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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

#831

Post by throwawaygal7 »

randcraw wrote: post #709
throwawaygal7 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A lot can change in a couple of centuries. Right now, Catholicism is still growing in South America and Africa. As people in those regions become better educated and affluent, they may indeed follow the evolutionary path of other more affluent economies. But with the resounding recent rise throughout the world in populism (which is a form of faith, but in a person or a dream rather than an economy), it's hard to know…

I find it perplexing that you describe catholicism as progressive, since it maintains strict sexual purity standards, a male clergy, anti abortion and homosexuality etc.(Perhaps I misread you)

Isnt it true that SA is having extreme growth of the prosperity gospel form of fundamentalism too?

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

#832

Post by throwawaygal7 »

ggggtez wrote: post #738
elmomle wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear that that "worship" here refers to where we practice focusing our heart's yearnings, not to a set of religious rites. Synonyms of this meaning of "worship" include "revere" and "venerate".

No. Because he opens his thought with saying that "Atheism" doesn't exist. Atheism isn't a rejection of "yearning" or "reverence". It's a rejection of religion. He's just playing word games, and you are falling for it.

I mean, theres some truth on both sides.

From a christian/jewish/islamic perspective whatever you focus most on is your 'idol' - the bible talks alot about worshipping money, for instance.

In that sense, then whatever you focus on in life is idolatrous worship, an atheistic religion.

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

#833

Post by throwawaygal7 »

jacurtis wrote: post #824
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…

> ...pretty much anything else you worship [other than religion] will eat you alive. If you worship money and things... then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. This is implying that worshiping religion/god/…

The orthodox and catholics call this scrupulpsity, the low churches lack the vocabulary to deal with it

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

#834

Post by pkghost »

Kinrany wrote: post #808
pkghost wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not disagree more. Wallace's use of language here is instructive, poignant, and immensely useFUL. I'll bet you're an engineer, data scientist, or other technical professional, not simply b/c you're here, but b/c your response to Wallace's use of ambiguity and multiple layers of meaning reveals as much about the nature of your own relationship with language, which I'd guess prefers that things should be clear,…

Regardless of words being context-dependent and having uncountable number of meanings, in the context of a single argument a word should generally only have one meaning.

Again, I could not disagree more with your interpretation of what's happening here.

I'd recommend you, too, read the article I linked in the comment above. To characterize Wallace's words as an "argument", as if he were a lawyer in the court of being—as if such a thing exists—, is to employ cognitive decoupling, and to miss the point.

There's nothing wrong with C.D.—it's absolutely useful and necessary to have contexts in which words mean one thing and one thing only, but it's equally if not more necessary to have contexts in which that constraint does not hold, in which we are free to make meaning by use of metaphor and non-literal comparison. Indeed, it's the only way in which we can point to dimensions of experience that do not yet have names; it's how language evolves and expands, it's how technical domains come into existence.

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

#835

Post by the-alchemist »

pmiller2 wrote: post #151
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #46

Having the Church community while growing up was great. But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre. Frankly, growing up in the church left me with a broken moral code. It was only once I left it in my teens and had to work things out for myself that I feel like I could properly ground myself ethically. Having a moral system imposed on you can do that.

> Having the Church community while growing up was great. But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre. If you're not talking about the capital "C" church (which I interpret as the Catholic Church), then, it doesn't, really. You can be a Unitarian Universalist and believe in just about anything you want. Their entire philosophy is almost literally "be excellent…

There's pockets of us UUs all over! Is someone asks me whether I got to a church, I have to ask, "Wait, what's your definition of a church?" Some of us Unitarians would prefer to drop the whole "Church" name entirely and call ourselves "Communities."

- Yes, you can believe whatever you want. Everyone is just genuinely curious about your journey. "My father was Jewish, my mother was Catholic, and I'm Wiccan now." is something that people legitimately say all the time, and never in jest.

- We "believe", if that's even the right word, that no one has it all figured out. There's great wisdom in all the world's traditions--and some nonsense too. Let's talk about it with respect.

- The way we teach sex ed is top-notch, educationally and psychologically. It's called "Our Whole Lives" because we know, from a vast empirical literature as well as our own personal stories that human sexuality is a complex, life-long activity. Our sex ed teacher is usually a guy called Mike. Mike is gay, and everyone agrees he is the best one to teach that class, for a variety of reasons.

- We encourage our kids to explore their own spirituality, in a "make your own religion" activity. We ask the kids themselves whether they think there is a god or not (or gods), and help them however we can.

- We vote whether our minister stays or goes.

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

#836

Post by hajile »

randcraw wrote: post #543
kongolongo wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason fundamentalists are so appealing is because they at least try to maintain some level of consistency. How does one know which parts of the bible to accept or which parts are metaphor and which parts are literal or which version of the bible to believe? At least the most literal interpretation always tries to be consistent. What makes any interpretation better than scriptural literalism? Is it the fact that…

I think fundamentalists care less about consistency than closure. They want to minimize mystery and unknowns by insisting that even some very implausible parts of the Bible are expressly and unquestionably true. Similarly, Catholicism seems also to be quite formal about Biblical interpretation, but willing to let the church decide which tenets should be explicit vs metaphor. In contrast to both, I understand that Ort…

The whole implausible argument always struck me as lacking.

You accept the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent god, but then say they couldn’t possibly do anything supernatural because that would go against the science they created.

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

#838

Post by Digory »

gspr wrote: post #473
sarabad2021 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no issues with Christianity from a philosophical standpoint. It explains things which our beyond our natural/physical world. Those things impact how we live in this world. I'm curious what you mean in your statement, please unpack your claim.

> It explains things which our beyond our natural/physical world. Those things impact how we live in this world. (1) These two statements seem to me to be incompatible. We live in the natural world. If something "outside the natural world" (whatever that nonsensical statement means) affects the natural world, then surely it's partly part of the natural world? (2) It is not my business to define what e.g. christians b…

"Naturalism" posits that natural laws are the only rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural world.

So "beyond the natural world" would be shorthand for alternatives to naturalism; the idea there are rules that govern the 'natural world' beyond natural laws or things that can be measured or observed scientifically.

The resurrection is a prime example of rules "beyond the natural" impacting our natural world.

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

#839

Post by antonzabirko »

ur-whale wrote: post #706
antonzabirko wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty straightforward to me. Worship here just means prioritize.

Feel free to assign the meaning you find most convenient to random words, but the fact is, we are in the thick of a thread about religion, in which Wallace's excerpt is being used to make a point ...

Oh yeah i am sidestepping that cause his quote doesn't really apply to religion. It's just a way to appeal to people who see no difference between money and ethics in a nice way.

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

#840

Post by nnvvhh »

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.

You must be fun at parties.
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