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Young Americans losing their religion at a rapid pace
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That's true. But it doesn't exempt secular belief systems. At the end of the day, why is communism better or worse than any other system? Break out the chemistry set boys and girls, but oh wait, that's right, you can't evaluate a moral system with beakers and test tubes. So how can you measure it? Utilitarianism? Randian Objectivism? Good luck quantifying why one is better than the other.
No, don't get me wrong. I can easily see the religion/rational dichotomy. I can see where you would draw the line. But after you go all "lol invisible guy" you are left with the underlying belief structures which make up religion. And there is no way you can objectively prove your beliefs are superior to those underlying structures.
Yeah, I get it: belief in a deity is silly. But religion as I define it is more than a god, it is a system of beliefs. And it seems we as humans replace one "opiate of the masses" for another quite easily. The reasoning behind it is up to you.
So, science = religion.
Go make an atheist/religion thread, people.
Yes. Only it can replicate its miracles on demand.
This being the important part.
That's a big part, yeah. But also its mythology is actually informative, its impact on morality is more positive, and it holds up well against scrutiny, particularly compared to every other religion on the planet.
I think that the area where science is wholly unable to contribute is a lot further back than where you are drawing the line. We can use experiment and simulation and history, among other things, to test the outcomes of various moral strategies.
I think the loss of religion among younger generations can be attributed to the diversity and accessibility of new hobbies and communities.
Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens may have contributed as well.
Indeed. In fact one could say it does all these things so well in comparison to any religion you care to name that claiming they are the same is essentially similar to generalising the distinction of living creature to both human and plant.
It's true.
But irrelevent.
Secular belief systems are put in place by people and government with actual quantifiable results. Sure, there's discord on which belief best suits the population, but it's still quantifiable. Want to prove socialism as a working philosophy? Implement a working model for universal healthcare. Want to prove anarchism? Tell everyone to do what they want, regardless of outcome.
Want to prove life everlasting in mansions of glory? Get back to me when you do.
Secular philosophy can be quantified. The. End.
So what, LightsOut's definition of religion doesn't entail outlining a strict moral code for all adherents?
I kind of think that's missing a big part of religion.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Experimental method.
Find me a science that does not adhere to this extremely strict methodology.
His analogy is absolutely correct. The trick is that even if it is that doesn't mean anything of worth.
I'm sorry did you just equate religious folks with cosplayers?
If so, I do believe that's the most ridiculous thing I've read here. Congrats.
Hey.
That's funny man. You just made a moral choice in a religion thread and then didn't back it up with any reasoning or logic at all!
You should do stand up.
It's a hilarious quote and I've sigged it, but generally all but the most hardcore cosplayers would know that shit be make-believe.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
It's an emotional connection. You wan to laugh at them, or negatively appraise them, but it's emotional. That's moral to me.
That is most certainly what he was comparing them to.
I just wanted to chime in and say it's a completely valid comparison for a number of reasons.
First of all, the fact that we do not know how life originated from non-life is not evidence of the existence of any god, anymore than it's evidence for the existence for fairies. Why the hell would it be? It's a God-of-the-Gaps argument. In the same way, prehistoric people didn't understand the process behind lightning so they assumed it was gods throwing shit around. But lightning isn't evidence for gods anymore than mysteries about the origin of life are.
Secondly, the premise of your argument is flawed: if life did emerge from non-life today, it would promptly be eaten.
Finally, numerous experiments have shown the path that abiogenesis would take. For example:
• Revised versions of the Miller-Urey experiments produce organic compounds from energy applied to the atmosphere of the early earth. Such compounds could easily have come from lightning, carbonaceous chondrites, or hydrothermal vents. You only need a little bit to get to:
• Amino acids combining into proteins and nucleotides combining into RNA. Modern life uses DNA as a "code" to synthesize proteins and RNA as a catalyst (which presents a chicken-and-egg problem). But many scientists believe that DNA "evolved" from an earlier RNA form of replication—since RNA can function both as a replicating code and as a catalyst.
• Most fascinating, lipids—the fatty organic molecules that form the membranes of all cells—spontaneously form cell-sized "bubbles" if you put them in water.
None of this shit requires anything more than the laws of physics. And if you're going to argue that the existence of the laws of physics is evidence of a god, I'll ream you out for that shit too.
How far in the future? Right now, it seems that fundamentalist Christians harbor a particular loathing for Islam, given our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the situation between Israel and Palestine. I don't see that gap being bridged anytime soon.
Political science.
Did God order genocides or didn't he?
I want to hear a straight answer from you.
What? The Canaanites had no covenant with God.
And does this mean you believe it's morally justified to commit genocide on lapsed Hebrew cities that revert to paganism? What a wonderful morality your religion gives you.
I actually studied ANE culture in college. I'm quite familiar with the cultural context of the Hebrew Bible. Many of the laws are identical to the laws in the Code of Hamurabi, an earlier Babylonian legal text. Obviously, Biblical laws allowing slavery and selling women as chattle are best understood in the cultural context in which the Hebrews lived.
The first problem is that understanding the Bible this way is not a "religious" understanding, it's an anthropological understanding. If you take the Bible in its cultural context, it becomes clear that it's simply another human-written piece of Mesopotamian mythology and legal text.
A second problem is that in many ways, the Bible is less progressive than the nascent Babylonian culture. For example, the Code of Hammurabi does not order you to kill homosexuals, astrologers, and unbelievers. The Bible does. The Code of Hammurabi does not contain orders to commit genocide. The Bible does. In fact, the Bible is the only religious text that actually commands you to commit genocide.
And thirdly, the Bible explicitly says it's not meant to be understood in a relative cultural context. In Deuteronomy 4, God says that the laws in the Bible are not to be changed or added to, and that they are so wise and just that other cultures will be in awe of them. Are you in awe of the laws commanding slavery and genocide and ordering rape victims to marry their rapists?
And finally, as I said before, playing the "non-literal religious truth" card, as you do below, is fundamentally dishonest. Let's examine what you say here.
This is a dishonest reading of the text. In ANE culture, everyone believed there was an ocean above the dome of the sky. Nobody would have understood this story as a "metaphor" anymore than they understood the Enuma Elish as a "metaphor." It was considered a valid description of the world and actually makes sense if your'e a primitive desert nomad—because after all, the sky is blue and rain falls from it, so obviously there's an ocean up there.
More importantly—we weren't talking about Genesis, we were talking about Deuteronomy, and the commandments by God to commit genocide.
How the fuck do you interpret these commandments non-literally? God says,
It's a specific commandment, and it is specifically carried out in the book of Joshua. Do you think God was lying when he said that, and didn't mean it literally? Because earlier you seemed to justify the genocide of these people.
Again, please be clear here: did God order genocide, or didn't he? You can't just say he "non-literally ordered genocide," that makes no sense whatsoever.
I understand; this doesn't contradict what I said. Unless I'm mistaken, you Catholics also believe in imputation of original sin from Adam's disobedience onto all his ancestors.
One wonders why the gospel writers bothered to establish a familial descent from the last great Jewish political leader then. I personally don't blame Romans for thinking Jesus was the "king of the Jews"—if the gospels are to be believed (which, admittingly, is a stretch) that's exactly the designation he was bringing on himself.
True. Lord knows Catholics aren't known for their intellectual consistency, since your religion basically allows you to make shit up to fill in the gaps. Like writing Star Wars fanfic. Though, to be fair, most Catholics I've talked to will unequivocally condemn genocide. The fact that you apparently think genocide can be justified says a lot about the value of your religion.
I'd buy tickets to see that!
What about robotic Muslims?
After you suicide-bomb someone, you just replace the broken parts, do it again, and when you finally kick the bucket you've got OVER 9000 virgins awaiting you.
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And in your discussion of Deuteronomy you completely ignore what he said, which is that it's recognized that the Bible is the word of God as written by man, and can therefore be reinterpreted by man.
OK, but again, if you're free to label the Bible as allegorical (especially the parts that make no damn sense), then there is no basis for asserting that the Resurrection actually happened, or for believing Jesus when he claims to be the son of God.
Wait, didn't they already get someone to do the Butlerian Jihad books?
I agree with this statement.
I have seen it all around me as I grew up. At least in my part of the world (Alberta), I have seen everyone in my class grow up from being christian because their parents told them to be to almost all being atheist/agnostic or apathetic.
Almost everyone my age that I know well at work and at college are atheist/agnostic.
If I were to put a statistic on it I would say that perhaps only 20% of the people I interact with on a daily basis as friends, roomates, family, acquaintances, and fellow students are religious in some fashion.
Things are a-changin. For the better of course, IMO.
1. Science as a religion
This completely misses the point of religion. Not a good idea. Briefly, science is great for explaining things. It is awesome for that, and as an area of study it is unique for the reasons mentioned here. Clearly, everyone has a problem with religion attempting to "explain things" and in this we both agree. So where is the problem? The scientific method will only get us so far objectively. Granted, it's pretty damn far in terms of explaining things. But try to extend that to something not quantifiable. Try and quantify morality. Which brings me to the second point.
2. Quantifying Beliefs
Morninglord mentioned the experimental method and Premier kakos suggested Political Science (jokingly im sure). So let's use Political Science as an example. Political Science gets nowhere close to producing the types of results real sciences do. How is it possible that you can half of economists subscribing to one model, and half subscribing to another. Oh it's true, they have numbers, graphs, and formulas a plenty but there is no consensus.
How does this relate to the topic at hand? I suggest the following ideas.
Why is religion on the decline? My theory is that the world is becoming more liberal, and in doing so there is no room for an organized system of denying people human rights. Put simply, young people don't see any good reason to disallow gay marriage, or criminalize abortion. Furthermore, churches which emphasize literal interpretations to "explain" things are preaching to a generation where information is readily available to prove the contrary.
So what's gonna happen?
My theory is that religion will become more liberal. Let's think about what are the main problems with modern religion. One, you could say it's complete bullshit, and two, it constantly imposes its views on the masses. If the church depoliticizes itself, than that deals with the second problem. For these examples I'll use Christianity.
There is no mandate in the Bible to force others to act as you do. You lead by example. People may be fishers of men, but fish choose whether or not to bite.
The solution to the first problem is what I was getting at in my first point. As a system of beliefs, sans the magical stuff, Christianity is just as relevant as any other moral system. Yes, it says what is right and wrong. Most people don't have a problem with this, they have a problem when they try to impose said system on other people.
Christianity largely spreads because parents teach their children religious beliefs, customs, and worldwiews while they're still likely to believe anything they're told.
This new generation of "others" isn't the tidal wave of atheists -- it's going to be their children. These people, who haven't been to church since they were 14 and their parents stopped forcing them, who rarely pray, don't follow any religious customs anymore, they're unlikely to put much effort into raising their children Christian. After all, they put no effort into anything else Christian.
And once you have a generation with enough people who never affiliated with an organized religion, it'll cease to be as taboo of a subject to criticize. It'll cease to be as emotionally charged and undiscussable. When people make horrible arguments like "I think the world is 6000 years old because the Bible says so", people won't be afraid to go "Really? A 2000 year old book that's wrong on countless things is what you use as proof against geological and astronomical proof? Wow."
...Well, that's what I'm hoping for anyway. I feel there's enough people right now that are separated enough from religion to have these discussions, but many people feel some kind of odd respect for religion that prevents them from discussing these things.
Morality is a behavior. Behavior is quantifiable. We're not very good at it yet, but morality is definitely within the remit of science as a psychological/social phenomenon.
Sure, but that's because of the primitive nature of those fields. In a thousand years, politics might be just as predictable as physics, for all we know. It depends on the tools we have available, our body of knowledge, etc.
This seems like a very likely scenario to me.
I'm great with Americans leaving organized religion in great droves. I hope they find something to replace it. The worst thing (philosophically, you know, below getting millions of people killed) that Christianity as it has stood for centuries has done is to stake its claim on all spirituality, such that when people leave the church, they leave all forms of spiritual belief as well, because it's been tainted by what Christianity declared it to be.
I think that spiritual belief telling you to spend some quiet time thinking about the world and your place in it, and to try to remember that other people are people like you, and to try to have faith that things are going to work out for the best... is great.
It's just when the folks selling the books get into political pissing contests and then decide to say that spirituality means going off to kill those guys that it gets screwy. If you can keep "Hey, try to be slightly more reflective and thoughtful and conscientious", it doesn't really matter how you do it. And the advent of new communications technology means that one of the oldest functions of churches (community social group) no longer applies -- which works in some ways and not in others.
It's really great to hear that volunteerism is on the rise, as somebody said awhile back.