Poll: Churchgoers more rigid

[YankeyMCC]

...

"It could be that more religious voices feel under siege, pinned against the wall by cultural developments. They may feel more emboldened as a result."

...

Full story (very short blurb)
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/01/23/poll_churchgoers_more_rigid/


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They feel under siege?!?

[Az]

1. Indeed they do

The bulk of our society has embraced a notion completely alien to the institutions that promote dogmatic belief. Tolerance. We take it for granted. It is expected. And that in and of itself is pressure on institutions that formed because they pressed their beliefs onto others.

The conflict started 500+ years ago. We won when the age of enlightenment arrived. It is sometimes called the Humanist Revolution. It placed us at the forefront of determining what was right or wrong in our societies.

Religion still exists. And it is trying to win back what it lost all those centuries ago. Dominance and control. But society continues to change and embrace ideas of its own making. Each new idea wearing away at the dogma and claim to authority the church tries to rebuild.

[YankeyMCC]

2. You have a point..

but in the snapshot of history that is the immediate present it certainly feels like it is the people without dogmatic belief in myth who are being persecuted.

We're the ones who's morality is questioned in the pubic political debate, the media. We are the ones who would never be able to be elected if we announced loudly and unashamedly the way theist that belong to organized religion announce their beliefs do.

That feels a lot more like persecution than having one of your own sitting in the White House and so many people with the same dogma controlling the rest of the government and media.

[fshrink]

3. We *always* have been persecuted!

Except when popular uprising had the rulers and their followers shut up and be more careful. Then the whole thing moves forward a notch. And so forth.

[Az]

4. To be sure it is a struggle and in danger of collapsing

I suspect that ancient Rome was on a similar path to realising rights and reason to its fullest extent when the sacking of the Library of Alexandria marked the descent into the dark ages. It took society 1500 years to come back from that fall. The same call to absolutism could well send us plummeting again. But maybe this time there is a strong enough hold to stem the tide.

[Taxloss]

5. Christianity NEEDS a sense of persecution.

It gets most vicious, and starts to pick fights, when it has no challengers.

Remember, atheism has always existed. Theism had to be invented. The Genesis myth of the Garden of Eden has another word for atheism: innocence.

[fshrink]

6. Yeah!

Innocence.