Changing U.S. Religious LandscapeThe Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among women as well as men.
While it looks like Christianity in general declined 8% points, evangelicals declined only .9% (and amusingly enough, continue to hover around the crazification factor). Probably a combination of two things- the changing population and people fleeing Christianity because of the evangelicals. Atheists and agnostics and nothing at all make up 15%, so let’s keep on waging war on Christmas, you filthy heathens.
Villago Delenda Est
Christendom has a problem. Most of the leaders, especially in the US, are vile, judgmental, sanctimonious assholes. The only major religious leader who is not a full blown asshole is Pope Francis…the only one who seems to be actually paying attention to the red text in the New Testament.
Betty Cracker
Onward (non)Christian Soldiers!
BGinCHI
When are they going to come up with a vaccination against religion?
Although the way that’s going for disease maybe it’s not such a good idea….
gogol's wife
So people are “fleeing Christianity because of the evangelicals,” but the evangelicals are the only Christians who didn’t suffer a major loss. This statement isn’t terribly logical.
Unfortunately, the kind of Christian churches that are suffering are the kind I attend, where people think, wrestle with their faith, doubt, and try to help their neighbor without prescribing how they should live their lives. It’s not an occasion for celebration. I see a lot of people outside the church who think that giving to the food bank once a year on Christmas is good enough. I see a lot of people inside my church who do things like that every day, and much more.
delk
Bill Donahue already faxed out his freakout.
charluckles
My mother, the life long Catholic, quite conservative about somethings, is or at least was livid about the Church’s focus on homosexuality. The new pope may be on the way towards changing that, but for awhile there I thought my mother might join her three heathen sons and give up on the Catholic Church. If you had asked me about that while I was young I would have told you hell would freeze over before my Mom would leave the church. So how much damage has organized religion done to itself by focusing on these issues?
scav
@gogol’s wife: Because good people would never think or actively be kind unless they go to the building with the pointy roof and the torture instrument on top once a week.
gogol's wife
@scav:
Somehow that’s how it works. I didn’t say “never,” just not very often, in my experience and observation.
ETA: And thanks for your insult to my religion. It shows you to be so kind.
raven
I hate those judgmental motherfuckers!
Hungry Joe
I don’t know how the numbers are broken down, but I suspect that a lot of those who “do not identify with any organized religion” nonetheless consider themselves Christian, or in some way religious, or at the very least “spiritual.” The very concept is befuddling to me; at age 11 I figured out that I was and always would be an atheist. When people talk about having a spiritual connection to something, or just feeling a part of some great universal Other, I have no idea what they’re talking about — it’s as if they’re describing a color that exists on the spectrum beyond my ability to perceive it.
Belafon
@gogol’s wife:
I believe the fallacy is called observational selection or something like that. All the people I see at church are nice, so it’s the people at church that do it, and those not in church don’t.
gbear
@Hungry Joe: The Hubble Telescope would like to share some good news with you.
gogol's wife
@Belafon:
Yeah, just tell yourself that.
scav
@gogol’s wife: I’ve met as many good, thoughtful people outside of churches (and other buildings of ‘faith) as I’ve met in, and I’ve met some assholes emboldened by their churches and their organized brimstone exclusuionary rants. My grandmother may have done as much good through the Elks as she did through her Church (mixed bag in both cases, there seemed to be a lot of lunches, but some works accomplished). You just want to count only all the good that comes out of the NGO you patronize and discount all the harm that comes from similar.
Eta. As for the kindness, I’ve already been complimented repeatedly on my utter damnedness of spirit and inability ever to do a good action or be a good persson because
i don’t beleive in the baby jebus. Fair trade.
gogol's wife
I love the idea that it’s the Christians who are intolerant, given the reactions here from the oh-so-reasonable atheists whenever anyone says they’re a Christian. They just can’t tolerate it!
donnah
Like the old saying, “going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a car.”
Speaking as a non-theist, I know that I can be a good, kind, thoughtful human being without following a specific set of rules from a higher power. But I respect other people’s decisions in religion because they find a sense of community, peace, and guidance from their religion.
I only have issues with religion when people feel the need to impose their religious rules on me or in government. Don’t make my kids pray in school, for example.
Steppan
@gogol’s wife:
No, that makes perfect sense.
The evangelicals don’t see themselves as a problem. The body of moderate Christians might, and in an effort to distance themselves, are leaving, or are questioning their positions, or whatever. They’re reacting to the evangelicals. This is exactly the way we’d expect to see the numbers move.
Swellsman
I dunno, the idea that evangelical Christianity hasn’t suffered much of a loss, but Christianity in toto has, makes a lot of sense to me — perhaps its similar to the self-segregating we see among the Republican party? And perhaps it isn’t really a difference in religious beliefs/attitudes, but a difference in self-identification?
There have been a number of polls indicating that more and more people are uncomfortable identifying themselves as “Republican”; instead, they identify as “Independent” even though if you drill down they still hold traditionally conservative ideas, for the most part, and probably continue to vote Republican anyway. The speculation has been that as the Republican Party increasingly has become the face of crazy, mean-minded whackjobs, people simply are dissociating themselves with the party in public.
In this country, the word “Christian” increasingly has been defined to mean only the most shrill, conservative evangelical Christians. That certainly is how the word is used by our political press. It strikes me as very plausible that people who might still hold to the principles of the faith they were born into simply don’t want to be identified with “those people.” Of course, if you are one of “those people” then you have no problem self-identifying as such, which also might explain why the Evangelical “dip” might just be statistical noise.
scav
@gogol’s wife: Yes, O mean hateful horrors! People venting on a thread are utterly eqivalent to an entire society and day in day out prayers at all public events and laws and lifestyle recruitment campaigns known as spreading the gospel and distortion of health care practices! You poor dear, attending that building was supposed to make you impervious to criticism and worthy of automatic respect as an undoutedly perfected moral being. You argue like a police union rep.
CONGRATULATIONS!
This seems to be a rather large component of it. American Christianity’s decision in the late 1970s to publicly jump into bed with conservatives seems to be paying some dividends they’re not very happy about.
They’re going to be a lot less happy a decade from now, because this trend is accelerating, not slowing down. The end result looks like Europe these days – empty churches.
Reason: the same. Churches stuck their nose into politics in Europe and they’ve been paying the price for it for centuries now.
Bitter Scribe
I wouldn’t get too excited about this. Christians still outnumber atheists/agnostics by ten to one, which is why I never understand why so many of the former freak out so much over the latter.
gogol's wife
@scav:
It’s okay, you’re making my argument for me.
Bye now.
Betty Cracker
@gogol’s wife: To be fair, you seemed to be painting with a pretty broad brush yourself right out of the gate. But your point about which kind of Christianity is in decline is a good one.
Iowa Old Lady
The problem comes when you think you have God on your side. Those who believe differently are not just different or even mistaken. They’re evil. And who can argue with God?
gogol's wife
@Iowa Old Lady:
And this seems to be the way people who don’t believe in God also frequently operate. “Those who believe differently are not just different or even mistaken. They’re evil.” I hate this attitude in believers, and I also hate it in non-believers.
Bill
The prevalence of evangelicals in the “faith” community has led many moderate Xians to evaluate whether they still want to be associated with the faith at all. This can lead to questioning the evidentiary underpinnings of belief, and eventual abandonment of faith all together. That was very much my experience.
That struggle and doubt may be the very reason people are leaving those churches.
Your characterization of non-believers as less giving than believers is unfair and unfounded — but predictable.
NotMax
Filet of soul.
scav
@Betty Cracker: The other thing that’ll be interesting to factor in is the changing of what the religious organizations do. This poll is just about expressed affiliation, so is largely branding. The official character and missions of the groups are changing as well (changes in focus, more green, less hetero-marriage focused) so the landscape is altering in multiple ways. Interesting to watch, hard to predict.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@gogol’s wife: Damn, I’d ask if you need any help nailing yourself up on the cross, but seems like you’ve got it WELL under control.
You might want to take a trip over to Jesus Radicals and relearn the humility you forgot when you logged onto your computer this morning.
Amir Khalid
I think the data shows that the more close-knit and conservative a religious group is (evangelicals and black Protestants may be more that way than other Christians) the less likely you are to see people dropping out of the church. As for faiths other than Christianity, I wonder what their percentage share growth is due to. How much of it is natural population growth, how much is immigration, and how much is conversion from another faith?
@scav:
You’ve just provided a perfect illustration of gogol’s wife’s point.
SatanicPanic
Speaking as an atheist- who is better, Christians or Atheists? is one of the most tiresome arguments that takes place on the internet. Who gives a shit.
Iowa Old Lady
@gogol’s wife: True enough.
I was just reading a FB post by one of my ex-grad students. I have no idea how this came up in the college class she was teaching, but she apparently said people with different faiths all tend to share some basic beliefs. Like they all think lying is wrong. One of her students said, “Except for atheists. They approve of lying.” That one surprised me.
scav
@Amir Khalid: she is rather dealing with a lifetime of having it explained to me that all goodness necessarily flows through church doors. I actually see religious affiliation sometimes as an accelerant, it can make good people better, bad people worse, but to many it’s just a visual badge of affiliation. But her initial claim that church affiliation was somehow necessarily related to community service was overbroad. participation in voluntary associational groups has been declining for a long time, the churches may just be the last to join in.
Steppan
@gogol’s wife:
This just in:
People of all beliefs can be assholes.
charluckles
@Bill:
Agreed, just as many good people outside the church as there are in.
One of the things that really opened my eyes to the way that religion really works in our society was the perceived hypocrisy of so many of the parishioners. How is that you can pat yourself on your back for going to worship Jesus Christ on Sunday, when you just drove your $100,000 car past a guy begging on the street corner?
NCSteve
@gogol’s wife: It’s not in the least illogical that evangelical craziness is driving people away from saner mainline churches. The children of members of sane churches are rejecting their parents religion because they see what they were taught in church in the mirror of the insane evangelicals.
Faith is inherently crazy. Kierkegaard wrote many, many, many almost impenetrable words exploring the implications of that and why people who chose to have faith had to embrace that crazy and own it without themselves becoming crazy. (Or, at least, that’s most of what I managed to get out of him in college.)
Sane protestent churches have danced around the craziness and the need to embrace it because, gosh darn it, it’s just kind of unseemly and risks driving away the really hyper-rational people, like engineers and instead devote hundreds of thousands of semantically null words to explain why it isn’t. The vangies, however, have always been about the crazy. They don’t just embrace it, they tell you must become it. (As opposed to Catholicism which seem to believe insanity is not a thing you become by your own choice, but rather, is a thing inflicted upon you by the clergy in no smaller or greater dose than the Church decrees).
And so when a kid sees the crazy himself, and he sees only one strain that acknowledges it, and all of them are hateful, spiteful, scary insane people, it can cause the kids to reject the whole thing.
Amir Khalid
For everyone’s amusement: CNN sees connections between Star Wars and Islam that are, well, most likely speculative.
John Cole +0
@gogol’s wife: Yes, it makes sense if you think about it. The hardcore evangelicals are never going to leave. But people in other brands of religion who already were not devout are looking at them and thinking ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with this freak show” and just quitting.
Think about me as a Republican looking at the (then) freak show that was the GOP and saying fuck it.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Bill: I’ve been mean to gogol’s wife on this thread and this is why. So fucking sick of it. It’s as predictable as the sunrise and sunset.
I spent all weekend volunteering, as is frequently the case (wife and I have no kids, we have the time) and I get this kind of “I’m so much better than all of you heretic scum” shit in return. Now, I don’t volunteer for the kudos or the money (there’s very little of either) but to be told that I obviously sit on my ass and chortle at those less fortunate than I just because I don’t share a set of beliefs with someone, well, it chaps my ass. Always has.
YOU DO NOT NEED RELIGION OR A CHURCH TO BE A GOOD PERSON.
Brachiator
@Swellsman:
Just not true, especially in California, where Independents are around 21 percent of the voters. And from a recent analysis, there’s this:
Often, here in California, both parties talk a lot of talk about people and policy, and then simply settle on fighting to retain their own power bases.
The Tea Party and other ideologically rigid groups get a lot of press, but I would wager that a high proportion of independents, and people who do not vote at all, on the national level are composed of people who are not getting anything at all from either major party.
ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=784
With that little detour out of the way, I agree with you that “the word ‘Christian’ increasingly has been defined to mean only the most shrill, conservative evangelical Christians.’ And there are pundits who insist on describing Christianity and belief in the most narrow and judgmental terms, often so that they can pretend that all of Christianity supports whatever political axe they have to grind.
Cacti
The greatest threat to dogmatic religious belief in human history has been the internet.
The millennials are the first generation to grow up with internet access beginning in childhood.
The millennials are also the least religious generation in US history in terms of affiliation with traditional religious orgs.
I know correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but I find it an interesting paralell.
Marc
Obnoxious statements by atheists are not an improvement over those from religious folks.
dedc79
@gogol’s wife:
I’d be wary of extrapolating any conclusions about the generosity of the religious or non-religious from that.
catclub
@gogol’s wife: This.
@Bill:
I think you are reading something she did not write. Religion focuses my mind on others better than reading the Sunday NYT
(and that is just me). But I wonder if there are prison visitation groups that are not explicitly religious ministries? Habitat For Humanity is explicitly Christian in its viewpoint. Are there housing charities of similar scope that are not religious?
I am desperate for those organizations of non-believers who want to do good, but I cannot find them in my community.
burnspbesq
@scav:
Not unless “unnecessary, gratuitous microaggression” and “fair trade” have suddenly become synonymous.
Amir Khalid
@scav:
“Necessarily”? gogol’s wife made no such claim.
Johnny Coelacanth
“@Iowa Old Lady: “Except for atheists. They approve of lying.” Well, yeah. We atheists actually know that God exists, but we pretend otherwise because we’re wicked.
shawn
@Villago Delenda Est: No, they aren’t. The church leaders that make the news are to be sure, but the wild majority of those who don’t make the news because they don’t make news are kind, caring people who aren’t anything like you described. Fred Phelps is the exception not the rule.
However like cops they NEED to be out on the forefront outsting the bad apples in their group and like cops, and like any other group with bad apples (aka every other group), they aren’t. They give their own guys a pass more or less.
Iowa Old Lady
@dedc79: I make no extrapolations. I’m an atheist, but if faith comforts someone and helps them think through what it means to be a good person, who am I to judge that. I do judge self-righteous meanness no matter where it comes from.
scav
@Amir Khalid:
tended that way.
trollhattan
Speaking of God, He must be really pissed at Nepal.
scav
@burnspbesq: It was an exchange of microaggressions. I claim no better than that.
Amir Khalid
@scav:
“Tended that way” =/= “necessarily”
Howard Beale IV
Wonder if Kevin Smith ever though about doing a Dogma II…..
Cacti
@trollhattan:
I blame gay marriage.
dedc79
@Iowa Old Lady: Apologies, I looped you into my comment inadvertently. It was aimed at Gogol’s wife, who appeared to be drawing some more general conclusions about the comparative generosity of believers and non-believers.
Heliopause
The drop in number of Christians has occurred over the period 2007-2014, and you realize who has been President during most of that time…
Marc
@Cacti:
It looks to me like a time delayed version of what happened in Western Europe.
Steppan
@Heliopause:
Thanks, OBAMA.
scav
@Amir Khalid: Fair enough. I don’t claim infallability. I certainly read it that way, as a lament that the decline of churches like hers meant the decline in the numbers of thoughtful kind people absolutely, rather than maybe they were being kind and thoughtful elsewhere.
Steppan
@scav:
I read it that way also.
catclub
@Heliopause: … and the Muslim population increased.
@NCSteve:
This. Trinity Sunday is one of the highpoints in recognizing the rational side of crazy beliefs.
dedc79
@scav: I read it the same way as you, and the context of the discussion reinforces that interpretation. Otherwise, what was the point of her comment? In any event, maybe she’ll clarify for us.
Bill
@catclub:
Perhaps you read this differently than I do?
“I see a lot of people outside the church who think that giving to the food bank once a year on Christmas is good enough. I see a lot of people inside my church who do things like that every day, and much more.”
If her intent was to state that religion inspires her to be better regardless of what it does for others, then there’s no need to draw a comparison with what she perceives people “outside of church” do. This is another version of the tired argument that those who believe are more generous.
Good for you. I support your constitutional right to believe whatever “focuses your mind.”
It’s completely irrelevant to this discussion though
I suggest you look harder.
Cacti
Speaking of religion…
Allen West flew off the handle after getting all Sharia creeped at Wal-Mart, when a sign at a cashier’s check out lane said “no alcohol products in this lane” and the cashier had a very non-Christiany sounding name.
Turns out, the cashier couldn’t ring up booze because they were under 21, and Allen West is still a donkey.
Amir Khalid
@scav:
So you reckon gogol’s wife was suggesting that when people leave their church, they leave their Christian charity behind as well?
Mike in NC
Last year we visited lovely Estonia, a tiny country that for many years was bothered by its neighbors. Poles trying to force them into becoming Catholics, Swedes trying to force them into becoming Protestants, Russians trying to force them into becoming Orthodox, etc. When the country became independent, it decided ‘none of the above’ and today it is the least religious in the world.
les
@Amir Khalid:
If the statement wasn’t intended to say religious folk are better than non-religious, why say it? My own experience says there’s a substantial number of religious who absolutely believe fear of hell/hope for heaven is an absolute requirement for good behavior. And that’s sure what G’s Wife sounded like to me.
shawn
@Bill: “I suggest you look harder.” That suggests you don’t know them either.
Major Major Major Major
When I was about 12, I think, we were Methodists. One day the preacher or whatever the word is started a sermon about how gay people are all going to hell. My mother stood up, threw down the bible, and dragged the whole family right back into the van. Then we were Episcopalian for a while, now we’re all atheists. My dad was raised Catholic so he’s more of an anti-theist now. I don’t have a favorable view of any of the Abrahamic faiths myself, though I do like the cultural aspects of Judaism. I have no beef with Hindus (har), and I love their conception of purgatory–just utter nothingness, you’re just a disembodied spirit in utter nothingness. It sounds worse than anything in Dante.
But hey, if you’ve got a thing that leads you to do actual good works, you do you. My philosophy is based around reducing net human suffering, and I have no problem sharing that goal.
Calouste
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Hey, I was in a church in Europe a few weeks ago and it was pretty full.
Granted, it had been converted into a pub and it was around lunchtime…
eemom
Speaking of Jesus H. Christ, it’s kind of appalling to see regular commenters so determined to read the worst into something said by a fellow regular commenter who has never been anything but kind and reasonable to everyone else on this blog.
singfoom
The world is full of assholes. Some assholes believe in a higher power despite the explicit tenets of their religion telling them to not be assholes. Some assholes don’t believe in a higher power.
Doesn’t mean they’re not assholes. Playing the who is the lessor asshole game just leaves everyone smelling like shit.
Also, people can be good with our without belief. Those good people in an instant, having had a bad day or received bad news can act like assholes.
Film at 11.
The Gray Adder
That is, -0.9% in spite of continuing to breed like rabbits. It’s an encouraging sign.
Diana
@scav: “I actually see religious affiliation sometimes as an accelerant, it can make good people better, bad people worse…”
Just like Dr. Eskine’s serum in the Captain America movie!!!
sorry, that just slipped out …
I dunno, I think this hits the nail on the head, but it’s not the accelerant that determines whether or not something’ll burn. Borrowing authority from God may liberate some people, but I’m not sure that makes it better.
Anyhow, this is too big a topic for me, so I will just agree with Cole that the crazy factor is making the non-crazies peel away.
Which is a good thing in an era of global climate change.
scav
@catclub: Used to be a lot more of similar organizations. read old obituaries. I.O.O. F., Elks, Moose, some sort of Woodmen organization that organized insurence, all the Ethnic Associations (eta, I think its IOOW and IOF.? 2.0 or other way round?) — it’s been a long time since I was around people studyting them, there were some studies in Northern Italy that were well-known. Tied into civic participation, cross-cutting allegiences between people. The people I was with were only vaguely into the political side, more interested into the ways the groups organized and channeled money, both for private needs and for community development.
The Gray Adder
@gogol’s wife: Do you think the off-their-rockers evangelicals (and don’t act like you don’t know who I’m talking about) might actually have something to do with certain people’s aversion to Christianity in general?
By the way, I love Jesus; I just can’t stand certain of his followers.
Mandalay
@charluckles:
Surely anyone who merely owns a car and a conscience faces this dilemma? There’s no need to make your argument exclusive to the super rich attending church – it probably applies to most of us here as well.
Calouste
@Iowa Old Lady: The religions state that lying is wrong. What the individual adherents say, think, or do about lying is a completely different matter. And you only have to look at some prominent religious adherents in the United States, for example every single GOP Presidential candidate of the last decade, that what their religion says about lying and how they act doesn’t always exactly line up.
Bill
@shawn: Seriously?
Fifteen seconds with the google machine produces a long list of secular charities including: Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Goodwill Industries,The Nature Conservancy, SHARE, Unicef, Planned Parenthood, The Southern Poverty Law Center, Second Harvest etc… If you really can’t find secular charities doing good work it’s because you aren’t looking.
Iowa Old Lady
@Calouste: If that student had been mine, I’d have said (truthfully), “I’m an atheist and I disapprove of lying.” The shock might have been the most educational thing that happened to that student all week.
Johnny Coelacanth
@Mandalay: “There’s no need to make your argument exclusive to the super rich attending church – it probably applies to most of us here as well.” That’s why I avoid going to church; I might pass a poor person on the way and have an attack of conscience.
beltane
The evangelical movement has also tainted nominally mainline churches. For example, I have seen James Dobson/Focus on the Family filth distributed at supposedly normal Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches. If religion is a brand, the mainline churches did a piss poor job of protecting their brand. Likewise, even many relatively conservative Catholic women I know have gradually gotten fed up with the RC church’s obsession with abortion, as though spiritual life is somehow centered around the female reproductive system.
aimai
@gogol’s wife: I can assure you that no one is judging evangelical christians as evil because of their beliefs, but because of their actions and policy goals. If it weren’t for those political actions, which are indeed absolutely evil, no one would have the faintest idea what their beliefs and their dogma looked like.
Major Major Major Major
@Mandalay: True. It’s not like any of us are flying out to Nepal.
@Calouste: Mormonism has that whole “Lying for the Lord” thing going on. I believe there is something similar in the Quran, though it’s mostly trotted out by conspiracy theorists on the Right. And just because something is in the Quran doesn’t mean it’s practiced.
les
Couple of things: simple intertubes search reveals many secular charities…foolish to deny it. Another: this article indicates that religious folk give at a slightly higher rate, if you count what they give to their church. Not to say that churches don’t do good things with some of their money; but they also build lots of buildings, produce radio and tv, pay ministers, etc. Generally, maintain themselves. And some of them (ex-catholic myself, cough, cough) amass incredible wealth and just sit on it.
Iowa Old Lady
I once read an analysis of European vs American religiosity that said European countries adopted state religions and that lessened their spiritual impact on many people. They were more likely to think of it as just something like the flag or a state flower, something that was just part of the background. I wonder if the alliance of evangelicals and Republicans has any sort of the same impact.
singfoom
@Iowa Old Lady: @Calouste:
This is the thing that drives me absolutely nuts as an atheist. I have no problem with those with faith as long as they don’t push it into my face, but the idea that just because you don’t believe in a god that all moral ideas of right and wrong just go out the window is so damn insulting.
I’m still waiting for a presidential candidate that’s an atheist. He or she will do awful still.
people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/5-19-14%20Presidential%20Traits%20Release.pdf
aimai
@catclub: Huh. You just aren’t looking. You prefer to affiliate through groups you identify with and that’s fine. But I cook for local charities, I tutor, I donate to worthy (non religious) causes and I work with new mothers and infants and I’m not religious at all. I do it through secular organizations and I do it purely for the love of doing it, not for any religious reward or recognition. I would say that with the exception of Habitat for Humanity, which may have a religious base but which does not require a religious commitment from its recipients, I donate time and money solely through secular groups. I wouldn’t consider donating to a religiously funded charity because I don’t limit my charitable donations by the religious affiliation of the people I would like to help.
scav
@Amir Khalid: She said it (the decline in church membership) wasn’t a matter for celebration, so yes, I read her as implying that, that the good works would thereby cease. Based on the words. I can’t speak to her intent.
Bill
@beltane:
This.
Also, by promoting “faith” as an acceptable belief system they undermine arguments against the crazier sub-brands of religion. After all, it’s hard to argue Jerry Falwell lacks evidence for his position when your own belief system touts faith as an acceptable foundational principle.
Amir Khalid
@les:
Well, gogol’s wife didn’t actually say that the generosity of people in her church was out of hope for heaven/fear of hellfire. She said only that from her point of view (a not entirely objective one, to be sure) people in churches like hers were more generous than others.
Major Major Major Major
@singfoom: I love how gay polls better than atheist. We’ve come a long way!
I recall reading in some paper on rationalism something along these lines: “When religious people say you have to have religion to be moral, it absolutely terrifies atheists because it suggests that your religious beliefs are the only thing keeping you from going on a murderous rampage.”
charluckles
@Mandalay:
100% agreed as far as this applying to many of us as well. My inarticulate point would be that it was the hypocrisy of people pretending to be holier than though because they sat through a sermon on Sunday, a sermon they had no intention of following once they left church, that really caused me to start questioning.
And it wasn’t just the super rich. Why are you supposed to wear your nicest close to Church? Aren’t we worshiping a God who preached self abasement and service to the less fortunate? How do these things go together?
For a lot of people religion isn’t something they use to do good for others, its something they use to feel good about themselves. Nothing per se wrong with that, just made me think Church was primarily about bullshitting yourself and others.
dedc79
@Iowa Old Lady: One BIG reservation about that assessment is that it took those European nations with state religions an awful long time and a very high body count before they got there. And I think that body count and the advance of scientific understanding had way more to do with the decline of religion in Europe than its affiliation with the state.
MomSense
@eemom:
Yup.
beltane
@scav: The poet William Blake wrote: Pity would be no more/If we did not make someone poor. And mercy no more could be/If all were happy as we.
Many of the most secular societies also happen to rank very highly on measures of well-being. The converse is also true. If one’s religion leads them to support laws that inflict suffering on people, their little acts of charity are not as commendable as they think.
aimai
@Amir Khalid: She’d be wrong, of course.
sparrow
I’m one of those who thinks this is kind of a mixed bag. I’d be much happier if it were people leaving judgemental evangelical sects for something broader-minded, rather than people leaving mainline churches for nothing.
In the long, long, long term (assuming humans survive for much longer), I would hope that humanity will evolve away from needing religion. It’s a crutch. “Death is a bummer, so fake it till you make it” is pretty much my view of religion, admitting that it has inspired some very impressive feats of humanity ranging from music to art to heroic acts. I don’t think I need to belabor the downsides.
Realistically, however, I think we’re in for a hell of a downfall due to our headlong run into the climate/population/resource wall that will make the fall of the Roman empire look like a stubbed toe, and the kind of thing that flourishes in that environment is extremism and fundamentalism. So, pretty much The Handmaiden’s Tale and down from there would be my bet if anyone were offering.
Man, I’m kind of a downer today.
Iowa Old Lady
@dedc79: I’m watching Wolf Hall, so I hear you on the body counts and state religions!
Major Major Major Major
@charluckles:
There’s a reason we call the gym “gay church.”
charluckles
@Bill: Also plenty of people working for these religious based charities who don’t believe in the religious aspect of them. I am an atheist and I work proudly for a religious charity that helps the homeless. I am sure that cuts both ways.
dedc79
@Iowa Old Lady: Definitely try the books too, if you haven’t already.
Botsplainer
@gogol’s wife:
Actually, it makes sense for me. It was all of the LOL-worthy tautologies that were screeched loudly by the fundivangelicals that got me to examine the presuppositions of my own VERY comfortable and nondogmatic observance of Eastern Orthodox faith.
I’m resentful as fuck about it, too. I was happy to go to Divine Liturgy, go to confession a couple of times a year and kick it up a notch during Lent, all while not acting like an asshole. The people in that congregation are friends and cousins to me, and I’d have been perfectly happy to be an average non-proselytizing, non-cultural warring Eastern Orthodox Christian, eating well, dancing at festivals, having feast days and acting better here and there.
It took looking hard at evangelicals to make me realize that the entire body of Christian theology is just a bunch of crap which, in the wrong hands, is a really great tool of hypocritical social control and excuse-making failures. I can’t do the “routine attendance” thing anymore without feeling like the biggest pharisee and hypocrite on earth. I’m still culturally Christian and still respectful (and the current priest is a super great guy), but I can’t see re-engaging.
Archon
I don’t want to give in to hubris but I find it a little surreal that the majority of people on this planet are following bronze/iron age religions.
Major Major Major Major
@Archon: You would prefer Scientology? :P
les
@Amir Khalid:
So, I guess she just made a meaningless statement because she’s miffed? Maybe G’s wife is just thoughtless. But her statement can hardly be read any way but that religious people are inherently better than the non-religious; and I for one am pretty sick of that message, unconscious or not.
beltane
@dedc79: Not only the huge body counts, but also the fact that state religions were inseparable from the blatantly corrupt and oppressive states they served.
Iowa Old Lady
The thing is it’s probably useful to have some regular place where you go to think about questions of life’s meaning, goodness, death, your values and how to enact them. So where do we get that if we’re not religious?
piratedan
@catclub: The Community Food Bank comes to mind as a charity/organization that isn’t affiliated with a specific religiosity… The American Red Cross is another
JPL
@eemom: BTW.. The volunteer organization that I worked with over ten years was started by a group of religious leaders. I have no idea whether the volunteers that I work with attend church.
I have to agree with you.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Probably depends on the faith. The two they point to as growing by a statistically significant margin are Islam and Hinduism. I would guess that Islam is growing more by conversion while Hinduism is growing more by immigration and some natural population growth.
singfoom
@Major Major Major Major: Eh, I’m not afraid of believers. Ironically I worked for a church for several years. I just want them out of my politics. I think the report of the the decline is good but it’ll still take decades for the culture warriors of Christianity to give up the ghost, if ever.
scav
@beltane: That could be. Social stability does come at rather a high price sometimes. That lots of organizations period (which also probably included the Klan) was also be the period of oppressive small towns and coercive meddling, and charity can be a noose around peoples necks — one reason I’m rather more fond of govt teats rather than private or religious ones.
It’s finding the balence, as ever
trollhattan
@Major Major Major Major:
I understand they have a better accounting department.
beltane
@Iowa Old Lady: Maybe human beings are not inherently terrible creatures. Do you really think the people of Vermont, the most secular state in the country, are worse than the people of Mississippi, one of the most religious?
scav
@Iowa Old Lady: Philisophy classes? Book clubs? The issues come up in movies and tv and Manga. The topics aren’t exclusive to religion.
Howard Beale IV
@Major Major Major Major: Amazing how many recent belief systems (Scientology/LDS/Jehovah’s Witness/Seventh Day Adventist/Assembly Of God/Southern Baptist) have an incredible social/political power and number of followers.
singfoom
@Iowa Old Lady: Why do we need to go anywhere to think about those questions? I talk about them with my wife at our dinner table. Are you talking about a place outside your family context?
Backyard bbqs? Drunk outings with friends? Does it need to be just one place?
Or are you talking about the loss of community that comes with belonging to a church?
JPL
My neighbors attend the church that whose minister was asked to speak at the President’s inauguration and who caused liberals to the fainting couch. I have trouble with mega churches created communities but I’m not troubled with their good deeds. There good deeds are not predicated on religious affiliations.
at least at this church
beltane
@scav: And I am actually not anti-religious on a personal level. However, I have never seen any evidence that religious societies are superior to secular societies.
Iowa Old Lady
@beltane: Point taken.
For me, literature is one of the ways I think about what it means to be a moral human being. There for sure are other ways.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
And whores. Don’t forget that part. Most of them are so avidly, blatantly selling themselves to the highest bidders and not even trying to live up to their religion that more and more people simply see them as the charlatans they are and stay the fuck away.
gogol's wife
@Amir Khalid:
Thank you for trying to clarify what I was trying to say. John put up a post exulting in the fact that Americans are fleeing Christianity. I don’t see it as cause for celebration, based on my own experience in my own local community. I belong to one very secular community, the university where I work, and to a much smaller Christian community at my church. Both communities probably have the same proportion of “good” and “bad” people — i.e., not very many of the latter in either. I see the people in my church, AS A HABITUAL PRACTICE, building houses for Habitat, visiting incarcerated adolescents, visiting the local (large) mental hospital, and supporting the local food bank and soup kitchen (both religiously based, there are no others). In my larger secular community, such activities are not nonexistent; they’re just rare and are cause for self-congratulation, not because people are bad, but because that isn’t what the community is concentrating on. So I am sorry to see my church community dwindling. Of course there are national and international non-religious charities like Doctors without Borders, etc., but on the local level, as is catclub’s experience, it’s all coming from the churches (except for a cat-rescue organization run by a saintly woman, but come to think of it she puts prayers in all her literature). Churches like mine spur people to do good, not by threat of hell fire but by getting people together every week to contemplate how to do it. I don’t claim anything beyond my own experience. I’m not really interested in any more insults, so I’m going to stop here.
beltane
@scav: Look, we’re talking about those issues right here.
Southern Beale
I wrote about this today as well, and my viewpoint is that this shows even more how out of step the GOP is. Since they are the party of God, after all. This decline has continued apace, this isn’t an anomaly. America is growing more secular and more brown. This spells doom for the Republican Party unless they embrace more progressive and inclusive ideas.
And I don’t think it’s significant that the evangelical numbers continue to decline. This is the group that has fucking EVANGELIZE in its name. If they can’t keep apace … well, sorry. Writing’s on the wall.
Iowa Old Lady
@singfoom: No, I’m just saying those things tend to get lost in the pressure of busy daily life. But maybe not. I’m thinking of casual conversations I have in the hallway at the Y waiting for my aerobics class to start. Stuff comes up all the time. You’re right about that.
Diana
@Iowa Old Lady: maybe this explains the popularity of yoga?
Seriously — a friend of mine who hails from a Sri Lankan Tamil origin found it absolutely hilarious that a bunch of rich white people could messages of tolerance and acceptance in yoga, given its origins in a Hindu tradition. It was her considered opinion that there is no more racist, hidebound, misogynist and all-around-traditional-evil religion than Hinduism, and the fact that anyone anywhere could have any kind of good opinion of it, or anything related to it, without being brainwashed, struck her as the most marvelous thing she’d ever heard of.
In fact, she sounded like nothing so much as a Chinese acquaintance of mine ranting about how utterly wrong and inappropriate it was for the Dalai Lama to win the Noble Peace Prize.
I love living in NYC. We get all the world’s religions, and when you put them all together you realize how stupid they all look.
Major Major Major Major
@Iowa Old Lady: There’s a theory in the world of community planning, I forget who coined it, of the Third Place. You have your work, you have your home, and you have your _______. Frank Lloyd Wright and Alexander/Silverstein/Ishikawa were big boosters of it. For his larger buildings, Wright tried to make the bedrooms as cramped as possible while still being comfortable and then construct beautiful common spaces (think Falling Water) to encourage people to mingle.
In A Pattern Language, they recommend (among other things) stuff like well-apportioned courtyards, lots of secular community centers…
I think for most of us it’s just the neighborhood pub or coffee shop. For the religious, it’s religion.
Bill
@Iowa Old Lady:
My couch. In My car. At my dinner table. While riding my bike.
The list goes on and on.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@dedc79:
“Who appeared to be drawing some more general conclusions”?
She said it right out, which is why many here have rightly been calling her on it. This is what she wrote:
The “it” to which she refers was this (scav’s first response to her claim that religious people are more generous than non-religioius):
That seems awfully goddamn plain to me, and the pushback here against this horseshit stated belief of hers that religious people are better than non-religious is well-earned.
Sorry, eemom, it’s not “reading the worst” into something said by gogol’s wife. It’s taking her at her word.
Awww, was that too mean to such a nice lady?
Chris
@NotMax:
Whoa, Live And Let Die flashback.
kdaug
@Iowa Old Lady: You’re soaking in it.
Bill
@gogol’s wife:
You should get a better secular community.
Amir Khalid
@les:
I think that there’s an unconscious bias that people like me are in some way better than people not like me, and that this bias occurs among the religious and the unreligious alike.
Southern Beale
I meant I don’t think it’s INsignificant that evangelical #s declined 1%.
Southern Beale
@Amir Khalid:
Well I’m pretty sure all the people like me are awesome because I am SUPER awesome.
:-)
Major Major Major Major
@Southern Beale: Well, it’s statistically insignificant.
Myiq2xu
The irony of Obama cultists bashing religion is priceless.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@donnah: This is exactly my view. While I tend to describe myself as a pantheist, I suspect that (for me) it’s functionally equivalent to a non-theist. I respect other people’s right to find comfort in and exercise the faith of their choice, but leave me the hell out of it. And leave it out of government. Do not make anyone’s kids pray to any god or flag or pasta in a public school.
Major Major Major Major
@Myiq2xu: Ah, there you are. I was waiting to run into you again so I could pie filter you. Ta!
And seriously, that username? Trashy.
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
As I understand it, the thing in the Koran allows Muslims to lie about their religion if they’re living in hostile enough circumstances that admitting their religion would put them in real danger.
Southern Beale
@Hungry Joe:
I don’t know how the numbers are broken down, but I suspect that a lot of those who “do not identify with any organized religion” nonetheless consider themselves Christian, or in some way religious, or at the very least “spiritual.”
Actually, the accompanying chart breaks it down pretty clearly.
“Unaffiliated” is atheist, agnostic and “nothing in particular.” They lumped Unitarians and New Age religions in with “Other World Religions.” There’s “Other Christian” for people who may still identify as Christian but don’t want to put themselves in any of the other boxes.
les
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe, maybe not. I’m not sure of the relevance to a specific statement by a specific person, and other specific persons’ reactions to it. If you’re saying G’s wife was unconscious, well, blog comment sections may not be the best place for that.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Hungry Joe: Wow, that’s how I’ve always felt. I went to Catholic school for 4 years from 2nd to 5th grade and just felt everything was bullshit.
Amir Khalid
@les:
To be clear, I’m not saying it of her alone.
dedc79
@gogol’s wife: It seems like there’s a lot to unpack in this line here:
If churches are merely organizational tools for bringing people together for collective charitable actions, then doesn’t that mean the religious component of it shouldn’t matter? Do you think the generosity/charitableness of individuals is or can only be manifested in their participation in the activities of charitable organizations?
One example you mention is your church’s efforts to visit imprisoned adolescents. I would suggest you consider the multitude of other ways that people (believers and non-believers) help those individuals. Are the lawyers in your local public defenders office who spend every waking minute defending those adolescents (individuals whom nobody else will defend) necessarily spurred to action by their church?
Southern Beale
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, they say the margin of error is less than 1% so maybe. But they’re not growing. And I find this chart very significant. The generational decline in evangelical representation is huge. This is the megachurch crowd. Again, this is the group whose entire core marketing is devoted to young people. They’ve always known that somewhere around high school they lose their audience, and that really is evident here.
I used to work in Christian music. That was 100% evangelical marketing. Get the youth groups. Get the YWAM kids. Get YoungLife. Get the FCA. It’s all about evangelizing to the youth, via Christian pop/hip-hop/radio — the point is to reach out and “evangelize.” They do all that and then they lose people as soon as they hit puberty. Hilarious.
InternetDragons
@gogol’s wife:
The statement is perfectly logical – evangelicals make up a given percentage of Christians. Those in the remaining percentage are more inclined to step away because Christianity is becoming increasingly linked with the crazies.
However, you’re doing a lousy job of convincing me that your brand of religion, whatever it is, is somehow comprised of folks who are more giving and wonderful than we heretics. I have come to feel that whatever amount of good so-called Christians accomplish is not counterbalanced by the amount of BS that comes along with the religion.
I see far more good works done by folks who don’t feel the need to announce their religion. They just do it because it’s right. As soon as the religious label gets applied, you can pretty much bet that there will be some hidden cost – either outright attempts at conversion, or simply the fact that the ‘Christians’ somehow need to get their egos stroked for being so wonderful. And yeah, I am biting because your immediate negativity and hostility ticked me off, but that seems to often be part of the “Christian” package. I never thought I’d say this, but I am getting to the point of believing that religion is essentially toxic.
Johnny Coelacanth
“Obama cultists” crap, I forgot to pay my dues. They still take Soviet Express at bhoculthq.com?
The Other Bob
I would like to see that “nothing in particular” broken down further. I am betting it is made up of people who believe in a god, but don’t assign a religion to it, but also atheists who dare not call themselves that.
Major Major Major Major
@Southern Beale: That’s funny.
I couldn’t find the exact margin for the sub-groups but they do say it’s higher than the overall margin, FYI.
JPL
@Spinoza Is My Co-pilot: I’m not one to question good deeds.
Hungry Joe
@Southern Beale: People who believe in god yet are unaffiliated with any one religious brand could answer, “Nothing in particular.” Lumping them with atheists and agnostics muddies the waters, doesn’t it?
les
If so swell; this is a pretty fringe version of christianity, though, if the salvation thing isn’t pretty central.
gogol's wife
@InternetDragons:
Yes, I’m the negative and hostile one in this thread.
Iowa Old Lady
@gogol’s wife: I’m sorry for that.
JPL
@gogol’s wife: Not quite. lol
also.. I blame Obama
fuckwit
@gogol’s wife: This is the old privilege argument. Like white people whining about political correctness and affirmative action being so INTOLERANT and unfair, or men whining about getting called out for being sexist as being so OPPRESSIVE. Or, like in the other thread, white guys in Colorado calling a “white appreciation day” out of poutrage for there being a black history month and hispanic history month.
The study shows clearly that christians are a huge majority with enormous policital and economic power. It’s the christians who have the responsibility to be tolerant, and we atheists who get to be tolerated. We get to whine about their shit; they don’t get to whine about ours.
When we enter a world where atheists are 70% of the population, then I’ll agree with you, and then we can have a discussion about being tolerant of the minority christians and making sure they feel welcome and valued, and their feelings are heard and respected.
eemom
@Spinoza Is My Co-pilot:
The point is this: if you’re a civilized person in a non-cyber community, and another member of that community who you know and have reason to respect says something that upsets you, the “pushback” process doesn’t usually start out right off the bat with personal attacks and words like “horseshit.”
Why shouldn’t there be some semblance of that here?
WereBear
The evangelicals themselves are panicking.
I think they are dwindling a darn sight more than .9%
Howard Beale IV
@Southern Beale:
Microsoft actually has people on their payroll with ‘evangelist’ in their role. And this goes back to the early-mid 1990’s. Back then I thought it was an insult to the religious users of the term. Today, with the current crop of sky grifters? Ehh, not so much.
eemom
@gogol’s wife: @Iowa Old Lady:
I am too. I know from experience how upsetting this bullshit can be.
Loving, supportive cybercommunity….until you say something that pisses a few people off. Then suddenly you’re the character in The Lottery who drew the paper with the X on it.
The Blog Dahlia
@gogol’s wife:
i think that’s part of it. you’re only taking about your corner of the world. John is likely talking about the country.
you may see dwindling churchgoing numbers and think “well fuck, this sucks cause my church is great”. but for every one of you there a bunch of people in fundagelical land thinking “great!”
scav
@eemom: That may be setting the baseline for civilized society a mite high. While ideal (if perhaps dull), I think not immediately heading for the physical rack, burnpile and beheadings in religious (or other) discusions is at least a modicum of progress. Civilization isn’t all about tea dances. Also some civilizations are less mealy-mouthed in their style of discussions: see UK Question Time.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
Or a favorite blog.
gogol's wife
@eemom:
Thanks! I love Shirley Jackson.
Bill
@eemom:
Personal attacks? I’m not seeing it. I see people disagreeing – sometimes strongly – with something she said. But that doesn’t rise to the level of personal attacks. (Ironically, lumping all non-believers together as less generous could be construed as kind of personal.) If GW thinks we misinterpreted her comment, I’d love to hear it. She didn’t really say we did though, and kind of doubled down on “the secular community just doesn’t give like us church going folk.”
As for language like “horse shit,” I’m going to assume we can all survive such an assault on our sensibilities. Or at least that there’s a fainting couch nearby to help us get through.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@gogol’s wife:
I’ll submit that it’s possible, and perhaps even likely, that such activities are less rare than you believe. Many people in a secular community engage in those activities without mentioning ii in secular community because that isn’t what the community is concentrating on. The self congratulatory ones are just obnoxious.
The people who are seriously doing charitable things outside of work won’t feel the need to talk about it. And you won’t know, because that isn’t what the secular community is concentrating on. I submit that you misunderstand the data points on which you base your inference. I’m not trying to be insulting.
chrome agnomen
@Mike in NC: i am looking into flights as we speak…
The Blog Dahlia
@Bill:
Looking at GW’s post 8, I can’t think of a word that works better than “horseshit”, the commenter’s history aside.
kdaug
@Roger Moore: Yep. See #133
Howard Beale IV
@WereBear: The thing that’s been somewhat schizophrenic in those who believe; They claim that it’s a compact between The Christ and the individual-which means there’s no government involvement at all-after all, how can the Feds serve a subpoena against Jesus?
And it’s at this point that the Talebangicals go all apeshit claiming persecution. Sorry, but I thought that persecution is one of the things that as a believer you may not want but accept to show your service to and faith in The Christ.
I know individuals who have a strong faith but do not advertise it or ram their beliefs down others throats. That is their business, and I’m not going to interfere in it. OTOH, we have batshit insane folks like Huckabee, Santorum, Dobson, Franklin Graham, Don Wildmon, Bryan Fischer, Tony Perkins and rest of these meatbags who have opened their mouths and have proved nothing, outside of being able to goad the media for someone to speak for the Thorazine-addled part of the country and probably the GOP as well.. Apparently they can’t find a decent tarry party to wait for the rapture to occur.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@WereBear: Thanks! That’s a fascinating essay. I think my favorite two parts are:
and
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@eemom:
What “personal attacks”? Neither scav nor myself nor anyone else here is attacking gogol’s wife personally. Claiming that is akin to the typical rightwinger’s thin-skinned complaint that they’re being attacked (or their First Amendment rights are being violated) because they’re criticized for something they said. Same fucking thing, in fact.
The point is this: gogol’s wife pats herself on the back for being better than others (because religion) then gets some pretty goddamn civilized — far as I’m concerned — pushback on such bullshit (the word you use just above; guess it’s better than “horseshit”, huh? And really, you’re on the fainting couch over the word “horsehit”? Seriously?).
Sorry if it offends your delicate sensibilities to hear it, but the stated belief by gogol’s wife that she and her ilk are far better (more generous) than the non-churched is horseshit. Or bullshit, or fucked up, or whatever pejorative you prefer.
People in my community that I know and have reason to respect don’t usually start out right off the bat (the initial comment by gogol’s wife was number 4) by telling people not like them that they’re maybe good for a little food bank donation at Christmas, nothing more (but what do expect from heathens?).
Then claim persecution (uncivilized and bullshit persecution, no less) when told, essentially, “Hey, now, what a second with that!”.
You, and gogol’s wife, and others here defending her execrable belief that church people are better than non-churched (based on her experience and observation) are just not getting it.
And you’re not going to, so I’m done talking about it. Peace and love.
Marc
Some of the atheists on this thread have been nasty and confrontational to a valued long-time commenter here. If you’re trying to convince me that deliberately misreading some mild posts, and being obnoxious in general is convincing, you’re failing. If you’re trying to convince others of moral superiority, start demonstrating some. And that might start by not acting exactly like the Holy Rollers spouting hellfire and brimstone – you know, by casually calling all religious people deluded fools.
We have a hard-won social compact, of actual tolerance. I could mock a lot of the things that anyone does as being irrational, superstitious, or wrong – especially if I was motivated to read them in a hostile way. I think that “how do I live a good life?” is a different question than “how does the world work?”, and I see zero evidence that secular people are more or less moral than religious ones. But I also can’t help but notice that the largest social justice organizations in my city are explicitly religious, as are the largest charities, and I read GWs comments in exactly that vein: we’d lose something valuable if they disappeared.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
Not according to Pew. They say quite specifically that it is statistically significant. They had a very large data set- over 30,000 responses- so they can get statistical significance for small differences.
schrodinger's cat
@Diana:
Hinduism, like Christianity and Islam or any other religion for that matter has its good and not so good aspects. That’s a rather myopic view of Hinduism that your friend has. As for yoga, and I think your friend means Hatha Yoga in particular, is not a religious practice at all but a series of stretches that help one relax and focus.
carcin
Which doesn’t require the belief in an invisible sky daddy or any of the myriad other bits of silly iron age baggage that goes along with it…
carcin
You’re doing concern trolling all wrong. You have to pretend to be sympathetic to the non-theist side, but then your “deliberately misreading some mild posts” gives that right up.
And speak for yourself with the “valued long-time commenter” ribbon…
eemom
@carcin:
And who exactly the fuck are you to speak about it at all? New to me, and I’ve been here 6 years.
I’ve gone back and re-read everything Mrs. Gogol said on this thread, and the reactions she’s received are bullshit, assuming — very important caveat here — a combination of reading comprehension, ability to focus attention, and comprehension of nuance at a higher than 6th grade level on the part of the reader.
J R in WV
@Iowa Old Lady:
How on earth could someone actually believe that? They must not have ever even talked to anyone who took a philosophy class, or a lit class that discussed anything ever written by a theologian.
In my experience, most of the low-life asses I’ve run into at work were Xtian holier than thou lazy pilferers. Now, many of the actual Christians I know well are wholesome people doing their best to help folks locally, and working to improve the world as a whole.
But the Xtianists are not the same as Christians. They are the people who ignore the red text in their Bible, and focus on the loathsome stuff that was added to Christ’s words by people who came along dozens of hundreds of years later, and convinced their peers that they were “close” to Christ. Mostly they were people Christ would have happily cured of an illness, or fed with a miracle of fish and loaves, but who would have turned around and thrown rocks at Christ for no good reason.
I worked with one guy who never talked about his religion, but went to the Unitarian church every week, and then he and his wife adopted 4 kids whose whole family died while they were infants and children. The guys who talked about Jesus all the time wouldn’t have given those kids the time of day.
Atheists believe in lying, huh? There’s a rotten dork for you. Don’t even know the difference between enforced rules and ethics.
Jewish Steel
This discussion of religion got kinda testy. Huh.
chopper
@Marc:
i don’t really think gogol’s wife’s post 8 is mild, nor is it being misread.
even ostensibly nice and valued commenters in this community occasionally lay a stinky turd in the comment section. we all should be able to handle the inevitable pushback when we do.