I studied theology for a few years before giving up religion entirely. The most disappointing aspect of 'modern' Christianity to me is how few of its supposed adherents have bothered to consciously choose a system and learn more about it, or even try to understand the one(s) they were brought up with.
The trend seems to be that people first decide what's most personally appealing to believe, then label themselves whatever fits with their in-group, with almost no attempt to connect the two. From a philosophical perspective, there is a lot of reinventing the wheel (poorly) going on, and very little recognition that carefully thought out frameworks which considered every possible angle and relentlessly sought internal logical consistency have existed for hundreds of years.
What about people meet on Sundays to talk about ancient philosophy, with a few long-term goals such as ending hunger by working in food kitchens and raising money for other charitable causes? If these Sunday meetup clubs get large enough, maybe they can run hospitals or schools.
I think we should call the leaders of such Sunday Meetup groups "Priests", or maybe "Ministers".
That would be great. I read that there are secular masses that actually do that.
The ones you mentioned do not meet to talk about ancient philosophy. They meet to talk about an imaginary entity you come to kneel to and pray it does not bring the end of the world.
The managers of these groups also expect the participants to tell them what they did wrong (confession) and when they hear that a guy is going to rape someone because he feels that need, they cowardly cover for him. Mostly because they put their comfort above the life of someone else (secret of confession).
So yeah, that wood be good but for now this is just a meeting of people who learned this from their parents and do not want to think about the whole craziness of the idea.
Speaking of philosophy. Didn't the Buddha say "you won't be punished for your unhealthy focus on politics, you will be punished by your unhealthy focus on politics"? Seriously, politics plus social media equals missery. I have an older family member who, I was surprised to learn, has forgotten pets he cared for for years and fun family events of the past, but he certainly remembers every political slight and wrong people in Washington DC have experienced. As if an evil spell was cast to replace all happy memories with aggravating memories.
(And I think the answer is no, the Buddha did not say that.)
The social aspect seems to be the biggest motivating factor for what makes people either join or leave a religion.
People often choose to stop a belief because of the failings of their parents, spiritual leader, etc without thought to their direct relationship with their deity and the belief system itself.
- In other words, if you are Catholic and your priest was a criminal does that mean the next logical step is to become an atheist?
- If you’re an atheist and science says that the inherent beauty of laws of the universe means that it is a possibility that our world was engineered by powerful being(s) does that mean you should jump your belief all the way to creationism?
I'm considering joining a church almost exclusively for the social aspect. Christianity does teach some good lessons and taking my kids would be a net positive.
I wonder how many people who attend church and identify as Christian hold similar views to mine: overall it's a pretty good system but very few stories in the Bible are historically accurate.
Europe is full of atheist Catholics. It’s a pretty cool system.
You get the holidays and culture, nice set of shared stories and a shared common sense. Thinking any of it is factually accurate or that god is a thing or being that actually exists is almost considered weird.
In Slovenia (where I’m from), for example, about 70% of the population identifies as Catholic, but only 25% say there might be a god. Another 30% say there’s probably some sort of greater spirit, but not necessarily god.
The American version always seemed odd to me. Believing that stuff in the Bible is factually true, not just fables with lessons ... that’s weird.
It's worth remembering that large groups of fundamentalist Christians left Europe to go to the "new world" to escape actual persecution or the perception that they were not free to express their form of Christianity. Culture IMHO runs very deep and lasts long after the death of the originators.
LOL talk to your local priest about the whole thing being a bunch of nice fables; or actually go to church.
The sermons at Easter can be especially unpleasant.
I like to chalk it up to just a bit of lost in translation, but I know it is probably more complex than that. Think about going from early Aramaic/Hebrew, to Latin, Greek and Turkish, to medieval Italian, German and Slavic, to Old English and French, to Modern English. You are bound to lose the real meaning of the original texts after several millennia in the game of lingual telephone.
Translations are usually done directly from the original language into the target language. The study of early Hebrew and Aramaic and Koine Greek remains an active field and there are lots of people who can read those languages fluently.
Why is it weird? It requires an open and trustful way of thinking. The same that lets me believe in global warming. I just think the outcome of subcribing to that ideology has good outcomes for me and my family, and I accept there are events beyond my reach and understanding, and that I cannot do much about it.
Because Occam's razor is clear. I successfully grow flowers on my balcony and my verification and peer review of temperature is not alarming. It's hard to make a living as a scientist, and journals need sensationalism, so of course people in their 30s+ would show me numbers that fit the agenda. From logical thinking the deduction is there is no global warming, but I do believe there is in some parts of the world, and we'd best do something about it.
Same thing goes for what ancient civilisations believed within the concept of their lifestyles.
It’s weird in the same way that believing Die Hard has good lessons on morality and courage is great, but believing the events of Nakatomi Plaza are real facts is weird.
Much of the bible is a mix of history inspired folk tales, political propaganda, morality tales, and self-help advice from various eras. It’s a great resource in that respect, but I wouldn’t use it to explain any particular “how”
Being raised in the church and briefly having taught kids there, please don't do this. Even in progressive churches the lessons they risk being exposed to will teach lazy thinking: trust in authority, testimony above hard evidence, etc. At worst they may be taught to hate or despise themselves, others, or natural desires.
To the article's point, I can see how wokeism has brought about "lazy thinking: trust in authority, testimony above hard evidence, etc. At worst they may be taught to hate or despise themselves..." as well.
I really think the article's author is on to a good line of thinking.
UT Austin journalism professor Robert Jensen joined — and was welcomed by — a liberal Austin Presbyterian church even though he didn't believe traditionalist theology, christology, or soteriology.
From a Texas Monthly article: "Jensen, who joined the church in 2005, did not come to St. Andrew’s in search of protective cover. On the contrary. In an article posted on the church’s Web site, he explained that he came in search of a moral and political community .... He told the congregation that he did not accept the divinity of Jesus, but he did endorse the core principles in Jesus’ teaching and pledged to be a responsible member if they would have him. That was enough for the folk at St. Andrew’s." [0]
(That didn't sit well with traditionalist elements in the larger church and led to ecclesiastical trouble. [1])
Tbh, you'd have to choose the right church. Something like the Anglicans or mainstream Presbyterians. Unitarians would be ideal.
Otherwise you're soon running into creationism, or purity culture, or speaking in tongues and the evil of backsliders, or why women can't hold jobs, why dolls violate the 2nd commandment, or, imo, one of the worst, Calvinism and it's TULIP doctrine[1]. I'm not sure what's worst, L, wherein God only saves some, and sends the rest to hell as an example of his grace to those going to heaven, or P, where if you express reservations or concerns about the church, you're obviously not actually saved and are going to hell.
At first glance, it appears that agnosticism is more rooted in science and evidence than atheism.
What is atheism’s general view of BioLogos and evolutionary creation as supported by the former head of the Human Gene Project and NIH, Francis Collins?
Well, atheism's general view is that it's bullshit.
My personal view is more nuanced than that, but it's much too long a story for an HN comment. The TL;DR is that the divergence between science and religion happens very, very early in one's thought process. Humans seek to explain their experiences, but there are two very different kinds of explanation you can choose to seek. You can pursue mechanism, i.e. what are the laws that describe the phenomena we observe, or you can pursue teleology, i.e. what is the purpose of the phenomena that we observe? If you choose the former, you end up with science, and if you pursue the latter, you end up with religion.
Neither approach subsumes the other. Science fails to identify purpose, and teleology fails to identify a mechanism. But humans want both, so we struggle to put together some kind of synthesis. BioLoogos is a valiant attempt at a synthesis, but it's not really supportable by anything other than our desire to construct a unified theory of our existence, i.e. to tell a story that makes us feel warm and fuzzy. IMHO it's problematic from the perspective of both theology and science. But, like I said, it's a long story.
Telos isn't strictly linked to religion. Emergent properties can be seen as a form of telos. Even atheists talk about evolution teleologically - "evolution fits species to their environment".
Personally I liken the typical materialist denial of telos to only trusting quantitative data, which is something they also do. You don't even get half the picture because the two halves form a greater whole.
To be honest, it was a catastrophe when the dualism of the Abrahamic religions was split down the middle and the spiritual half was abandoned. Its no surprise that modernism is so unfulfilling when the default philosophies that are compatible with pure materialism are hedonism and nihilism.
Right, I didn't mean to imply that it was. It's just an explanation (a hypothesis at this point) for how otherwise reasonable people end up with radically different worldviews.
When our kids were very little, my Episcopalian wife said we needed to raise them in a religious tradition "so they'd have something to reject when they grow up." So we did; both were baptized (as infants) and confirmed (as teens) at her parish. Fast forward three decades: One now-grown and -married kid is on the vestry (board of directors) of the parish, while the other hasn't darkened the door of any church since he was a teenager, apart from his sister's wedding.
> very few stories in the Bible are historically accurate.
Outside of a particular brand of Protestantism which happens to be quite popular in the US, Christians doctrine doesn't hold that the Bible is a literally factual narrative.
But beyond that, which obviously doesn't quite cover the degree of divergence you seem to be suggesting, there are probably Churches you'd fit into without hypocrisy, though som
e might argue they they are only partially or historically Christian, e.g., some Unitarian Universalist churches.
I would say: more than you think. Someone else responded to you about European churches and honestly that sounds quite appealing to me.
My experience in Canada is that there are a lot of people who would most closely align with Liberal Christianity[0] but then spend their time in churches which are more "traditional". I think there is a bit of disconnect and tension in the current state of the churches here, though I think as this subgroup of Christians grows it will have to be addressed.
Robin Lane Fox, a historian, in his book _Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible_, wrote that as he finished this book, "a friend reminded me that I had once remarked to him that I believed in the Bible but not in God. . . . Twenty-five years later, this book has turned out to be an explanation of what I meant."
The history of the Jewish and Christian scriptures and the subsequent history of the many faith communities who read them, shows how much time and effort people have spent trying to understand themselves and the world.
It is a nice thought; that religion is the communication of useful (not literal) truths.
However religion is also about control.
As Jesus said: "You are my friends - if you obey me."
Turns a bunch of people away from Alcoholics Anonymous too. I mean, I get the gist - admitting something bigger than you exists can help frame your inability to manage your addiction, but yeah, in this day and age, it's an extra barrier.
"Supreme Being" is just concise and archaic language.
This is all it means.
"You must believe we may not be in the base level of reality and our universe could be a simulation"
> People often choose to stop a belief because of the failings of their parents, spiritual leader, etc without thought to their direct relationship with their deity and the belief system itself.
IME and those I've read about on various ex Reddit subs is that many stop believing because the evidence is non-existent. Learning about the hypocrisy of leadership may push people out of certain organizations, but to stop believing is another thing.
Choosing to believe we have enough evidence to know/state a definitive answer is belief itself, no?
Nobel-winning physicist, Roger Penrose.
Question: Do the wonders of physics and the beauty of its laws inspire belief in something that is beyond science?
Answer: ‘There is a sense in which I would say I’m an agnostic[...] But that doesn’t mean I’m an atheist. Do I believe in something outside science? Well, it’s a bit hard to know. What is science? Where are its boundaries? Is there something going on in consciousness, which is outside of science? Well, I like not to think that. It is certainly outside the science we have now. But it’s something we can explore scientifically. Whether we will have an understanding of what’s going on, which is deep enough to solve the mystery of what it is to be, I don’t know.’
I've stopped believing in Christianity because the things I learned about physics and sociology far better explain the evidence that I've seen. Others appear to have done the same. Whether their is some untest-able higher power is irrelevant to my life. And if it can be tested and falsified then given enough time and effort it will be proven. Yet centuries of human effort have been wasted exploring what may simply be a side effect of overzealous agent detection.
Great way to put it, definitely going to steal this one!
Our brain's pattern recognition circuits are highly developed and we like to anthropomorphize. Tens of thousands of years ago with a lack of scientific knowledge, who else but the gods could we have pointed to in order to explain the world around us?
This is the case for me. I basically just realized I had never actually hard anything speaking back to me and had never observed anything super natural. I was basically fully deconverted by about age 16 or 17, mostly just through self examination of my subjective experiences.
I find some of these other explanations strange and quite at odds with the experience of me and the rest of my deconverted family.
Lack of evidence for divine Creation, lack of evidence that a particular “revealed truth” is supernatural in origin, moral teachings of a particular faith incompatible with own morals derived from lived experience, religion systematically corrupt or staffed by people of dubious character ...
For those that become “religious” for social reasons it makes complete sense to leave because of dubious characters but I would argue that all social groups/organizations have dubious characters.
For those that become “religious” and see it as their personal mission and spiritual relationship, then the social part has scant importance because the hypocrisy is that of other corruptible individuals.
"for what makes people either join or leave a religion."
This is a very American kind of statement.
In this world, most people don't 'join' religions - they are born into them, and they are usually a part of the social fabric.
In the New World we have this notion that Religions are a bunch of competing ideas, that you can join or unjoin this or that.
Joining/unjoining kinds of religions are so fundamentally different things that they probably need different words.
Catholicism is so different from Evangelicalism that they probably should not be put in the same boat.
Catholicism in many ways is more similar to Judaism than Evangelicalism.
Anglicans (Church of England), Catholics (Church of Latin world), Presbyterians (Church of Scotland), Methodists (Church of Some Germans) and Judaism ('Church' of Jews) - should almost be thought of in cultural or ethnic terms as much as religious.
The Church has always been a cultural and community centre as much as any place of mere belief.
The notion that we treat it almost in terms of 'belief' is a constant fallacy which causes us to often miss the point.
Finally - religious fervour moved out of the Church in the last century into left/right wing politics. It's just taking a different form now.
There is nothing modern about what you say; there is no internal logical consistency in any religion which is why you have the fanatically orthodox and the ultra liberal coexist in every religion - each one sure of their moral superiority, of their interpretation of the code. People have always been able to defend what they believe in, what they grew up with etc. If anything the divisions have grown more peaceful over the years. The trend is that due to the internet and social media, you do not have to follow your tradition, you can find other things, which would be in general a good thing, except it doesnt do anything to bring people together, and it also has the effect of giving the worst of them a voice and a following which could have been suppressed by more moderate voices in the pre internet era.
I would agree with most of this. Blaming social media is a dead horse now, but not without good reasons.
Most of what I'm bemoaning here boils down to frustration with the apparent increase in anti-intellectualism, and how it pervades everything. If you don't understand enough of what's been discussed before, you can't even have a coherent conversation. There are all too many incoherent conversations going on.
> Their view of social justice has no place for forgiveness or grace—as Alexi McCammond recently learned, when the 27-year-old’s editorship of Teen Vogue was cancelled because of some bigoted Tweets she sent as a teenager
This is an incredible story. If you’re not familiar with it:
I feel conflicted. On one hand, kids do dumb things. On the other hand... those tweets were pretty terrible, and may hint at some deep seated prejudice. And this isn't a 50yo, those tweets were only a decade ago.
Ultimately I fail to be outraged either by her hiring or her firing. They could have kept her and I'd shrug; they fire her and I also shrug. The whole situation is sad. It's hard to imagine my child saying things like that, but who knows, maybe her parents said the same thing.
For reference, here are the tweets referenced in the story:
Outdone by Asian #whatsnew
now googling how not to wake up with swollen, asian eyes...
give me a 2/10 on my chem problem, cross out all of my work and don't explain what I did wrong..thanks a lot stupid asian T.A. you're great
Those aren't vaguely bad as compared to the shit that has been yelled at me out of car windows by people who will never have to answer for it.
The first one is just the "model minority" trope, the second one is a reference to the actual physical characteristic that Americans use to define "Asian" (since we tend to leave South Asians out, and everybody in the West tends to leave Central Asians out), and the third is a case of over-specification that maybe indicates hidden racist attitudes, but could also be a way to distinguish between a number of TAs whose names you don't know.
I don't care about Teen Vogue, and I don't care which elites get jobs in the culture industry dictating the range of acceptable opinion, but tweets like these are minor racial crimes as compared to the systemic actions of people who would never talk like this.
It probably isn't that simple though. This article puts forth that there was likely more going on, with the Tweets being the part that it was easy for people to be loud about:
Even if this is true, the point is the trend that made the Tweets so easy to be loud about. It's abnormal and frankly dangerous to have an environment where "she said offensive things a decade ago in high school" is a stronger objection than "she's totally unqualified for this role".
> She also dressed as a Native American at a Halloween party as a teenager.
As someone who grew up in Germany, this made me chuckle, as probably 50% of children did this at least once in their life where I lived for "Fasching". The other half were cowboys.
Sure, but there are certain things as which one should never dress up in Germany. Don't you think parents should think twice before letting their kids dress up as the displaced indigenous victims of genocide? Context and history matters.
Nevrtheless, German kids dont cosplay as SS and Jews. The cowboys in Germany are more about Karl May books which in turn have nothing to do with history.
Treating minors as adults is not a new problem. They are regularly tried as adults by "tough on crime" prosecutors. With examples like that it's not surprising to see the "tough on racism" crowd following that lead.
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Mainstream media regularly publishes anti-religious articles, but I wonder how many HN readers actually know and regularly converse with religious people.
In my shoestring travels around the U.S., I'd say most of the help I received was from people who identified as Christian.
I also observed that most charity work like feeding people regularly is done by Christians and other religious/spiritual groups.
While the statistic on atheist or agnostic self identification is fairly accurate, I think it is misleading. There is a lot of stigma against these terms in the U.S., and many people who hold beliefs inline with what would generally be considered atheist or agnostic do not self identify as such.
A 2017 Pew Research survey found that 18% of Americans consider themselves "neither religious nor spiritual" and that a further 27% consider themselves "spiritual but not religious" [1]. In total, roughly 45% of Americans consider themselves "not religious". Given the historical trends in the U.S., I suspect these numbers are even higher now.
If you define Christian to mean someone says “yeah I’m a Christian I guess,” then perhaps. If you define it to mean someone actually studies the teachings of Christ and tries to live by them, there’s no way it’s more than 10-20%. If you go to church you’ll find most people there come infrequently as a purely social thing and don’t really listen or care about the philosophy much.
Visiting my wife’s extended family is quite difficult for me because out of the dozens of them, not one of them has high speed internet. The internet is just emails to them. All of them are very active in their communities.
The internet, and Reddit especially, are a self selected group that don’t represent the majority of the 330M people living here at all.
I recall vaguely reading an argument that New Atheism activism, so prominent in the early years of the new millennium, withered precisely because some of its demographics began to focus on social-justice activism, and this sapped New Atheism of time and effort that could be put into the cause. Does this ring a bell with anyone? If so, I'd be grateful for a link.
(In this case, this would be an example of areligious fervour migrating into politics!)
I'd say it withered due to the opposite trend, which largely focused on a woman being awkwardly hit on in an elevator and complaining about it. It turned out that some of the New Atheists and those they inspired were still European/Christian supremacists, although being atheists they defended it as Judeo-Christian/Western culture, rather than traditional heretic-hunting and Crusading.
It started with Objectivist Michael Shermer, when he started debunking the existence of poverty, racism and sexism rather than quacks and ghosts, was exacerbated after 9/11 when that group (and notably Hitchens) found that they would rather direct invective at brown people overseas than their own parents (it certainly paid more), and the elevator incident simply finalized the Incel tripod, leading into Gamergate.
There was also Richard Dawkins etc. advocating 'the Brights' and Alain de Botton proposing atheist churches, amongst a lot of other cringeworthy ideas.
It's a popular story. But I think people shifted their focus after the atheist cause stalled. And the framing assumes their activism wasn't motivated by social justice all along.
Just an anecdote on this, a few years ago (in a university town in the US) I was in a bookstore and overheard a small group discussing what sounded a lot like New Atheism. What stood out to me was one of them arguing passionately for greater group solidarity, saying that they shouldn't squabble over whether they call themselves secular humanists or atheists or whatever. So these people are still out there. Of course, in this same town social justice activism is much more prevalent, and there was something pitiable about this group, as though they knew that their brand of politics isn't in favor anymore. But I was struck by how strongly some of them still wanted to change that. I'm not an atheist, but I think groups like this can provide a healthy counterbalance to the kind of fervor being discussed here.
I don't believe most educated, rational believers call their faith equivalent to a belief in magic, so that's kind of begging the question.
Anyway, if we start inventorying our personal beliefs and the rational, empirical basis for each of them, I think we all probably practice magical thinking to some extent.
I imagine some perfectly rational, omniscient alien interrogator questioning my most deeply held beliefs about, say, free will, or my individuality, or why the world is the way it is, and placing me somewhere on a continuum that includes witch-burners and cavemen, rather than in a completely separate category.
Depends, if a secular humanist believes that time, space and matter appeared out of nothing, which is indistinguishable from magic and on the grandest possible scale.
It's definitely less of a magical explanation than that everything was created by a magic personality of endless love and ruthless judgment, whom you know personally through auditory hallucinations and the writings on ancient scrolls.
You would really have to stretch the definition of religion to breaking point to justify that comparison though. Secular humanism is fundamentally different in the way it was born, how it tenets are formulated and how it's practised compared to say to Islam or Christianity. Reducing both religion, as practised by billions of people, and a secular belief system to just philosophical systems does neither justice.
To clarify: sceptical in the sense of doubtful / needing to be convinced by compelling evidence, and credulous in the sense of being prepared to believe something with uncertain or only minimal evidence.
OP said secular humanism and religion were indistinguishable - my point is they are distinguished by their fundamental attitude to evidence.
Thank you, this is exactly the post I was thinking of and I'm happy to have found it again. I'm sorry that your comment was unfairly downvoted beyond all others as I write this.
Seems like religiosity is a neurological need, but church is not. With organized religion decreasing in various countries, I wonder where people will get their outlets for social and metaphysical needs previously supplied by churches.
How did you arrive at that conclusion? With the decline of organized religion, could one not suggest that religiosity is very much something people can be without? Or are you referring to already religious people being unsatisfied religiously?
I'm in a very secular country. Non-religious people are... non-religious. I don't believe there is anything that "replaces" religion in most people's lives. If you're not religious, you don't necessarily have metaphysical needs, and I think most people here don't.
Regarding religious people: they meet with eachother in church and other constellations as usual. Nothing is keeping people from practicing their religion, but they can't assume most people will empathize with their views, which is true for many different standpoints in life, not just religion.
(I did not read the article as I was paywalled, I might have missed the context of your comment)
Japan surprises me. Religion seems nearly absent from their daily lives.
There is ritual around death and marriage. The scene of a temples will be typically older people eliciting prayers for health, relieving ailments.
But little else that I have observed.
It is perhaps the rest of the rigidity of their society that gives them a sense of belonging to, serving the whole, a notion of laws, rules, guidelines....
Some have postulated that the rise of conspiratorial thinking is exactly this. So people are leaving the church, and moving to QAnon, and cults of personality.
Perhaps organized religion was serving to keep people's need to be part of something more productively contained. However I can tell you it isn't universally a neurological need. There are those of us who get by just fine without any religiosity, or church. I don't know if that is because we are different or if anyone can do it.
Are you really implying that white supremacy, the very thing that in my parents lifetime was the law of the land, has been reduced to a boogeyman? That is unfortunate. I'd love to engage with you more, and provide some reading or sources that can maybe away your view.
Im not the person you're responding to, but I agree with their post.
In my opinion, mainstream American Conservativism fell from grace long before Trump. Coincidentally for the topic at hand, I believe it was when they made a pact with the evangelical Christian community that they lost their way.
An ideology can not support both small government and personal freedom and fight for banning abortions and gay marriage. They are, on their face, opposite beliefs, but the Republican party needed to bolster their base, and taking on the religious community was a marriage of necessity. Unfortunately any coherent message of actual Conservativism has been lost in that attempt.
Libertarianism was never "actual Conservatism." Real conservatives have been bemoaning the dominance of libertarians within the Republican Party for decades now. Actual conservatism means hierarchy and authority, crushing criminals, and enforcing public morality.
There's a book written back in the 1960s that deals with this phenomenon: The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics, written by Michael Walzer [1], and which book in my view described the current political climate from most of the world pretty spot on. I don't live in the States, but in Eastern Europe, but I still can see firsthand new parties/new people who have entered into politics (they're mostly new) who see themselves as "saints", anyone who doesn't think like them is either corrupt or, generally speaking, not on the good side of history.
"The [Republican] party has never been more avowedly Christian or more clearly out of line with gospel doctrines."
I think this introduces one of the largest spiritual problems of our generation. I have talked to an astounding number of young Christians [the group for which I identify] who have been turned away because of the Church's failure to answer their questions on a sophisticated enough level. And I don't fault them for that. But as most of our churches become more extreme and socially conservative, I think there is a huge community of people who yearn to belong to something more progressive (and, ironically, more aligned to the gospel).
I really hope to see a solution because the current trend of complete rejection of the church is unfortunate and much wisdom will be lost. But you see that the younger postmodern generations really are afraid of institutions and power as a whole, which is why their protests are led in a decentralized manner (BLM, women's march). I would guess a portion of this mindset is due to a bit of a "perfectionist complex", i.e. many live in fear of being criticized by the mob and thus will refrain to committing themselves to an institution short of perfect. Unfortunately, this makes them far less effective movements than they could be. They have something to learn from the church in this regard.
This is actually one area where a lot of the “mega churches” seem to be a better fit. They are less oriented on church community and specific denominational biases, which is designed to create a less intimidating environment for curious people to attend and learn.
I have been in different churches for most of my life outside of about 6 years where I decided I knew better. I’ve never heard anything close to what angry Reddit culture seems to think is preached.
The issue is more that the Republican Party tries to paint itself as Christian to appeal to voters. Somehow this has created a lot of Democratic policy and talking points among their base which seem to take aim at hurting churches or labeling churches as a threat somehow...which naturally causes people to become more defensive.
The issue is that so many policies being pushed by Democrats over the last decade exist around the idea of controlling what people are allowed to do or say, going to far as to target all things Christian as something that should be disallowed.
It’s scary not just from a religious perspective but from the idea that people support such controlling policies at all.
The mindset it takes to believe that you know what’s best for other people is terrifying.
You'd think the establishment and its chattering classes could have a moment of self-awareness that their aggregate behaviour has been so appalling that people who have never been to church in their lives are turning to God.
What The Economist is missing is they have never understood evangelicals as anything other than caricatures. Most of the popular understanding of them comes from Jack Chick comics and the farcically corrupt televangelists of the 80s, coupled with music samples of fire and brimstone sermons in industrial music. That chapel who protested gay peoples funerals was an appalling example, but it has occupied the role of straw man ever since.
The Economist's view essentially reduces to, "let them eat stimulus checks," and along with the rest of the progressive establishment, they have profoundly misunderstood what a religious revival means. The reason all these people are getting right with their maker is because they are preparing for war.
Carl Jung theorized that unconscious human psychology desperately needs a higher purpose to live for, and for most of human history that need has been filled by religion/mythology.
Our scientific revolution, which largely usurped religion, may have thrown the baby out with the bath water and has left many people with a deep unconscious void in their lives which has largely been filled by pious political ideology which echoes many of the same concepts and dynamics of human mythologies.
I think there is a common neurological underpinning for all manifestations of "tribalism of (unfounded) beliefs". Since we can't simulate human societies, or even a single human with any accuracy, politics is not a form of scientific knowledge, you really have to believe you are right without much evidence. So it's a form of an unfounded belief, which we nevertheless have to have in some form in order to function and move forward. We use folk psychology, personal life experiences, and other wishy-washy means for gauging veracity of political propositions, so it's not surprising that a religious kind of fervor could arise.
I've seen this happen in the workplace, where someone was waving around and quoting literal chapter and verse from a book about coding interviews, as if it were doctrinal and any deviation of our process from this book was heresy.
I was a missionary (no longer religious) for two years and saw first hand the terrible fire that ignites in some when confronted with disagreement about fundamental tribal beliefs. It does seem this fervor is hard-wired, and now with religiosity waning it gets applied to everything.
It's unfair to lump most with "left" though. There are quite a number of people on this site which call out sjw bullshit, for instance. I think HN is still much better than tech twitter which is full of woke feminists hating about white straight males and getting away with it. (And I say this I am not even white).
There's definitely a real reason there, which is the same one that people from my parents' generation had when waving around the phrase "political correctness gone mad". I guess you'd rather ironically call it "virtue signalling". But I agree there's not likely to be much chance of having a constructive discussion with someone taking that approach.
Is virtue signaling ironic? I'm not sure what you mean by that point. However, I agree that it's a big turnoff to engage with someone using that language because it seems as if they already have their mind made up.
Perhaps the most commonly perspective here is one based on falsifiable evidence. My decades of exploring faith were entirely evidence free, and I'm glad that way of thinking is passing away.
This is one of those instances where I find it difficult to accept honesty. The entire purpose of the public school system - in EVERY country - it to make you accept stuff without evidence, or AGAINST evidence.
E.g.: the Earth revolving around the Sun, the existence of Black Holes, the Earth being 5 billion years old and so on. I have daily evidence against the first, and no evidence for the others, all of which are accepted by everyone "because scientists / professors / everyone else says so" and any attempts to argue against it are ridiculed.
Let's not even go into Global Scamming, which has reached religious levels of hysteria. I mean, "the world is ending, give us money" is basically copied from the Catholic Church.
School shouldn't appeal to authority either. They should teach the evidence, and where that's impractical the conclusions of experts (with citations). School curriculum is often updated yearly.
If you doubt the sun is at the center of the celestial system there are some experiments you can do yourself to test that conclusion. Proving or disproving black holes may take significantly more effort.
What distinguishes religion is blind appeals to authority and claims about ancient, sacred truths which cannot be falsified.
In my city, a ragtag group of socialist and union activists is fighting to raise the minimum wage, keep the city dock open to lobster fishermen rather than yachts, get paid sick leave for essential workers, reduce rents, etc, and we are doing it with referendums and other such tactics. Our signs are hand painted. We are all volunteers with day jobs. We have no money, and our opponents in the real estate industry and the chamber of commerce have millions of dollars and the best lawyers money can buy. (They are all Democrats, if it matters). We want our city to be a city for families, not wealthy tourists.
But I see on this very page people saying that we are somehow the elites here? Excuse me?
There is a vast difference between the socialist left and the neoliberal center.
I know given it's GK chesterton, he's trying to say that's bad, but being treating, say, a forest, the ecosystem, the people around you with more reverence in the early 1900's probably would have avoided a lot of the problems we have now.
Are you familiar with Chesterton's writings? In particular his criticisms of capitalism?
“Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.”
A massive number of people believe that the configuration of the stars or other celestial bodies will influence the outcome of their lives. They also believe that humans have achieved mastery of this celestial language. Millions of people believe very strongly that a divine force keeps track of the bad and good things that each person does, and will make each balance the other through happenstance. People really believe that. And the most shocking thing is that there are people who know about this and dont appreciate the fact that the world is an ocean of insanity that dashes all good things against the rocks. I know this for a fact because there was considerable surprise at the sudden popularity of “flat earthers.” Anyone who has any sense would not be surprised because this is tame stuff compared to religion, karma, horoscopes and all the other nonsense that preoccupies a terrifying number of people. Flat earth has echos of logic or at least the superficial appearance of sanity. I almost welcome it. But anyway I have been saying for many years that the dogma that has infected the liberal camp is very similar to the dogma that made Christianity so infamous. They are very similar: kernels of truth that deflect criticism of moral dogma that fuels a race to the bottom which ultimately results in hilarious contortions of the human condition and mental gymnastics that resist enlightenment no matter how blinding. The mistake is that people associate dogma with religion. The only true association is with stupid people. Soon wokeness and it’s dogma will be uncool and abandoned just like religion but the dogma will not die with wokeness.
And what scenario do you imagine when you imagine confronting dogma? You probably imagine painstaking effort being put into conveying reason to the afflicted. It’s always the same pensive expression on the face of that person. And that effort is always met by bulging veins up the neck and forehead. For all of history it has been pensive wincing at bulging veins and slamming fists. And the epiphany that I have had is that it is completely a fools errand to engage in that exchange. No matter how perfectly you do it, they won’t understand.
Do you believe there is a distinction between religious ideas, and ideas that are wrong?
Because you seem to be claiming that politics has always had ideas that are wrong, and that all of these wrong ideas are somehow the same as religious ideas, aside from them both being wrong.
It always bothered me how Republicans just appropriated Evangelism, as if Conservative ideology had anything in common with teachings of Jesus. Because Jesus would want the rich to pay fewer taxes, and if presented with a sick person, would go "let him die". Is that right?
I always give the hypothetical of Jesus coming to Earth in secret and running for President in a Republican primary. What would happen? The answer is that he would be laughed off the stage, if we are being honest about it.
This is even before we get to the whole thing of relentless commercialization and never-ending extension of the Christmas season, and the fact that most "evangelicals" never cracked open the New Testament to actually READ it. All we get are some snippets they found online or on TV - of the Old Testament, to show us how lost and vain the rest of us immoral degenerates are.
It isn’t that complicated. In a two party system, you’re forced to pick one option or the other. With issues like abortion being important, it’s a total nonstarter for an evangelical to support pro-choice parties.
Abortion is a fronting issue. They care as much about it as the "endless wars" and the "deficits". It's OK if their guy does it. You mean to tell me the guy with a Ford F-150, a recreational boat, and tons of "economic anxiety" cares about abortion? People are catching on.
What about "family values"? Haven't heard THAT one in a while, primarily because the last Defender of Evangelism used to shtoop and pay off porn stars.
Hypothetical Jesus would be laughed off the stage? This is a preposterous strawman. Christianity skews toward conservative politics due to lessons of humility and understanding that man should not "play God" in the form of ever-centralized (oppressive) power structures. This is not to say that religious institutions aren't without their own corrupt tendencies or that Christians should oppose state-sponsored welfare. But the underlying theme is that progressive politics tend to preach idolatry of false prophets.
Ridiculous. Modern "conservatives" in America have __nothing in common__ with the Jesus of the bible. Lessons of humility?? What conservative leaders in America show the slightest sign of that?
I have a very religious coworker who voted for Trump. I asked why he would vote for the least holy president in history. He said he was willing to because he was "saving" the supreme court.
I’m a religious person and I voted for Trump. AMA!
My primary voting issues in 2020+ are: winding down and stopping our endless wars in the Middle East, restoring domestic manufacturing, protecting constitutional rights, in particular free speech, and curtailing the US intelligence apparatus, which I view as abusive and political.
>My primary voting issues in 2020+ are: winding down and stopping our endless wars in the Middle East, restoring domestic manufacturing, protecting constitutional rights, in particular free speech, and curtailing the US intelligence apparatus, which I view as abusive and political.
You got a bit of the first, and none of the rest. If Trump runs again in 2024, you should pick someone else.
These are all my own thoughts, I grew up in a Christian household, but I've spent a lot of time building my own worldview. I was taught that you are not a Christian just because your parents were. You have to choose Christ for yourself. I don't just parrot what I hear, I examine it, look at what the Bible says, and then figure out what to believe and say.
Christianity is based on the concept that every individual can choose to follow Christ, or not to follow Christ. If you choose not to follow Christ, you take responsibility for your actions, even the ones that lead to hell. If you choose to follow Christ, Christ takes responsibility for your actions (via the cross), even the ones that lead to hell, and enables you to learn how to act righteously.
Leftism, as far as I can see, is mainly about putting all decisions in the hands of the "elite", that makes individuals not responsible for their actions. If there is no individual responsibility, then there is no such thing as sin, and then there is no point to Christianity.
Conservatism, as I know it, is very much about the individual's freedom to make their own choices.
I see no room for Christ in Leftism. Where Conservatism does have room for Him.
So, ideologically, I see Conservatism as more in line with what Jesus taught, than Leftism. Conservatism allows for freedom, especially of thought, Leftism does not.
Politically, Christians have more freedom under Republican's than they do under Democrats. Hence why we vote Republican. It's not that we fully support everything Republican, it's that we want the freedom to practice our beliefs without government interference.
To be clear, I'm not a fan of any of the political parties. I'm registered as independent. But I'll vote for freedom over tyranny any day. Even when the party I'm voting for has warts.
Oh, and for Christians, traditional moral values are still very very important. Many votes for Trump were made due to the outsized effect the US Supreme Court has on those values. The Left does it's best to shove their ideology down our throats via Judicial fiat, rather than working through the process set forth in the US Constitution, so we have to keep the Supreme Court in a state where it won't join in with those overreaches of power. Hence why we often vote for very imperfect men.
One final thought, there is a difference between Leftism and Liberalism. I haven't solidified my thoughts on that enough to say, but right now the Democrat party is not liberal. It is leftist. I've even heard on former leftist call modern conservatism more liberal than what the left stands for now.
Jesus certainly would not use armed force to get people to pay for others health care or to under threat of violence make them give to the poor. For this reason socialism is not compatible with Christianity. Thou shalt not steal, also not via the proxy or the democratic state.
Jesus beat the merchants in the temple, called the Jews who refused him and later had him killed the “synagogue of Satan”, said that they who have a sword but keep it sheathed would inherit the world, so it’s not crazy to interpret him as a leader of freedom-lovers with guns who in order to please the spirit that created them must out of free will help their fellow brothers and sisters
Everyone worships something - either God, the State, or oneself. And since people with moral conviction are easier to motivate to action, it’s no surprise that virtually every political argument has morphed into some sort of moral crisis.
If you complain about government spending and the obvious fiscal cliff ahead, you get responses bemoaning racism and classism. If you complain about foreign wars and constant interventionism, your patriotism is questioned. If you complain about the suppression of speech, you get lectures on “hate speech”.
It’s exhausting and the polemics responsible are loathsome.
> Everyone worships something - either God, the State, or oneself.
This is false equivalence. The common use of the word worship does not describe how everyone acts towards things that interest them. And people devote their lives to a greater variety of things besides the government, themselves, and non-falsifiable entities.
Possibly. But being raised with sloppy language like that reinforced lazy thinking. "Welp, if we're all worshipping something I'm sure glad I was raised worshipping the 'true' god."
Nope. I for one doesn’t worship any God, any State, and certainly not myself. Everything is flawed to some degree. Nothing is perfect. However there is still beauty and good intentions in this world.
The trend seems to be that people first decide what's most personally appealing to believe, then label themselves whatever fits with their in-group, with almost no attempt to connect the two. From a philosophical perspective, there is a lot of reinventing the wheel (poorly) going on, and very little recognition that carefully thought out frameworks which considered every possible angle and relentlessly sought internal logical consistency have existed for hundreds of years.