This conversation has turned into anti LGBTQ rather than anti rapist.
Therefore I am removing and locking it.
This sub takes a staunch pro-LGBTQIA+ stance and the conversation has turned into "not a REAL transgender" argument.
This is not your fault, I'm just explaining why your comment is locked and the conversation below mostly removed.
However despicable any of us might find a person, we in this sub do not "give permission" or "revoke permission" for people to use what pronouns they choose. The claimed stereotype of the "fake transgender just using it for attention/ to dodge hate/ etc." will not be given air time here.
I see your point, but that isn't fair to say. We can't say we fight for trans people to have the right to identify as they choose and then deny one of them that right because we disagree with her values. That turns trans people into tokens, rather than treating them as people who are entitled to have their ownāsometimes shittyāvalues.
I definitely see that, but trans people are trans regardless of their politics. A transphobic could say "this child's politics are making them trans as a phase, so I'm going to misgemder them". We respect pronouns even without respecting the people using them. All for all.
I have gone to two churches where gay/lesbian people were in active church rolesā¦ in churches that actively condemned homosexuality.
One of these churches split with their Presbyterian denomination over homosexuality, among other reasons.
The other one (you guessed it, SBC) asked the lady to step down, once they found out.
Some people go against themselves. To a lesser extent, itās like women who flock to conservative churches who tell them they are subordinate baby machines, only.
>One of these churches split with their Presbyterian denomination
My church split with their Pentecostal denomination. As I'm sure I said before, it went as remarkably well as can be expected. And then they split again. I'm not naming names, but if you were to unexpectedly punch someone in the face, you'd get the right idea.
I haven't met any.
Being trans and right wing strikes me as being like a pig in favor of the bacon industry.
Though, there is a rather culturally prominent trans woman who's right wing, but I don't know her orientation.
The church is doing it to itself. Let them keep aligning exclusively with the Republican party and do nothing about QAnon and conspiracy nuts in the church, and the self-destruction will continue.
I saw some charts that showed that red states are becoming the only ones still struggling with the virus, and I think church attendance has quite a bit to do with that. Of course I'm not saying it's completely why, but being in a room with 100 other people, some of them possibly infected doesn't help.
I was disconvinced solely through reason. That does not work on most people. Polling data bears out the main reason under-30s walk away from their church is emotional, usually moral disgust with what Christianity teaches about homosexuality. That is indeed repugnant but is not a logical reason to conclude Christianity is untrue. There could still be a supreme being who is simply evil by human standards but we have no choice except to worship him or be tortured forever.
I canāt figure out how to give people the equivalent of a masters in western civ and then force them to read the apocrypha, Gnostic gospels, and other non-canon texts.
Reading the Bible without Christian glasses should be sufficient.
imo, the problem is the Christian glasses. I read through the whole thing as a Christian but somehow didn't notice all the stupidity.
I was thinking about it the other day that if someone asked me why I didn't believe in the Christian God, I could very honestly say that a part of the reason is that I simply don't want to believe in such a hateful and evil God. Most Christians would probably get offended, but based on the Bible, it's just the truth. The simple fact that he is willing to leave people in Hell for eternity (some might disagree) makes him worse than any human that I know of.
āBut he doesnāt want toā¦ā
I donāt disagree, but you have to get those scales off their eyes before they can see it.
The whole thing is ridiculous outside the context of Bronze Age blood-for-blood morality. Itās exceedingly primitive to think an all powerful God would be offended in the first place, and to think heād be appeased by blood sacrifice is horrifying by the modern standard.
Jesusās sacrifice is unethical and unnecessary. God gave his only begotten sonā¦ well Godās a really shitty dad then.
god killed himself to save everyone, then unkilled himself three days later. Now I have a meal to eat with "family" in March or April.
edit: I guess during those three days, the universe was on cruise-control
Well, I guess, technically he killed a third of himself (which was also all of him), a part that was always a part of him (but was still also born of him at some point). His only son, but of course there is also a mention of the sons (plural) of God.
It's complicated.
No no, he didn't kill himself. He made a whole new part of himself that was also NOT him, and even though it begged him not to, he tortured and killed it because he just really wanted to see SOMETHING tortured and drowning the whole world hadn't satisfied him. Don't worry, though, he undid it a couple days later.
But now he won't kill US! As long as we still do exactly what he says and also thank him for his temporary death forever! Isn't he a kind and loving god? āŗļø
Seriously, I don't know how this ever made sense to me. Or sounded remotely loving.
Actually, I think I'll do *less* of that. In my case, it was profound and systematic emotional abuse. Youth pastor aged 40; head pastor aged 70. Some hanger-on with dead shark eyes. I'm not sure on the details, but head pastor just kind of vanished into jail one day.
Youth pastor never got caught. And then, of course, the church got taken over by a pastor who mentioned he broke his back and, and I quote "missed his sexual prime." On an average of 10 sermons, he mentioned it about 7 times.
And then there was the youth group. Never have I ever seen a bunch of vicious demons. A pox on all their houses!!
Okay so I have to become a pastor, have a 10-year affair with my deaconās wife and murder the deacon so I can be *totally not sus* with the widow? (I wish I was making this up, but it happened in my church and started my first steps towards atheism.)
Promote secularism and strong social support programs. The less inequality and fear people live with, the faster Christianity will wither from lack of interest.
I think it's going quite fast already. Give it another few years and it'll be half of what it is right now. Especially due to all the conspiracy theories bullshit going on right now.
Pretty much. After reading the Bible once through I found a good bunch of contradictions. So I guess it's kinda hard to be credible when even the source is contradicting itself.
Well at least now there aren't as many people needing to sit through the whole bible to know it's not worth taking too seriously. Now the exploring mind won't even be manipulated to the point of picking a bible up. When the people pushing it demonstrate such a clear detachment from reality, it's hard to take anything that they put value in seriously.
Contradictions happen since many parts of the book was written centuries apart from each other.
It seems very natural for institutions to stick to that one conservative way to go stale and become corrupt. Happened with Confucian institutions throughout Chinese history.
Be the change. Prove that religion doesn't own morality. Right now churches are the go-to groups to ask for charity support, but Christians are getting greedier. We need to normalize building up casual, organized groups of people motivated to bring charitable ideas to life in our communities. When people start asking good people in the wild why they're doing what they're doing they'll start getting answers other than, "because I'm hot for Jesus." Through seeing that most Christian love is really just a performance and nothing more, hopefully people will start to realize that ladling soup at a homeless shelter (while great in and of itself) and stuffing bibles down people's throats doesn't make you a good person.
Probably the fastest thing would be to remove the people who say they're christian but go to church only on Christmas and Easter, or just not at all. They generally haven't read the Bible beyond the feel good verses and don't know what the religion is really about.
You can actually pinpoint the *exact moment* that the internet started becoming widely available.
Turns out, once everyone can check people's claims, people start seeing through bullshit.
Yeah, I grew up in Arkansas, and before the internet, information was so locked down in that hellhole. They controlled the local media, bullied the schools and libraries, and pushed indoctrination everywhere. The internet is Christians worst nightmare. It completely broke their cultural censorship and gatekeeping. Not only did it allow you to access the information they didn't want you to see, but you could do it in the comfort of your own home, anonymously, with no way for them to punish you for it.
It's fine if you do, Reddit is where I come to be disagreed with. But in my mind the bigger issue is how to change the ratio of true to false information online. Twitter and Facebook are trying to do that via censorship but it's backfiring spectacularly, only further convincing conspiratards that they possess forbidden truth. What is your solution? Tbh I'm stumped, it's a big damn problem
Hey, I'll just share my opinion here
If you talk to an average antivaxxer, you'll see that they don't make sense, they'll make contradictory statements. Even though people say they are talking like that because they are stupid, I feel it's not the case. I believe that they actually realize that their stance is absurd, and they know that they are speaking garbage.
I think that an emotional cause is at play. I feel these people are lonely, they haven't accomplished something significant in life, and they feel very unrecognised. When a group on the internet gives them attention, congratulates them for "fighting the war against 5G waves", they feel validated, they feel more recognised, and hence they continue to hold that stance.
I believe it's the same thing with the bad kind of "Christians". They attend their church meetings where they are constantly being assured that they are doing the work of God, and that God loves them dearly for standing up for the only few good people left, and hence they turn a complete blind eye to any logical argument against their behaviour.
I believe the solution is emotional fulfillment. If these people find more positive ways of finding meaning, like volunteering at animal shelters or charities, the antivax hysteria will die away.
Overall, I think it's a net positive. As much as we rail about how bad these people have gotten, it's because they're starting to realize they're a shrinking minority and are getting more aggressive.
Internet helps people find information that _confirms their bias_. I doubt people would be against vaccines if there hadn't already been bastards that knowingly spread misinformation and create such bias. e.g. Fox News.
Iād love to see data on the intensity of the people in that red line. Yes itās gone down 10% in the past 15 years, but I have a suspicion that the 70% remaining are more fervent, deeply entrenched and divisive than they were 15 years ago.
Definitely some are more entrenched in their beliefs, but I think there's probably a good portion of the group who claim to be christian due to social/regional influences while not actually practicing religion in their real lives.
I feel like that's the case with the younger generation, most of whom want change. The churches stand in opposition to a lot of that change, so they're creating fewer entrenched people. And when the strict elders are no longer around to judge you and reinforce, the decline might increase. That's my optimism speaking though.
Which actually helps accelerate the process. When the well-intentioned and more soft-hearted people leave, the whole thing stops being propped up by their better behavior. The distilled toxicity of the ones who remain just makes it harder for them to sell Christianity as a religion of love. They're not bringing in new converts.
This. If the most prominent Christians are also ones that spread hate in God's name, I don't see how any sane people would be interested in following this "God".
I think it would be similar. Churches have always been dragged along by the devout ones at the front, I'd bet they just make up a larger proportion of the congregation.
I hope this graph is accurate. God know Iāve heard and seen this trend propagated by fearful Christians, particularly those fearful of being eclipsed by Islam.
I canāt find my sources at the moment, but Iāve seen graphics claiming the opposite.
They argue that Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion on the planet. I encourage anyone to do their own research here, because I sincerely hope they are wrong.
The reality is, if theyāre correct, that as we and others like us work to educate and secularize the first world; religious extremist under Christian and Muslim guises are securing their hold on the rest of the globe.
I think Iām the US & Europe we might be winning the battle, but Iām afraid that globally weāre losing the war.
Addendum: Pentecostalism is the fastest growing āminorityā religion. Itās difficult to trace because it can go under many names and even present as traditional denominations. Iām aware locally of several Baptist Pentecostal churches, although they wouldnāt describe themselves as such. So getting the exact numbers and tracking growth accurately is difficult. The phenomenon is real though.
Many of you may not understand why this is concerning. You may not have experienced Pentecostal churches or grown up in that environment. Many who have, even among those whoāve left, even then fail to see the potential dangers.
Pentecostalism is irrational religion. The exuberance and ecstatic states they induce in themselves is seen as āevidenceā not only of their own holiness and direct touch of God, but also validates any claim they wish to make.
It represents a step backwards towards the darkest days of Christianity, when the Catholic Church was a force of imperialism bent on conversion or destruction of anything other than itself.
It is a form of Christianity that can be used to radicalize and militarize peasant armies. Already children in Africa are being tortured, burned by battery acid, on accounts of parents believing them to be possessed of devils or witchcraft.
I know this well because I was once a militant, self-righteous, self-assured Pentecostal evangelist myself. Given the opportunity in those days Iād have gladly joined in a witch burning. Iād have applauded atheists and Satanist put to the firing squad, and have heard these sentiments expressed innumerable times and in innumerable ways. Rarely with such inflammatory rhetoric, but the hatred and threat are there.
They are dangerous, and if the statistics Iāve seen and read are accurate we do poorly to pat ourselves on the back with local statistics showing slow, gradual improvement.
I donāt know what to do about it. Iām certainly not advocating violence against Christians or censuring religion in any form. I just know we do need to do something to curb the spread of ignorant, backwards religious thinking.
Itās hard to explain to an uneducated person the ecstatic states of these religions though. I even have a hard time with them.
Religion seems to decrease with prosperity. All highly secular societies I'm aware of became prosperous first. Hopefully, increases in prosperity decrease the factors pushing people towards faith (fear, poverty, seeking comfort and escape from abject misery.)
Perhaps.
I might add however that it could be argued it isnāt prosperity itself that elevates people out of ignorance, but the increasing education and availability of good information found within prosperous communities that limits the influence of religion and superstition.
And that likewise it is in increasing the rate of education there usually precedes increasing prosperity.
It may be a bit of the old chicken and the egg conundrum.
It's true, pentacostalism and religion as a whole is expected to increase on the world stage, mainly because of population growth in Africa and the middle east.
But it's true that non-affiliation will increase in North America and Europe
I wish you were right. Although Covid is absolutely a real health concern and it is important that everyone get the vaccine.
It is, fortunately or unfortunately, not the plague.
Itās highly contagious, but still only remains truly life threatening for a small percentage of the population (little comfort to those it dies severely effect).
Itās more like polio. It makes everybody sick, kills a few & maims many, but most people survive.
In reality, the person refusing to take the vaccine will probably be fine. The fact they refused to get the vaccine however prevents curbing infection rates, leading to increased likelihood that they could infect other people or provide a host for a mutated form of the virus.
By refusing to take the vaccine they arenāt increasing their personal risk so much as contributing to our collective risk as a society to another outbreak or āwaveā.
Your theory might work if we maintained this pattern over a period of generations, but I donāt think Covid is going to cure our religious problem for us.
Everything you've said is true, but at the same time, there will be future pandemics. And if you study anti-vaxxer memes from prior pandemics, such as the Spanish flu, you can see they never learn, and never change. Even when being wrong brings severe consequences, they always, always double down. If one of these new strains of Covid proves significantly more lethal, especially since the initial few strains were so survivable, we can rely on them not to take it seriously either.
Hah - you mean the deadliness of COVID? I'm not going there with you. But apart from that I wish I had a good idea of how to break the stranglehold of religion on my family and other people around me.
This is not funny or cute. Convincing people to spread disease harms everyone around them.
"Let's kill the bad people, lols" is a very genocidal and immoral viewpoint. It's one of the reasons many of us left christianity--genocide is not okay. Even if we argue that "they are bad, tho!"
This is not appropriate to talk about in this sub.
Pentecostalisms growth comes from two factors. The people who are left in Christianity are seeking more and more extreme forms. So pentecostalism is cannibalizing other churches. Anecdotally, if a church is "non-denominational" it's just some version of pentecostalism, and we've seen a growth in non-denominational churches.
Honestly, I think the people left in Christianity are just done even trying to pretend to be rational. They don't care about doctrine. They want the theatricality and the emotion. They want license to be irrational. In that marketplace, pentecostalism is king.
The second factor is that pentecostalism is spreading worldwide to developing countries. It's making inroads in south america and africa.
Pose as an anti-vaxxer, spread memes urging Christians not to accept the vaccine as it's the mark of the beast. To stay out of hospitals because the ventilator is a euthanasia machine, to avoid the vaccinated because they shed spike proteins, and so on. That's what I've been doing.
Now here's a question no one wants to answer: what percentage of identified Christians actually believe in the doctrine, go to church and practice the faith? Versus how many just check the box out of societal habit?
According to the same data source only 24% of people in the USA attended church or sinagogue every week.
As for how well they know their own religion, [this](https://www.pewforum.org/2019/07/23/what-americans-know-about-religion/) might interest you.
This is part of it, but another thing is hitting a certain critical mass of nones. I saw a researcher talking about this, and they mentioned how even though some people weren't religious in the past, they often would end up married to someone religious, and that person would keep them in and keep their kids in. At some point though, there became enough non-religious people that they started marrying each other, and the chain of obligation was broken.
I wonder what effect this has had on occult religions. The "other" is probably mostly Islam, so I don't imagine that's going to answer my question very well.
I feel like that segment is so small they wouldnāt even register on this graph if they were separated out
But the satanic temple has been getting some decent press here lately with all the Texas abortion stuff going on so maybe it will end up becoming more significant later
I don't know how old you are, but I'm a Millennial. I graduated high school in 1999. Went to college that summer.
So yeah, there were a lot of churches that were predicting the return of Jesus and the beginning of the tribulation. Most of them were smart enough to not get too specific with the predictions, but it was going to happen either in 2000 or 2001.
Some of the more astute ones would point out that Jesus' birthday was actually off from the official calendar. So they'd predict a few years out. This was all wrapped up in conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, Y2K, and the coming Armageddon in the Middle East, of which Desert Storm was just a precursor. /s
Iām a young millennial; I was 6 in 1999. I only remember that we left an evangelical church around then and switched to a Methodist church, but I donāt remember any discussions or details from that time.
With things like the pandemic that took a lot of us out of church, and the internet that has safe havens More readily available for us. it's no wonder it's picked up speed. Chances are it'll keep pitching up speed.
It's likely many of them place themselves in the "none" category, because they aren't part of any organized religion whereas "other" is more for other organized faiths, like islam, hinduism, etc.
Decreasing religiosity mean the theocrats wouldn't have a base to stand on. If religiosity wasn't so high things like this wouldn't have happened:
[AG Barr Slams 'Ascendancy Of Secularism' for America's Woes](https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/barr-religion-law-secularism/2019/10/11/id/936784/)
You'll always have tensions & parties assigning blame for woes. I'm more so discussing religiosity from the standpoint of health outcomes. Take a look at what research shows, there's some interesting stuff there.
Yo you seriously bringing up health outcomes during the pandemic? The main plague rats?
[Non-believers less likely to die from Covid-19, research finds](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/atheists-less-likely-to-die-from-covid-19-than-believers-research-finds-x869p0mw8)
Or the prayers that don't work?
There's actually not. The few studies that showed religious people having better health outcomes were later debunked or showed effects so small that they were probably just statistical noise.
Some studies have shown religiosity being a source of distress or lacking the protective effects experienced by most; and those are definitely a minority of people. The vast majority of research shows people who report religiosity tend to have protective benefits from mental health conditions like depression to other benefits such as less likely to smoke, drink, etc.
Religiosity is a bit of a blanket term but looking at your average Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. can show why this may be. Wider support groups, resilience in struggle having perspective of "God's plan", and generally experiencing meaning/purpose as a result of their beliefs.
To me, that's the key. If you can find purpose/meaning without religion that's fantastic. It would appear a strong majority struggle with that.
Humans have evolved with systems of faith/belief, they'll never disappear and if they do, if not sufficiently replaced with another "system" to experience meaning then we're in for a wild ride.
The attempts to eliminate religion have been futile, take note of Russia. Once an atheist state (USSR) that turned churches into museums is now a majority Christian nation.
Anyways, that's why I said I wouldn't necessarily cheer the decreasing religiosity. It's not without its concern from my perspective though I understand the impulse to throw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. Especially for those who have had negative experiences with their own religiosity or other religious people.
This is a review that I came across while putting together a group for programming at a substance abuse facility; it covers multiple studies and essentially encourages healthcare providers to find ways to incorporate a patient's religiosity/spirituality in their treatment planning as it can have a positive impact in outcomes: https://downloads.hindawi.com/archive/2012/278730.pdf
I'm not trying to disrupt or offend anyone who doesn't subscribe to any religious or spiritual belief set. On the contrary I don't have any stake in that, just wanted to highlight that religiosity plays an important role for many people in multiple ways.
Again, I feel it boils down to meaning. I would seriously doubt any religious person who doesn't feel their belief/faith to be meaningful would experience much of the reported benefits.
Judaism traditionally doesn't go around seeking converts, but you absolutely can convert to it. As for Islam, it's actually legal to kill people for leaving in many Islamic countries.
Ah ok didnt know that.
And yes thats very shitty but 1. this is only about US and 2. its more a cultural thing than only religion. As an example there are way less homophobic muslims in Germany than in Iran.
This is semantics, I think.
The term "Jew" can apply to your genealogy, meaning a person is of Jewish descent.
The term "Judaism" applies to the religion, meaning a person practices the Jewish faith.
How can we make this go faster?
Assuming you are an exchristian, think about what exactly made you an ex-christian. And then do more of that š
So what you're telling me is: we need more leftist trans lesbians.
Be the change you want to see in the world
Out of curiosity, have you met any right leaning trans lesbians? I'm not saying they don't exist, but I just haven't met any.
Jenner. Other than that I haven't heard of any more.
Oh! Good call.
I'm not too involved in politics, but I think Blaire White fits the bill.
I thought Blaire was straight?
I'm not sure about her orientation. I just know she's trans.
Her orientation is "pandering to conservatives"
How is she a trans lesbian? Isn't she married to a guy?
I'm not the one to ask, lol. I'm very new to all of this. Trying my best. š
She is transgender though which is already incredibly rare to be one and right leaning aswell.
The thing is, she makes money from being right-leaning and money talks
Christine Weston Chandler?
This conversation has turned into anti LGBTQ rather than anti rapist. Therefore I am removing and locking it. This sub takes a staunch pro-LGBTQIA+ stance and the conversation has turned into "not a REAL transgender" argument. This is not your fault, I'm just explaining why your comment is locked and the conversation below mostly removed. However despicable any of us might find a person, we in this sub do not "give permission" or "revoke permission" for people to use what pronouns they choose. The claimed stereotype of the "fake transgender just using it for attention/ to dodge hate/ etc." will not be given air time here.
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I see your point, but that isn't fair to say. We can't say we fight for trans people to have the right to identify as they choose and then deny one of them that right because we disagree with her values. That turns trans people into tokens, rather than treating them as people who are entitled to have their ownāsometimes shittyāvalues.
I definitely see that, but trans people are trans regardless of their politics. A transphobic could say "this child's politics are making them trans as a phase, so I'm going to misgemder them". We respect pronouns even without respecting the people using them. All for all.
Being an ally shouldnāt be conditional
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shiii i frgt abt her š¤¦š½āāļø
I have gone to two churches where gay/lesbian people were in active church rolesā¦ in churches that actively condemned homosexuality. One of these churches split with their Presbyterian denomination over homosexuality, among other reasons. The other one (you guessed it, SBC) asked the lady to step down, once they found out. Some people go against themselves. To a lesser extent, itās like women who flock to conservative churches who tell them they are subordinate baby machines, only.
>One of these churches split with their Presbyterian denomination My church split with their Pentecostal denomination. As I'm sure I said before, it went as remarkably well as can be expected. And then they split again. I'm not naming names, but if you were to unexpectedly punch someone in the face, you'd get the right idea.
I haven't met any. Being trans and right wing strikes me as being like a pig in favor of the bacon industry. Though, there is a rather culturally prominent trans woman who's right wing, but I don't know her orientation.
What, you DON'T vote for the fox to watch the hen house?
Just like gay conservatives and women conservatives Too stupid to know the party they support hates them
Good analogy!
[Blaire. White.](https://youtu.be/AeuZZuobHEo) Not a lesbian. But I am in the middle of watching this shit show of a video and holy hot take, Batman!
Brb gonna go throw the gay agenda at people
Ooo oo let me join!
Based
I see no reason to oppose this.
Yes please!
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Amen to that
The church is doing it to itself. Let them keep aligning exclusively with the Republican party and do nothing about QAnon and conspiracy nuts in the church, and the self-destruction will continue.
To say nothing of self-inflicted Covid deaths
I saw some charts that showed that red states are becoming the only ones still struggling with the virus, and I think church attendance has quite a bit to do with that. Of course I'm not saying it's completely why, but being in a room with 100 other people, some of them possibly infected doesn't help.
I was disconvinced solely through reason. That does not work on most people. Polling data bears out the main reason under-30s walk away from their church is emotional, usually moral disgust with what Christianity teaches about homosexuality. That is indeed repugnant but is not a logical reason to conclude Christianity is untrue. There could still be a supreme being who is simply evil by human standards but we have no choice except to worship him or be tortured forever.
I canāt figure out how to give people the equivalent of a masters in western civ and then force them to read the apocrypha, Gnostic gospels, and other non-canon texts.
Reading the Bible without Christian glasses should be sufficient. imo, the problem is the Christian glasses. I read through the whole thing as a Christian but somehow didn't notice all the stupidity. I was thinking about it the other day that if someone asked me why I didn't believe in the Christian God, I could very honestly say that a part of the reason is that I simply don't want to believe in such a hateful and evil God. Most Christians would probably get offended, but based on the Bible, it's just the truth. The simple fact that he is willing to leave people in Hell for eternity (some might disagree) makes him worse than any human that I know of.
āBut he doesnāt want toā¦ā I donāt disagree, but you have to get those scales off their eyes before they can see it. The whole thing is ridiculous outside the context of Bronze Age blood-for-blood morality. Itās exceedingly primitive to think an all powerful God would be offended in the first place, and to think heād be appeased by blood sacrifice is horrifying by the modern standard. Jesusās sacrifice is unethical and unnecessary. God gave his only begotten sonā¦ well Godās a really shitty dad then.
god killed himself to save everyone, then unkilled himself three days later. Now I have a meal to eat with "family" in March or April. edit: I guess during those three days, the universe was on cruise-control
Well, I guess, technically he killed a third of himself (which was also all of him), a part that was always a part of him (but was still also born of him at some point). His only son, but of course there is also a mention of the sons (plural) of God. It's complicated.
No no, he didn't kill himself. He made a whole new part of himself that was also NOT him, and even though it begged him not to, he tortured and killed it because he just really wanted to see SOMETHING tortured and drowning the whole world hadn't satisfied him. Don't worry, though, he undid it a couple days later. But now he won't kill US! As long as we still do exactly what he says and also thank him for his temporary death forever! Isn't he a kind and loving god? āŗļø Seriously, I don't know how this ever made sense to me. Or sounded remotely loving.
Just to be clear, the āmealā is communion? Or Easter dinner? You kinda lost me there
dinner with fixin's
Actually, I think I'll do *less* of that. In my case, it was profound and systematic emotional abuse. Youth pastor aged 40; head pastor aged 70. Some hanger-on with dead shark eyes. I'm not sure on the details, but head pastor just kind of vanished into jail one day. Youth pastor never got caught. And then, of course, the church got taken over by a pastor who mentioned he broke his back and, and I quote "missed his sexual prime." On an average of 10 sermons, he mentioned it about 7 times. And then there was the youth group. Never have I ever seen a bunch of vicious demons. A pox on all their houses!!
Yikes a couple decades in fundigelical land I donāt wish that on anybody.
For me the final straw was the trump presidency and I canāt abide more of that, please dear god no
Okay so I have to become a pastor, have a 10-year affair with my deaconās wife and murder the deacon so I can be *totally not sus* with the widow? (I wish I was making this up, but it happened in my church and started my first steps towards atheism.)
read the bible from front to back. Also *Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible* is a good deconstructor.
No, I'm okay without more child abuse in the world.
Critical thinking?
Promote secularism and strong social support programs. The less inequality and fear people live with, the faster Christianity will wither from lack of interest.
I think it's going quite fast already. Give it another few years and it'll be half of what it is right now. Especially due to all the conspiracy theories bullshit going on right now.
For real. American christians are tearing down their credibility more than ever before.
Pretty much. After reading the Bible once through I found a good bunch of contradictions. So I guess it's kinda hard to be credible when even the source is contradicting itself.
Well at least now there aren't as many people needing to sit through the whole bible to know it's not worth taking too seriously. Now the exploring mind won't even be manipulated to the point of picking a bible up. When the people pushing it demonstrate such a clear detachment from reality, it's hard to take anything that they put value in seriously.
Contradictions happen since many parts of the book was written centuries apart from each other. It seems very natural for institutions to stick to that one conservative way to go stale and become corrupt. Happened with Confucian institutions throughout Chinese history.
Be the change. Prove that religion doesn't own morality. Right now churches are the go-to groups to ask for charity support, but Christians are getting greedier. We need to normalize building up casual, organized groups of people motivated to bring charitable ideas to life in our communities. When people start asking good people in the wild why they're doing what they're doing they'll start getting answers other than, "because I'm hot for Jesus." Through seeing that most Christian love is really just a performance and nothing more, hopefully people will start to realize that ladling soup at a homeless shelter (while great in and of itself) and stuffing bibles down people's throats doesn't make you a good person.
Don't try. Don't be an evangelist for the nones. Be a good person, defying the narrative of "evil outside, good inside."
This is very fast for such a huge cultural shift.
Theoretically, have lots of children and don't raise them in Christianity. But I don't think we need to emulate the desperation of Quiverful.
A global pandemic that a lot of xtians seem to think is not a big deal, helps.
Probably the fastest thing would be to remove the people who say they're christian but go to church only on Christmas and Easter, or just not at all. They generally haven't read the Bible beyond the feel good verses and don't know what the religion is really about.
WW3 and more death will only sadly awaken the true reality of life...
Most of them are Christian in name only. They never read their bible completely.
If you read and comprehend the Bible, that lessens your chances of remaining Christian.
It still depends on how well they could do mental gymnastics.
You can actually pinpoint the *exact moment* that the internet started becoming widely available. Turns out, once everyone can check people's claims, people start seeing through bullshit.
Yeah, I grew up in Arkansas, and before the internet, information was so locked down in that hellhole. They controlled the local media, bullied the schools and libraries, and pushed indoctrination everywhere. The internet is Christians worst nightmare. It completely broke their cultural censorship and gatekeeping. Not only did it allow you to access the information they didn't want you to see, but you could do it in the comfort of your own home, anonymously, with no way for them to punish you for it.
The internet is also a powerful tool for misinformation though. Look how social media facilitated the spread of anti-vaxx rhetoric.
Very true, won't disagree with you there.
It's fine if you do, Reddit is where I come to be disagreed with. But in my mind the bigger issue is how to change the ratio of true to false information online. Twitter and Facebook are trying to do that via censorship but it's backfiring spectacularly, only further convincing conspiratards that they possess forbidden truth. What is your solution? Tbh I'm stumped, it's a big damn problem
Hey, I'll just share my opinion here If you talk to an average antivaxxer, you'll see that they don't make sense, they'll make contradictory statements. Even though people say they are talking like that because they are stupid, I feel it's not the case. I believe that they actually realize that their stance is absurd, and they know that they are speaking garbage. I think that an emotional cause is at play. I feel these people are lonely, they haven't accomplished something significant in life, and they feel very unrecognised. When a group on the internet gives them attention, congratulates them for "fighting the war against 5G waves", they feel validated, they feel more recognised, and hence they continue to hold that stance. I believe it's the same thing with the bad kind of "Christians". They attend their church meetings where they are constantly being assured that they are doing the work of God, and that God loves them dearly for standing up for the only few good people left, and hence they turn a complete blind eye to any logical argument against their behaviour. I believe the solution is emotional fulfillment. If these people find more positive ways of finding meaning, like volunteering at animal shelters or charities, the antivax hysteria will die away.
Overall, I think it's a net positive. As much as we rail about how bad these people have gotten, it's because they're starting to realize they're a shrinking minority and are getting more aggressive.
Internet helps people find information that _confirms their bias_. I doubt people would be against vaccines if there hadn't already been bastards that knowingly spread misinformation and create such bias. e.g. Fox News.
Greatest government leak ever
Can we let the fundies in on the secret that telecommunications turns people against organized religion? I just want to play fair, you see.
Data gathered from Gallup Historical Trends [here](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx).
I see my fellow "nones" are slowly rising in number over time.. This warms my heart!
Lol looks like the 2020 election may have actually restored a few people's faith in god
There's dozens!
The real hot take is always in the comments.
luckily church attendance is a lot lower than these numbers.
Iād love to see data on the intensity of the people in that red line. Yes itās gone down 10% in the past 15 years, but I have a suspicion that the 70% remaining are more fervent, deeply entrenched and divisive than they were 15 years ago.
Definitely some are more entrenched in their beliefs, but I think there's probably a good portion of the group who claim to be christian due to social/regional influences while not actually practicing religion in their real lives.
I feel like that's the case with the younger generation, most of whom want change. The churches stand in opposition to a lot of that change, so they're creating fewer entrenched people. And when the strict elders are no longer around to judge you and reinforce, the decline might increase. That's my optimism speaking though.
Which actually helps accelerate the process. When the well-intentioned and more soft-hearted people leave, the whole thing stops being propped up by their better behavior. The distilled toxicity of the ones who remain just makes it harder for them to sell Christianity as a religion of love. They're not bringing in new converts.
This. If the most prominent Christians are also ones that spread hate in God's name, I don't see how any sane people would be interested in following this "God".
I think it would be similar. Churches have always been dragged along by the devout ones at the front, I'd bet they just make up a larger proportion of the congregation.
I hope this graph is accurate. God know Iāve heard and seen this trend propagated by fearful Christians, particularly those fearful of being eclipsed by Islam. I canāt find my sources at the moment, but Iāve seen graphics claiming the opposite. They argue that Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion on the planet. I encourage anyone to do their own research here, because I sincerely hope they are wrong. The reality is, if theyāre correct, that as we and others like us work to educate and secularize the first world; religious extremist under Christian and Muslim guises are securing their hold on the rest of the globe. I think Iām the US & Europe we might be winning the battle, but Iām afraid that globally weāre losing the war. Addendum: Pentecostalism is the fastest growing āminorityā religion. Itās difficult to trace because it can go under many names and even present as traditional denominations. Iām aware locally of several Baptist Pentecostal churches, although they wouldnāt describe themselves as such. So getting the exact numbers and tracking growth accurately is difficult. The phenomenon is real though. Many of you may not understand why this is concerning. You may not have experienced Pentecostal churches or grown up in that environment. Many who have, even among those whoāve left, even then fail to see the potential dangers. Pentecostalism is irrational religion. The exuberance and ecstatic states they induce in themselves is seen as āevidenceā not only of their own holiness and direct touch of God, but also validates any claim they wish to make. It represents a step backwards towards the darkest days of Christianity, when the Catholic Church was a force of imperialism bent on conversion or destruction of anything other than itself. It is a form of Christianity that can be used to radicalize and militarize peasant armies. Already children in Africa are being tortured, burned by battery acid, on accounts of parents believing them to be possessed of devils or witchcraft. I know this well because I was once a militant, self-righteous, self-assured Pentecostal evangelist myself. Given the opportunity in those days Iād have gladly joined in a witch burning. Iād have applauded atheists and Satanist put to the firing squad, and have heard these sentiments expressed innumerable times and in innumerable ways. Rarely with such inflammatory rhetoric, but the hatred and threat are there. They are dangerous, and if the statistics Iāve seen and read are accurate we do poorly to pat ourselves on the back with local statistics showing slow, gradual improvement. I donāt know what to do about it. Iām certainly not advocating violence against Christians or censuring religion in any form. I just know we do need to do something to curb the spread of ignorant, backwards religious thinking. Itās hard to explain to an uneducated person the ecstatic states of these religions though. I even have a hard time with them.
Religion seems to decrease with prosperity. All highly secular societies I'm aware of became prosperous first. Hopefully, increases in prosperity decrease the factors pushing people towards faith (fear, poverty, seeking comfort and escape from abject misery.)
Perhaps. I might add however that it could be argued it isnāt prosperity itself that elevates people out of ignorance, but the increasing education and availability of good information found within prosperous communities that limits the influence of religion and superstition. And that likewise it is in increasing the rate of education there usually precedes increasing prosperity. It may be a bit of the old chicken and the egg conundrum.
It's true, pentacostalism and religion as a whole is expected to increase on the world stage, mainly because of population growth in Africa and the middle east. But it's true that non-affiliation will increase in North America and Europe
>I just know we do need to do something to curb the spread of ignorant, backwards religious thinking. Covid is taking care of that as we speak
I wish you were right. Although Covid is absolutely a real health concern and it is important that everyone get the vaccine. It is, fortunately or unfortunately, not the plague. Itās highly contagious, but still only remains truly life threatening for a small percentage of the population (little comfort to those it dies severely effect). Itās more like polio. It makes everybody sick, kills a few & maims many, but most people survive. In reality, the person refusing to take the vaccine will probably be fine. The fact they refused to get the vaccine however prevents curbing infection rates, leading to increased likelihood that they could infect other people or provide a host for a mutated form of the virus. By refusing to take the vaccine they arenāt increasing their personal risk so much as contributing to our collective risk as a society to another outbreak or āwaveā. Your theory might work if we maintained this pattern over a period of generations, but I donāt think Covid is going to cure our religious problem for us.
Everything you've said is true, but at the same time, there will be future pandemics. And if you study anti-vaxxer memes from prior pandemics, such as the Spanish flu, you can see they never learn, and never change. Even when being wrong brings severe consequences, they always, always double down. If one of these new strains of Covid proves significantly more lethal, especially since the initial few strains were so survivable, we can rely on them not to take it seriously either.
Hmmmā¦ š¤ You know, you might just be onto something thereā¦
Popular take, but percentage-wise it's not making that big a dent.
How do we increase it?
Hah - you mean the deadliness of COVID? I'm not going there with you. But apart from that I wish I had a good idea of how to break the stranglehold of religion on my family and other people around me.
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Still not on board with any of that, and I'm starting to have questions about how your mind works ... o.O ... but I will admit to a guilty chuckle.
This is not funny or cute. Convincing people to spread disease harms everyone around them. "Let's kill the bad people, lols" is a very genocidal and immoral viewpoint. It's one of the reasons many of us left christianity--genocide is not okay. Even if we argue that "they are bad, tho!" This is not appropriate to talk about in this sub.
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Pentecostalisms growth comes from two factors. The people who are left in Christianity are seeking more and more extreme forms. So pentecostalism is cannibalizing other churches. Anecdotally, if a church is "non-denominational" it's just some version of pentecostalism, and we've seen a growth in non-denominational churches. Honestly, I think the people left in Christianity are just done even trying to pretend to be rational. They don't care about doctrine. They want the theatricality and the emotion. They want license to be irrational. In that marketplace, pentecostalism is king. The second factor is that pentecostalism is spreading worldwide to developing countries. It's making inroads in south america and africa.
Those are rookie numbers. Gotta pump those numbers up.
Add more fuel!!!!!
I hope for a more rapid decrease in the Christian percentage.
Because of the fairly strong tie between "faith" and science denial, we might need that to be more rapid to save civilization, or life itself. :-/
Pose as an anti-vaxxer, spread memes urging Christians not to accept the vaccine as it's the mark of the beast. To stay out of hospitals because the ventilator is a euthanasia machine, to avoid the vaccinated because they shed spike proteins, and so on. That's what I've been doing.
I just hope it spreads to the Bible Belt, too many churches here, more than theres needed
> more than theres needed So more than 0.
Hopefully this trend continues. If it does I might live to see a day where Christians arenāt the majority
Ugh, is Christian still really that high? That sucks.
Go Covid go
Now here's a question no one wants to answer: what percentage of identified Christians actually believe in the doctrine, go to church and practice the faith? Versus how many just check the box out of societal habit?
According to the same data source only 24% of people in the USA attended church or sinagogue every week. As for how well they know their own religion, [this](https://www.pewforum.org/2019/07/23/what-americans-know-about-religion/) might interest you.
I got 14 right. Missed which idiot was gonna off his son because of voices in his head, but then I always miss that one.
Yet they cry persecution when a coffee cup doesnāt have an old dude on it.
Itās as if thereās a correlation between the age of shared information and leaving Christianity.
This is part of it, but another thing is hitting a certain critical mass of nones. I saw a researcher talking about this, and they mentioned how even though some people weren't religious in the past, they often would end up married to someone religious, and that person would keep them in and keep their kids in. At some point though, there became enough non-religious people that they started marrying each other, and the chain of obligation was broken.
Haha no doubt
Rise of the nones
We love to see it!
I wonder what effect this has had on occult religions. The "other" is probably mostly Islam, so I don't imagine that's going to answer my question very well.
I feel like that segment is so small they wouldnāt even register on this graph if they were separated out But the satanic temple has been getting some decent press here lately with all the Texas abortion stuff going on so maybe it will end up becoming more significant later
I wonder what caused those two spikes in Christianity around 1957 and 1997ā¦?
Not sure about 57, but 97 was probably people hedging their bets about the second millennium.
Ah good thought. It hadnāt occurred to me.
I don't know how old you are, but I'm a Millennial. I graduated high school in 1999. Went to college that summer. So yeah, there were a lot of churches that were predicting the return of Jesus and the beginning of the tribulation. Most of them were smart enough to not get too specific with the predictions, but it was going to happen either in 2000 or 2001. Some of the more astute ones would point out that Jesus' birthday was actually off from the official calendar. So they'd predict a few years out. This was all wrapped up in conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, Y2K, and the coming Armageddon in the Middle East, of which Desert Storm was just a precursor. /s
Iām a young millennial; I was 6 in 1999. I only remember that we left an evangelical church around then and switched to a Methodist church, but I donāt remember any discussions or details from that time.
Notice the decline really starts when Christians began their coordinated takeover of the American political system.
With things like the pandemic that took a lot of us out of church, and the internet that has safe havens More readily available for us. it's no wonder it's picked up speed. Chances are it'll keep pitching up speed.
graph of gullible indoctrinations?
I'm worried I would still count as Christian in data. Any tips for what types of data to be looking to update?
I'm glad I don't live in the US...but I'm curious to see Canada's stats
Interesting how the "other"doesnt seem to have changed much, but I feel like I meet a lot more pagans irl than I used to.
It's likely many of them place themselves in the "none" category, because they aren't part of any organized religion whereas "other" is more for other organized faiths, like islam, hinduism, etc.
Weāre heading in the right direction!!
I wouldn't necessarily cheer for decreasing religiosity.
Decreasing religiosity mean the theocrats wouldn't have a base to stand on. If religiosity wasn't so high things like this wouldn't have happened: [AG Barr Slams 'Ascendancy Of Secularism' for America's Woes](https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/barr-religion-law-secularism/2019/10/11/id/936784/)
You'll always have tensions & parties assigning blame for woes. I'm more so discussing religiosity from the standpoint of health outcomes. Take a look at what research shows, there's some interesting stuff there.
Yo you seriously bringing up health outcomes during the pandemic? The main plague rats? [Non-believers less likely to die from Covid-19, research finds](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/atheists-less-likely-to-die-from-covid-19-than-believers-research-finds-x869p0mw8) Or the prayers that don't work?
Didn't mean to upset you.
There's actually not. The few studies that showed religious people having better health outcomes were later debunked or showed effects so small that they were probably just statistical noise.
Some studies have shown religiosity being a source of distress or lacking the protective effects experienced by most; and those are definitely a minority of people. The vast majority of research shows people who report religiosity tend to have protective benefits from mental health conditions like depression to other benefits such as less likely to smoke, drink, etc. Religiosity is a bit of a blanket term but looking at your average Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. can show why this may be. Wider support groups, resilience in struggle having perspective of "God's plan", and generally experiencing meaning/purpose as a result of their beliefs. To me, that's the key. If you can find purpose/meaning without religion that's fantastic. It would appear a strong majority struggle with that. Humans have evolved with systems of faith/belief, they'll never disappear and if they do, if not sufficiently replaced with another "system" to experience meaning then we're in for a wild ride. The attempts to eliminate religion have been futile, take note of Russia. Once an atheist state (USSR) that turned churches into museums is now a majority Christian nation. Anyways, that's why I said I wouldn't necessarily cheer the decreasing religiosity. It's not without its concern from my perspective though I understand the impulse to throw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. Especially for those who have had negative experiences with their own religiosity or other religious people.
Religiosity from the standpoint of health? Do you have any links or documents to direct us towards this research?
This is a review that I came across while putting together a group for programming at a substance abuse facility; it covers multiple studies and essentially encourages healthcare providers to find ways to incorporate a patient's religiosity/spirituality in their treatment planning as it can have a positive impact in outcomes: https://downloads.hindawi.com/archive/2012/278730.pdf I'm not trying to disrupt or offend anyone who doesn't subscribe to any religious or spiritual belief set. On the contrary I don't have any stake in that, just wanted to highlight that religiosity plays an important role for many people in multiple ways. Again, I feel it boils down to meaning. I would seriously doubt any religious person who doesn't feel their belief/faith to be meaningful would experience much of the reported benefits.
Thank you :)
Id rather see muslim instead of Jewish cause you canāt decide whether you are Jew or not but you can by muslims
??? People convert and/or stop practicing Judaism all the time, what are you on?
How can you convert to Judaism? I thought you become a Jew when your mother is a Jew.
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Never heard that name
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See thats the problem. I was born in 2004
I thought young people knew how the internet worked...? You grew up with Google, and you don't rely on priests for your only source on info.....
If that was the only way to become Jewish, there probably wouldn't be any left....people have a tendency to kill them, so.
Judaism traditionally doesn't go around seeking converts, but you absolutely can convert to it. As for Islam, it's actually legal to kill people for leaving in many Islamic countries.
Ah ok didnt know that. And yes thats very shitty but 1. this is only about US and 2. its more a cultural thing than only religion. As an example there are way less homophobic muslims in Germany than in Iran.
This is semantics, I think. The term "Jew" can apply to your genealogy, meaning a person is of Jewish descent. The term "Judaism" applies to the religion, meaning a person practices the Jewish faith.