Gallup: 29% of Americans Now Say Reiigion is "Old-fashioned & Out of date."

[stopbush]

29% of Americans say religion ‘out of date’

By Muriel Kane
Friday, December 25th, 2009 -- 8:11 pm


A Gallup poll of Americans' attitudes towards religion released on Christmas Eve found significant recent increases in those responding either that they have no religious preference, that religion is not very important in their lives, or that they believe religion "is largely old-fashioned or out of date."

Only 78% of Americans now identify as Christian, while 22% describe their religious preference as either "other" or "none."

Most of these changes have occurred since 2000 and represent the first significant shift since a sharp decline in religious adherence during the 1970s. Over the last nine years, the number with no religious preference has grown from a level of around 8% to 13%. The number for whom religion is not very important has climbed from just over 10% to 19%. And the number who believe religion is out of date and has no answers for today's problems has jumped from slightly more than 20% to 29%.

http://rawstory.com/2009/12/29-americans-religion-out-date/

[onehandle]

1. It also says the % of people that say religion is 'very important' has stayed the same for 35 years.

'These changes do not appear to have affected the majority of Americans who still consider religion "very important" in their own lives. That figure remains at 56% -- roughly the same as for the last 35 years -- while 57% still say religion has answers to most of the world's problems.'

It's no surprise that people consider religion out of date. This is why mega-churches are growing so quickly. It's a new act that the religious are looking for.

[stopbush]

3. Yes, but received opinion would have you think that 90% of Americans

consider Christianity (not the more generic "religion") to be very important in their lives.

At present, the percentage of Americans who think religion is important in their lives is just a bit over half. How many Americans would be shocked to hear that? Probably many.

The good news is that the more Americans DO hear that figure, the more that non-believers will feel comfortable about coming out and saying that they're non-believers. At present, I'm sure a significant percentage of that 56% says that religion is important to them because they don't want to be ostracized by what they think is a "Christian" society, more specifically, to be ostracized by family and friends.

That's why it's important for non-believers to continue to speak up and fight the scourge of Christianity in this country. Not to convert the fanatic or moderate believers, but to let those on the fence or with one foot over the fence into non-belief know that they're not alone, and that it's perfectly alright to not believe in the fairy tales of Christianity and the other religions.

To quote St Paul, time for this country to give up childish things. Looks to me that we're further down that path than most people would have expected.

[roguevalley]

13. there have been polls that show evangelical youth have been

leaving their churches at an astonishing rate due to the bs.

[tridim]

2. The Universe is so much more fascinating than the Christian God anyway.

It's time to move on.

[napi21]

4. I had a serious discussion with a Minister & his wife today about

how you can possibly contradict people who say religion is the CAUSE of most of the World's problems. They were both raised Catholic, but switched to Methodist a LONG time ago. The results we all agreed on was that religion is very important to a lot of people, but every religion has it's fundimentalists, and it's THEM who have caused almost all the wars, and the serious disagreements over the thousands of years humans existed. Every religion has fundies and none of them will ever be satisfied until EVERYBODY believes like they do. That can NEVER happen! There are way to many different beliefs who all want to convert all the others to their way of thinking.

[stopbush]

5. That answer is too facile by half.

Were the fundamentalists responsible for The Crusades? How abut The Inquisition? How about the genocide visited upon native Americans as the Christians pursued their doctrine of Manifest Destiny?

Seems to me that the Christian status quo was behind all those atrocities. The fact that the Christian status quo today is being reduced to the reality deniers who are left in the world speaks less about the fundamentalists who still cling to their religion than it does about the tenets of religion that attract fundamentalists while driving away rationalists and intellectuals.

Truth be told, I appreciate the fundamentalist Xians who at least have the ego to realize that there are no subtleties or nuances attached to religious belief, and who embrace the beliefs for their overtly self-serving nature.

Your Methodist friend is welcome to spend his hours contemplating the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin. In the meanwhile, the fundies will use the same pin to poke out a few eyes, while the growing number of rationalists will be happy to point out that a pin is a pin, and that angels are a childish fantasy, a fantasy believed in by religious fundie and moderate alike.

[napi21]

10. I disagree that the tenets of religion attract fundies.

The fundies PICK what they want to believe and what they ignore. If you concentrate on christianity, the Jesus they believe in and adore preached "give your wealth away to the poor and follw me", "love your neighbor as you love yourself", "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich mand to get to heaven", "if people reject what you preach, leave and go elsewhere", feed & clothe the poor amoung us for those who care for the poor are my followers".....

The fundie christians of today ignore all of that! I honestly question what christianity they think they're following?

[stopbush]

11. Au contraire, I believe that most people give Xianity a free ride because

they conveniently ignore all the loathsome shit about Jesus.

Read ALL of his words. Stop cherry picking the good sentences scattered among the wretched normal behavior of this creature. For every "love your neighbor" quote there also exists a "hate your family if you love me" quote.

And don't give me the tired old "taken out of context" apology. The "good" words are just as much taken out of context as the nasty shit.

As CS Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse."

Not believing in gods, I can hardly believe in their having sons. And so I find myself agreeing with Lewis - Jesus was NOT a great moral teacher. He was a madman...or worse.

[JackintheGreen]

17. Talk about taken out of context!

Have you even read "Mere Christianity"? It is not, as you seem to be trying to suggest, an argument against Christianity. Lewis was a converted theist, an atheist become an Anglican who was trying to prove the divinity of Jesus.

Out of context? You do exactly (not essentially, but exactly the same thing. Shortly after the excerpt you quote - out of context, but I said that already - he wrote "Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

So, Jesus was not a great moral teacher, as you say. You're right so far.

He was instead GOD himself, since his behavior - as Lewis saw it - was inconsistent with lunacy or lying.

Look, you can criticize Lewis for so many things in his Christian apologetics. I certainly do. Nor am a theist.

But please, PLEASE, for the love of something other than the god neither one of us believes in, do not accuse others of cherry-picking and then do so yourself. And with something so easily debunked.

[dmallind]

18. Can it not be a simple disagreement on the choice?

Lewis undoubtedly posed that trilemma (conveniently ignoring the possibility that people simply lied ABOUT "Jesus" of course). Nothing in the above poster's response states that he agreed with Lewis on the answer - only that he agreed that those were the choices.

[JackintheGreen]

19. Perhaps, but...

the way I read the poster suggests to me a basic misunderstanding of Lewis:

"I find myself agreeing with Lewis - Jesus was NOT a great moral teacher. He was a madman...or worse."

This is absolutely *not* what Lewis was saying. Rather he argues that Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or God. At no point does he conclude that Jesus was a liar/lunatic. He posits a (false) trilemma in which he dismisses the first two options as inconsistent with the character of Jesus. Therefore, according to Lewis, Jesus must be divine.

As I've already mentioned, there are many many many critiques that can be made of Lewis's logic, and even his basic understanding of centuries of prior theology, but one cannot use him to bolster the argument that Jesus was a madman without being more than a little disingenuous.

On reflection, however, I may have been a wee bit harsh in my first few lines, but a rank misunderstanding of the work in question seems apparent.

[stopbush]

22. Yes, I've read Mere Christianity, and I understand the point that Lewis was trying to make.

It's just that he fails to make his point because his argument rests entirely upon taking the incredible leaps of faith that god exists and Jesus was his son. He knows his audience and provides them with a too-convenient opportunity to shake their heads in agreement. But he provides no basis for making the leap of faith outside of the time-honored and -worn argument from authority.

Like most Christian apologists, Lewis was not interested in "proving" whether Jesus was divine. He was interested in proving how he was divine. To do that, he first has to engage in a willful suspension of non-belief and posit that both Jesus and god exist, and then present his audience with the whole cloth "argument" that even immoral sayings and behaviors can be readily explained (and excused) if one simply assumes that we're talking about an omnipotent and omniscient god who can do whatever he wants. A god whose very existence means that anything he does - no matter how evil it is perceived to be in the eyes of mere mortals - cannot be evil, because god is god and god (by definition) isn't evil.

Ergo, by mere human standards and morals, the things Jesus said and did are - as Lewis readily admits - quite immoral, and the stuff born of lunacy. BUT, because human beings cannot possible understand the mind of god, who are we to say such acts weren't entirely sane and moral? God is god and Jesus is god and he knows better than us, so there!

That's why Lewis' simple-minded musings are so easily debunked. Unless one buys the magic beans he's selling, his arguments are no more convincing than are excuses about a child's homework substituting for the family pet's Kibbles-n-Bits. The sad thing is that Lewis is held up by Xians as some great thinker, when the logical holes in his arguments may be discerned by anyone with a C average in Critical Thinking 101.

So, please, for the love of the god neither one of us believes in, don't defend the indefensible.

[JackintheGreen]

23. I agree with everything you say except

your last sentence.

At what point do I defend Lewis? What is it that I say that leads you to believe that I have any truck at all with anything he has to say about Jesus or Christianity?

My point was that you, too, were quoting selectively to prove a point. But because your point is more valid (in our view) you somehow get a rhetoric pass? Sorry. You got caught. I've done it, you've done it, and now you're going to plumb my future posts in order to catch me out, too. Good. It will make me a better poster.

And why has this degenerated into idiotic snippiness? We agree with each other. (I almost added "for heaven's sake." Yikes.)

[stopbush]

24. Sorry. I missed your post #19 when i made my response to your post #17.

Yes, we are in agreement on this - your post #19 made my point more succinctly.

It would have been better if I had been as detailed in post #11 as I was in #22. I freely admit that I was been obviously selective (after all, I DID provide Lewis' "but he's god" words) in #11, but that was only to be obviously provocative and to get a dialogue going. I've found that dialogue on chat boards is best when one allows an argument to spin out in smaller back-n-forth units, rather than laying out a lengthy apologia that won't be read in its entirety (or, more often, entirely ignored due to its length).

As one given to overly lengthy posts here and elsewhere, I've got to take advantage of any and all opportunities to self edit whenever they present themselves.

And, no, I'm not planning on picking nits in your future posts. I do hope to engage in dialogue, though, even if we tend to argue from the same position.

[JackintheGreen]

27. So we'll call it a tie.

I do enjoy a good spar, and find I do much as you. I look forward to our next...I'd say "encounter," but that has too much the connotation of shirtless drum-beating in the woods to me.

:pals:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. The "hate your family" part is a reference to putting family loyalties

above what's right.

I swear, when atheists want to bash religion, they become as literalist as any fundie.

[stopbush]

26. You're quite wrong.

The Greek root word for the word "hate" used in this passage - miseo - unequivocally means hate. Has nothing to do with loyalty or what is right or wrong.

The New Testament Greek Lexicon provides the following origin and definition:

Word origin: from a primary misos (hatred)

Definition: 1. to hate, pursue with hatred, detest; 2. to be hated, detested

The word "miseo" is used throughout the NT, as in Ephesians ("For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord the church") and 1 John ("He that says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness even until now." and "If a man say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar").

I swear, when people want to make apologies for the ugly things Jesus said, they simply ignore the plain meanings of words and carve out exceptions of their own devising to explain away the obvious. They want to have it both ways, accepting the word's literal meaning of hate when it is applied to human nature, but concocting an entirely new definition for the word when it comes out of the mouth of the supposed son of god, most insidiously when they so neuter a word's meaning as to wreak havoc on the impact of the message their lord was conveying in the first place.

[DeSwiss]

28. "...atheists want to bash religion, they become as literalist as any fundie."

Au contraire. Religion is so easily bashable because it tries to have it both ways. Particularly with the Fantasy/Reality paradigm. You religionists need to pick a side: Either the junk in your book is LITERAL. Or, its NOT.


- Not even Christians can have it both ways.....

[Lydia Leftcoast]

29. I'm of the variety that says it's not literal

It's how I was brought up as a preacher's kid.

[DeSwiss]

30. While.....

...I, also being a PK ;) -- was brought up to believe it was literal except when the preacher (Dad) said it wasn't.

Point is, it's all allegorical now after 12,000 - 8,000 years since the first hieroglyphed story about the Virgin Baby-Mama were painted on a wall of pyramid or the story about the Three Magicians who came to see that baby, were slapped onto some papyrus.

http://www.archive.org/details/biblemythsandthe00doanuoft">Bottomline: THESE. STORIES. DO. NOT. BELONG. TO. THE. JEWS. NOR. THE. CHRISTIANS.

All that has happened since all these many centuries is that the Jews and the Christians ADDED their tales of woe and other assorted BS of no importance to anyone but themselves to these books, and then they burned and/or destroyed (or at least attempted to) everyone else's versions. And this is the sh*t we're left with as if it were somehow meaningful to our lives. Nothing but silly, often insipid and definitely fanciful fairy stories that only make sense as a mythical tale of good vs. evil. Or, whose only value that may be extracted by those who're limited to a level of Bronze-Age intelligence. Which unfortunately, there are plenty still around.

- I mean seriously, did you really need to have a rule written by god to tell you not to kill your neighbor or not to steal his rake and shovel? Or his maid-servant? Hammurabi had such rules for the Babylonian/Akkadian Empire (1792 BC to 1750 BC) way before Moses showed up. Doesn't his "no-killing neighbors" rule count as much as Yahweh's too?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

31. OK, play out your issues if you must

I feel no need to.

[DeSwiss]

32. I assure you....

...I'm not the only one with issues here. But as I recall, this issue started out being about something you said:

"I swear, when atheists want to bash religion, they become as literalist as any fundie."

- A position that has yet to find any supporting credibility. What the heck? I suppose we'll never know now. But then there's no point in beating a dead horse either....

[DeSwiss]

14. The tenets of religion....

...are designed to attract people who cannot cope with reality. Its a myth-sustaining organization where a certain number of people have agreed that together, they'll all pretend the myth is real. Even though we know that pretend is for children. But it gives them an "alternative view" -- one that's not reality-based -- because reality is difficult. Reality requires thought and deliberation. Myths provide people with answers and rules so they don't have to think about what they're doing or why.

And even with all that, there are no religionists of today ?t=1261983062">who believes as the ?t=1261983279">bible says they're ?t=1261983302">to believe. And yet they still claim to be adherents of religious doctrines that they routinely ignore. They make it up as they go, in the same manner that its always been made-up. Or stolen. And it'll split off after a while into something else, always keeping the core package god (that would be Yahweh and Son), no matter how divergent they are away from its true philosophies. We don't have churches and/or religions anymore. Those exist no where except in theocratic nation-states. What we have are social clubs and neighborhood religious associations for the support and advancement of people in the same cliques. Which is also what churches have always been for as well. Because as its members are enriched, so are they.

Fundies have always existed along side the major institutions and in the past and for those that refused to be co-opted, then they were roundly chastised, tortured and eventually killed in a ?t=1261984719">variety of ?t=1261984687">interesting ?t=1261984758">ways. Ways in which ?t=1261984539">The Church itself ?t=1261984587">thought-up to make the point clear to all other Fundies to either tow the company-line(s), or to be prepared to ask god if they were right or not. Now. But now we've gotten all fancy with civil rights and secular institutions interfering in the church's business of soul-saving. So they can't do what they used to do, to keep people in-line.

In the end, what this comes down to is whose version of the allegory for http://www.archive.org/details/biblemythsandthe00doanuoft">The Sun are we going to determine is the real deal. It is said that each interpretation changes the message. Something is added, something is lost. Fact is that in this instance, the tenets of religion belong in a museum. For early man's purposes they may have had some value. But if we haven't evolved any further beyond the scope of the muddle-headed thinkers of the Bronze-Age, then we deserve no better than what we have if we refuse to learn from our past. Or worse, because we are afraid to question our beliefs.

- And it explains much about why we haven't been able to "put away those childish things."


Bennie's Nazi Saint?"


on edit: spelling

[DeSwiss]

7. What a LOAD.

:rofl:

[MichaelHarris]

6. Exerpts from my religion essay I wrote this fall

One can hypothesize that from the deepest darkest cave of prehistory, to the late 19th Century, religion had been used to control the minds and the will of the people. Religion can be considered a means of dominance as well as an inspiration for propagation. One could even argue that religion has achieved its goal within civilized societies; control and population growth are the norm. When populations grew beyond the hunter gatherer status, when growth expanded out of the cave and into the villages, tribal leaders sought a means of control. With roofs over their heads and walls for protection, people began to think freely; meetings often took place and dissent soon followed. This dissent arose from those who suffered at the hands of violent rulers. These tribal leaders and the ruling elites developed an omnipresent entity, one who could see through walls and roofs, to achieve their basic need, control. This common theme of control and growth has woven its way through history. When we needed an “angry” God to control the savages, the Old Testament prevailed with its fire and brimstone approach. As societies became more civilized a new peaceful God was desired, giving way to the New Testament and Jesus.

Christianity and the search for riches destroyed most of this oral tradition. In times of turmoil Christianity often promised relief, conversion and the denial of past beliefs soon followed. When the promises failed people tended to revolt, such was the case of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Seeing the loss of their religion and culture, as well as the inability of the Christian God to provide during a drought and to protect from invading Apaches, the Pueblo People fought back.

[Warpy]

8. Prosperity theology failed to work as advertised

except for the preacher living large on 10% of their incomes.

No wonder they're getting disillusioned.

[DeSwiss]

9. When I heard religion for the first time as a infant in church.....

...I thought the philosophy was "Old Fashioned and Out of Date" even back then. I didn't say anything at the time because the preacher was my father.

- True story.

K&R

[Hardrada]

12. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus est.

[DeSwiss]

15. Salus est ut exsisto instituo intus. n/t

[Hardrada]

35. Vincant arma crucifera!

[dmallind]

38. Sterce! Sterce! Morituri Sumus!

[ZombieHorde]

16. Very good news. nt

[BR_Parkway]

20. Considering the loudest focus of religion was preventing (or stripping) equal rights

among GLBT, I'm not surprised that the meanness has turned people away.

[Meshuga]

21. It is interesting to see the backlash from all the craziness of the last decade

Well, at least I wonder if that is the case for the trend.

[saltpoint]

33. The nutbags are still out there, and they're still as loud as ever, but

they are off-putting to many people in part because they are shrieking their heads off about opposing stem cell research, about gay love and marriage, and prayer in schools. The more desperately ridiculous their argument the more cranium-shattering their shrieks.

In the internet age the web unites the world while all the nutbags' shrieking expressly seeks to divide it. I think the web will win.

[caitxrawks]

34. *pumps fist*

Yessss we're winning! Slowly but surely :P

[stopbush]

37. More important, we're on a roll and approaching critical mass.

The trend is away from religion, and that's good. But the best news is that the trend is accelerating. So while it may have taken a decade or two for the number of avowed non-believers to self identify as such, that number will grow more rapidly as more and more people realize that it's OK to drop the religious crap.

We have been winning slowly, but the tide is picking up.

[rd_kent]

36. Kick

[struggle4progress]

39. The Gallup data indicate the percentage of US protestants is essentially flat since 1983,

the percentage of US catholics decreased slowly by about 8 points since 1983, the percentage of other may be up about a point since 1983, and the percentage of none is up 4 or 5 points since 1983. So in the last quarter century or so, there has been about a six point drop in the number of catholics, with a corresponding increase in other and none. See: http://www.gallup.com/poll/124793/This-Christmas-78-Americans-Identify-Christian.aspx

[Manifestor_of_Light]

40. Totally superstitious and rule bound.

Lots of rules that make no sense in our scientific, technological, psychologically understanding age.

Ancient religion that has rules of morality but that are not culture-specific: Buddhism.