People in the U.S. are leaving and switching faith traditions in large numbers. The idea of “religious churning” is very common in America, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
It finds that around one-quarter (26%) of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated, a number that has risen over the last decade and is now the largest single religious group in the U.S. That’s similar to what other surveys and polls have also found, including Pew Research.
Good. Religion is about power and money.
We don’t need a sky god to be good people.
We don’t need a sky god to be good people.
I’d also argue that if a person needs the fear of a sky daddie to be a good person, they’re not really a good person
I think “good person” is a nebulous and generally subjective term. If some people need an external factor to hold themselves accountable then as long as they willingly seek out that accountability then that’s all that matters to me ultimately, I’m not going to try and micromanage how other people reconcile with their own morality in a large uncaring universe, or act like I’m an authority on how people are supposed to be “good”, all I care about is how they treat other people at the end of the day. But a lot people use religion not as a way to hold themselves personally accountable for their actions, but rather as an excuse to get away with doing bad things and dictating how other people can live their lives without having to suffer consequences. They use it to ESCAPE accountability, and that’s when I take issue with it.
You are more intellectually honest and open-minded than the majority of people in the Fediverse.
They are looking at the sign to see if the god allows them to kill certain some people.
“Religiously unaffiliated” and “atheist” are different things.
“A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” – is now the largest cohort in the U.S.”
That’s a better definition than I have heard previously, but atheists are still a portion of that group and not its whole.
I assumed that unaffiliated meant not belonging to a church while still believing.
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I mean people who identify as agnostic generally choose to do so specifically because they don’t see themselves as atheist. I’m agnostic myself and I definitely don’t consider myself to be atheistic any more than I consider myself to be religious.
And to add to this: Religion is not equal to spirituality. Left that door closed for decades.
Sadly someone I know left their church of >20 years because they thought it had become TOO accepting of LGBT stuff. But they found another congregation with a more comfortable level of bigotry.
Well it’s pretty important to find the right God’s will to match your opinions.
The effect of that in the long run is to have a few groups of concentrated extremism. This is how you Branch Davidian.
For me, it moreso came down to the fact that the church was essentially becoming just a wing of the Republican political party.
Good.
Organized religion can’t die fast enough.
EDIT: Everyone take a minute to point & laugh at the sad christofascist @BaldProphet that likes to follow me around & give me his singular, pathetic downvote anytime I tell the truth about his pedophillic loser death-cult.
These groups always need a enemy.
So when a follower actually meets the person the group calls a enemy, and realized that it’s a lie… What do they expect?
Yeah, religion is the deadliest ideology, basically “that’s a made-up reason we’re better than you and that’s why you need to die” basically an extension of conservatism
Priest spews transphobia on the pulpit fifteen minutes after being balls deep in his tween altar boy.
Pastor rants about the loss of family values weeks before its found out that he’s impregnated a fourteen year old girl that he got hooked on meth or something.
Both scenarios are made up but the fact that they are VERY plausible should make it clear why people aren’t feeling keen on organized religion.
Jesus: Share everything you have, especially with those in need. Be kind and loving toward everyone. Worry about your own shortcomings and not those of others. Pay your taxes.
Members of the religion named after him: Nah. We just want to hoard wealth and watch people suffer. Also, let’s add a bunch of pagan stuff to our dogma that isn’t remotely scriptural.
When did Jesus say pay your taxes?
Mark 12:14-17
14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax[a] to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”
But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
And they were amazed at him.
Matthew 17:24-27
24 After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”
25 “Yes, he does,” he replied.
When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?”
26 “From others,” Peter answered.
“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him.
27 “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”
That is the closest I found.
Mark 12: 14-17
Give unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser’s, give unto God that which is God’s
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There is also another way of looking at it: If pastors focus on ministering to teens, those teens become more faithful but then leave to the coasts for work when they reach adulthood and churches on the coasts receive more money due to the work of the home church. Meanwhile, if the pastors focus on the old people, those old people die and leave money to the home churches. So there is a financial incentive to ignore things that matter to the youth and focus on what matters to the elderly, at least in the short run.
Church is a business and baby jesus is crying
Remember that most of these identify as “nothing in particular”. Self identification of atheist/agnostic groupings are still quite small. What the Nones believe is highly varied. They may believe in some kind of god, but don’t like organized religion in general.
Religion itself tends to become more entrenched during hard times. If you believe that the US is going down a path of economic stagnation, devastation from global warming, and increased war around the world in general, then we might expect that religion will grow again. It might not be traditional Christian denominations, though. I suspect we’ll see a revival in paganism derived from pre-Christianized Europe (though far from identical to what they were historically).
I wonder where groups like the Satanic Temple are placed in studies like this (or if they’re even counted at all) since they’re an activist group that’s legally classified as a religion.
Tbh I find them annoying because they’re keeping stupid myths alive because of their existence (because their name is a foil), and acting as a fuel for motivating the religiously minded. Organized religion as a whole needs to die in a civilized society context, and that cannot happen if we keep ideas like “Satan” alive in any context.
Organized religion as a whole needs to die in a civilized society context
Oh boy. Who decided you get to be the arbiter of what people do with their lives? Shouldn’t a civilized society let people believe what they want provided they are tolerant toward others?
This isn’t my perspective, but something many share. Tbh, I am okay with keeping religion as a private affair. But the problem is that such ideology can often instill self-righteous attitudes, which can become dangerous on a societal level. See all of history, for example!
we’ll see a revival in paganism derived from pre-Christianized Europe
I hope not? Those types of ideologies were even more backwards than the Abrahamic faith ones, and the good parts were all rolled up into Judaism or Christianity. I am not sure if I misremember, so let me know otherwise. I remember movies like Midsommar as a good example of this type of ideology at an extreme/cult level.
Anything where you’re believing in some woo woo as an organization, or even as a small group, is just a bad idea for societal development. I just want people to move away from mythology based origin stories, or explanation for known or unknown phenomena 😭
The major relevant drive is the fact that people finally realized they are a useless time waste and most importantly, made up - rather than having something to do with minorities.
Wow maybe if they’d stop hiring sexual abusers after realizing they can’t force people to stay at the same church their own life they’d get more business. But I believe the entire structure is sexual abusers by this point because all the “good” people realized how fucked it was and left.
The audacity, if god all mighty says child rape and bigotry are righteous and correct who are they to overrule his will. Seems obvious to me the first step is to realize there is no god, and then they shouldve bailed anyway before even getting to the hate
Was talking about this to a religious Christian friend of mine last week. Do you really want your religion to be associated with anger and being mean to minorities or do you want people to associate it with charity programs?
It is too much for me to ask that religion be good, I just wonder why they don’t care about even being seen as good. Why don’t they even have the basic level of shame we should expect from any common criminal?
Or any shame at all. Even common crooks are appalled by pedophiles. Christians will not only shield their priests from justice, they help transition them to other churches to find new victims.
Why don’t they even have the basic level of shame we should expect from any common criminal?
Well put
They don’t have shame because “God” is a crutch for all sins when you can just beg for forgiveness from the supposedly all merciful.
Furthermore, they can’t comprehend their worldview without the existence of the Christian God.
Pair that with indoctrinations and now you got a cult!
Source: am former Catholic student studying psychology
You don’t say…
