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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

#911

Post by gremlinsinc »

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…

Do you not consider God a narcissist? When he says "Worship me", no other gods, I'm a jealous god, worship or face hell-fire, literally threatening if you do not worship?

Why does God need/desire your worship? You know, I have kids. I "hope" they love me and always will, but I'll never force them to say it and I'm definitely not going to punish them if they are mad at me and won't prop up my ego.

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

#912

Post by throwaway0b1 »

Context_free wrote: post #291
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…

> adhering to scriptural literalism What scripture? As Bart Ehrman has written in his books condensing scholarly tomes for the layman, there are many scriptures, and we don't have the originals. The Comma Johanneum being the clearest passage that there is a trinity is not found in the Greek until the 15th century. Mark thought to be the earliest gospel, it ends without a clear resurrection from the earliest manuscrip…

I suppose maybe I'm missing something, but this seems a bit on the vague side. Furthermore, I am far from an expert on the history of biblical texts; to be quite frank there's a general text (okay, maybe two) that's accepted by every Christian church I know of. I'll try to answer your point regardless. While over several millenia there certainly may have been some minor changes to the text, I would like to break this down into two major points:

1. The Bible is has (to my knowledge) by far the largest corpus of ancient texts compared to pretty much anything prior to the invention of the printing press. The existence of so many ancient texts (both directly, translations, and quotations in other materials) spanning so far both geographically and temporally with fairly minor differences is rather compelling evidence for the accuracy of many biblical manuscripts. A similar interplay is found within the Bible itself. I can think of numerous other passages commonly used to support the doctrine of the trinity from both the Old and New Testaments. Similarly, there are several accounts of as well as numerous prophecies of Jesus' resurrection. The adultress in Mark is actually found in a significant portion of ancient manuscripts; that it is not found in all is noted in most translations I've seen.

2. I stated this somewhere below, but put simply: God isn't going to let the Bible change contradictory to its original meaning (cf. Isaiah 55:11, although I could probably find a better reference for this).

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

#913

Post by throwaway0b1 »

throwaway0b1 wrote: post #521
xivzgrev wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

1. Grew up there. 2a. "Verbal inspiration" - while the words were written by people and they certainly did recount their experiences in their own styles (perhaps involving consulting others who had been there), but God (through the Holy Spirit) breathed into them the words they were to write (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16). Basically God's not going to be like "eh oh well whatever if the Bible just goes away." 2b. Translation i…

Perhaps better support for 2a/b would be 1 Peter 1:25 and Mark 13:31.

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

#914

Post by throwaway0b1 »

throwaway0b1 wrote: post #912
Context_free wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adhering to scriptural literalism What scripture? As Bart Ehrman has written in his books condensing scholarly tomes for the layman, there are many scriptures, and we don't have the originals. The Comma Johanneum being the clearest passage that there is a trinity is not found in the Greek until the 15th century. Mark thought to be the earliest gospel, it ends without a clear resurrection from the earliest manuscrip…

I suppose maybe I'm missing something, but this seems a bit on the vague side. Furthermore, I am far from an expert on the history of biblical texts; to be quite frank there's a general text (okay, maybe two) that's accepted by every Christian church I know of. I'll try to answer your point regardless. While over several millenia there certainly may have been some minor changes to the text, I would like to break this…

See also 1 Peter 1:25 and Mark 13:31.

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

#915

Post by nfw2 »

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 ...

Thanks I will, and I will know I am doing a good job of it when I am regarded by many as the most talented writer of my generation

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

#916

Post by mattnewton »

wolfhumble wrote: post #896
asdff wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need religion to learn about morality. Watching Mr. Rodgers or reading Winnie the Poo would do. As you get older you can get into Machiavelli and start really becoming a principled person.

I never grew up with watching Mr. Rodgers and only really know about him through the recent film about him, but it definitely seems that his Christian faith shaped his children programs, see: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/how-mister-rogers-faith-sh...

But he never threatened you with hell, promised heaven, or invoked god at all, which is are all parts the parent post found strange.

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

#917

Post by lalaland1125 »

skissane wrote: post #870
mustafa_pasi wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cultural Christian" is just what western culture is. "atheist Jews" can exist only because they exist in the cultural Christian west.

> "atheist Jews" can exist only because they exist in the cultural Christian west There are atheist Jews in Israel. Is Israel part of the "cultural Christian west"?

The parent poster is more arguing that the atheist Jew label only really exists because most of the atheists in the US are Christian atheists to a certain extent (in that they celebrate Christian holidays and many aspects of Christian culture).

So you need to explicitly define atheist Jews as the exception.

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

#918

Post by lalaland1125 »

bckr wrote: post #872
simplerman wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In modern no-religion societies, where is the pull for good old family values? What we are seeing is better rights and fairness for individuals (same-sex marriage, etc) but is that good for society as a whole? I understand where you are coming from, I struggle with my atheism/beliefs too. But without doubt, this is good for society. Think about it, we had slavery because bible and other religions, approved of slave…

I wouldn't say that religion caused these ills. Religion was used to justify these ills.

You don't think holy books and holy leaders explicitly supporting those horrible positions had a negative effect? The Catholic Church still teaches their followers that gay sex is a ticket to hell.

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

#919

Post by dillondoyle »

dookahku wrote: post #829
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…

i mostly got tired of being told i going to burn and choke and scream forever and ever, amen, because i like guys and gals. and if i disagreed, the pastor made sure i got punished. the long term effects wast that this not a healthy thing to tell a young teenager, and it's time for society to move on.

I believe this is a way bigger factor than OP comment says: church failing to keep up with modern society.

1000% that's why I am against many (perhaps most by % in the US?) of the organized religious congregations.

those that identify queer, gender-fluid, whatever are told their literal existence is sin. it's hard to imagine how damaging that is if you're not in this community. It'd be like telling someone who has orange hair they are going to hell for something they have absolutely no control over.

In the worst cases they push parents to try to 'change' their kids, which has been shown to be incredibly dangerous and damaging.

Even if you're in a 'liberal' church that says we love gays like we love all humans, but don't think about getting married and in some cases can't have sex, that still does a huge amount of psychological damage and putting us on the outside of 'normal.'

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

#920

Post by exporectomy »

ur-whale wrote: post #676
cjameskeller wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This was a major component in my switch from Protestant/Baptist to ("Greek"/Eastern) Orthodox. Having thousands of years of prior religious & philosophical discussions to draw from, as well as the experiences of people living under all manner of political regimes provides a much-needed grounding against whatever may be the current, trendy topics. And a direct result of that history is that the Church mandates…

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…

That's a naive view that assumes people are rational but we're not, not even you. Our minds seem to need some amount of hokum (imaginary beings) to remain sane. Children who grow up with a supportive parent who reliably takes care of them carry the feeling of being cared for and the confidence that comes from it for the rest of their lives even after the parent is dead. A dead person is no more real than God, yet they're very influential in helping people cope with life. I think they serve similar purposes. Just think how much people who are not present with you still influence your feelings every day. Until we meet them again, these people effectively don't exist either. It's all in our heads, just like God.

There's even a psychological technique to build confidence by imagining a supportive person helping you. That's even closer to God or Jesus than a real but absent person.

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