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In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace
- dang 7y agoThis community doesn't seem to have the capacity to discuss religion. Edit: ok you guys, message received. I won't do it this way again.
- krapp 7y agoThis community doesn't have the capacity to discuss a lot of things, yet it does.
- traderjane 7y agoShould people really be able to discuss things they don't have the discipline to understand? Should average Americans be able to discuss race relations or economic matters or should they simply... rightly receive superior accounts from those who engage in empiricism?
- dang 7y agoThose who "engage in empiricism" might want to look empirically at the effects their "superior accounts" tend to have on others. It's not so clear that this approach is working. To be specific about this site: on HN we have a clear mandate—intellectual curiosity—and a set of principles based on what serves that (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Discussion that stays within those guidelines is welcome, and conversely, when it isn't able to stay within those guidelines, we intervene. There are different degrees of intervention depending on how badly the guidelines are being violated. But intervention, or moderation, or whatever you want to call it, is indispensable. The system doesn't reliably stay within the guidelines on its own.
- dang 7y agoActually, there is almost no topic that degenerates into flamewar and (frankly) inanity as rapidly as the topic of religion does on HN, and probably anywhere on the internet. Can you think of one?
- deftnerd 7y agoEven if it does descend into a flame war at some point, I feel that it's interesting to observe people's viewpoints. Personally, I'm not religious and I tend to view the tech world through that filter. I forget that some tech people might have other philosophical or religious beliefs. At some level, I assume that Tech people are smart, and thus don't believe in religious. This is obviously untrue, so now I'm curious to see if people's religious beliefs, or lack of them, impacts the tech work that they do. i.e. is there any crossover in the venn diagram of religion and tech, or are they entirely isolated from each other. Historically, religious groups sometimes funded purely scientific endeavors. Of course, sometimes religious groups went after science that was inconvenient to belief... But both actions indicate a precedent.
- dang 7y ago> Even if it does descend into a flame war at some point, I feel that it's interesting to observe people's viewpoints. The problem is that, just like fires in a city, flamewars aren't cost-free. It only takes so many before users don't want to be here anymore—except users who like flamewars. That's how internet communities destroy themselves, so trying to contain that risk is a big part of what we do.
- krapp 7y agoTrue, religion is certainly the worst offender, but it's clearly not a one item list. At the moment, anything related to Richard Stallman seems to bring out the worst in a lot of people. And anything related to a particular gender isn't likely to go well. And to be fair to HN, what tends to happens is that the initial set of low-value comments gets replaced over time by better ones. Even the worst of threads can have good conversations in them, it's just sometimes difficult to find.
- deleted 7y ago
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoWow that's the sort of comment that usually gets removed. An unnecessary slur on an entire group of people with no supporting argument. Being disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable. I'm disappointed.
- tokai 7y agoYeah a really disparaging comment coming from a mod. What is the problem. Sure there is some bickering, but it's falling to the bottom.
- dang 7y agoA lot of bickering falls to the bottom because moderators downweight it. I wish that weren't so, because it's a lot of work.
- tokai 7y agoI'm sorry your comment confuses me. Isn't it us users that downweight comments with our votes? I thought you reacted on flags and heavy downvotes. I know you do a lions share of work dang, but I think you were a little to fast here. Good comments were being posted (and pushed below you comment) as you wrote that.
- dang 7y agoFor sure, users downweight (and up-weight!) comments. That's the most important factor. But moderators also downweight subthreads, for example if they're off topic. It's a combo of the two. Same for stories: the ranking is determined by votes, flags, software, and moderation. Users are the most important factor, but alas not a sufficient one. Without moderation, the system gets into unstable states and can't stay within its mandate. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 7y agoIt's partly strategic. The presence of a moderation comment like that in a thread often seems to evoke higher-quality comments. I'd bet that it such had an effect in this case—the thread improved almost immediately—but who knows. You're right that I should have written something longer and not in haste. But I'm a bit surprised by the strong reaction to that one; it's atypical. Perhaps to some readers it felt like a disparagement of their own view on religion—which of course it was not.
- traderjane 7y ago1. Which community does? The Christian community? If so, do you have an intuition over the proportion of HN people who were raised in Abrahamic faiths? Do you presume that the voices which monitor the conversation aren't personally experienced? 2. Or the academic community formed by the Abrahamic faiths? Did you reserve some expectation that secular scholars in academia are about to pop in? 3. And if people cannot discuss these matters, are they to receive the truth from a better source? Which source should we receive it from? 4. If most discussions never reaches into data-driven conversation, does that put them all in the same bin for you? Aspirational speech, perhaps?
- dang 7y agoI don't know which community does, but I suspect there's no large public internet forum that does. The topic is too activating. To get substantive discussion of religion, you probably need smaller groups that have a certain amount of cohesion. A group can be cohesive even if it disagrees. But a large group with weak cohesion discussing a provocative topic is probably always going to plummet to lowest-common-denominator quickly.
- verisimilitudes 7y agoYou wrote that after a mere twenty minutes. Compared to how you've treated other inflammatory topics, one can't help but wonder if this is a sore spot for you. In any case, it's amusing because I'm in that set that would prefer Hacker News to actually discuss computer topics and not those such as this. My computing related articles usually go ignored, since you need to read more than the headline before you vomit forth your personal opinions, though, and the topic means not everyone is equally underqualified to give their opinion to start with.
- dang 7y agoAlas, twenty minutes is plenty of time for a flamewar to get going. When I posted that, the thread consisted of comments like these: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284355 You're right that there's a sore spot for me, but it isn't religion—it's long experience with how wretched HN threads become as soon as religion is mentioned. But I should have been more careful and not posted hastily and vaguely. If I hadn't intervened by posting and doing other standard moderation things, though, the thread would likely have become more of a flamewar. These things don't self-correct; would that they did. I made this case more complicated by posting in a way that stirred up additional waves—it was not a splash-free dive, like we usually try for. I was distracted and my irritation managed to grab the steering wheel.
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- scarmig 7y agoTurn Christianity into a vehicle for conservative identity politics instead of a community and moral framework, and the people victimized by it will cease to identify as it. Simple as that.
- gmoot 7y agoCatholicism has never been that, and it's declining too.
- AlexandrB 7y agoCatholicism as an organization has a lot of skeletons in the closet. I'm surprised it's not declining faster.
- scarmig 7y agoSpillover effect. Catholics might not have the terrible reputation that evangelicals do, but they all fall under the Christian umbrella.
- diego_moita 7y ago> Catholicism has never been that, and it's declining too. In the U.S. you are likely correct. But in Spain, Portugal, Argentina and many parts of Latin America it was a strong supporter of fascist/authoritarian regimes up until the 70's and 80's. Also, up until the 19th century Catholicism was the foundation of very authoritarian and absolutist monarchies.
- xenospn 7y agoBetter late than never.
- notadoc 7y agoWill be interesting to see what happens when the country trades the Protestant worth ethic, concepts of morality, duty to family, for .... whatever is adopted as faith instead. Identity politics seems to be the new religion for many.
- nighthawk1 7y agoOne set of rules is enough. Don’t want to have to follow common law and some made up religious laws as well.
- gscott 7y agoJoined with a rise in suicides https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/suicides-homicides-rise-young-people-n1067786 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/suicides-homici... and mass killings https://news.wttw.com/2019/08/13/northwestern-research-shows-us-mass-shootings-rise https://news.wttw.com/2019/08/13/northwestern-research-shows... and violent crime https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/violent-crime-murder-chicago-increase-.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/violent-crime-murder-c... and homelessness https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homelessness-on-the-rise-in-some-u-s-cities/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homelessness-on-the-rise-in-som... What do Christian churches do? (quick Google search random). https://www.uchristianchurch.org/mission-and-outreach/ https://www.uchristianchurch.org/mission-and-outreach/ https://www.diamondcanyon.org/missions https://www.diamondcanyon.org/missions https://www.newhopechristianchurch.com/missions https://www.newhopechristianchurch.com/missions http://northridge.online/about/missions http://northridge.online/about/missions
- teunispeters 7y agoIn general, replace all of the social and infrastructure with themselves at the center and then there's nothing to replace when the churches fail to serve the people - so people leave. (I've never been a member of any - I just study - as a hobby - "conversion era" in Europe. Be aware that some of what the church replaced was toxic, and some was not. It's an interesting set of eras to study....) The churches have failed though, largely. And finding out why can be informative. (this is not a religious failure, this is a social one. Don't blame peoples' beliefs for this, that's not the right target).
- vkou 7y agoI think all of those things are clearly caused by the increase in atmospheric CO2, and the correlated reduction in maritime piracy. Or, mayhaps, there are more mundane, economic explanations for them...
- Endy 7y agoWould you agree that there's a real relation there, though? That piracy was affected by industrialization and militarization as was CO2 output?
- cabaalis 7y agoI am a Christian, and I believe this is caused directly by a few factors: 1. The history of actions taken by theocracies is not good. There is a strong modern social justice movement, and even saying something bad 10 years ago is enough to cancel someone. Now imagine a group that committed multiple genocides over the centuries. 2. A growing rise of "spiritual but not religious" has led young people to eschew attending church. These young people grow up and have young people of their own who are now never exposed to Christianity. 3. Relegation of religion to personal matters alone, taboo in public. 4. Christians have allowed the book of Leviticus to overwhelm their message. Because of what is said about LGBTQ, Christian == bigot in many people's minds. I'm sure there are fellow Christians who visit HN. I think these are the primary obstacles that must be overcome in order to grow the cause. All the mission work and happy Easter messages in the world won't make a lick of difference against these 4 issues.
- teunispeters 7y agoThe intolerance of Christian groups for non-Christian is a part too. I think it has to do with the myth of being persecuted that hasn't been true since Constantine.
- teilo 7y agoTell that to the Catholics in England and colonial America, or the Protestants in Ireland, or the Jacobites in Scotland, or churches of various denominations in many Islamic countries or territories, such as the Congo.
- teunispeters 7y agoIn general for every group X, you can find a subgroup Y who's done terribly toxic stuff somewhere. The larger and more coordinate the group, the more likely. It doesn't need religion. It needs humans, organising, to happen.
- teilo 7y agoOf course. Even subgroups within the Christian church itself have been guilty of such atrocities at various points in history. But to say that all organized persecution of Christians ended with Constantine is just historically wrong.
- deftnerd 7y agoSome side effects of this that are worth thinking about... As churches see less membership, at some point congregations merge and one church is shut down. Many churches do outreach and provide services to the community, the poor, and the homeless. This often includes shelter from the elements, soup kitchens, food pantries, meeting places for groups like AA/NA/etc. When a church shuts down, the distance that the population has to travel can increase, and there might not be enough room to provide the same resources to those populations. Additionally, it's not necessarily a problem, but more of a musing... What happens to all those old churches? The impact on the property market has to have local effects... I wonder how many churches are shut down, but are just maintained by a skeleton crew of maintenance people in the hope that their customer base will increase enough one day to restart their services and reopen the property. I assume churches don't pay property tax, so as long as the church is in hibernation mode and not actually totally dissolved, could they hold onto the property indefinitely for just the cost of maintenance? Or would them not providing religious services anymore cause them to lose the exemption?
- dangus 7y agoI would think that many churches sell the property. I know people who live in an apartment building that used to be a church. While churches do provide services and outreach to the poor, I've always wondered about what happens when they're serving the opposite effect by not paying property taxes. Property taxes are the public education base in the USA, and quality education is the way out of poverty. Churches' outreach programs will also discriminate against causes they don't agree with based on their own teachings - i.e., Christian churches might not recommend that someone use contraception or get an abortion even if those options are the best logical course of action.
- deftnerd 7y agoThose are some excellent points. You know how some people have pointed out that McDonalds wasn't in the food business, it was in the real estate business to franchise owners? They often hold prime real estate locations. The Post Office also has prime real estate locations. I think that Churches, collectively, hold some of the most desireable property locations in our communities. Especially older churches in city centers have been there and grown organically since cities were founded so now they're very valuable.
- rinchik 7y agoWhat else is new? Religion is the most conservative institution ever created. It does not adapt (well, almost..) it doesn't change (also, almost..) and it's no wonder that with developments in science and culture, religion doesn't seem as important as it used to be. It's been going on for a while, in suburbia the main purpose of religion has nothing to do with religion, it's mostly about community, church is the place when you meet a talk with your neighbors. That's it. Well, strong economy is also there to "blame", one talks to God only when one needs something, nothing wrong with that just to make a point that when everything is good religion is on decline.
- Invictus0 7y agoIf the trend continues, we can expect parity in Christianity and religiously unaffiliated by roughly 2040. However I would expect the decline to increase in rate at some point, as the network effects due to the ubiquity of the Christian community start to fall apart.
- AlexandrB 7y agoWhat's disheartening to me, a life-long agnostic, is that this change doesn't seem to correspond to an increase in rational, scientific materialism. Indeed, it seems like science is on the outs as well with increasingly common denial of basic scientific facts when they conflict with ideology. Instead, this seems to be a change of aesthetics - trading one set of pseudoscientific beliefs (Christianity) for another (new age mysticism, astrology, goop.com).
- nopriorarrests 7y agoWhen people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything. G.K. Chesterton, circa 1924
- wglb 7y agoA fellow that is not exactly neutral on the subject. And really not true.
- lorriman 7y agoDepends what version of Christianity you're thinking of. After all, the inventor of the Big Bang theory was a Catholic priest (top physicist first), and the father of modern genetics was a Catholic monk (biologist also). It's also That covers 50% of Christianity. And since none of Christianity has ever had a dogma that the Bible has to be literally interpreted, really it's just the Christians who don't know they don't have to be creationist who are pseudo-scientfic. Despite stating the facts, it's inevitable that this post will be downvoted by the agressively anti-religious.
- rpmcmurdo 7y agoGood! I come from a family that is split between A) secular/atheist people and B) deeply religious people from the South. Group A has done well, all have happy families, and are overall good people. Group B are, to put it nicely, uneducated bigots who blame a lifetime of bad decisions on everyone besides themselves, oh, and they are also some of the most hateful people you will ever meet. The only people in group B who turned out okay were the ones who rejected religion or turned out gay (and newsflash, they were exiled by their so loving families).
- lorriman 7y agoI live among Christians and we're pretty happy. The only atheist is also the one screw-up and his life is a mess. Statistically, Christians live longer than non-believers.
- lorriman 7y agoMarsha Hunt, actress now aged 102, on her family: "I lucked into the most fortuitous, warm, constructive kind of family context imaginable. My father was a top scholar, a Phi Beta Kappa. My mother was a voice coach and accompanist of singers in the concert and opera fields. We didn't have the term "liberated woman", but my mother certainly was ... They were brought up, both, in the state of Indiana, which is now called the Bible Belt. They were wholesome, they neither smoked nor drank, and they never used the Lord's name in vain. I never heard a four-letter word. It didn't exist in my wholesome family setting."
- jdietrich 7y agoTo pre-empt a lot of comments in this thread: The decline of religiosity is a global trend, strongly correlated with economic development. The US has historically been an outlier and remains unusually religious. The relevant question isn't really why religion is declining in the US, but why it hasn't declined sooner. Claims that the decline in religiosity are related to increases in crime or social problems are not strongly supported by the evidence; there is not a consistent relationship between religiosity and criminality or wellbeing. https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-worl... https://web.archive.org/web/20131021065544/http://www.wingia.com/web/files/news/14/file/14.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20131021065544/http://www.wingia... https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2009.00247.x https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2009.00247.x
- diego_moita 7y ago> The relevant question isn't really why religion is declining in the US, but why it hasn't declined sooner. I believe the reason is that religion has been very different in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world. Few countries have the great variety of religious denominations the U.S. has and the relative peace between said religions. But I agree with your perspective.
- deftnerd 7y ago> The relevant question isn't really why religion is declining in the US, but why it hasn't declined sooner. It's possible that religion is treating the symptom of another problem. Assuming someone religious attends an organized function related to that religion, it's making them part of a community and might be helping them feel less lonely. 2018 study shows that half of Americans feel lonely. [1], but a similar kind of study on people in europe surveying if people had anyone to ask for help or discuss personal matters has a much smaller amount [2] The European study indicates that income inequality has an effect on social isolation, with the lowest incomes having twice the amount of isolation. The income inequality in America is even more pronounced, and geographically, many of the areas with the highest levels of religious beliefs seem (on a map) to line up pretty well with levels of poverty and income inequality. Usual disclaimer about correlation/causation and everything... But perhaps economic conditions that cause people to tend to be socially isolated are being self-treated by pursuit of religious groups because the community it gathers results in a decrease in the isolation symptom? [1] https://fortune.com/2018/05/01/americans-lonely-cigna-study/ https://fortune.com/2018/05/01/americans-lonely-cigna-study/ [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/DDN-20170628-1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/D...
- simonsarris 7y agoA great sorrow I think. Not for Christianity per se but all that comes with it. What is most essentially "home" in the world is the set of rituals you make for yourself and others, things that allow you to dwell more poetically in place. Traditional rituals, like those found in religions, enhance our sense of belonging in the world, or if the world is a rough and scary place, at least within a society. I think we do not have the words for all the good parts of religion and ritual, and because they are not easily articulated, they are easily dismissed as irrational or nonexistent. People instead will attack any religion, or any set of rituals that are not easily explained with a dollar value, gleefully as things that need to die, in service of a more rational world, by which they only mean a world more easily explainable to them. Since they cannot easily explain what's lost, they assume it must be nothing. I think this is a mistake due to a lack of attention. People do not think about this, for that matter I fear people hardly think of our sense of dwelling and belonging at all. Culturally, the idea of "belonging" anywhere has been entirely subsumed by "wandering"[note]. This makes for a more consumer-friendly world, but a much less nice one to live in day to day. I fear that until we have the easy words to properly describe what it is we have lost, people will simply continue to cheer its loss, perhaps pausing once in a while to wonder aloud why they feel somewhat lost. [note] ask people about their aspirational hobbies, they are amost always quick to point to "travel", and "experiences". Weirdly a lot of the "experiences" wording people use comes from a study commissioned by LivingSocial ("millennials prefer experiences over things", as if that's the dichotomy) to hawk the selling of experiences. The pseudostudy seems to be outliving the failed company.
- dangus 7y agoI would guess that the high level of religious affiliation in the United States is somewhat abnormal for a developed and wealthy country. Can you find another Western nation out there with similar levels of religious affiliation? I think I see this decline as a correction. It's not actually normal to have so many people finding religion important to their lives in a large, connected, developed society. The USA's unique history and geography lent itself to high levels of religious affiliation, but since the Internet has connected us all a little closer, it's been harder for religious institutions and religious parents to prevent younger people from obtaining unfiltered information. Enjoyable secular rituals are also easy to find if you look right in front of you - the Thanksgiving Day parade, the SuperBowl, Halloween and Trick-or-Treating, Valentine's Day, city-wide marathons, County Fairs, street festivals, etc...the list is nearly endless. And tradition itself isn't a religion or belief in something. The fact that the Catholic church has you cross yourself, stand and sit at specific times, or eat a cracker are not examples a belief in anything, they are physical ritual and tradition. One can partake in all those activities without having a thought in their mind. There are also secular traditions that have no root in surviving religions, like putting a tree in your house during the holiday season. Plenty of atheists put up "Christmas trees" because it's fun!
- haunter 7y agoWonder what will replace the community for a lot of people in the near future. In a lot of places the church is a de facto community place. There usually a lot of posts in HN about the modern life, loneliness, depression, isolation etc. and I think if you strip away the outward trappings and dogma, this is what religion is good for. Not in a "believe in Jesus" or "trust in God" kind of way, but in a "how to orient your life" kind of way. Which is to say, the actually useful portion of religion generally teaches that your best life is probably not focused on you. It isn't about finding yourself, or being true to yourself, or really thinking about yourself at all. It's in being of benefit to the human beings around you. And in serving those around you, you become something that is worth being. There are parentless children, drug addicts, parks that need cleaning etc. And not christianity per se but local churches do a great deal of job in these. We will see what the future holds.