"No Religion" on the rise in the USA

[Watt-Zeefuik]

38 minutes ago, Jambo-Jimbo said:

 

I think you'd find that the church and 'faith' has been in serious decline in the UK for quite a few decades now, so your sentence above which I have put in bold is clearly a reference to brexit, but I somewhat fail to see your logic for thinking how brexit could in anyway have anything whatsoever to do with how the UK and it's relationship with the church and religion has been declining over the last 50+ years or so.

 

Having a state religion in the UK or in the rest of Europe hasn't done the church any to little to no damage over the last millennia or so, until relatively recent times that is, certainly in the UK at any rate and by recent I mean over the last 50 or 60 years or so.

You only need to look at the Vatican or many of the other 400 churches there are in Rome to see an example of how successful the church has been, in acquiring vast wealth over the centuries, so it doesn't look like having a state religion has been bad for them or the many thousands of other opulent churches covering Europe & the UK.

 

I'll put it to you then -- why did religion start declining in the UK when it did? What happened at the same time to make the change?

 

As to the Vatican, yes, in the late Medieval/early Renaissance period, the Vatican started moving from a sort of central point for disparate bishoprics to engaging in dynastic politics and asserting control over Western Christendom with a more authoritative hand, shutting down localized practices and insisting on a more centralized theology, particularly the Latin Rite. And of course, that went over entirely without objection and was not at all deleterious to the Roman Catholic church's power and authority in Europe.

 

Snark aside, I should clarify that when I say something is bad for the soul of the church, I don't mean it's necessarily bad for the church coffers. For a trivial but still kind of related example, one could ask if the founding of the EPL has been good or bad for football in the UK, versus whether it has been a good or bad thing for the finances of the EPL members and administrators.

Edited April 20, 2019 by Ugly American

[Jambo-Jimbo]

1 hour ago, Ugly American said:

I should add -- folks in the UK should probably be prepared for some form of boom in religious observance over the next few decades. Periods of low religious observance are pretty common throughout history, and are often followed by religious awakenings. No idea what the next one will be, just think there's a very good chance of it happening.

 

And for those who will insist that now it's different because we have Science, please specify what the turning point was in obtaining Science and when exactly it occurred.

 

Indeed, history is littered with such events, but sometimes just sometimes the religious reawakening is in a radically altered version of the old religion which people had lost their faith in, and we have seen Christianity split and fracture many times and into many different factions over the last two millennia.

 

Is the apathy towards Christianity currently being shown in Europe & the US a prelude to another split in the Christian religion?  I don't know, but if Christianity wants to survive it needs to change and become relevant to a younger generation, just how it manages that I have no idea, but whatever the church needs to do it needs to do it sooner rather than later or it risks fading into irrelevance.

 

I see it in my own town, whereas years ago church goers were all ages, young, old, children even, and fairly numerous in numbers have over the years dwindled as the older folks die off, and the congregation becomes smaller and smaller as nobody is replacing them, and the few which do are certainly not in the numbers needed for the church to remain viable, and the same thing is being replicated up and down the country.

 

 

[Jambo-Jimbo]

58 minutes ago, Ugly American said:

 

I'll put it to you then -- why did religion start declining in the UK when it did? What happened at the same time to make the change?

 

As to the Vatican, yes, in the late Medieval/early Renaissance period, the Vatican started moving from a sort of central point for disparate bishoprics to engaging in dynastic politics and asserting control over Western Christendom with a more authoritative hand, shutting down localized practices and insisting on a more centralized theology, particularly the Latin Rite. And of course, that went over entirely without objection and was not at all deleterious to the Roman Catholic church's power and authority in Europe.

 

Snark aside, I should clarify that when I say something is bad for the soul of the church, I don't mean it's necessarily bad for the church coffers. For a trivial but still kind of related example, one could ask if the founding of the EPL has been good or bad for football in the UK, versus whether it has been a good or bad thing for the finances of the EPL members and administrators.

 

A change in social attitudes perhaps, I really don't know.

[Sidelight]

13 hours ago, scott herbertson said:

 

 

Would it be reasonable to blame God? For allowing the Bible, full of contradictions and historical inaccuracy, to be proclaimed as 'The Word' ? How is anyone who can understand history  or logic supposed to guess that someone omniscient wrote it or allowed it to be proclaimed as 'all true'.

 

If there is a final exam based on a badly argued and constructed book of ethics isn't it reasonable to ascribe some of the blame to the author?

 

Secondly, I'd blame the Church, who have taken that book and overlaid on it all sorts of ridiculous claims - relics and miracles (done in his name) for starters, and leading ignorant followers into committing sinful acts like inquisitions and forceful and corrupt conversions*. If God exists he is surely guilty of negligence in allowing these terrible fraudsters to mislead their followers into certain eternal damnation.

 

*Not to mention crusades against unbelievers, heresy and witchcraft trials etc

 

 

On Miracles

 

I'd recommend anyone, religious or not read the short essay 'On miracles' by our very own David Hume - a masterppiece of writing but also a superb logical argument against the existence of miracles

 

 

 

What I would say is that supposed bible discrepancies are well known to biblical teachers and scholars. They have been addressed and found not to be contradictory and inaccurate in nature.

I am sure that you are correct in your assertion that church bodies have been guilty of many wrong doings and unsavoury participations over the centuries.

However, Christ doesn’t ask us to follow the imperfect people who embody the church.

He asks us to follow Him.

[Joey J J Jr Shabadoo]

17 hours ago, Ugly American said:

 

Quite a few extremely important scientists and philosophers continue to profess various religions. Modern genetic theory, without which Darwinism wouldn't hold up, was developed by a Catholic priest. Darwin himself was on the verge of entering the priesthood before he went on the Voyage of the Beagle. That, of course, isn't an actual argument for the existence of God or the worth of religious practice. Just that the two aren't inherently contradictory (some versions, of course, are).

 

British folk seem to get hung up on the Man in the Sky argument a lot, though, even more than Americans. Must be an issue with the Anglophone churches... Tedious, useless argument, if you ask me.

I don't believe in god. There is nothing, Not even a man in the sky.

[Watt-Zeefuik]

2 hours ago, Joey J J Jr Shabadoo said:

I don't believe in god. There is nothing, Not even a man in the sky.

Cool.

[scott herbertson]

9 hours ago, alfajambo said:

What I would say is that supposed bible discrepancies are well known to biblical teachers and scholars. They have been addressed and found not to be contradictory and inaccurate in nature.

I am sure that you are correct in your assertion that church bodies have been guilty of many wrong doings and unsavoury participations over the centuries.

However, Christ doesn’t ask us to follow the imperfect people who embody the church.

He asks us to follow Him.

 

The bible teachers and scholars are hardly impartial judges of the historical accuracy of the bible. Simple matters like Noah's ark and the lineage thereafter, or the hoary old question asked rather wittily by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes trial " Did you ever discover where Cain got his wife?" are cases in point.

 

However with that I guess you can blame the imperfect people who have run the church(es) over the years for their insistence that the Bible is 'The word of God' and therefore literally true. I doubt the authors of the various stories int he Old testament believed that for a minute. I would think they were just passing on orally the 'origin legends' of their day, not imagining for one moment people who be burned alive by 'Holy men' centuries later in the name of their deity for doubting its absolute historical accuracy.