7 ms·

I'd love to see a public discussion on this. Intuitively, I think you could be right that church participation brings about happiness and reduces alienation, bu

I'd love to see a public discussion on this. Intuitively, I think you could be right that church participation brings about happiness and reduces alienation, but it's hard to discuss in a complete void of data. I admit I didn't look very hard, but a quick search only yielded a Pew Research study which showed that weekly church attendance was correlated with happiness, but being in good health had a much stronger correlation. There are a bunch of related issues I'd like to discuss: 1. Church attendance isn't available to everyone. Specifically, LGBTQ folks are often excluded. In a broader sense, does church attendance still make you happy and reduce alienation if you don't agree with the church's dogma? You claim that "Whether you actually donate and believe everything that is said isn't really a factor" but in my personal experience that was a very large factor. 2. Why do people believe that this is unpopular to discuss? You're not the first person I've heard claim this. 3. Instead of comparing church-attendance to non-church-attendance, is there data which compares church attendance to attendance of other social groups (clubs, activity groups, etc.) which meet weekly? 4. Have there been any attempts to replicate the benefits of church with secular community organizations; i.e. a group that meets weekly and someone gives a talk about some topic (science!)?

794CD01 10y ago
Church attendance is available to everyone. For thousands of years, the answer to your dilemma has been obvious. If you are excluded from an existing church, just make a new one. When black people could not attend white churches, do you think they just gave up and decided to be secular?
- tehrei 10y ago
  Parent is talking about a small sub-minority of people. Not large enough to form their own church or provide a diverse society to network in.
  - 794CD01 10y ago
    If there are enough gays to be gay, there are enough to form a church.
humanrebar 10y ago
> Church attendance isn't available to everyone. Specifically, LGBTQ folks are often excluded. I have been to a lot of churches and I've never seen this happen. > Why do people believe that this is unpopular to discuss? The Bible offends people. And it's very strange to discuss church participation without discussing God and the Bible. For example, I believe creating a godless (or even God agnostic) church will be ultimately a dead end (at least in the long term). I'd be interested to read any research about these things, but I'm skeptical that it's even possible to study these things scientifically. Church dynamics play out over generations. You really need to watch organizations over many changes of leadership to see if they're really successful. I realize that some people reading this reach for an empirical, practical approach to discovering whether it's possible to recreate the benefits of church without the theism. I'd be interested to hear what happens, but I suspect we'll all be dead before all the implications of the experiment are known. I'm not sure waiting around for a series of definitive studies is a good plan.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  What's your opinion on Unitarians? They seem to fit your description and have been around for a wile.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    In general, Unitarians are nice people trying to be nice. But nice isn't enough. The Bible teaches that you can't have love without truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love without truth isn't really love at all. To take one particular, teaching people to be agnostic about who God is or even whether He exists isn't really loving in the long run, no matter how nice the intentions are. And there's some real danger of self delusion in editing the Bible. If we are the ultimate judges of what parts of the Bible count, we become the ultimate judges of Truth. In contrast, it's consistent to trust the scriptures and the God of the scriptures. But if you take that objective source of Truth away, what keeps us honest about who God is? When there is no objective source of Truth, people create a false god in our own image. One that's cold and harsh. Or one that thinks love involves money and power. Or one that only hugs and never rights wrongs. Anyway, I've never heard a good answer from a Unitarian about how they know what parts of the Bible are good. It generally boils down to their own feelings and experience. Typically phrased like, "I can't see how God could...." As if anything we don't understand is automatically false. Anyway, Unitarians are generally nice people, but the ones who are Christian are heavily editing the commandments of Jesus from the Bible. They're very close to practicing another faith. It makes about as much sense to me as a Christian attending a mosque or synagogue.
s_kilk 10y ago
Related to your first bullet-point, but there are also those who can't/won't attend because they refuse to be associated with the goings-on of the larger Church institution. For one example, as recently as 1996, the Catholic Church ran slave-labour camps in Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland When these camps were eventually shut down, some within the Church defended them, claiming they had done nothing wrong but had instead provided a service by enslaving these women. Not something many sane people want to be associated with.

794CD01 10y ago

Church attendance is available to everyone. For thousands of years, the answer to your dilemma has been obvious. If you are excluded from an existing church, just make a new one. When black people could not attend white churches, do you think they just gave up and decided to be secular?

tehrei 10y ago
Parent is talking about a small sub-minority of people. Not large enough to form their own church or provide a diverse society to network in.
- 794CD01 10y ago
  If there are enough gays to be gay, there are enough to form a church.

humanrebar 10y ago

> Church attendance isn't available to everyone. Specifically, LGBTQ folks are often excluded. I have been to a lot of churches and I've never seen this happen. > Why do people believe that this is unpopular to discuss? The Bible offends people. And it's very strange to discuss church participation without discussing God and the Bible. For example, I believe creating a godless (or even God agnostic) church will be ultimately a dead end (at least in the long term). I'd be interested to read any research about these things, but I'm skeptical that it's even possible to study these things scientifically. Church dynamics play out over generations. You really need to watch organizations over many changes of leadership to see if they're really successful. I realize that some people reading this reach for an empirical, practical approach to discovering whether it's possible to recreate the benefits of church without the theism. I'd be interested to hear what happens, but I suspect we'll all be dead before all the implications of the experiment are known. I'm not sure waiting around for a series of definitive studies is a good plan.

ZeroGravitas 10y ago
What's your opinion on Unitarians? They seem to fit your description and have been around for a wile.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  In general, Unitarians are nice people trying to be nice. But nice isn't enough. The Bible teaches that you can't have love without truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). Love without truth isn't really love at all. To take one particular, teaching people to be agnostic about who God is or even whether He exists isn't really loving in the long run, no matter how nice the intentions are. And there's some real danger of self delusion in editing the Bible. If we are the ultimate judges of what parts of the Bible count, we become the ultimate judges of Truth. In contrast, it's consistent to trust the scriptures and the God of the scriptures. But if you take that objective source of Truth away, what keeps us honest about who God is? When there is no objective source of Truth, people create a false god in our own image. One that's cold and harsh. Or one that thinks love involves money and power. Or one that only hugs and never rights wrongs. Anyway, I've never heard a good answer from a Unitarian about how they know what parts of the Bible are good. It generally boils down to their own feelings and experience. Typically phrased like, "I can't see how God could...." As if anything we don't understand is automatically false. Anyway, Unitarians are generally nice people, but the ones who are Christian are heavily editing the commandments of Jesus from the Bible. They're very close to practicing another faith. It makes about as much sense to me as a Christian attending a mosque or synagogue.

s_kilk 10y ago

Related to your first bullet-point, but there are also those who can't/won't attend because they refuse to be associated with the goings-on of the larger Church institution. For one example, as recently as 1996, the Catholic Church ran slave-labour camps in Ireland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland When these camps were eventually shut down, some within the Church defended them, claiming they had done nothing wrong but had instead provided a service by enslaving these women. Not something many sane people want to be associated with.