any evidence to back up the causal relationships you're inferring?

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

#557

Post by SyzygistSix »

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.

On the other hand, we are a people of stories. Stories help to explain abstract concepts and elucidate our values. Everyone has a belief system, even if they are unaware of it.

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

#558

Post by RankingMember »

ccn0p wrote: post #334
_1100 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute bias and lack of any self awareness present in your statements here is fascinating. There really is only the One Way for you, isn’t there? Call me brave, but I would counter that there may, in fact, be at least one other way to interpret ideas like “strong”, “freedom”, and “vibrant”.

Isn't everything a bias in some way? But point taken. I don't attend multiple churches, I attend one, and it, like others of its ilk, has been under attack, so observations are of course my own. But if you want to mute the language some, let's s/strong//, s/freedom/choice, and s/vibrant/well-attended.

Under attack how, exactly? By being asked to close during a pandemic?

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

#559

Post by ouid »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #535
anonAndOn wrote: post #514

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me…

And yet our society is more polarized than ever. From your anecdote, one would think that declining religion would result in peace and love overflowing in society, but we see the opposite. Public morality cannot be maintained without religion; we will sadly see the end result of that in coming years.

Are you claiming that marginally declining religiosity is the dominant factor to be considered in the breakdown of "public morality"? Among such factors as 50 years of stagnant wages and the rise of social media?

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

#560

Post by ceilingcorner »

haberman wrote: post #554
ceilingcorner wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a somewhat funny joke but it doesn't actually map to reality. Inter-Christian conflict is almost nonexistent in 2021 and has been so for probably a generation. Edit: by “conflict” I mean actual real violent conflict. Not people arguing on Reddit. People literally killing each other (or pushing them off bridges) because they are “heretics.” This doesn’t happen much at all anymore in the Christian world. Even t…

I don't think that's true. Churches are deeply divided on some core issues, and in some cases are splitting over these differences: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/united-methodist-conserv...

That link is about Methodists splitting over a fairly big issue (gay marriage) and not the minute differences referred to in the parent comment.
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