I was a local preacher in the Methodist church a long time ago, in Birmingham England. (There are more churches than ministers in the Methodist church so the gap is filled by laypeople who lead services on Sundays.) I remember in particular going to churches in the Black Country, home of the industrial revolution. Large churches from a time when they were far more attendees, many from the factories, but now holding just a handful of mostly elderly congregants. Even with such small numbers the singing was magnificent.
I am sure almost all those congregations are gone now. Is it a loss? I don't know. I no longer have the faith I did then, but I did see the power of community, genuine concern for one another, and a deep faith expressed in a very specific understated way. It is something I still remember all these years later, and I haven't really seen it reproduced in other social environments.
I'm saying this as an agnostic who grew up in the UMC:
All attempts to do this, particularly in the internet age, have failed spectacularly. They just turn into the worst parts of organized religion without the higher power. Remember the Reddit atheist movement of 10-15 years ago? A not-insignificant portion of that population went on to become the alt-right.
Remember the Reddit atheist movement of 10-15 years ago? A not-insignificant portion of that population went on to become the alt-right.
You're making an observation about the USA type of atheist here, and I'll leave that to you because I understand that in the USA atheists are an unusual thing. But I just want to point out that in the UK and many parts of Europe, being atheist is just very normal. Its so normal that there's not really a label or a scene, and there's also a lot of just agnostic/dont-really-ever-think-about-it type people that would probably be classed as atheist in the USA, but in the UK they're just <unlabelled> because no-one cares whether they believe in deities of some kind or not. And many people might say they are christian when asked (46%), but dont ever pray, or go to church. A lot of UK people have christian weddings and funerals, but thats about the sum total of their involvement. Only 8% of the UK are getting baptised, only about 5% go to church regularly.
For example I see that in the USA its very important for politicians to talk about their faith, and if a politician is atheist it gets talked about as a 'thing'. In the UK its the exact opposite, the last thing we expect politicians to talk about is their faith in god, and if they do talk about it we get kindof weirded out (ref: Tony Blair in the late 90s).
I just want to point that out, because I know the UK exported Dawkins and that might give people the wrong impression. Most of the UK are quiet-atheist or quiet-agnostic. And they are quiet because its no big deal, there's no political or moral stakes, no-one gets judged for being non-religious over here. (Even in politics, where you might expect political opponents to nit-pick everything about each other, no politician here would ever call out an opponent for being atheist, because it would just be a nonsensical thing to call out, and they would be laughed at for even trying to call it out)
Oh yeah, when you look up "wallflower" in an English language dictionary, it's got a British atheist next to it, and Dawkins is definitely an exception to the rule.
Offer not valid for Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Adams, Ricky Gervais, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Bertrand Russell, and Salman Rushdie
Those communities still need some sort of faith to keep going. It doesn't have to be faith in supernatural gods; it could be in the destiny of mankind to surf the universe, or in the revolution of the proletariat, but it will still be a type of faith.
Why? That may sound vaguely profound somehow but it’s just not true. Communities don’t have to be secular churches. A cycling club or a board games meetup or a book club don’t have “faith”, just a shared focus and people who are willing to show up every week.
Something like a cycling or book club isn't going to have the deep connection, commitment to unconditional love, etc. that a healthy church has.
Humans are emotional, physical, and (whether you interpret it as supernatural or not) spiritual creatures. The ritual and belief in something bigger than oneself are an essential part of the process. If you look at other organizations that serve similar roles to conventional churches (such as the Grangers, Freemasons, Shriners, The Lions Club, etc.) they all replicate the ritual and higher purpose commonly associated with churches.
this is an interesting thing to contemplate, the different degrees of sustaining power a community centers upon. If it centers upon trifling things the entropy of the community will just disband over that thing since it has no real drawing power for longevity. Centering upon less trifling more significant things more longevity. Centering upon the deepest things you find a bonding power to overcome the repulsions and noise and can cross the multigenerational barrier. I'll have to think about this somewhat.
It’s not that religion is hardwired, it’s that religions leveraged what’s already there. Like any good parasite they are simply well adapted to their prey.
But those groups (board games, book club) don't fulfill all the same social functions as church/religion. I tend to agree with you (people say it a lot without evidence) but I don't seem to see any examples out there contradicting it. For example, a lot of people seek out religious communities when raising children but I've never heard someone say that about their cycling club
The talk about clubs made me think of "Fight Club" which within the story went on to be a sort of all-encompassing cult. In retrospect, it really wasn't all that subtle about the problem of nihilism in advanced societies.
They're not communities, they're just activities that are attended by a friendship group.
Church is way more meaningful than that. Baptisms, deaths, marriages are run by churches and the meaning can survive the majority of attendants not showing up.
The problem in modern society, is teaching the meaning behind churches. It takes longer than a couple cycling classes and is more demanding on the spirit.
Churches are essentially tribes (i.e. shared identity) unified by a sense of purpose external to one's self.
Cycling clubs and board games groups can bring people together, but they don't ask for the same kind of commitment or engender the same sense of shared identity.
It isn't that they cannot substitute and create many of the benefits, but are unlikely to.
Shared purpose in some ways works better. It certainly can be fostered in the same ways that faith can. Sports works really well and "fringe" activities like birding bind people together really well. For example the solidarity among cyclists (the ones out and about in the countryside) here in Portugal is really strong. Pretty much everyone says hello and you can't stop on the side of the road or trail without everyone who passes asking if everything is ok.
If you think sports don't involve faith, I think you're being naive. Sports have rites, involve hopes for a better tomorrow, and carry belief in the social value of certain behaviours (the discipline).
What powers the typical football club "factotum", showing up every week to cut the grass, inflate balls, wash shirts, clean changing rooms, etc etc...? What powers the cyclist agitating about the need for bike lanes, or proselitizing the sport? There is no seriously rational explanation. It's a type of faith.
The Unitarian Universalists exist. It's not really non-religious, but it is inviting to non-theist people, or those who don't otherwise believe in the supernatural.
People have been trying to do this for at least two hundred years, the Jefferson Bible was completed in 1820. We still can't point to any clear successes.
Say what you will about God, theology, and such - but a good church is far more a giant nest of social bonds than it is a cross or creed. And as the churches quietly die off, human society looses more and more of those.
I look at my local Catholic parish, and one thing that really helps keep it alive, is the parish school. A lot of parents who don't really believe in it all will still take their kids to be baptised so they can get into the school (and then for the other sacraments to get into the local Catholic high schools). And, once you have a large number of people with that connection, a few of them may decide to take it deeper. One dad I know from the school is officially converting (from some kind of Protestant) this Easter Sunday, he told me "my wife and kids are Catholic, I might as well be too".
It surely helps that here in Australia, private schools receive extensive government funding, roughly on par with what public schools get, which assists the Catholic Church in running lots of (relatively low fee) private schools. In effect similar to the idea of "school vouchers" in the US, although not actually implemented that way.
I note Methodists don't have as strong a tradition of running their own schools as Catholics do. In Australia, if you go back to some point in the 19th century, there were no public schools, only private religious ones, Methodist included (although Church of England was most common). Then, the Protestant churches made deals with the colonial governments, the colonial governments would take over most of their private religious schools and turn them into public ones, the churches would keep only their most prestigious schools (aimed at the upper classes)–the Catholic Church refused to take part, and then spent decades agitating for its schools to be publicly funded ("why do Catholics pay taxes to educate Protestant children but not their own?"), until finally in the 1960s the federal government agreed to fund them (in part because it really needed the Catholic vote, in part because the bishops threatened to close all their private schools, which would have completely overwhelmed the public system)
As an atheist parent being forced consider Catholic faith schools out of sheer necessity, this is far from a help. This is geographical blackmail. I have seen teaching material, and it is subtly biased towards Catholicism. Spending valuable contact hours on Religious Education is a waste of time. I will respect my child’s choice if they find religion as an adolescent/adult, but I do not respect an organisation that depends on indoctrinating 5 year olds and filter-feeding on the local inhabitants.
If it is any consolation, as someone from a Catholic family and who spent 11 out of 13 years of K-12 schooling at Catholic schools, mainstream Catholic schools do an utterly woeful job at indoctrination. Your average Catholic school is more likely to turn your kid into an atheist/agnostic than into a convinced Catholic.
The really conservative ones, like Opus Dei or SSPX schools, arguably do a much better job of indoctrinating their pupils (although even for them, there are plenty for whom it doesn’t stick)-but I assume they are not on your menu. Even if you were willing to consider them, they probably wouldn’t be willing to consider you.
I went to a catholic school (in a place where public ones are readily available, but my parents thought the education there was better), and while they did talk religion, except for the religion class (which i'd have had in public school as well) I don't think it was very faith oriented. Notably they had evolution, big bang, sex ed and so on.
I think anglosaxon world religious schools are much different, and I have the impression that people in USA collate creationism and catholicity, while it's a strongly held belief in their country, across all faiths.
I'm an atheist now, so I don't think the indoctrination was so good.
> I have the impression that people in USA collate creationism and catholicity
I've noticed this as well. It's kinda weird, since the Catholic Church has officially held that it has no conflict with respect to evolution for around 75 years now (they basically take no position on the subject), and some of their scholars were pro-evolution for many years before that.
Nowadays, it's generally just fundamentalist Protestant churches which insist on literal creationism.
> while it's a strongly held belief in their country, across all faiths.
It's actually a minority belief in the United States, although a substantial minority.
Basically it's all WASP propaganda against italians, mexicans and irish people… to brand them as intellectually inferior, when the reality is different.
The USA has something similar, though the schools aren't subsidized (much, there's some in some places, but it's relatively minor) by the state or feds.
They are subsidized by the diocese, the "Annual Catholic Appeal" is mostly taken from parishes and sent to the parishes with schools.
The schools close usually from lack of kids not lack of funds.
> The schools close usually from lack of kids not lack of funds.
Australia has much more of a private schooling culture than the US. About 36% of Australian children go to private schools, compared to only about 9% in the US. And slightly over 50% of Australia's private schools are Catholic. So Catholic schools closing from "lack of kids", I wouldn't say it never happens in Australia, but certainly a lot less common than in the US. Decline in Catholic religious affiliation doesn’t necessarily lead to school closure, because many Australian Catholic schools enrol large numbers of non-Catholics
I suspect funding is a big part of this-if the US introduced widespread school vouchers, the private percentage would likely creep up. But Australia has had publicly funded private schools for over 50 years now, so even with school vouchers, it could take decades for private schooling in the US to reach Australian percentages
Vouchers would certainly raise the percentage in the US, but it would take quite a long time to get to 36% or even 18% - that's a lot of schools that would have to be reopened or rebuilt, and teachers found or trained.
The lack of kids is often because the school is in an older part of town, which has become "newly wed or nearly dead" and they don't have enough people willing to drive long distances to use the school. Others are rural in areas that are just depopulated now.
> The lack of kids is often because the school is in an older part of town
This happens less in Australia, because Australia has rather different population dynamics from the US.
Significant population decline in inland rural areas, especially in smaller towns, which leads to school closures (for public schools too)–something also happening in some parts of the US
But, the problem the US has with decaying urban areas (e.g. Detroit) just doesn't happen in contemporary Australia. Most of the population lives in a handful of big metro areas, which just keep on booming, due to runaway property prices, and absorbing a constant stream of immigrants (on a per capita basis, Australia's official immigration rate is almost twice that of the US.) Also, local government is a lot weaker, urban planning is controlled by the state governments, and they just won't let that kind of urban blight happen on their watch
Australian faith based schools cover all faiths, not just Christian ones. Where a madrassa isn't established some Islamic kids go to catholic schools out of parental choice, their monotheism is at least partially respected.
State schools are meant to be mostly agnostic/athiest except they can run R.E. classes but local staff can (and do) proselytise, and State authorities do little about it.
R.E. classes are a factionalism nightmare and ecumenical teaching is scant. Satanists don't get much lookin.
Laws are in draft to try and settle a decades old battle around equal opportunity and human rights, teachers who are gay, students who are gay, to what extent a religious school can enforce belief and behaviour in staff and pupils and its a fiery debate.
There have been horrific historical and recent abuse issues in faith schooling here, bound up in state interventions for single mothers, Aboriginal displacement, reliance on nuns and monks, establishment refusal to confront abusive behaviour. A notorious instance was a Jewish school head who groomed students, got found out, absconded to Israel and was defended by politically astute religious to avoid extradition for years. She did finally get done. Anglican and catholic schools have also had significant problems.
> Australian faith based schools cover all faiths, not just Christian ones. Where a madrassa isn't established some Islamic kids go to catholic schools out of parental choice, their monotheism is at least partially respected.
I know there are Jewish and Muslim schools in big cities like Sydney and Melbourne, but not where I live. Where I live, your private schooling choices are basically Catholic, Anglican, Adventist, a couple of variations on non-denom Protestant, "vaguely Christian but super-expensive school for the upper class", Steiner, and some (mostly small) secular schools which focus on children with different needs (autism, disability, "just not fitting-in in a mainstream environment", etc)
My Catholic high school had lots of Protestants, and also a Jewish girl. I know the Catholic school we send our kids to has at least a couple of Muslim families. But, for Jews and Muslims, I think that is only really an option for some of the relatively secular or moderate; I expect many of the more strict would not agree to sending their kids to a school where their children are exposed (even just passively) to Christian prayer and religious services. Whereas, state schools, there is significantly less of that passive exposure (even if it isn't always possible to opt out of it 100%)
The Catholic schools have an "arrangement" with the Eastern Orthodox Church, according to which they officially give preference to Orthodox kids, after Catholics, but before Protestants and non-Christians. (I'm not sure if the arrangement is mutual, but there are so few Orthodox schools, that question
only has practical relevance to a small minority.)
> State schools are meant to be mostly agnostic/athiest except they can run R.E. classes but local staff can (and do) proselytise, and State authorities do little about it.
There is a historical reason for this. At least in New South Wales (and I believe other states too), the public school system started through a deal between the colonial government and the major Protestant churches – the Protestant churches handed over their schools to the government, in exchange the churches would retain the right to do religious education in them. Although the deal was made almost 150 years ago, the churches involved insist the government stick to it. (It isn't legally binding, so the government could legally break it if they wanted, but politically they aren't going there.)
> A notorious instance was a Jewish school head who groomed students, got found out, absconded to Israel and was defended by politically astute religious to avoid extradition for years.
A lot of that was due to a belief in Orthodox Judaism that it is a sin to take Jewish community issues to non-Jewish courts – I think most Orthodox Jews do not think that rule should apply nowadays, at least not to serious crimes, but this school was ultra-Orthodox/Haredi, a community in which some still seem to think it should. I don't think that specific issue is really applicable more broadly, since even though you'll read some rather similar stuff in the New Testament, mainstream Christian churches have long chosen to ignore it.
> a good church is far more a giant nest of social bonds than it is a cross or creed
History has shown different. Martyrs relied more on cross and creed (and indeed a specific person the cross & creed spoke of) than social bonds. 'Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also' is a sample from a specific slice, but representative of a larger concept.
Of course a martyr may die wrongly, but the point is that a definition of a 'good' church should include considering concepts of before birth and after death, in addition to life. In my experience, that leads to the social bonds.
The lack of this care for cross and creed in many churches I've visited seems to be the precurser to a dying church. There is little to attract new generations if little things are at stake.
Yeah. The standard advice for a person looking to make friends now is, "have you tried Meetup?" And, speaking from experience, it's not the same.
The thing is, a Meetup doesn't ask very much of its members, which leads to loose ties: "I'll go until it stops being fun, or I get busy, or I get a better offer." People take their religion much more seriously than that.
And that, in turn, leads to a different social dynamic: when you expect everyone around you to still be there in 5 years, you treat them differently.
My more recent experiences with Meetup are that most events there seem to be just ways for their organizers to make money, and generally not a great way to meet people.
YMMV though; I had better experiences with it in the past in a different city.
Which is doing the most harm, though - the decline of religion, or the rise of 'virtual communities', replacing in-person interaction and community-building with something less real and more gameified?
Fraternal societies were very good for providing community self organization and services until the Great Depression resulted in loss of dues, shuttering most of them.
Yeah. The gender-exclusionary approach of the Masons keep me out of it despite knowing some great folks in it. And I left religion behind, having been raised in one that infantalizes its adherents and enforces strict patriarchal hierarchy.
I don't know anything about the Elks except my aunt lived down the road from a lodge.
On the flip side, I think religion has had a monopoly on the idea that only it can provide that kind of space for such relationships. I don't think that's true.
Talk to some really old people, who recall the 1950's. At least in America, there were a huge number of non-church social groups. And families tended to be both far larger, and considerably better connected.
If some churchgoer was saying, today, that the churches have some sort of monopoly on providing such spaces...my interpretation would tend toward "we have a monopoly, while we last, because every other provider is already gone".
(Yes, if you go further back, especially in Europe, the church had somewhat more of a monopoly. Partly that was because governments were rather authoritarian, and didn't want organizations to exist, beyond their tightly-controlled churches.)
Certainly not. But a good church (and not all of them are) actively promotes parishioners to connect in deep ways, sharing vulnerabilities and weaknesses in ways that usually don't happen without some intentional guidance. Unfortunately, this "feature" also opens up churches to be places where different kinds of abuse can (and does) happen.
I don’t know, I haven’t seen a great replacement. The only things that come/came close are things like Elks Lodge, VFW, Country Clubs/sports clubs, and things like that. I don’t think most of these have thrived into in the 21st century.
After that, maybe kids’ schools if you have the energy.
Thanks for that second paragraph, because my (otherwise neutral and uniformed) alarm bells on the subject were blaring with the notion that we should replace religious-institution-backed schools with secular schools run by… The Loyal Order of the Moose.
I haven't either, but I'm hesitant to suggest that there's something particular about the religiosity of faith communities that make them work the way they do.
My take is that it's a familiar social institution and we haven't yet formulated the social protocols to reproduce a secular version. You mention a variety of semi-institutionalized social groups. To me they are associated with older folks, which naturally leads to the question: why aren't young people[1] making their own formal groups? why do young folks communities tend to be anarchic? And what would empower young folks to form their own formal social institutions?
1. We're talking about a rather wide swath of 18-50 yearolds, but that doesn't necessarily mean specific groups must correspondingly be as age-inclusive
Think of this in terms of game theory. Some religious communities, e.g., Christianity, explicitly ask for personal sacrifice for community good with compensation to be provided post-death, e.g., eternally blessed life.
In game theory terms, cooperative behavior is rewarded from outside the observable system! That's the faith part of faith communities. Even if only a relatively small fraction truly hold these belief, those communities naturally get pay-it-forward dynamics.
I'm not sure how game theory can lead to the same result in non-faith communities (i.e., closed systems). Someone has to pay the cost of "redeeming" the effects of cheaters / defectors.
Maybe a tangent idk, but how do unitary universalist groups work or religious communities without afterlife reward doctrines? They exist, but I don't necessarily think their minority status means there isn't something they're doing that we can learn from or expand our model with.
> Maybe a tangent idk, but how do unitary universalist groups work or religious communities without afterlife reward doctrines?
Unitarian-Universalists aren't growing, they are shrinking. Most denominations are shrinking, but on the whole, conservative denominations are shrinking rather more slowly than liberal ones, including the super-liberal UUs. I remember, when I was younger, I tried out a few different churches. I saw more than one conservative Protestant church overflowing with young families. I also went to a Unitarian church (only one, but there aren't many around here), and I was the only person there under 50.
In general, religious communities without afterlife reward doctrines, struggle to survive and thrive in the long-run. Their members tend to defect either to secularism or to religious communities which make bigger promises
The real answer unfortunately is that they mostly don't. They're an absolutely tiny minority of active religious people and because of that they struggle to take effective group action based on their values or sustain their communities across generations.
Look at the Quakers for a really admirable but ultimately pessimistic illustration of it. A long and almost uniquely sound history of true dedication to causes of human freedom, safety, comfort, and thriving, but with no shared creed per se. At times united in their activism and influential because of it (abolition, prohibition, civil rights). Now generations removed from any unifying cause, they are fragmented into an entire continuum of irreconcilable beliefs; fewer than half a million left globally. And the only thriving, growing communities among them are in africa, with belief and worship virtually indistinguishable from the local main stream of evangelical christianity.
Whatever it is that makes religions culturally impactful does not seem easily separable from whatever it is that makes them religions. People have tried over and over, not all of them completely unsuccessfully. But I don't know of any with the kind of durable cultural influence we see in the mainstream religions that don't value or attempt that separation.
> Look at the Quakers for a really admirable but ultimately pessimistic illustration of it
> And the only thriving, growing communities among them are in africa, with belief and worship virtually indistinguishable from the local main stream of evangelical christianity.
To add to what you say, not just in Africa but also in the West, the branchers of Quakerism which seem to be in the greatest health, are at its evangelical Protestant end – whereas, the end of the Quaker spectrum which you are talking about, is the one in the worst health
The origin of Unitarians as a movement is fairly instructive. The Congregationalists (descendants of Puritans, kind of) were hard-core Reformed and determinists with a very strict view of God. They ended up not believing it was possible to know whether you were a true Christian ("Elect") since God decides and is inscrutable.
Within about a generation, most Congregationalists became Unitarian Universalists, which is strongly linked to uncertainty over eternal blessedness/damnation. (Generalizing the history quite a bit, TBH.)
As an atheist, I disagree. The power of the church has been dying at the same time as the availability of other, non-religious "third places". Thirty years ago you not only had a stronger church, but you also had more shopping malls, community centers, diners, and parks. Superficial electronic socializing and personal isolation is killing the concept of community across the board.
That shows the power that a politician has over churches, not the power that churches have over society.
Furthermore, I think one reason he has that power over them is they are desperate to regain power and influence they've been losing in society. That's why they're willing to make this deal with the devil (so to speak).
Why do you think religious people embracing someone like Trump says anything at all about the relative power of religion? Would a stronger church not demand greater conformity in its supported candidates, not less? In twenty years, the percentage of Americans who are members of churches has dropped from 70% to 47%. In 1991, 87% of Americans ages 18-35 identified as Christian. In 2019 it was less than fifty percent.
I don't know. I live in the American South and it seems like Christianity is so universal that it's simply taken for granted. And I don't think you get a repeal of Roe v. Wade, then half the country banning abortion outright, in a truly secular society.
Why not? The secular French Revolutionary government abolished slavery in 1794; the abolition of abortion represents essentially the same scientific, non-theistic recognition of human beings, no matter their ethnicity or stage of development.
Really, they are independent axes: a religion can preach that some kinds of human being should be enslaved and/or killed; a religion can preach that no human beings should be enslaved and/or killed; an atheist can support enslavement and/or homicide of some human beings; and an atheist can oppose enslavement and/or homicide of some or all human beings. As a general rule, the vast majority of atheists think that it should be illegal to kill a 5-year-old; I believe that the vast majority think that it should be illegal to kill a 5-minute-old; it wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number think that it should be illegal to kill a negative-five-minute-old.
>the abolition of abortion represents essentially the same scientific, non-theistic recognition of human beings, no matter their ethnicity or stage of development.
It really doesn't. Opposition to abortion in the US is entirely premised on Christian ideology and the belief that a human is ensouled by God at the moment of conception, thus making abortion at any stage equivalent to murder, whereas scientific consensus is that abortion is a perfectly valid and sometimes necessary medical procedure, not fundamentally different than removing an appendix. Science certainly doesn't support outlawing abortion outright, or banning contraceptives or forcing women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term, all of which anti-abortion states have now made law, often with politicians directly citing the Bible while doing so.
> Opposition to abortion in the US is entirely premised on Christian ideology and the belief that a human is ensouled by God at the moment of conception
Historically, many Christians (e.g. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas) opposed abortion from the moment of conception, yet didn’t believe in ensoulment until later in pregnancy. This is because they accepted Aristotle’s belief that ensoulment only happened at around 6-12 weeks gestation; but they classified abortion from the moment of conception as a form of contraception, and they believed contraception was a sin. This was arguably the mainstream Christian position from time immemorial up until the 19th century. Maybe a rare position today (especially if you are limiting your consideration to American Christians), but it demonstrates that time-of-ensoulment and morality-of-abortion are (at least partially) logically independent questions
> Science certainly doesn't support outlawing abortion
Whether to outlaw anything isn’t a purely factual question, it is a value judgement. And the question of whose values are correct is fundamentally beyond the scope of the natural sciences. So, science really doesn’t support outlawing or not outlawing anything. It is true that, if we agree on what are the right ethical principles, then science can (sometimes) resolve factual disputes that arise in trying to apply those principles; but if we don’t agree on which set of fundamental ethical principles to adopt, that is a dispute for which science cannot help us
> Opposition to abortion in the US is entirely premised on Christian ideology and the belief that a human is ensouled by God at the moment of conception, thus making abortion at any stage equivalent to murder
‘Entirely’ is a strong word: the existence of a single non-Christian American opposed to abortion refutes your contention.
Anyway, abortion isn’t (necessarily) murder: it’s homicide. Homicide can be legal, e.g. in the cases of capital punishment and self-defense.
> scientific consensus is that abortion is a perfectly valid and sometimes necessary medical procedure, not fundamentally different than removing an appendix
I think that you are confused here. The universal scientific consensus is that neither a blastocyst nor an embryo nor a fœtus is an organ of his mother, but a separate organism. That is, there is a fundamental scientific difference between removing an organ from a human being and removing a human being from another human being.
> Science certainly doesn't support outlawing abortion outright, or banning contraceptives or forcing women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term
‘Science’ doesn’t support any particular policy decision all, but only deals in facts; it doesn’t support outlawing abortion and it doesn’t support mandating it, and likewise with anything else. All science can do is provide estimates of facts, and predictive estimates of outcomes: it can’t say whether those outcomes are good or not, because good and evil are not intelligible to science.
I suspect that you think they are, because you assume that whatever makes the most people the happiest is the best outcome, but that’s a moral call, not scientific: someone who wanted to make one single human being the happiest possible could just as easily use scientific means to achieve that goal instead.
I would not even agree with your contention that science says that abortion is a necessary procedure, because it begs the question of what ‘necessary’ means. Science says if that an ectopic pregnancy is not aborted, the mother will almost certainly die; some (most? all?) moralities say that it’s wrong to prevent taking action to prevent that outcome — and probably a few say otherwise. Certainly it cannot address ‘validity,’ because again that doesn’t even make sense. Science says if one achieves a certain physical arrangement of items in a certain condition then one can release a tremendous amount of energy; it can predict what the effects will be; it can’t say anything whatsoever about whether or not bombing Hiroshima is ‘valid.’
All of that is true but it has no bearing on whether the power of religion is waxing or waning, or whether religious institutions have discouraged non-religious community gatherings.
We're pretty deep into an experiment to see if it's otherwise. A lot of people have been confident that other structures will emerge, and a lot of institutions have presented themselves as the alternative. I haven't seen anything convincingly comparable, though I'm sure others see it differently.
People keep waiting for this new concept / institution that can replace religion for community building, moral cohesion, and cross generational culture to emerge... but at this point I'm fairly certain it aint coming. I consider this hope the optimism of mid-wits who believe in emergence and evolution, but can't grasp why ideologies that co-evolved with humanity for a few thousand years might be better at filling those roles and needs than their fad secular prophet's intelligently designed philosophies. The modern Nietzscheian free thinker of the day is rebelling against conventional wisdom and propaganda by saying maybe we DO need religion. Oh the irony.
But what else is the secular world to do? Suppose you're right and we do need religion. Surely the solution isn't for atheists to pretend that religion is true, right? Even if they did, the psychological benefits of religion are probably at least greatly weakened (if not absent) when the follower doesn't even believe it's true.
Step one would be to acknowledge that many of the criticisms of religion are merely criticisms of human nature itself, as secular ideologies and individuals fail in the same sorts of ways by the professed moral standards of most secular individuals. The next would be for for secular thinkers to admit that (from an anthropological perspective) their atheistic philosophies are more or less proto-religions and admit to taking certain value judgements and stances about reality on faith.
The issue is, almost no secular thinker comes away from admitting those two honestly and then stays within the purely secular realm for very long.
It was very possible to be an intelligent introspective atheist when the consequences of that stance were not on display so readily. The "forward thinkers" who might have been capable of forming secular religions are instead embracing established faiths. Perhaps it's an issue like attempting to create life from scratch again. Hard to do when existing life just crowds it out. It would take dedicated committed atheists, admitting that they are intentionally attempting to establish a secular religion as a sort of memetic symbiote to fill the same space as religion, but when you're biggest rallying cry for converts is, "People don't need religion!" it's neigh impossible to do.
>The issue is, almost no secular thinker comes away from admitting those two honestly and then stays within the purely secular realm for very long.
I'm not so sure about this, though it depends on what you mean by "purely secular". I don't know if there's any data on this, so I can only speak anecdotally - I know people who are sympathetic to religion and believe it can be useful (even one who's a fan of Jordan Peterson, the person who has made a career about talking about religion in a secular way. Aside - I think it's telling that Peterson continually says good things about religion but is still atheist and still doesn't go to church.), but still are within the purely secular realm.
To be sure, I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong about secular institutions not being able to fill the role that religious institutions can. But at the same time, it doesn't seem like getting people to agree on the benefits of religion gets them to accept the resurrection of Christ, existence of God, or anything like that. Which kind of makes sense, right?
(Another aside - I have always sort of felt like this emphasis on religions being useful over religions being true is a kind of implicit concession to atheism. It's as if religion actually is just a shared delusion, but that's ok, because it's a useful shared delusion. I have no trouble seeing why an atheist would not see this as a compelling case. But the case for religion being true isn't nearly as weak as this "pragmatic delusion"-style argument implies.
Not a criticism of what you're saying, it makes sense to say what you've said in the context of the thread. I'm just thinking out loud.)
Religion is useful / Religion is a virus, are both utilitarian arguments because some people care more about what is useful than true AND because some people's standards for what is true is based on judging its utility.
To focus on Christianity (since you brought it up), religion not being useful would be a blow to the "Loving God" claim, as a God who (like a bad parent) gave lousy advice that harmed us wouldn't seem very loving. Similarly, if a utilitarian secular philosophy continuously failed to be useful based on its own utilitarian standards, it's self defeating.
Certainly faiths that don't assert a loving God, and secular philosophies that don't include utilitarian moral and ethical frameworks aren't effected. The usefulness of religion compared to secular philosophies doesn't PROVE one is correct, but if you can DISPROVE one or some of your largest competitors for mindshare, I get why the argument is so stressed.
Agreed. I recently made it out of a high demand religion. When talking to my brother-in-law (still in the religion) about it, he said something along the lines of "I don't think the church is necessarily true. But I think I personally need it in order to be a good person."
Well.. of course that is what the religion you were born into, brainwashed by, and are currently paying crazy amounts of money to wants you to think. It is necessary for the churches survival.
People need to be careful about believing anything taught by an organization when that organization's very survival depends on you believing that thing.
> People need to be careful about believing anything taught by an organization when that organization's very survival depends on you believing that thing.
I think you're off the mark here. Your brother-in-law doesn't believe what the church teaches. He believes in the effect he sees it having on his own life (and maybe also the effect that not having it has on his own life).
Yes. And he has been told every day of his entire life, by said church, that he can only get that effect through them. High demand religions are an entirely different beast. They control every aspect of your life.
I'm not religious, but I don't see a lot of evidence of other forces filling that space. In part, it takes a lot of commitment (and resources) to do it well. Religious communities have been motivated, but I don't see other groups filling the void as they depart.
Yeah but I think the issue is the loss of tight knit communities, not that the churches are the only way.
I think they are simply the ones that survived the most in our current era of narcissism and consumerism because they were bigger to begin with.
I mean I live in an old fashioned, traditionnally poor gipsy neighborhood. Most people around here don't go to the church, but this is a tight knit community. As a stranger, and for good reasons[1], it took me a long time to be accepted as part of it, and in a sense I will never be completely part of it. However I have already been shown that my neighbors are ready to give me a hand when I need it and even that they are ready to fight for me had I been in a situation that required it, no question asked. Which is funny because these are the same people that initially tried to rob me!
[1] first and foremost because the presence of expats working remotely for big corps like me is one of the reason the rents are ever increasing and becoming out of reach to
Just wait a couple thousand years, and add the threat of murder/dismemberment/incineration for not participating, and I'm sure some alternatives would arise...
IME religion is a net loss. It too often marginalizes or outright harms people who don't or can't fit the mold. It usually also requires or at least encourages counterproductive ways: confirmation bias, appeal to authority, trust without evidence, bandwagon effect, paying significant portions of income for no benefit, etc.
I've moved across the world 4 times in my adult life. Every time I have made deeper and faster community connections by joining a local church than through any other means.
People may have downvoted thinking I was making fun of the poster above. What I meant is through hobbies/sports you can usually meet people with common interests which is a good start to grow a social circle.
That's because Cheers deliberately kept the character most central to the show's sense of comraderie out of the sight lines: an uncredited bouncer posted just outside the door, with the thoroughly Southie name Plot Armor.
Outside of Boston many churches have closed or consolidated over the decades owing to declining attendance and the Catholic clergy scandal from the early 2000s. Others have barely managed to persevere, in large part because of child care centers located on the premises which provide operating funds, as well as volunteer/community efforts to provide help where needed.
One positive trend: New or growing ethnic groups who take over a fading building. When the Archdiocese of Boston shut down or combined several churches in the wake of the scandal, it decided to let a Korean congregation use one of its smaller churches that had been closed. Services were well attended because it's near the intersection of two major highways, and congregants come from many miles away, including from other states in New England.
After a few years, the Archdiocese of Boston deeded the entire property to the Korean congregation who did a wonderful job of fixing the building and bringing life back to that church. It's a beautiful church and I was so glad to see it happen.
I have learned recently that the Koreans are set apart in the world (perhaps uniquely) in that they were self missionizing to their own people with Christianity delivered back home from their kinfolk who traveled abroad. That must produce a very different ethos and flavor for them for getting things done internally without a lot of external support where foreigners are relied upon to get stuff done. This self starter spirituality is probably highlighted in this example you share above somehow.
Korea has a strong Catholic presence with a unique history. Unlike in many Asian countries, the Korean people became Christian prior to the arrival of any missionaries. They learned about the Bible on their own and “self-converted” before seeking instruction from missionaries in China.
For what it’s worth, other flavors of Catholicism and Christianity evolved outside of Rome’s oversight or with very limited contact. I’m thinking in particular of some of the east African sects, as well as Celtic outposts in Ireland and Scotland in the Dark Ages.
a community from Tonga has taken over an underused Presbyterian property in a dense city here on the US West Coast. What was once empty and dusty is now regularly filled with vibrant events for all ages. Since they started that program, that large volcano erupted, making the community center safely in California all the more important.
I grew up playing at this church in the 1970’s and passed it everyday until the early 2000s when I moved a bit further north.
It’s a wonderful building and a loss for the town, but as a whole the town has completely changed (for the worse) since the internet grabbed local commerce by the neck. It’s not a unique story, probably most of us in the smaller towns in England have seen it.
Something of this story reminds me of the famous Ozymandias poem. In a very real sense we are surrounded by the artifacts of a kingdom that no longer exists.
I think it is easy to feel the shock of massive and violent cultural revolutions like the ones that took place in some communist countries. It is another thing to watch the slow death of our own cultural heritage. Nothing is being forcefully taken from us and so it is hard to register that there is any loss happening at all.
What I can say personally, is I have no desire whatsoever to join an elks club or odd fellows or anything of that sort. I find it hard to imagine any kind of institution that could replace the multitude of activities that constitutes a church.
I guess I'm saying this as a young person who is part of the "Young people aren't joining churches" phenomenon:
There are no activities that churches do, that appeal to me. That's why I didn't even stick with the local UU church.
This does seem like a bad sign - I don't have connections to my own town, I don't feel like I'm thriving here, I'm getting by with pretty loose friendships with people who sometimes live in other towns, I don't have any connections with anyone outside my own age group.
From another perspective, it's what I want. I like socializing with people my own age, who I've chosen to form small groups with, and not having to avoid that one person at church who believes in way more woo than I do. I don't really want a mutual aid network. If I have to move to a bigger city, maybe that's fine - Lots of people already moved out of my town... :(
Nothing comes to mind. Honestly it might be an "it's not you, it's me" thing. I keep my optimism to myself and when people talk about spirituality, community, building connections, etc., I feel like they're about to sell me something.
I recently got divorced and I'm sleeping around a bit. The social groups for sleeping around are rarely called churches. There's no Satanic Temple around here or I'd try visiting them.
I saw that "Sacred Harp" a capella style posted here on HN a few weeks ago and it captured my interest. I like the idea that I wouldn't have to be a great singer, I could just be part of a bunch of people doing something for the sake of fun. But even the UU hymns feel too saccharine for me already.
It’s a little weird to me reading all the atheist theories in this channel attempting to understand what is clear on its face if you are willing to accept that there is something bigger than your understanding of the Universe.
There should be many church closures if you believe the Bible itself. Jesus starts the church based on faith in how His life and death earns our forgiveness for us, resulting in eternal life (see GetHisWord.com). His church is to prioritize the truth, reflect Christ’s character in every area of life, have strong fellowship with each other (which is fun!), share the Gospel, and help those in need. God’s Word (and China today) shows such churches multiplying even as believers are jailed for sharing Christ.
Jesus and the Apostles also promised that people would turn away to false religions and versions of Christianity. Even in NT, we see the denying the divinity of Christ, adopting parts of worldly culture to appeal to outsiders, not loving each other, preaching focused on health + wealth, etc. God’s Word said in the last days that that would be extremely common with record amounts of people being godless, in churches with non-Biblical teaching, and following false prophets who work false miracles (eg TV preachers). Jesus also says in Revelation 2-3 that He’ll shut down many churches like that. All of that is happening.
So, the correct thing is to return to the real Gospel, teaching built on God’s Word, churches focused on living it, and love and accountability among believers. More non-believers will believe it when they see it. Also, more prayer… every church praying for the nation as we were commanded to… so we see more great moves of God. Prior revivals had thousands of souls changed and lives changed. In Wales, crime effectively stopped for a while to the point the police were all bored. Imagine that.
And your bio reflects my personal experience; it is something so good and so awesome; it is out-of-this-world, and so, out of describable, out of computable, beyond
> He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. john1
It cannot. As a straw cannot receive an ocean
@dang I would say far from offtopic, this is the most ontopic comment...
Indeed. Receiving eternal life instead of wrath is already awesome. Then, we see how Christ transforms people and works in their lives. I’ll give fresh examples.
I was out door to door today. God put several of them right in front of me as I was about to knock. All good conversations. Several had struggling families, people who went trans & Satanist, etc. They were greatly encouraged by God’s Word, one to tears. Another had just asked for God to send her an answer about where to go and I knocked on her door with that answer. A number had left churches due to the worldliness I referenced in my comment, too.
Outside of that, we’ve seen amazing things happen. People close to Christ were about the only folks with peace and joy working retail during COVID. My prayer group has seen two people supernaturally healed with doctors baffled. One still has the neurological damage but no symptoms. Hardcore folks in our local prisons are begging for more of the Word with some transforming. One evangelist I met was doing drive by shootings in his past.
It’s just amazing watching Christ work miracles and change lives every day while the news focuses on alternative philosophies doing record damage. The media needs to report, not suppress, this stuff. Then, we’ll see real change happen.
> The media needs to report, not suppress, this stuff.
If media discards secularism, news becomes worthless. No organization that spans the trust of religious and non-religious audiences would acquiesce to the promotion of an arbitrary religion - I doubt you'd support what you're asking for if it treated Muslim revelations with equal weight. Regardless, showing people at mass on TV will not solve food inequity or goodwill towards mankind (ask me how I know; I grew up in Detroit).
Your heart is in the right place, but compared to the "struggling families" you've described, you might be the least functional of them all. You require the illusory promise of salvation to persist; denying it for you is almost like killing your own ego. You flip-flop between counterintuitive stances based on what the bible or the ecclesiastics say is right. Perhaps your own notion of morality and logic is stunted, because you're dependent on the word of others to interpret reality for you.
In a world full of realized problems and pragmatic failures of the human condition, faith is the least realistic framework for actually fixing our world. Convincing people to reject personal willpower and self-righteousness is how you kill the individual and create a mentally-neutered sycophant.
Truth is in short supply. I think in secularism, and the religions as you described, people push their own advantage, rather than an independent truth. But the idea that our ultimate goal is truth -- i.e. truth is God, God is truth: This is the only truly trustable source; since anyone who places something higher than truth, such as life, will sacrifice truth to get that. So considering God, to be truth can be the only fully trustworthy position
This is quite different to your conceptualization
> you might be the least functional of them all
"If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied"
1cor15. So Yes :)
> you're dependent on the word of others to interpret reality for you
I really really appreciate your feedback!! However I would attest to many many personal revelations and observed miracles to the point i would consider myself insane not to believe. i.e. It is very much personal choice
I appreciate your other comments too, but my reply is already long
> So considering God, to be truth can be the only fully trustworthy position
Has "God" and his proclamations not been proven wrong over the age of the Earth, the origins of mankind, geocentrism, global flooding, etcetra? If secularism promotes the warping of objective truths, then religion reciprocally practices the interpretation of fiction. As a rational person I'd rather argue over the merits of rational information. From my perspective, the existence of a God is used as a ersatz explanation for determinism.
Not to get too far off in the weeds, but this is usually the Achilles heel of religion. We create religion because man feels a need to justify irrational suffering. Why aren't the crops growing, why did our king die, how does space work, who made us, all of these questions have been skewed by religion since time immemorial. When you deconstruct Christianity and the merits of religion from a postmodern worldview, you very quickly identify how it digs it's claws into people. The founding fathers of America, Christian though they may be, even acknowledge the poison that is a state-affiliated church. Thousands of people have senselessly lost their lives throughout history due to deference to religious interpretation over logic.
I've heard the gospel since I was a kid, and I've watched the wheel go round with or without the dedication of the faithful. People deserve a better education than a penitent mindset. Peace and suffering are thermodynamic certainties, religion will make no sense of it unless you reject reality entirely.
"not been proven wrong over the age of the Earth, the origins of mankind, geocentrism, global flooding, etcetra?"
It really hasn't. One thing I realized after finding Christ was how many of our "scientific" beliefs weren't science at all. We simply repeated, on faith, what other people told us with no thorough peer review or proof of many claims. If the proof contradicted it, then organized science would suppress alternative views. Actually, no dissent is allowed in academia on some topics which is a hallmark of religion, not science. (Science always allows dissent or exploration.)
So, age of the Earth. The theory that we've been around forever was built on the assumption that how Earth works today is how it always worked. That there were no geology-changing catastrophes or that they were rare. The Flood predicted we'd find evidence of Earthquakes, super volcanos, tsunamis, maybe hypercanes, etc. All life on Earth was wiped out by chaotic events that would've layered them on top of each other. Today, modern science talks about all of those things I named with new research showing catastrophe was common. Which means all guesses about millions of years etc need to be thrown away.
They told us fossils and geological structures take a long, long time to form. It's been proven false by actual observations today. They still keep repeating it because it's faith, not science.
On evolution, Darwin predicted a continuous stream of changes from one species to another for all species. The fossil record should be full of transitional fossils. With billions of animals in captivity, we should be seeing new ones all the time. Instead, the fossil record shows (esp Cambrian Explosion) fully formed animals appearing out of nowhere with no transitions. We see no evolution today with the only adaptations happening within the same kinds God originally created. While evolution is falsified, they repeat it non-stop with no dissent allowed because it's their religion.
The Bible also said humans originally descended from a small number of people near Africa and the Middle East. That it happened not long ago (eg 4500 years). Both population analysis and genetic analysis show that's the case. They get no press coverage. Even scientists have often said we came from one group in Africa while giving the Bible no credit for that prediction. So, the Bible is true again.
I'm also re-running the population estimates myself using the exponential, growth model with all observed, growth rates. Using both averages and Monte Carlo over varying rates, evolution model is always off by insane numbers while 4500 years is closer to the truth. At one rate, 4500 years is really close to today's population while evolution predicts the Earth would be totally full of creatures. Although I hope to publish it, I want to get it checked by data scientists for methodological errors first.
Surely this is due to scientists becoming postmodern since truth becomes "influence of ideology in maintaining political power", so then they loose objectivity, to make themselves look better, and publish whatever does that
But my main thought would be that these issues are almost entirely irrelevant to the Christian narrative. Genesis is about our relationship with God. If it was about the early formation of stars, or the universe, then it would be unintelligible and useless information for thousands of years -- how would we then apply it in our lives, even now?
The Genesis narrative does place the main events and their ordering, in a big bang narrative, which is extremly improbable to occur by chance -- light, darkness separated out, earth, oceans, plant life, other life, humans. Particularly when compared to other creation narratives -- for instance the Aztecs believed the earth was devoured by tigers, then the next earth created by a snail going around the sun too slowly and being hit by other animals
If there was an argument to be had, I would say it should be on why there is such a highly improbable level of similarity between the two narratives
But personaly, I would say, Genesis, on our relationship with God, and the state of mankind, is very succinct and impactful; and to me, moving outside that to generate side issues is an argument that doesn't need to happen
If fossils or old earth are true, then we have an awesome God. If they are not true, then that is fascinating aswell. The bible is not affected
Sorry talldayo, and thankyou for your blessing at the end. I was replying to nickpsecurity, rather than you
If you wish to state they have category overlap, which sure, they do, but also the bible is not titled astronomy 101, and in my opinion not even aiming to cover that ground
> Damned if you do, damned if you don't
What I was aiming for was blessed if you do, blessed if you don't. I.e. you may well be completely right on this topic
In anycase, please allow me to reply to one of your other comments
> If fossils or old earth are true, then we have an awesome God. If they are not true, then that is fascinating aswell. The bible is not affected
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. You'll have to pardon me for not taking any of your arguments seriously when this is how you frame them for debate.
I'm done in this thread. You've well made clear that reason is unwelcome, and in it's absence I hope your wily imagination finds peace.
Thank you for responding here. I'm always grateful when my family shows up to discuss these things.
"The journal Nature highlighted the scope of the issue in 2016 with a poll of 1,500 scientists. 70% of respondents reported that they had failed to reproduce the results of at least one of their peer’s studies. 87% of chemists, 69% of physicists and engineers, 77% of biologists, 64% of environmental and earth scientists, 67% of medical researchers, and 62% of all other respondents reported this issue. 50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments."
"A 2021 study found that papers with reproducible results tend to be cited less than papers with findings that cannot be replicated in leading journals."
Pretty damning. It's not bad enough to toss out science or treat it all the same. It does justify high skepticism for new, scientific claims until peer review gets to a point where quotes like above are impossible. That is, the ordinary reviews are actually peer review.
re Youtube vid
Thanks! I'll check it out.
"Genesis is about our relationship with God."
It is. There's evidence for both the six day and older model. I went from older model, six day model, and purely poetic. I went with six day on basis of the text itself. If we're wrong, we'll be still be fine because it won't change anything. That said, I did ask the Spirit for a message that harmonizes how six day vs appearance of the Earth fit together. Here it is for bretheren to test as required in 1 Corinthians.
So, let's say a human creator wants to tell a story, like a movie or game. Their design a set with a universe, its laws, a history, characters, and so on. The universe might be billions of years old. The characters might be 80. Do most, content creators try to slowly evolve all that over billions of years by limiting themselves to the mechanics in their imagined universes? Or do they rapidly produce their creation (the set) using their own power (eg tech), start at moments in the story they feel are important, and then move the story along mostly with in-universe laws?
Now getting more empirical, surveying all human creations shows that most human creators rapidly create their universes. They also usually focus the audience on what the creator thinks is most important. We would predict a divine, intelligent designer might do that. God's Word says we do it because we're made in the image of He who did it first. That's six-day creation. From there, God might use any combination of in-universe or supernatural methods to advance creation in the way His story requires. That's my creation theory.
Like you said, that we're knitted in the womb to be characters in God's story is very powerful. By Genesis 3, we know that we have a personal God, objective morality exists, a basic design for human life, why the world stays evil, the love of God greater than anything people have, and hope for our future. It's all very encouraging.
(Note: I could talk with you more in email about the Genesis interpretations and such things. My email is in my profile. I'm trying to keep on clearest points here as you were.)
Clearly I've struck a nerve. Are you unwilling to admit that portions of the Bible are blatantly incorrect and uninterpretable in a veritable sense? Because if so, that would make this a very grueling discussion for you. There are parts of the Bible that are simply wrong, many of which are points I've already raised and you've ignored.
"The rest of us remain mentally-sound skeptics that need better evidence than circular reasoning around the Bible."
Far from skeptics, they believe most things because some authority told them to. I see no evidence that any of you follow the scientific method with skeptical replication and peer review of most claims. Some of you definitely do for some claims, esp professional researchers. If it doesn't use the scientific method, then believing it as if it's probably or definitely true is a faith-based or emotional belief, not science. Christian beliefs are a mix of experiential, evidentiary, faith, and empirical (scientific method).
Why do many atheists act as if all their key beliefs were obtained by empirical investigation when they in fact mostly put faith in people they don't know? Why do they hold us to a standard they don't follow? In my case, I'm happy to discuss any with the caveat that my justification will use whatever is appropriate for that type of belief (eg experiential vs empirical claims).
"There are parts of the Bible that are simply wrong, many of which are points I've already raised and you've ignored."
You've not also not raised any scientific or historical claims. You've only asserted some things are true (argument from authority). I've responded to a few claims. I'm happy to elaborate on the points you asked about. Quick recap of just those, though.
I gave you an evidence page that the Bible is God's Word. The types and number of evidence surpass most claims I see in the daily news. My own belief is based on that evidence (evidentiary), witnessing God act on the world in ways that require divine attributes (empirical), the inner witness caused by the Spirit's activity when hearing the Gospel, both have tons of independent corroboration (replication), how specific sins/obedience produces Bible-predicted results in real world (evidentiary/empirical).
That's quite a combo. Acting on it despite remaining uncertainty is Christian faith. Like any good model, it kept producing good results, had accurate predictions about people, and predictions about trends in the world. That strengthens my faith and rational belief in God's Word. Now your question: What about the unverifiable claims in the Bible?
They're like how atheists believe many claims in history and science without personally investigating or replicating them. They trust the reliability of the source. Then, put faith in their claims, esp non-critical ones. Likewise, we put faith in the Bible's claims due to our trust in the Bible itself. Many of the Bible's claims that intellectuals opposed were later shown to be true externally to the Bible. Other times, using the historical-grammatical method while treating conflicting accounts like other eyewitness testimony works fine with little or no mental gymnastics. (See Cold Case Christianity by Wallace, a homicide detective, for how he evaluated the eyewitness statements.)
re scientific claims
You also brought up "the age of the Earth, the origins of mankind, geocentrism, global flooding, etcetra." Geocentrism isn't in the Bible. Flooding fits the fossil record well but empirically there's multiple possibilities. Whereas, I showed mainstream age of the Earth used many faith-based premises. The biggest is that one can linearly roll back the current, observed behavior of geological structures for millions to billions of years. Never justified in the first place, that was disproven by secular science in geology (catastrophism), data science (non-linear models), and complexity theory (eg phase transitions + emergent behavior). That premise is highly unjustifiable.
Darwin's theory had specific predictions of gradual emergence of species, piles of transitional forms, more streaming than hierarchical in style, and more kinds of animals forming today with just as much differentiation. The actual, fossil record and animals in captivity both refute every one of those predictions. Instead, the fossil record shows creatures appearing out of nowhere in large number (eg Cambrian Explosion). Combined with catastrophism, the mass die-offs might have happened to existing creatures in a short time or over a long period of time.
Empiricism and logic each require you discard a theory immediately when its premises fail like that. Then, build a new theory on real-world observations. Why didn't scientists do either? If they don't, is it still science or more like religious dogma?
The other problem is that most of you don't know these things. Those making curriculums and "science" news didn't tell you that canyons have formed in 3 days, that fossils formed in 24 hours, and that oil could form in hundreds to a few thousand years. In each case, that lots of water and pressure was all it took with some caused by observed floods. If you knew that, you'd have rejected mainstream theories to explore alternatives where our biosphere developed quickly. Alternatively, you'd humbly say you have no idea how young or old the Earth is which is also scientifically valid.
About the rapid development of geological features and fully-formed creatures in fossil record, did you know about these things before today? Did you know mainstream theories absolutely require these things to be impossible? Or did you just learn that things which supposedly take a hundred thousand to millions of years could happen in a time span of 24 hours to a few books of the Bible?
Either way, what do you now think about mainstream science continuing to push age of the Earth and origin of life theories whose premises were disproven by real-world observations?
Heavens and the earth are created, and light and dark are separated out before the first day listed in Genesis1.5. So total length of time is unstated. The length of the day is also unspecified, see Hebrews3, which shows that those 7 days are still in effect
"Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as you did in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers tested and tried Me, and for forty years saw My works."
Heb3. An example where day means 40 years, and today means an unspecified period of time longer than 24hours
The bible has no proclamations on the age of the earth or geocentrism. Unless you're Calvinist (and not many people are), God is also not used as an explanation for determinism
Global flooding, I would argue is roughly the same as the issue of "day". If everything was flooded as far as you could see in every direction, you would say everything was flooded. It would be silly to misconstrue that. You know that the Black Sea floor was inhabited and catastrophically flooded around the time of Noah? Noah and vast portions of the bible are supported by archeology
You dismiss examples that many Christians already dismiss. That is corroboration
> Not to get too far off in the weeds
I like the weeds. Just some quick thoughts:
> religious interpretation over logic
Do you know that the best basis we have for logic (set theory) was said by Georg Cantor to be given to him as a revelation by God, to help us understand God better?
I think the universe cannot provide a foundation for logic without being cycilical. For instance explain axioms, without using axioms. They simply exist, without possible explanation. Quines are possible (uses an external transformer to re-create itself), but a self-explaining system without external help, is as possible as a perpetual motion machine. All systems we have require an external force to exist, including logic
How can you argue postmodernism is more logical? To quote wikipedia "postmodernism ... rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power. The idea of objective claims is dismissed"
In postmodernism you loose stability and objectivity
> a better education than a penitent mindset
Jesus didn't advocate for this, a penitent mindset would hardly be good news. @nickpsecurity explains this well on his website
> You dismiss examples that many Christians already dismiss. That is corroboration
It's part of my point. When the text isn't an authority on itself, who holds the power in it's interpretation? It simply becomes a tool for narrative control, which has been repeated throughout history to violent extents. Religion is a tool for subjugation, and Christianity is the pinnacle of the master/slave morality system regardless of how Jesus feels about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality
> All systems we have require an external force to exist, including logic
Sure, it's a lot to think about. The regressive nature of reality doesn't preclude the idea that things can be explained, though. Multiple times throughout history, religion has contended with the modern understanding of reality or society. You've done an excellent job cherry-picking the agnostic advancements in science, but there's no shortage of conflicting advancements that challenge that worldview. The best we can do is agree that it's too abstract to say anything for sure (or build a faith system around it, your pick).
> How can you argue postmodernism is more logical?
Because of the second part of the sentence:
and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power
As I said, the truth is manipulated no matter where you are, secular or not. Whoever can create the most-trusted narrative controls their constituents, through lies or blind faith. Faith is not separate from this system, however enticing the idea of "true belief" is. Anything can be challenged with more conclusive evidence, and should God reach out tomorrow and invite me for a game of checkers I'll write you an update about what I think then.
I didn’t say for the media to discard secularism. I asked for the media that reports or goes into depth on so many topics to treat Christ and Christians the same way. Instead, they systematically suppress the Gospel, mock it, misrepresent Christians’ claims, and do negative stories every chance they get. Doing this to any group liberals favor would create an outcry about discrimination but it’s tolerated for Christians. It’s both inaccurate for media reporting and unjust toward people.
Re treating other groups the same
I think the group should carry the weight it’s earned in terms of evidence and outcomes. Here’s some evidence of the Gospel that far outweighs the vast majority of what U.S. media reports as facts:
Now, compare the Muslim faith. They recognize the Bible as Scripture, the authtor’s writings heavily contradict it, and therefore he is a false prophet. He worked no miracles per earliest writings and didn’t come back from the dead. His influence largely spread by money and the sword whereas Christ told us to peacefully share His message. The Christian-like nations had much better outcomes for most individuals than Muslim nations, too.
So, evidence-based reporting would favor Christianity over Islam. It would also report any good or bad things people in those faiths were doing. They’d just report the news.
Re my background, “ego,” and “illusion”
I was a hardcore, liberal, scientific atheist who destroyed religious people for ego and fun. Most of the world around me were arrogant, selfish people chasing ego, money, knowledge, and pleasure. We opposed Christian values to push the opposite. My country got worse and worse the more we did stuff like that, too, but we blamed everyone else. Especially right-wingers and Bible thumpers.
One day, I was forced to believe after witnessing an actual miracle on top of highly-improbable events. The God who works miracles deserves more belief than my prior icons who had no such power. After believing in Him, the Spirit of God dwells in us and delivers on His promises. We saw the results in our family, workplace, etc. He gradually humbled me into a different person, too, who acts for His name and others’ future. In fact, God requires each act be done in love or He won’t reward it at all. No showmanship.
Now, I was in a community that shared all the history, news, and analyses that was hidden from me as a liberal. It was like leaving Plato’s Cave. After a while, I had seen everything from lives changing in the hood (eg Memphis TN) to studies showing positive outcomes on a national level to doctors confirming miracles granted in Jesus’ name. What I had before were my personal beliefs with no such evidence or power.
One of the other lessons from God’s Word is how He blesses or disciplines nations. The nations that followed Christ or kept laws similar to God’s design were very prosperous in many ways. In the Bible, they’d turn to idolatry (or atheism), sexual immorality, oppression of workers, and kill their children for financial success. Each time, God’s wrath eventually came down on them with economic problems, random violence going up, chronic illness going up, birth rates going down, bad weather, and so on. They were destroyed. As predicted, America started doing all those things after turning away from God with all the same responses beginning to happen.
So, we’re not taking out of ego or speculation or hatred of people. We’ve seen objective, personal, and historical proof that the Bible is true with positive outcomes for individuals and nations. We see our nation turning to huge sin and paying the same price in the Bible. That’s sad.
We want all of you to live eternally, purposefully, and with deep peace in hard times. The media systematically suppresses or makes negative reports about Christ and His positive results while promoting tons of unproven or sinful practices even when they do damage. If they do the opposite, or even just more righteousness, it will help many people.
> In fact, God requires each act be done in love or He won’t reward it at all. No showmanship
I think that is key. Too often we try to appear loving, to earn God's favor. We grabbed hold of the pulpit, to prove our ministry value, and in so doing, we quenched the Holy Spirit; to attempt to say it was us who did the work, not He -- since we worked to be loved, rather than accepted the free offer of salvation, and accepted that God loves us not based on our works. Only then will it be no showmanship, and enacted from love
If we don't get that key, (and sometimes we dont), then @talldayo's perspective would be right in saying religion is an empty shell of ideology, grasping to appear loveable, rather than knowning it is loved, and living from that perfect security
I think this was the key to the revival you talked about in Wales, where crime stopped, and on duty police would form choirs to sing carols -- they sang "Here is love, vast as an ocean"
I partially agree - the core of what you're saying doesn't need Christianity or faith to reinforce. People can find salvation, lifelong happiness and spiritual fulfillment from something as simple as visiting their hometown. There are hundreds of mechanisms to ground people in their communities without using faith as a corollary for commitment. Lions Club, Boy Scouts, food shelter volunteers and firefighters all roughly serve the same purpose in serving the community while enriching the individual.
Without trying to make anyone angry, I legitimately believe religion as a concept is obsolete. My impression is that Christianity is blatantly manmade, and adapted to each society in accordance with how servile the audience is. That's not to say it's an ineffective tool, but propaganda and torture can also be effective tools that we consider irrational and unhealthy under a liberal democracy. I think that any state that respects the individual sovereignty of it's citizens would not turn around and spend their tax-dollars on non-secular investments.
> I legitimately believe religion as a concept is obsolete
I think this is correct, from your world viewpoint. But the key to our difference is in two viewpoints:
A ship is sinking. Do you dispise the weakness, and strengthen the ship? Or do you say the sinking is inevitable, we must abandon ship?
The first group must dispise the second for giving up. The second is Christian -- this world will end, we cannot hope in our own strength, we must hope in Christ
The first group is Nietzschien. We must throw out the weak and become masters
These two viewpoints are deeply opposed
I have two notes here: One is, I think Nietzschien thought leads to a society you don't want to live in. The second is that science says the universe is a sinking ship: we began in nothing, we end in meaningless heat death. Nietzsche hoped to escape this by becoming the overman, a strong enough master to create his own meaning
A third note, against Christianity, is that the second group must become slaves to Christ, and this is a hard route to take. I believe this is the reason most people choose to join that first group
But anyway, I appreciate your time. For me this has been my second most positive and enlightening conversation on HN, so even if you step away, know that I appreciate you and your forthrightness
As resurrection day is coming, I realize the sinking ship analogy inverts
Nietzsche aimed to save his life. Jesus aimed to give his life
Jesus saves the weak. Nietzsche does not
Apologies for pushing you hard. I think if I had found this foundation of life giving love, I would of treated you better, and found truth -- the one who freely gives his life, freely places truth first; and this is love
Perhaps God will make his next miracle something more generally observable. The context of your lived experience is useless to me. Unfortunately, I have seen schizophrenic people maim their bodies over perceived threats that a security camera proves isn't real. I'm not very good at the whole "trust me" thing anymore, at least without seeing the boogeyman myself.
Maybe both of us will be proven wrong, someday. It's the nature of unknowing.
You don’t need a miracle. God’s Word says the Father draws us to Him, that faith is a gift, and He opens our heart to receive it. The God who created and sustains your brain has the ability to let you know His message is true. All He requires is we humbly seek Him and the truth.
Read John and Romans 1-3 asking who Jesus is, what our problem is, and what He does about it. You will know the truth. Then, choose life.
Speak for yourself, I grew up in churches and feel stronger in my life than ever now that Christianity is a yoke of mental slavery. My ignorance of God has brought no ill tidings upon myself, and freed my soul to seek righteousness through my own person.
Maybe you don't need a miracle, having received whatever visions you claim to have seen. The rest of us remain mentally-sound skeptics that need better evidence than circular reasoning around the Bible.
The Western church (as it relates to Protestant Christianity) has been dying for some time now. However, I wouldn't really use the West as any sort of thermometer for Christianity's influence. The underground church in oppressive countries has been growing at a fairly steady rate for some time now. From my perspective, I'm seeing more of a shift than anything else. I suspect it won't be long before countries start sending Christian missionaries to the US (I know of at least a few cases of this already happening).
Source: I work within a para-church organization that keeps track of this stuff.
Off topic: I thought (probably incorrectly) that the EU required that the cookie preferences for sites were supposed to offer "Reject All" if they offered "Accept All". I realize The New Statesman may not need to comply since Brexit, but their opt-out logic seems almost to be calculated to make people give up before they opt out of everything. Net result is that I didn't read an article that might have interested me, and I didn't see any of their advertisements because I didn't want to be tracked.
The cookie law still applies in the UK because it has not been revoked. IIRC, there was a ruling recently that it must be as easy to reject all as it is to accept all. Not every site has been updated/fixed; I still see dark patterns, frequently, but I do feel like it has gotten better.
I believe you are correct, definitely in terms of the spirit of the law and probably in terms of the text. It's just that there haven't been any landmark legal cases yet to settle this point (further complicated by the fact that the EU is more civil law than common law).
I am sure almost all those congregations are gone now. Is it a loss? I don't know. I no longer have the faith I did then, but I did see the power of community, genuine concern for one another, and a deep faith expressed in a very specific understated way. It is something I still remember all these years later, and I haven't really seen it reproduced in other social environments.