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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

#771

Post by nprateem »

Milner08 wrote: post #120
nly wrote: post #35

For comparison, UK church membership is Numbers for those claiming to be of "No religion" range from from 50 to 60% depending on region. 38% don't believe in God or any higher spiritual power. The interesting thing is people will identify as Christian on the census while also not claiming to subscribe to any particular religion in other surveys. 2021 census (just completed this month) results will be interesting http…

Other than my Grandma who is in her 90's and one friend who joined a church later in life (his family are atheist) I don't know anyone in the UK who goes to church. At least among my friends its just not a thing. I find it bizarre how many people in America attend church, but I hold nothing against them for it.

Yeah but they do all the gospel and dancing stuff over there. Don't tell me you don't want to FEEL THE POWER

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

#772

Post by krapp »

hudon wrote: post #753
ur-whale wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This approach, "religion as an operator's manual to living one's life" is one of the very rare arguments in defense of religion I can vaguely resonate with. Unfortunately this argument entirely fails to support all the rest of the luggage, especially the metaphysical hokum: you can perfectly chose to live your life according to a set of rules that will help you (and others) without having to justify it via the existe…

> bearded dude sitting on a cloud That's a strange straw man. No God-fearing person I know believes in such a thing. God is not a being, but rather is _being itself_. In fact, when Moses asked God what his name was, God replies something like "I am who am". If you prefer an Aristotelian frame, he is the "unmoved mover" [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

God, as portrayed in the OT, is clearly a being. God has specific thoughts, agency and expresses emotions. God gets tired after making the universe and takes the weekend off. God despairs of humanity and decides to kill everyone in a flood. God calls himself a jealous God. God even argues with Jonah about a houseplant (Jonah 4) and haggles with Ezekiel over what kind of excrement to bake his bread over (Ezekiel 4).

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

#773

Post by thatcat »

throwaway823882 wrote: post #703
rmah wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that quote, Wallace is just morphing, conflating, and fudging the definition of the word "worship". He says people "worship" (with a variety of subtly different meanings) a variety of things and then, implies that because we can use the same word, "worship", to describe those activities, they are equivalent. I despise this rhetorical technique. I find it both insulting, intellectually dishonest and useless.

Actually he's making philosophical commentary about the nature of what people dedicate themselves to. But if you want to get emotionally wrapped up in the definition of a word and ignore the message, go for it.

Exactly, he's pointing out that the revaluation of all religious values does not lead to atheism, but to individually chosen principles that must also be based on a faith due to the uncertainty that such beliefs are meant to deal with. Even athiesm itself can be viewed as a fundamentalist religious belief that is based on faith.

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

#774

Post by johnfn »

rmah wrote: post #687
lootsauce wrote: post #606

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble…

In that quote, Wallace is just morphing, conflating, and fudging the definition of the word "worship". He says people "worship" (with a variety of subtly different meanings) a variety of things and then, implies that because we can use the same word, "worship", to describe those activities, they are equivalent. I despise this rhetorical technique. I find it both insulting, intellectually dishonest and useless.

He's really not, though. He means that these are the activities from which people derive purpose. People derive purpose from religion, or money, or beauty, or status.

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

#775

Post by petre »

jandrese wrote: post #681
lootsauce wrote: post #606

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble…

I find the idea that faith can't eat you alive to be strange given that we have so many examples of that happening in real life. Faith is no different than money, power, allure, etc... in that regard. That's one reason people turn to atheism in the first place, to avoid getting gobbled up by religion.

I really don't understand why some people have to turn to atheism when not participating in organised religion is quite easy enough. This is what the article implies, church membership as opposed to faith. Why even bother to deny something that others believe without proof and needlessly argue about it? Maybe it makes them happy, more secure. Vocal atheists usually annoy me more than christian evanghelists, mostly because of the negative message.

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

#777

Post by CivBase »

phd514 wrote: post #526
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…

I think it's helpful to point out that the Bible contains a variety of types of literature including historical narrative, poetry, etc., some of which uses figurative language that is not intended to be taken literally. We all understand this when we use modern language such as "sunrise" which is not literally true (the sun does not actually "rise" in the sky though it appears that way to the casual observer) even th…

I think when people talk about a "literal" interpretation of the Bible, they mean that it uses human language (including figures of speech like "sunrise", number rounding/approximation, etc) to describe literal, historical events with exceptions for explicit fictions or metaphors (such as psalms or parables).

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

#778

Post by ur-whale »

joshuacc wrote: post #766
ur-whale wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This approach, "religion as an operator's manual to living one's life" is one of the very rare arguments in defense of religion I can vaguely resonate with. Unfortunately this argument entirely fails to support all the rest of the luggage, especially the metaphysical hokum: you can perfectly chose to live your life according to a set of rules that will help you (and others) without having to justify it via the existe…

> some bearded dude sitting on a cloud You do realize that this idea is explicitly condemned by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam?

You do realize that, when talking about a bearded man on a cloud, I was making a point about the fact that most of what the three monotheistic religions you mention (BTW 3 out of many, many equivalently deluded things) are essentially fairy tales designed to control the minds of men?

If at one time the bearded man on a cloud was the useful tool of the day to manipulate crowds and was later "condemned" because better ways were devised to keep the flock believing, in what way does that affect my argument that 90% of religion is utter, unprovable, fairy-tale BS?

[EDIT]: and yeah if you insist on plowing the dirt of literal interpretation, I'll point you to this argument made by another poster : please take a look at the first image that pops when querying google for "god" and come back and tell us that the argument has no basis.

https://images.google.com/search?q=god

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

#779

Post by xtracto »

LadyCailin wrote: post #510
xtracto wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was "in touch" with religion for 12 years (my parents sent me to a very catholic school even though both are atheists) My experience was seeing huge amounts of falsehood and hypocrisy as religious people followed and repeated all the rituals of the mass but in the day to day life they just did not care about others and pretty much ignored what their religion taught them. Thank God after those 12 years I saw everyth…

Is this the religious equivalent of a parent making the kid smoke a carton of cigarettes at once, to turn them off smoking?

Haha it could very well have been that! In reality what happened is that we lived in a small town (in Mexico, called Campeche. Late 80s and 90s) and the only quality schooling at that place and time was catholic schools.

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

#780

Post by fuzzer37 »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #167
nly wrote: post #35

For comparison, UK church membership is Numbers for those claiming to be of "No religion" range from from 50 to 60% depending on region. 38% don't believe in God or any higher spiritual power. The interesting thing is people will identify as Christian on the census while also not claiming to subscribe to any particular religion in other surveys. 2021 census (just completed this month) results will be interesting http…

Growing up in the 80's (UK) as a Roman Catholic, I remember the services being full on Sunday mornings. Not been since I left home at 18, because frankly I stopped believing in God the same time I stopped believing in Father Christmas (7?). The only reason I went was to make my parents happy. Now I'm in my 40's I do wonder if the lack of religion in society is leading us to a bad place. We know from numerous studies…

> What we are seeing is better rights and fairness for individuals ... is that good for society as a whole

Yes. This shouldn't even be a question.

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