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The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to j

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!" Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over."

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brobdingnagians 6y ago
And yet our society is more polarized than ever. From your anecdote, one would think that declining religion would result in peace and love overflowing in society, but we see the opposite. Public morality cannot be maintained without religion; we will sadly see the end result of that in coming years.
- 0_____0 6y ago
  ? how do you explain the relative stability of largely secular nations then?
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    The two most destructive regimes of the twentieth century were explicitly secular. The stability of modern Western Europe is more of a historical consequence of Pax Americana and the Cold War than secularism.
    - julianlam 6y ago
      ... and what exactly are these two destructive regimes?
      - ceilingcorner 6y ago
        Do I really need to point that out? Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. If one wants to play "edgy contrarian" and argue that the United States was somehow worse than either of those, well...the U.S. is technically secular too.
        adrian_b 6y ago
        Believing that the communist countries were not religious countries is a common fallacy of the Westerners. In reality communism was a religion and more precisely a variant of the Christian religion, but this fact was disguised by changing the names of all things related to the Christian religion. Just a few of the correspondences between Christianity and Communism (shown as traditional word => communist word for the same concept): Christian => atheist Pagan => Christian Prophets => Marx, Engels & Lenin Holy Scriptures => the published works of Marx, Engels & Lenin Christian martyrs => communist illegalists Pope => general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Cardinals/patriarchs => general secretaries of communist parties Priests => members of the communist parties having functions in the party hierarchy Religious teaching in schools => Political teaching in schools Priest of a military unit => Political second-in-command of a military unit Heretics => oppositionists to the party leadership Happy life in the afterlife => happy life in the future truly communist society Holy Inquisition => Committee for State Security ... and so on. Writing a complete dictionary about all the words used by Christianity with their replacements in Communism would take a very long time. While the communist vocabulary looks very different, the meanings are exactly the same as in Christianity. All the communist countries were not countries free of religion, but on the contrary, they were countries were a monotheistic-like religion was intermingled with all the administrative & government institutions and where all the other religions were aggressively persecuted, including the true atheists or agnostics (i.e. not the communist atheists, which was the code name for the believers in the communist religion). The claim that the communist countries were not religious was just propaganda, they were countries where there was no separation between the religion and the state. Likewise false was the claim that the communist countries had a different economic system, in reality their economic system was an extreme form of capitalism, where everything was dominated by monopolies.
  - brobdingnagians 6y ago
    Depends on how you define secular. Most secular states are simply neutral and promote plurality of culture and religion, i.e. allowing choice. The other type of secular state is one which is openly hostile to religion. The US is becoming openly hostile to religion, as many of the comments in this thread evidence, which is distinct from neutrality. I agree with religious freedom as such, with everyone being on equal standing. If you define secularism as the USSR or China, I would disagree with their long term stability, or even with liking their regimes.
    - tootie 6y ago
      How about church membership
      - prophesi 6y ago
        Funnily enough, one of the most secular countries, Sweden, has a 50%+ church membership. But it's an anomaly; church membership is still a good litmus test for secularity everywhere else.
        ur-whale 6y ago
        > Sweden, has a 50%+ church membership. Could it be that in Sweden, you get some sort of tax rebate or discounts at supermarkets if you are officially registered with some religion?
        meheleventyone 6y ago
        If it’s anything like Iceland people get auto-registered as members. Much better to look at things like church attendance rates.
    - Arainach 6y ago
      The evidence doesn't support your claim. The least religious countries are among the most stable and most peaceful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun... Their crime and imprisonment rates are far below those of the US. Even on an individual level, the presence of non-religious individuals is assocated with a series of positive societal effects: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227616923_Atheism_Secularity_and_Well-Being_How_the_Findings_of_Social_Science_Counter_Negative_Stereotypes_and_Assumptions https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227616923_Atheism_S... Religion isn't necessary for public morality, and as America has shown, is often actively harmful. America is full of people who assume that they are good people BECAUSE they go to church rather than because of their acts. By and large, these are generally not good people. Instead, they're among the most judgmental and least helpful members of society. To paraphrase Gandhi, "I like your Christ, not your Christians". The religious in modern society can't even be bothered to read the Cliff Notes of their own book, otherwise they'd be focused on helping the poor and remembering that rich people have trouble getting to heaven rather than going around promoting guns, no taxes, and slashing social safety nets.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    People wonder if they are only temporarily stable, since the only subset groups that are reproducing at replacement rates are the religious.
    - gbrown 6y ago
      Religion isn't a genetically inherited.
      - mensetmanusman 6y ago
        Cultural inheritance...
        gbrown 6y ago
        It’s not binary is the point.
- prophesi 6y ago
  I'd argue that the polarization is a direct result of the rise of evangelical Christianity. And as church membership decreases, their perceived persecution will fan the flames of their crusade against soft drugs, LGBTQ+, and trans rights to name a few.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >crusade against soft drugs, LGBTQ+, and trans rights to name a few. So then why have those crusades all but evaporated? Weed is on its way to being federally legal. Hard drugs are becoming legal or decriminalized in some jurisdictions. Trans people are pretty much universally accepted/tolerated as being a thing that isn't going away with the remaining conflict more or less related to all the gender based stuff that's been codified in law over the years.
    - iamatworknow 6y ago
      I mean no offense by this, but this opinion seems to be colored by your direct experience. There's is still A LOT of intolerance to these things to be found in the world. You're just not being exposed to it, most likely.
    - gbear605 6y ago
      Just in the last few weeks, three states have passed new laws targeting the healthcare of transgender people and twenty five other state legislatures are considering them. It’s unfortunately not going away. [1] It’s not one of the issues you mentioned, but another similar crusade is abortion rights. It’s looking like the Supreme Court will have hearings potentially leading to the end of Roe v Wade, and a number of states have enacted laws limiting abortions, though some of them were struck down by previous Supreme Court rulings. [1]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/transgender-rights-in-the-spotlight-as-arkansas-and-tennessee-become-latest-states-to-pass-anti-trans-legislation/ar-BB1f42P8 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/transgender-rights-in-the-...
- ouid 6y ago
  Are you claiming that marginally declining religiosity is the dominant factor to be considered in the breakdown of "public morality"? Among such factors as 50 years of stagnant wages and the rise of social media?
- mahogany 6y ago
  > Public morality cannot be maintained without religion Do you have evidence or arguments for this, or is this just a feeling? I can see an argument for the statement "religion can be and has been used to maintain public morality" but that's not what you said, so I'm curious about your reasoning.
  - Alenycus 6y ago
    What is morality? It is not a physical material phenomenon and it is not scientific, so if it exists it is by definition supernatural or its synonym metaphysical Once you are discussing the supernatural, you are discussing religion.
    - mahogany 6y ago
      Since the topic of this thread is about church membership, I would assume religion in this context refers to organized religion, rather than such an abstract definition, in which case someone can believe in the supernatural without being religious. But in either case, I'm a little confused. Wouldn't this line of reasoning apply to laws as well? They aren't physical or (necessarily) scientific. And are you saying that any study of metaphysics is necessarily religious in nature? Perhaps we are using different definitions of religion. If you are making an argument that notions of morality do not (or did not) arise from science, or that morality arose from religion, I think that would have weight to it. But that also doesn't imply that morality cannot continue to exist without religion. For example, it's plausible to me that a sense of shared community is something that can "maintain morality" in a society. We may have lost a sense of community in part due to the decline of churches, but I don't see why it would require them to exist.
      - Alenycus 6y ago
        I have not heard a convincing argument that true right or wrong can exists outside of a universe with a monotheistic God. Do you believe you morality is more right than a Nazis or a pedophiles? If so, you need a justification of why your morality is more ultimately correct and truly "good and better." I have not heard a convincing one that ultimately doesn't end in a monotheistic God. And if not, what are we even doing in this conversation? There can be no moral progress without an objectively better standard that we are attempting to discover.
- hkarthik 6y ago
  It's an interesting argument that you lay out, and as agnostic that came from a religious family, it's something that I've personally grappled with. In the absence of religion, where do people find their moral and ethical compass? I wasn't raised atheist, and when I ask atheists this question they often dismiss it as not important or obvious. I feel like that's half the reason religion persists, because they actually attempt to answer such questions with respect.
  - rjtavares 6y ago
    Have you considered that it is not important, that it is obvious? As a person that wasn't raised religious, the concept that you need religion to find a moral and ethical compass seems weird to me. My parents taught me values, I learned them, society reinforced them. They made sense to me, and I feel bad when I don't follow them. The mechanics of it are pretty simple.
    - caseysoftware 6y ago
      Your line of reasoning is similar to "where does food come from? The grocery store, obviously!" The underlying question is not how YOU got your moral compass but where do the people who taught you yours - and eventually society as a whole - get theirs. If it's a set of principles that civil society generally agrees upon, then the rest are implementation details that will vary from situation to situation. If it's a set of whims of the people in power and will vary regularly and constantly, then "damnation" comes from breaking today's rules.. maybe without even knowing what they are.
      - rjtavares 6y ago
        Your line of reasoning is similar to "Food comes from animals and plants. But where does animals and plants' food comes from?". Do you want to go all the way up to the Big Bang? You learn your ethics from a combination of your parents and society, and you update your beliefs during your life, you share them to a younger generation. Repeat since humans acquired a conscience until humans cease to exist. That's all there is to it.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  > Public morality cannot be maintained without religion This tired, offensive and a thousand time debunked old trope requires imo a little more argumentation than the "it is thus" justification you just provided. I'd recommend reading Hitchens, specifically [1] where he addresses that lame claim at length. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great [EDIT]: here's a good summary from the man himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOHgrnaTxk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOHgrnaTxk0
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    Hitchens' knowledge of religion and philosophy borders on 0%. I would not reference him in any way if you intend to make serious arguments.
    - ur-whale 6y ago
      >Hitchens' knowledge of religion and philosophy borders on 0% A rather bold claim, backed by little evidence and easily debunked by a metric ton of counter-evidence. As example of counter-evidence, I offer: - The man spent a large fraction of his life studying religions of all ilks - He wrote a number of carefully researched books on the topic of religion. - From his quoting the bible, the coran, jewish sacred texts on the fly in the middle of debates with random religious folks (and usually tearing them a new one in the process), I feel confident he had at least skimmed most of those. - No one can accuse Hitchens of being dumb, I very much doubt he'd get into high visibility, in-depth public debate about a topic without having researched it thoroughly. Given the above, I would say the claim that "his knowledge of religion borders on 0%" is - to remain unsarcastic, however hard that is - highly unlikely to be correct.
      - ceilingcorner 6y ago
        Anyone with a modicum of knowledge on religious studies finds his, and all of the other books by the "New Atheists" (with the possible exception of Dennett) to be laughable. I'm sorry, they simply don't have much of an intellectual foundation in anything. Here's an example: Chapter eleven discusses how religions form, and claims that most religions are founded by corrupt, immoral individuals. The chapter specifically discusses cargo cults, Pentecostal minister Marjoe Gortner, and Mormonism. Hitchens discusses Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, citing a March 1826 Bainbridge, New York court examination accusing him of being a "disorderly person and impostor" who Hitchens claims admitted there that he had supernatural powers and was "defrauding citizens".[31][32] Four years later Smith claimed to obtain gold tablets containing the Book of Mormon. When the neighbor's skeptical wife buried 116 pages of the translation and challenged Smith to reproduce it, Smith claimed God, knowing this would happen, told him to instead translate a different section of the same plates. And where does our concept of corruption or immorality come from? Hitchens just lacks basic knowledge of meta-ethics. He doesn't seem to realize that modern democratic rationalist values are themselves descendants of Christian ideas. This is the foundational problem of the New Atheists and of the "rational" set in general. They either don't know or don't understand the foundations of modern ethics, all of which has roots in religion.
- DVk6dqsfyx5i3ii 6y ago
  There is a decline in Christianity but there is not a decline in religion. The religions many preach today are non-theistic and secular but they are religions nonetheless and they don't tolerate heretics.
ceilingcorner 6y ago
This is a somewhat funny joke but it doesn't actually map to reality. Inter-Christian conflict is almost nonexistent in 2021 and has been so for probably a generation. Edit: by “conflict” I mean actual real violent conflict. Not people arguing on Reddit. People literally killing each other (or pushing them off bridges) because they are “heretics.” This doesn’t happen much at all anymore in the Christian world. Even the edge cases like Northern Ireland have little to do with actual religious differences. That issue is mostly political in nature and revolves around the relationship of Ireland to Great Britain, not the intricacies of the Christian religion. It’s easy to observe the difference when you look at the Muslim world, where there still is a lot of violent conflict and people being persecuted or killed because they are “heretics.”
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  Idk, man... about two years ago, I heard an evangelical dude say Catholics aren’t even Christians. As a Catholic, I found it a bit startling to learn that I am - by default - going to hell.
  - reducesuffering 6y ago
    Pop by r/catholic and you'll come across some people's hush-hush Catholic views that Martin Luther was evil by leading away millions to eternal damnation because there's no salvation outside The Catholic Church.
    - germinalphrase 6y ago
      No doubt. I’ve known some pretty insulated, hateful Catholics.
      - slumdev 6y ago
        The Church has always taught that schism and heresy are mortal sins, and the teaching hasn't changed, even if most clergy don't talk about it.
  - 6y ago
jeffwass 6y ago
Emo Philips has another joke which I think was voted somewhere as funniest joke ever, and is a great take on western religion : “When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.”
RhodoGSA 6y ago
Rarely does anyone ever ask my religion but when people do i tell them Hellenism (Belief in the greek gods). People often give me a quizzical look - but when you study the 'religion' you find interesting beliefs that help you in modern day. For instance, claiming you don't have 100% complete faith in the myths and gods wasn't a heretic offense. Everyone respected the fact that the stories were arch-types that displayed courage, anger, revenge, ect. Also, if someone else came up to you from Egypt and believed in an entirely different pantheon you respected their opinion and could see similarities in your own religion. Christianity from the very early days (The skims' under Constantine) was a very absolute one. There was a right and wrong. There was only one god and you are wrong and a heretic for believing in another. That's why Hellenism works so well for me. I do not claim to be a moral precept but i do offer you this; A peace treaty. You can believe what you want to believe as long as you respect my own moral reasoning. In the grand scheme of things as long as there is no direct harm to you for my actions you must accept and respect them but i do not have to bow to them. It cannot be a suicidal pact, meaning if i do not believe in YOUR GOD, slip up and don't call you a 'They' or say somethings 'Gay'. I truly believe one of the biggest problems with current society is everyone believes they are a moral precept and have all the answers. Love your neighbor.
- simonh 6y ago
  >Also, if someone else came up to you from Egypt and believed in an entirely different pantheon you respected their opinion and could see similarities in your own religion. More than that, they believed each others gods were cultural representations of the same actual gods. After all there is only one sky. It doesn't make any sense to think that our sky god is different from their sky god, or our sun god is different from their sun god, though being gods they can manifest in different forms. But then it's shocking how many people seem to think that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship different gods. There's only one god of Abraham, which arguably Hindus call Brahman. They're all just names and stories, there's only one reality*. * citation needed
  - krapp 6y ago
    >More than that, they believed each others gods were cultural representations of the same actual gods. Ironically, Christianity kind of did the same thing, rather believing everyone else's gods were just demons or sorcerers in league with Satan. In further irony, this led to a lot of syncretism of pagan beliefs and rituals into Christianity.
nikolay 6y ago
It's weird how many Americans are completely unaware of the second largest branch of Christianity (or better call it "the trunk" and everything else - "a branch") - the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is the original Christianity without a pope, indulgences, inquisition, and other things, which have nothing to do with the early Christianity.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Yes, also Christians in the US are mostly Protestants, which purposely moved away from the things you mentioned.
  - Breza 6y ago
    I'm a Lutheran and I've studied the works of Luther. When I learned about the Orthodox church as an adult, I really liked what I saw. If Luther had been an Orthodox priest, I wonder if he would have launched his gentle rebellion (and, later, his not-so-gentle rebellion).
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  So it's like the relationship between modern agile methodologies and the original agile manifesto then?
  - nikolay 6y ago
    No, it's more immutable vs mutable... or accepting messages with bad public key signatures.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Prior to the East-West Schism, and from the beginnings of organized Christianity, the entities which became the Eastern Orthodox Churches after the schism had the same Pope, with a somewhat different role, as Western Christianity. Some of them also have had things not unlike the inquisition, though they don't call it that. And, of course, outside of the Eastern Orthodox and maybe the “Old Catholics”, even those Christians who disagree with the Roman Catholic position don't see the Eastern Orthodox as having a particular claim to original Christianity. EDIT: for example, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Church of the East are, in their current form, older than the Eastern Orthodox, and from their perspective the branch containing both sides of the 1054 Schism is a divergence from “original Christianity” in the same way that Western Christianity is viewed by the Eastern Orthodox.,,

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brobdingnagians 6y ago

And yet our society is more polarized than ever. From your anecdote, one would think that declining religion would result in peace and love overflowing in society, but we see the opposite. Public morality cannot be maintained without religion; we will sadly see the end result of that in coming years.

0_____0 6y ago
? how do you explain the relative stability of largely secular nations then?
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  The two most destructive regimes of the twentieth century were explicitly secular. The stability of modern Western Europe is more of a historical consequence of Pax Americana and the Cold War than secularism.
  - julianlam 6y ago
    ... and what exactly are these two destructive regimes?
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      Do I really need to point that out? Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. If one wants to play "edgy contrarian" and argue that the United States was somehow worse than either of those, well...the U.S. is technically secular too.
      - adrian_b 6y ago
        Believing that the communist countries were not religious countries is a common fallacy of the Westerners. In reality communism was a religion and more precisely a variant of the Christian religion, but this fact was disguised by changing the names of all things related to the Christian religion. Just a few of the correspondences between Christianity and Communism (shown as traditional word => communist word for the same concept): Christian => atheist Pagan => Christian Prophets => Marx, Engels & Lenin Holy Scriptures => the published works of Marx, Engels & Lenin Christian martyrs => communist illegalists Pope => general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Cardinals/patriarchs => general secretaries of communist parties Priests => members of the communist parties having functions in the party hierarchy Religious teaching in schools => Political teaching in schools Priest of a military unit => Political second-in-command of a military unit Heretics => oppositionists to the party leadership Happy life in the afterlife => happy life in the future truly communist society Holy Inquisition => Committee for State Security ... and so on. Writing a complete dictionary about all the words used by Christianity with their replacements in Communism would take a very long time. While the communist vocabulary looks very different, the meanings are exactly the same as in Christianity. All the communist countries were not countries free of religion, but on the contrary, they were countries were a monotheistic-like religion was intermingled with all the administrative & government institutions and where all the other religions were aggressively persecuted, including the true atheists or agnostics (i.e. not the communist atheists, which was the code name for the believers in the communist religion). The claim that the communist countries were not religious was just propaganda, they were countries where there was no separation between the religion and the state. Likewise false was the claim that the communist countries had a different economic system, in reality their economic system was an extreme form of capitalism, where everything was dominated by monopolies.
- brobdingnagians 6y ago
  Depends on how you define secular. Most secular states are simply neutral and promote plurality of culture and religion, i.e. allowing choice. The other type of secular state is one which is openly hostile to religion. The US is becoming openly hostile to religion, as many of the comments in this thread evidence, which is distinct from neutrality. I agree with religious freedom as such, with everyone being on equal standing. If you define secularism as the USSR or China, I would disagree with their long term stability, or even with liking their regimes.
  - tootie 6y ago
    How about church membership
    - prophesi 6y ago
      Funnily enough, one of the most secular countries, Sweden, has a 50%+ church membership. But it's an anomaly; church membership is still a good litmus test for secularity everywhere else.
      - ur-whale 6y ago
        > Sweden, has a 50%+ church membership. Could it be that in Sweden, you get some sort of tax rebate or discounts at supermarkets if you are officially registered with some religion?
        meheleventyone 6y ago
        If it’s anything like Iceland people get auto-registered as members. Much better to look at things like church attendance rates.
  - Arainach 6y ago
    The evidence doesn't support your claim. The least religious countries are among the most stable and most peaceful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun... Their crime and imprisonment rates are far below those of the US. Even on an individual level, the presence of non-religious individuals is assocated with a series of positive societal effects: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227616923_Atheism_Secularity_and_Well-Being_How_the_Findings_of_Social_Science_Counter_Negative_Stereotypes_and_Assumptions https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227616923_Atheism_S... Religion isn't necessary for public morality, and as America has shown, is often actively harmful. America is full of people who assume that they are good people BECAUSE they go to church rather than because of their acts. By and large, these are generally not good people. Instead, they're among the most judgmental and least helpful members of society. To paraphrase Gandhi, "I like your Christ, not your Christians". The religious in modern society can't even be bothered to read the Cliff Notes of their own book, otherwise they'd be focused on helping the poor and remembering that rich people have trouble getting to heaven rather than going around promoting guns, no taxes, and slashing social safety nets.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  People wonder if they are only temporarily stable, since the only subset groups that are reproducing at replacement rates are the religious.
  - gbrown 6y ago
    Religion isn't a genetically inherited.
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      Cultural inheritance...
      - gbrown 6y ago
        It’s not binary is the point.
prophesi 6y ago
I'd argue that the polarization is a direct result of the rise of evangelical Christianity. And as church membership decreases, their perceived persecution will fan the flames of their crusade against soft drugs, LGBTQ+, and trans rights to name a few.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >crusade against soft drugs, LGBTQ+, and trans rights to name a few. So then why have those crusades all but evaporated? Weed is on its way to being federally legal. Hard drugs are becoming legal or decriminalized in some jurisdictions. Trans people are pretty much universally accepted/tolerated as being a thing that isn't going away with the remaining conflict more or less related to all the gender based stuff that's been codified in law over the years.
  - iamatworknow 6y ago
    I mean no offense by this, but this opinion seems to be colored by your direct experience. There's is still A LOT of intolerance to these things to be found in the world. You're just not being exposed to it, most likely.
  - gbear605 6y ago
    Just in the last few weeks, three states have passed new laws targeting the healthcare of transgender people and twenty five other state legislatures are considering them. It’s unfortunately not going away. [1] It’s not one of the issues you mentioned, but another similar crusade is abortion rights. It’s looking like the Supreme Court will have hearings potentially leading to the end of Roe v Wade, and a number of states have enacted laws limiting abortions, though some of them were struck down by previous Supreme Court rulings. [1]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/transgender-rights-in-the-spotlight-as-arkansas-and-tennessee-become-latest-states-to-pass-anti-trans-legislation/ar-BB1f42P8 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/transgender-rights-in-the-...
ouid 6y ago
Are you claiming that marginally declining religiosity is the dominant factor to be considered in the breakdown of "public morality"? Among such factors as 50 years of stagnant wages and the rise of social media?
mahogany 6y ago
> Public morality cannot be maintained without religion Do you have evidence or arguments for this, or is this just a feeling? I can see an argument for the statement "religion can be and has been used to maintain public morality" but that's not what you said, so I'm curious about your reasoning.
- Alenycus 6y ago
  What is morality? It is not a physical material phenomenon and it is not scientific, so if it exists it is by definition supernatural or its synonym metaphysical Once you are discussing the supernatural, you are discussing religion.
  - mahogany 6y ago
    Since the topic of this thread is about church membership, I would assume religion in this context refers to organized religion, rather than such an abstract definition, in which case someone can believe in the supernatural without being religious. But in either case, I'm a little confused. Wouldn't this line of reasoning apply to laws as well? They aren't physical or (necessarily) scientific. And are you saying that any study of metaphysics is necessarily religious in nature? Perhaps we are using different definitions of religion. If you are making an argument that notions of morality do not (or did not) arise from science, or that morality arose from religion, I think that would have weight to it. But that also doesn't imply that morality cannot continue to exist without religion. For example, it's plausible to me that a sense of shared community is something that can "maintain morality" in a society. We may have lost a sense of community in part due to the decline of churches, but I don't see why it would require them to exist.
    - Alenycus 6y ago
      I have not heard a convincing argument that true right or wrong can exists outside of a universe with a monotheistic God. Do you believe you morality is more right than a Nazis or a pedophiles? If so, you need a justification of why your morality is more ultimately correct and truly "good and better." I have not heard a convincing one that ultimately doesn't end in a monotheistic God. And if not, what are we even doing in this conversation? There can be no moral progress without an objectively better standard that we are attempting to discover.
hkarthik 6y ago
It's an interesting argument that you lay out, and as agnostic that came from a religious family, it's something that I've personally grappled with. In the absence of religion, where do people find their moral and ethical compass? I wasn't raised atheist, and when I ask atheists this question they often dismiss it as not important or obvious. I feel like that's half the reason religion persists, because they actually attempt to answer such questions with respect.
- rjtavares 6y ago
  Have you considered that it is not important, that it is obvious? As a person that wasn't raised religious, the concept that you need religion to find a moral and ethical compass seems weird to me. My parents taught me values, I learned them, society reinforced them. They made sense to me, and I feel bad when I don't follow them. The mechanics of it are pretty simple.
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    Your line of reasoning is similar to "where does food come from? The grocery store, obviously!" The underlying question is not how YOU got your moral compass but where do the people who taught you yours - and eventually society as a whole - get theirs. If it's a set of principles that civil society generally agrees upon, then the rest are implementation details that will vary from situation to situation. If it's a set of whims of the people in power and will vary regularly and constantly, then "damnation" comes from breaking today's rules.. maybe without even knowing what they are.
    - rjtavares 6y ago
      Your line of reasoning is similar to "Food comes from animals and plants. But where does animals and plants' food comes from?". Do you want to go all the way up to the Big Bang? You learn your ethics from a combination of your parents and society, and you update your beliefs during your life, you share them to a younger generation. Repeat since humans acquired a conscience until humans cease to exist. That's all there is to it.
ur-whale 6y ago
> Public morality cannot be maintained without religion This tired, offensive and a thousand time debunked old trope requires imo a little more argumentation than the "it is thus" justification you just provided. I'd recommend reading Hitchens, specifically [1] where he addresses that lame claim at length. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great [EDIT]: here's a good summary from the man himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOHgrnaTxk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOHgrnaTxk0
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Hitchens' knowledge of religion and philosophy borders on 0%. I would not reference him in any way if you intend to make serious arguments.
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    >Hitchens' knowledge of religion and philosophy borders on 0% A rather bold claim, backed by little evidence and easily debunked by a metric ton of counter-evidence. As example of counter-evidence, I offer: - The man spent a large fraction of his life studying religions of all ilks - He wrote a number of carefully researched books on the topic of religion. - From his quoting the bible, the coran, jewish sacred texts on the fly in the middle of debates with random religious folks (and usually tearing them a new one in the process), I feel confident he had at least skimmed most of those. - No one can accuse Hitchens of being dumb, I very much doubt he'd get into high visibility, in-depth public debate about a topic without having researched it thoroughly. Given the above, I would say the claim that "his knowledge of religion borders on 0%" is - to remain unsarcastic, however hard that is - highly unlikely to be correct.
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      Anyone with a modicum of knowledge on religious studies finds his, and all of the other books by the "New Atheists" (with the possible exception of Dennett) to be laughable. I'm sorry, they simply don't have much of an intellectual foundation in anything. Here's an example: Chapter eleven discusses how religions form, and claims that most religions are founded by corrupt, immoral individuals. The chapter specifically discusses cargo cults, Pentecostal minister Marjoe Gortner, and Mormonism. Hitchens discusses Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, citing a March 1826 Bainbridge, New York court examination accusing him of being a "disorderly person and impostor" who Hitchens claims admitted there that he had supernatural powers and was "defrauding citizens".[31][32] Four years later Smith claimed to obtain gold tablets containing the Book of Mormon. When the neighbor's skeptical wife buried 116 pages of the translation and challenged Smith to reproduce it, Smith claimed God, knowing this would happen, told him to instead translate a different section of the same plates. And where does our concept of corruption or immorality come from? Hitchens just lacks basic knowledge of meta-ethics. He doesn't seem to realize that modern democratic rationalist values are themselves descendants of Christian ideas. This is the foundational problem of the New Atheists and of the "rational" set in general. They either don't know or don't understand the foundations of modern ethics, all of which has roots in religion.
DVk6dqsfyx5i3ii 6y ago
There is a decline in Christianity but there is not a decline in religion. The religions many preach today are non-theistic and secular but they are religions nonetheless and they don't tolerate heretics.

ceilingcorner 6y ago

This is a somewhat funny joke but it doesn't actually map to reality. Inter-Christian conflict is almost nonexistent in 2021 and has been so for probably a generation. Edit: by “conflict” I mean actual real violent conflict. Not people arguing on Reddit. People literally killing each other (or pushing them off bridges) because they are “heretics.” This doesn’t happen much at all anymore in the Christian world. Even the edge cases like Northern Ireland have little to do with actual religious differences. That issue is mostly political in nature and revolves around the relationship of Ireland to Great Britain, not the intricacies of the Christian religion. It’s easy to observe the difference when you look at the Muslim world, where there still is a lot of violent conflict and people being persecuted or killed because they are “heretics.”

germinalphrase 6y ago
Idk, man... about two years ago, I heard an evangelical dude say Catholics aren’t even Christians. As a Catholic, I found it a bit startling to learn that I am - by default - going to hell.
- reducesuffering 6y ago
  Pop by r/catholic and you'll come across some people's hush-hush Catholic views that Martin Luther was evil by leading away millions to eternal damnation because there's no salvation outside The Catholic Church.
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    No doubt. I’ve known some pretty insulated, hateful Catholics.
    - slumdev 6y ago
      The Church has always taught that schism and heresy are mortal sins, and the teaching hasn't changed, even if most clergy don't talk about it.
- 6y ago

jeffwass 6y ago

Emo Philips has another joke which I think was voted somewhere as funniest joke ever, and is a great take on western religion : “When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.”

RhodoGSA 6y ago

Rarely does anyone ever ask my religion but when people do i tell them Hellenism (Belief in the greek gods). People often give me a quizzical look - but when you study the 'religion' you find interesting beliefs that help you in modern day. For instance, claiming you don't have 100% complete faith in the myths and gods wasn't a heretic offense. Everyone respected the fact that the stories were arch-types that displayed courage, anger, revenge, ect. Also, if someone else came up to you from Egypt and believed in an entirely different pantheon you respected their opinion and could see similarities in your own religion. Christianity from the very early days (The skims' under Constantine) was a very absolute one. There was a right and wrong. There was only one god and you are wrong and a heretic for believing in another. That's why Hellenism works so well for me. I do not claim to be a moral precept but i do offer you this; A peace treaty. You can believe what you want to believe as long as you respect my own moral reasoning. In the grand scheme of things as long as there is no direct harm to you for my actions you must accept and respect them but i do not have to bow to them. It cannot be a suicidal pact, meaning if i do not believe in YOUR GOD, slip up and don't call you a 'They' or say somethings 'Gay'. I truly believe one of the biggest problems with current society is everyone believes they are a moral precept and have all the answers. Love your neighbor.

simonh 6y ago
>Also, if someone else came up to you from Egypt and believed in an entirely different pantheon you respected their opinion and could see similarities in your own religion. More than that, they believed each others gods were cultural representations of the same actual gods. After all there is only one sky. It doesn't make any sense to think that our sky god is different from their sky god, or our sun god is different from their sun god, though being gods they can manifest in different forms. But then it's shocking how many people seem to think that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship different gods. There's only one god of Abraham, which arguably Hindus call Brahman. They're all just names and stories, there's only one reality*. * citation needed
- krapp 6y ago
  >More than that, they believed each others gods were cultural representations of the same actual gods. Ironically, Christianity kind of did the same thing, rather believing everyone else's gods were just demons or sorcerers in league with Satan. In further irony, this led to a lot of syncretism of pagan beliefs and rituals into Christianity.

nikolay 6y ago

It's weird how many Americans are completely unaware of the second largest branch of Christianity (or better call it "the trunk" and everything else - "a branch") - the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is the original Christianity without a pope, indulgences, inquisition, and other things, which have nothing to do with the early Christianity.

mixmastamyk 6y ago
Yes, also Christians in the US are mostly Protestants, which purposely moved away from the things you mentioned.
- Breza 6y ago
  I'm a Lutheran and I've studied the works of Luther. When I learned about the Orthodox church as an adult, I really liked what I saw. If Luther had been an Orthodox priest, I wonder if he would have launched his gentle rebellion (and, later, his not-so-gentle rebellion).
commandlinefan 6y ago
So it's like the relationship between modern agile methodologies and the original agile manifesto then?
- nikolay 6y ago
  No, it's more immutable vs mutable... or accepting messages with bad public key signatures.
dragonwriter 6y ago
Prior to the East-West Schism, and from the beginnings of organized Christianity, the entities which became the Eastern Orthodox Churches after the schism had the same Pope, with a somewhat different role, as Western Christianity. Some of them also have had things not unlike the inquisition, though they don't call it that. And, of course, outside of the Eastern Orthodox and maybe the “Old Catholics”, even those Christians who disagree with the Roman Catholic position don't see the Eastern Orthodox as having a particular claim to original Christianity. EDIT: for example, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Church of the East are, in their current form, older than the Eastern Orthodox, and from their perspective the branch containing both sides of the 1054 Schism is a divergence from “original Christianity” in the same way that Western Christianity is viewed by the Eastern Orthodox.,,