I find the framing of this article odd. People are people and as such have incredibly diverse views regardless of if they are Christian (Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic (Franciscan, Jesuit...),...
I find the framing of this article odd. People are people and as such have incredibly diverse views regardless of if they are Christian (Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic (Franciscan, Jesuit...), Evangelical, Baptist (Southern/Norther), Anglican...), Muslim (Sunni, Shia, Sufi), Hindu (Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, Smartism...) or whatever, there is divergence everywhere. It's pretty unsurprising that for non-religious folks they too have divergent opinions on what (gestures arounds) all this means.
Honestly, I think the actual Pew stats and write-up are much more interesting than the WP article.
“This is really about the question: How do we live in a pluralistic society? Thirty years ago, 90 percent of Americans were Christian; now it’s 60 percent. How do Christians understand the nones? Are they your enemy? How much religious freedom do I get?” he said. “Religious people need to be able to talk about these questions. And how do nones feel about questions of religion? Can a woman wear a hijab in her driver’s license photo? Do they think religion plays a productive role?”
The framing from Burges highlights pretty disturbing, but mainstream Christian viewpoint. My guess is he views these questions as "open minded", but they look like the same old Christian rhetoric to me.
It always seems weird to me when these sort of articles try to come up with all these complicated social reasons for people to be dropping religion. They always tip toe around the fact that most...
It always seems weird to me when these sort of articles try to come up with all these complicated social reasons for people to be dropping religion. They always tip toe around the fact that most religion are objectively ridiculous and people just have a better idea of how things work than they used to.
Honestly I think very very few people actually truley believe in their religion.
I think you are underestimating the capacity people have for self-delusion. For example, I grew up Catholic. We went to church every week. My mom (who died about 20 years ago in her early 50s)...
Honestly I think very very few people actually truley believe in their religion.
I think you are underestimating the capacity people have for self-delusion. For example, I grew up Catholic. We went to church every week. My mom (who died about 20 years ago in her early 50s) once asked my atheist friend how he could be atheist considering how scary death was. Even at the time, I thought the question was completely absurd. Your fear of death should not inform your beliefs about life after death. I, myself, am absolutely terrified of dying, but that doesn't make the evidence for Christianity more compelling to me. (If anything, it makes it less compelling.)
The point is, people can be very good at performing the mental gymnastics necessary to maintain their belief in something they want to be true or that aligns with their expectations. People who are born religious often maintain their religion and I don't think most people carefully, deliberately examine their beliefs. My sister, for example, hasn't attended church in close to two decades, but if you ask her what her beliefs are, she would probably say she is "spiritual." That belief system is built on a foundation of pop culture and wish fulfillment.
In fact, I think you see that reflected in the Pew data — even among the "nones," a very large percentage don't seem to have any kind of specific belief system. They just kind of nebulously feel like they don't align with everything else around them. For people with low openness to experience, religious or otherwise, I believe that their beliefs are largely unquestioned.
Same for me. Grew up Catholic, am atheist now. I can very easily remember having faith. It's not difficult for me to imagine really believing in a religion; I was an altar boy! I've seen the...
Same for me. Grew up Catholic, am atheist now. I can very easily remember having faith. It's not difficult for me to imagine really believing in a religion; I was an altar boy!
I've seen the sentiment that religious people don't really believe their own stories, and I'm never sure how to respond. I can confirm that they do.
I mean as a child, we all believe ridiculous things. Most adult Christians are not even close to Bible literalists though. Definitely some — I’ve met people who believe humans lived among the...
I was an altar boy!
I mean as a child, we all believe ridiculous things. Most adult Christians are not even close to Bible literalists though. Definitely some — I’ve met people who believe humans lived among the ancient dinosaurs, 6000 years ago, but in America they are down to only 20%.
The fact that a fifth of this country are biblical literalists still is kind of shocking. On the other hand, it also explains a lot. It's a damning indictment of human nature, I would say.
The fact that a fifth of this country are biblical literalists still is kind of shocking. On the other hand, it also explains a lot. It's a damning indictment of human nature, I would say.
I was raised Catholic, so I never was a Bible literalist. I think that's uniquely a thing in American Protestantism. I learned about evolution and the Big Bang in my private Catholic school from...
I was raised Catholic, so I never was a Bible literalist. I think that's uniquely a thing in American Protestantism. I learned about evolution and the Big Bang in my private Catholic school from my science teacher, a nun.
We all have irrational beliefs. I know some atheists who believes in trickle down economics, or that rich people are rich because of hard work. Is that less ridiculous than believing Enlil the wind god is the reason for your poor harvest?
I daresay all adults believe in ridiculous, irrational things.
I think we might be saying kind of the same thing. A lot of people have a vague spiritual feeling and a lot of people are part of a religious group for social reasons or out of habit. But I don't...
I think we might be saying kind of the same thing. A lot of people have a vague spiritual feeling and a lot of people are part of a religious group for social reasons or out of habit. But I don't consider that to be true belief in a specific religion.
How many people who claim to be Christian have never read the bible. I'm going to assume it's most of them. But think about what actual belief in Christianity actually means.
It's hard to imagine a true believer that 100% believes God is real, controls/created everything, and will send you to hell for eternity if you piss him off, but they haven't gotten around to reading the Bible. Nothing in your life matters except pleasing this entity, but you can't find the time to read the guide to keeping it happy?
If I thought God was real I'd be reading that thing cover to cover constantly. Hell I'd be learning extra languages just to make sure I didn't have to trust a translation. Unless someone is like a monk or the most wackjob type of religious nut, they probably know deep down its not actually real.
I find that very easy to believe, honestly. Especially when Christians are told that they're going to go to heaven just for being Christian, they just don't accept that they have to do with thing...
I find that very easy to believe, honestly. Especially when Christians are told that they're going to go to heaven just for being Christian, they just don't accept that they have to do with thing they don't want to do in order to get a reward that they kind of nebulously feel like they're going to get anyway.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that most American Christians probably get more of their understanding of how their religious beliefs work from pop culture than they do from churches they have attended. How many of them, for example, believe that Satan is in charge of hell? It's an absurd proposition, theologically speaking, but I would still imagine it's very popular.
Most people are deeply incurious. They don't examine their morality, their psychology, their political beliefs, or their religious beliefs. I don't think religion gets any sort of special treatment. In fact, I often like to say that culture is stronger than religion. Which is why the Christianity of 2024 America is very different from the Christianity of 1450 Italy.
I do want to add that this is normal, and how humanity has worshipped for all of history. Sumerian scribes and priests knew why this ritual was done for Inana, why this was was for exorcism, and...
I do want to add that this is normal, and how humanity has worshipped for all of history. Sumerian scribes and priests knew why this ritual was done for Inana, why this was was for exorcism, and this one for a fever. Normal people didn't. We're not any different.
It's also not stupid. I went to a mystic a few months ago for an ailment, he wrote an arcane script into a piece of paper, I brought the script to an apothecary, he gave me mysterious rocks that I consumed, the ailment went away. I don't know chemistry or physics, but I trusted all those people because of my cultural context and education. Obviously the reality of it is different, but the human experience of it is identical. Humans haven't changed even a little bit.
Right. The priestly groups of every organized religion have always been the people who have dived the deepest into theology, ritual, and defining orthodoxy. The only thing that I think really sets...
Right. The priestly groups of every organized religion have always been the people who have dived the deepest into theology, ritual, and defining orthodoxy.
The only thing that I think really sets the Abrahamic religions apart from other religions around the world is the deeply legalistic perspective it has. (Okay, the monotheism is a little weird too. But less so.) It's something we just take for granted in our culture, like the centrality of faith in religion. We can't even imagine a religion not having a single canonical holy book, one that is endlessly poured over for divine insight. We can't imagine huge, important schisms that aren't driven by differing interpretations of a holy text.
Compare that to the experience of pre-Christian Roman religion and it's night and day. There's no holy book, there's no set theology. Hell, which gods are the important ones was constantly in flux. In fact, no one even cares if you believe in the gods or not. All anyone cares about is that you observe the state-mandated rituals. And that's to say nothing of its lack of hostility to syncretism. It was a very different beast.
But, importantly, even with that very different approach to organized religion, there was still a priesthood. (It just so happened that the pontifex maximus was also the princeps/Augustus.) After all, everyone can't be an expert in reading the augers!
Satan isn't really in the Bible. He isn't a fallen angel, he isn't the ruler of Hell. In fact, hell isn't even well defined in the Bible. At best, Satan is expected to be thrown into hell along...
Satan isn't really in the Bible. He isn't a fallen angel, he isn't the ruler of Hell. In fact, hell isn't even well defined in the Bible.
At best, Satan is expected to be thrown into hell along with all other non-Christians at the Second Coming of Christ.
Go a bit further; the serpent, Lucifer, Satan and the devil are all different characters in the Bible, perform different roles, and are ascribed to different cultures. But dualism is a hell of a...
Go a bit further; the serpent, Lucifer, Satan and the devil are all different characters in the Bible, perform different roles, and are ascribed to different cultures. But dualism is a hell of a drug, and Christians wanted an anti-God.
Yeah, the religious syncretism to Zoroastrianism seems pretty blatant. Hell, the entire concept of a Jewish/Hebrew afterlife is a much later invention (relative to the primacy/exclusivity of...
Yeah, the religious syncretism to Zoroastrianism seems pretty blatant.
Hell, the entire concept of a Jewish/Hebrew afterlife is a much later invention (relative to the primacy/exclusivity of Yahweh). I could be wrong, but I don't know if there was even complete consensus around that fact among Jewish theologians by the time of Jesus. But modern Christians just take it for granted—in their minds, the ancient Hebrews always knew that there was always a heaven and a hell. Because of biblical inerrancy and all of that.
I love that the non-Christian ideas are so integrated. Like, so many Americans think their dead relatives become angels and can still communicate with them. That's the most pagan shit, it's...
I love that the non-Christian ideas are so integrated. Like, so many Americans think their dead relatives become angels and can still communicate with them. That's the most pagan shit, it's incredible. It's not even a matter of interpretation, it's just outright not what angels are. But humans have the ability to fit anything into the pre existing belief systems they'd rather have. So there we are. Humans become angels, who are in Heaven. Sometimes they talk to you in dreams. Sure, it sounds like ancestor worship, but don't worry about it, it's Christian!
It's bad, but I think it's just another manifestation of where Christianity came from in the first place. Theologically, it really isn't terribly compatible with ancient Hebrew beliefs. So today...
It's bad, but I think it's just another manifestation of where Christianity came from in the first place. Theologically, it really isn't terribly compatible with ancient Hebrew beliefs.
So today it's "dead people go to heaven to become angels." 2,000 years ago, it was the idea that the Messiah was not a king to restore the kingdom of Israel and throw off the Palestinian people's Roman oppressors. Instead, it was some dude who died in obscurity but said some stuff that really affected a small number of people people that would one day go viral, particularly among non-Jews.
Religions are always reinventing themselves. The worst thing that happened to all of them was probably widespread literacy, making it possible to contradict the newer claims of uninformed believers. Not that that has stopped the aforementioned misconceptions about Christian theology from spreading. (Though even that presupposes that the Bible has special authority for Christians. There's really nothing stopping a potential heretic from rejecting it outright and saying they have better, more accurate revelations to work off of.)
So my spouse actually did go down the route of learning extra languages so he wouldn't have to trust a translation, and it permanently broke his faith. He came from a very devoutly Catholic, but...
So my spouse actually did go down the route of learning extra languages so he wouldn't have to trust a translation, and it permanently broke his faith. He came from a very devoutly Catholic, but highly educated family - half of his uncles were in the priesthood. He went to Catholic schools through college, with considerable encouragement towards becoming a priest himself. He studied Latin, Aramaic, and even went to yeshiva to learn Hebrew... then dug into the history of the Gnostic gospels. The historical politics and inconsistencies of the text made it impossible for him to consider the Bible as the inerrant word of God, and things pretty much fell apart from there.
So imagine how uncommon it is to find people willing to undertake that effort. It's hard to conceive having the courage and intellectual honesty to invalidate your entire framework of understanding when the people closest to you are committed to convincing you otherwise.
Yeah, reading the Bible in English was enough for me. Especially when I could easily contrast it with other ancient myths. It's a lot easier to put it on a pedestal if you don't really have...
Yeah, reading the Bible in English was enough for me. Especially when I could easily contrast it with other ancient myths.
It's a lot easier to put it on a pedestal if you don't really have anything to compare it to, though. Or haven't actually read it. I think a lot of people are satisfied with having authority figures like priests and pastors who just tell them what they need to know from that long boring book that they don't really think they have to read.
But I also grew up Catholic in Northern California, so my experience isn't exactly representative of other Americans. Evangelicals in the South probably feel a lot more pressure to actually read the Bible. But do they read it cover to cover? And among those who do, do they read it critically? And in the context of other books of ancient myth?
25 years ago, I remember asking my parents what religion we were. The answer: "shrugs Christian." I bet a lot of parents were like mine, and that's why we see such a natural decrease.
25 years ago, I remember asking my parents what religion we were. The answer: "shrugs Christian." I bet a lot of parents were like mine, and that's why we see such a natural decrease.
I would say none of those questions matter and are none of anyone's business. My beliefs, or yours for that matter, should have no impact on how we live our lives and ships have no impact on others.
I would say none of those questions matter and are none of anyone's business. My beliefs, or yours for that matter, should have no impact on how we live our lives and ships have no impact on others.
The word "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentiment. I agree with you - matters of faith shouldn't have an impact on the lives of anyone but their holders. But in the USA, we live...
The word "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentiment.
I agree with you - matters of faith shouldn't have an impact on the lives of anyone but their holders. But in the USA, we live in what amounts to an increasingly Christo-fascist state. Christianity is being used as a cudgel with which to remove the rights of people, regardless of their views.
The same can be said of other nations, with other religions - and even non-religions. Science has been used as a cudgel too.
I'm surprised and glad to read this. I think religion can do more good than harm, but in America it has been weaponized and absolutely does more harm than good.
I'm surprised and glad to read this. I think religion can do more good than harm, but in America it has been weaponized and absolutely does more harm than good.
I think historically the "harm" side of the scale is too weighed down to salvage. Globally. We'd be better off abandoning all forms of magical thinking.
I think historically the "harm" side of the scale is too weighed down to salvage. Globally. We'd be better off abandoning all forms of magical thinking.
I think that, if people were to abandon all forms of religious/magical thought ... we'd just find other reasons to kill and discriminate against each other. I'm an agnostic atheist. I also do not...
I think that, if people were to abandon all forms of religious/magical thought ... we'd just find other reasons to kill and discriminate against each other.
I'm an agnostic atheist. I also do not hold a high opinion of humanity at large. We make terrible decisions on the regular, and we find ways to hate each other all the time. You don't need to be religious to be bigoted, even if there's a lot of history connecting the two.
It would be a better situation if no group had a magic book with explicit instructions to be awful though. The problem with these magic books is there’s no way to really rationally argue against...
It would be a better situation if no group had a magic book with explicit instructions to be awful though. The problem with these magic books is there’s no way to really rationally argue against any of their tenets because they are pretty much by definition taken on faith that supersedes rational thought.
Sure, individuals can decide to opt out of sections be choosing to see them as allegorical or not relevant because of historical context, or whatever way they need to rationalize their way out of doing what the book says, but very existence of these books always provides an avenue for fundamentalists to go back to taking them literally.
Other magic books will fill the void, though. Eugenics was considered good science for a good period, and continues to be misused to this day. There's plenty of books that get cult followings...
Other magic books will fill the void, though.
Eugenics was considered good science for a good period, and continues to be misused to this day. There's plenty of books that get cult followings without any ties to religion, that get used to sort and divide people.
Hell, there's whole cults out there that aren't based on religion at all.
Again, I only say all of this because while there's plenty of shit we can lay at the feet of religion, we should be wary of just saying it is the SOLE REASON things are a certain way, or that people do certain horrible things.
Eugenics has been pretty thoroughly smashed by science though. We don’t still have 70% of people fully on board with eugenics, 20% on the edge, and a small minority that outright reject it, like...
Eugenics has been pretty thoroughly smashed by science though. We don’t still have 70% of people fully on board with eugenics, 20% on the edge, and a small minority that outright reject it, like we have with atheists versus religionists. And that only took a couple decades, the big religions have been defying science for millennia.
While this is strictly speaking true nowadays, it absolutely isn't an honest reflection of the history of science and eugenics. Eugenics came from the scientific community and flourished within...
Eugenics has been pretty thoroughly smashed by science though.
While this is strictly speaking true nowadays, it absolutely isn't an honest reflection of the history of science and eugenics. Eugenics came from the scientific community and flourished within it. There's a reason it's often uttered in the same breath as "scientific racism." And the idea that it "only took a couple decades" is simply ridiculous. Eugenics was wildly popular throughout the Western world for far longer than "a couple decades" and for a significant period of time, denying eugenics would have been considered "defying science". Our modern world still feels the effects of this era and has absolutely not been even close to entirely rid of eugenicist rhetoric and policy.
There is not some neutral force disconnected from other humans called "Science" that is the arbiter of truth. Science is practiced by scientific communities, and horrific things have been done time and time again as part of science -- the creation and proliferation of eugenics being only one example thereof. I'm a big fan of science, for what it's worth! I almost became an academic myself. But the idea that there's some abstract perfect ideal of Science that isn't doing all the horrible things scientists do is... kinda deifying the concept of science.
Religions cannot have been defying science for millennia btw, because science as something independent of philosophy and religion has not been around that long. The further back in time you go, the harder it is to separate the precursors to modern science from religion, because millennia ago no one made such a distinction. The "science vs. religion" framing arose in the Enlightenment and is not a reflection of any natural dichotomy -- it is perfectly possible for someone to be religious and not "defying science", and it is perfectly possible for a scientist to also be religious. Denying these possibilities only validates the religious dogma and anti-intellectualism among religious people who do deny science.
This is my exact point. People come up with stupid ideas in the name of both science and religion, but science has a built-in mechanism for flushing out nonsense while religion does not. Religion...
Eugenics came from the scientific community
This is my exact point. People come up with stupid ideas in the name of both science and religion, but science has a built-in mechanism for flushing out nonsense while religion does not.
Religions cannot have been defying science for millennia btw,
Religion has been defying basic elements of reality for millennia, even in the face of evidence.
There was also the Tuskegee Experiments, the countless people who've been experimented on, the animals and everything else... Again, I'm not trying to say science is worse. Im simply pointing out...
There was also the Tuskegee Experiments, the countless people who've been experimented on, the animals and everything else...
Again, I'm not trying to say science is worse. Im simply pointing out that people can, and will, find ways to be horrible to each other, with or without religion.
A couple issues with your statement. First, eugenics is just one manifestation racism, which persists, and has for milennia. Score one for “science” maybe that it ended its association with the...
A couple issues with your statement. First, eugenics is just one manifestation racism, which persists, and has for milennia. Score one for “science” maybe that it ended its association with the practice.
Second, eugenics as a thing has a much smaller scope than religion. And a large part of religion m’s scope, perhaps even the greater share, is good. Religion can and has brought people together to end bad things (poor people’s campaign), and do good things (love your neighbor as yourself).
Religion affects more than just an outgroup. It also creates dogma with the ingroup that may go against the common good. You see this with topics such as sex education, history, geology, and more....
Religion affects more than just an outgroup. It also creates dogma with the ingroup that may go against the common good. You see this with topics such as sex education, history, geology, and more.
If abolishing religion achieves all of those things except solve discrimination, it'll still be worth it.
But yes, if not religion we'll just kill each other over some other perceived slight.
Religion isn't the only social structure that creates in-groups and dogmatic principles. Abolishing religion may achieve some benefits, while creating a whole host of new negatives - including a...
Religion isn't the only social structure that creates in-groups and dogmatic principles.
Abolishing religion may achieve some benefits, while creating a whole host of new negatives - including a loss of some forms of social cohesion, some elements of social safety nets, that sort of thing.
The argument is a bit of a non-starter - there is no universe in which we "eliminate" religion across 8+ billion people. Even if we did, it is very hard to predict the consequences - and naive to assume they are all positive.
I think there is definitely a universe where we eliminate all of the more obviously absurd religions. I’m talking about translating scrolls out of a magic hat, aliens riding comets, walking on...
The argument is a bit of a non-starter - there is no universe in which we "eliminate" religion across 8+ billion people.
I think there is definitely a universe where we eliminate all of the more obviously absurd religions. I’m talking about translating scrolls out of a magic hat, aliens riding comets, walking on water, transmuting water into wine, seducing people in the form of a swan, that kind of nonsense. The more abstract versions that don’t really make any claims like deism probably have more staying power, but they are also correspondingly inoffensive.
How would you even do that as a practical matter without despotism? Foundationally, religion is ideas. And all attempts to control and the generally unsuccesful, often counterproductive, and...
How would you even do that as a practical matter without despotism? Foundationally, religion is ideas. And all attempts to control and the generally unsuccesful, often counterproductive, and sometimes, very dangerous. Maybe also it’s unjust?
It gets down to a core political question: what freedom should we have?
I don’t have an answer to that question, but I do have a solution: grow better religions with better ideas. Indulgence of faith and spiritual experience do not squelch inclusivity, generosity, en-dignification (the inverse of enshittification - you heard it here first, folks!). Real religion is about connecting people and their environment, to the good of everyone.
I don’t think we have to do “do” anything to achieve that. Just look at the trajectory of irreligion — people are steadily abandoning the supernatural. In the marketplace of ideas, religion versus...
How would you even do that as a practical matter without despotism?
I don’t think we have to do “do” anything to achieve that. Just look at the trajectory of irreligion — people are steadily abandoning the supernatural. In the marketplace of ideas, religion versus irreligion is losing.
grow better religions with better ideas
Why not just… not? What if the best idea is realizing that imagining a higher power is not actually a good idea?
I’m not persuaded that there is not a higher power. Neither the affirmative nor negative can be proven; I abide by the bard: There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in the minds of...
I’m not persuaded that there is not a higher power. Neither the affirmative nor negative can be proven; I abide by the bard: There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in the minds of men…
But even if there is none, I will continue to exhort a profession whose noble goal is to promote goodness alone.
I don’t think it’s possible to have definitive evidence either way of something so vague as a “higher power” but I am absolutely convinced that if there is one, it isn’t getting involved in our...
I don’t think it’s possible to have definitive evidence either way of something so vague as a “higher power” but I am absolutely convinced that if there is one, it isn’t getting involved in our day to day lives, either now or in the time of the “prophets.”
But even if there is none, I will continue to exhort a profession whose noble goal is to promote goodness alone.
More generally to clergy, one of the three classical professions (others are doctors and lawyers). Clergy’s sole noble role is to profess goodness. Doctors profess health, and lawyers, justice....
More generally to clergy, one of the three classical professions (others are doctors and lawyers).
Clergy’s sole noble role is to profess goodness. Doctors profess health, and lawyers, justice.
God/deity is only so useful as the extent to which it helps people be good, to a true cleric.
Simply being open to a higher power isn't a religion, it's agnosticism. Agnosis is a state of not having knowledge. Religions are attempts to understand, describe, even speak for, that higher power.
Simply being open to a higher power isn't a religion, it's agnosticism. Agnosis is a state of not having knowledge. Religions are attempts to understand, describe, even speak for, that higher power.
I agree that religion has caused a lot of problems for humanity, and that the rise of the Christian nationalists in the US is pretty bad. You can check my post history if you want to read more...
I agree that religion has caused a lot of problems for humanity, and that the rise of the Christian nationalists in the US is pretty bad. You can check my post history if you want to read more about my own run-ins.
That said, I think framing religion as mere "magical thinking" is both dismissive and reductive. Especially when you're talking about the sincerely held beliefs of billions of people that has given us thousands of years of thought, art, and culture.
Some of the best ideas I heard about keeping religion from running away from itself have come from a political theologian named Stephen Backhouse. He's probably not the original source of all of them, but he's how I came by them. It boils down to constructing our institutions to be frail instead of enduring, because when they start to endure too long, they take on a life of their own and start to do things for the sake of the institution itself rather than the original purpose it was founded for.
But this is not just a problem with churches. Businesses, social movements, and even governments fall prey to this as well. China has been actively suppressing all forms of religion belief to encourage loyalty to the state, and look at how that is turning out. Which makes me think it's probably a problem with human nature, not religion.
I agree that it’s dismissive but I would characterize it as simply accurate rather than reductive. Magic fills in the gaps where we didn’t know how things worked.
That said, I think framing religion as mere "magical thinking" is both dismissive and reductive.
I agree that it’s dismissive but I would characterize it as simply accurate rather than reductive. Magic fills in the gaps where we didn’t know how things worked.
I stand by reductive. There is a lot more to religion than just magical thinking (borrowing Wikipedia's definition, "belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any...
I stand by reductive. There is a lot more to religion than just magical thinking (borrowing Wikipedia's definition, "belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects").
Religion is a structure for social order, a center for building community and relationship, a mode of supporting people in the community, a place to raise and teach one's kids. The ISKCON-founded Akshaya Patra feeds 2 million children a day.
Like all human endeavor, religion can get out of hand, and when those structures take on a life of their own, it can be bad as well. But even the bad is not just magical thinking. It's politics, manipulation, and will to power which all manifest just fine for humans outside of religious contexts.
Dismissing the importance of religion in the world and reducing it to mere magical thinking fails to engage in an incredibly nuanced topic. Even if we had a way to unwind that particular part of human behavior, you's still have politics, manipulation, will to power. Like @Drewbahr said here, "we'd just find other reasons to kill and discriminate against each other".
The social benefits aren’t integral to religion, they’re integral to society. We associate them with religion because religion has sunk its teeth so deeply into many societies that it’s hard to...
The social benefits aren’t integral to religion, they’re integral to society. We associate them with religion because religion has sunk its teeth so deeply into many societies that it’s hard to see where one ends and the other begins.
You're technically right, but in my experience, local Christian organisations do a hell of a lot more for the poor than most atheists I know. In theory, there's nothing stopping a local atheist...
You're technically right, but in my experience, local Christian organisations do a hell of a lot more for the poor than most atheists I know. In theory, there's nothing stopping a local atheist group from opening a soup kitchen. And indeed, I'm sure some do. But it sure is a hell of a lot rarer. Certainly none in my area.
What you may be surprised at is the number is the number of atheists who volunteer at charities. They aren’t very visible because they are just an assortment of random people, instead of...
What you may be surprised at is the number is the number of atheists who volunteer at charities. They aren’t very visible because they are just an assortment of random people, instead of representatives of an intrinsically self promoting group.
Non-religious NGOs are in fact quite common, and impactful. Medicines sans frontiers, Oxfam, and the united way come to mind immediately.
Those are secular organisations, not atheist ones. And again, I'm 100% sure that there are many atheist soup kitchens out there. But again, in my personal life, if someone is volunteering their...
Those are secular organisations, not atheist ones. And again, I'm 100% sure that there are many atheist soup kitchens out there. But again, in my personal life, if someone is volunteering their personal time on a Sunday to feed the homeless, that person is waaaaay more likely to be religious. Atheists can do it. I once helped with houses after an earthquake, and I'm an atheist. But I can't hold a candle to some of those church groups.
Belief in an arbiter of morality does have positive effects, and it's silly to pretend otherwise.
Again, this is my point. Atheists don't have a group identity that has an intrinsic need to proclaim why it they doing something. They aren't (usually -- there are a small number of people,...
Again, this is my point. Atheists don't have a group identity that has an intrinsic need to proclaim why it they doing something. They aren't (usually -- there are a small number of people, Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.) defined by what they don't believe. They're just random people doing good things, without religion. When they form organizations, they're generally not specifically non-religious organizations, they're just organizations.
Belief in an arbiter of morality does have positive effects, and it's silly to pretend otherwise.
I don’t really agree, but I don’t have high quality studies to point to on the matter.
I'll grant that. But again (anecdotally), the people I know in my life that are atheists volunteer less of their personal time than Christians. My mom just went to Guatemala to give food to poor...
I'll grant that. But again (anecdotally), the people I know in my life that are atheists volunteer less of their personal time than Christians. My mom just went to Guatemala to give food to poor children, as part of her religion. She's not conservative, she votes liberal, but it was her religion that led her to make that personal journey. My uncle volunteers his time every month or so. He's conservative, but he still does that. By contrast, I can't get my atheist friends to even vote, even though they complain about politics all the time, let alone volunteer any time for anything that's not personal enjoyment.
Given how conservatives are also much more likely to be religous than not, it's hard not to see that as self-serving back patting. Sure they'll run a soup kitchen. But they'll use the running of...
Given how conservatives are also much more likely to be religous than not, it's hard not to see that as self-serving back patting. Sure they'll run a soup kitchen. But they'll use the running of that soup kitchen to justify virtually nonexistent social safety nets. They certainly don't support policies that would eliminate the need for homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and food banks. "The churches take care of that, we don't need the state."
Ancedotally, all the atheists I know are also a lot more willing to just give cash or food to the homeless whom are begging.
Part of it is also just the general isolationist society...if you don't fear eternal damnation, you're a lot less likely to get up on sunday morning and trudge to whatever pulpit brand your parents dragged you to as a kid and meet people. Doubly hard to start up a new atheist non-profit organization.
You're completely right, and that's usually the spread. Conservatives are way more likely to vote for people running on making sure poor people can't sleep on a park bench, and are way more likely...
You're completely right, and that's usually the spread. Conservatives are way more likely to vote for people running on making sure poor people can't sleep on a park bench, and are way more likely to volunteer their personal time for a good cause. Liberals are way more likely to vote for someone who promises a fair society, but (in my experience) way less likely to show up to that same soup kitchen.
That's fair. There's a lot that I am sick of, too. I ended up in this place of disgust with Christianity, and it has been very damaging for relationships and friendships because I wasn't able to...
That's fair. There's a lot that I am sick of, too. I ended up in this place of disgust with Christianity, and it has been very damaging for relationships and friendships because I wasn't able to separate the Christian nationalist maniacs I was reading about online from my friends and neighbors who are just quietly living their (religious) lives.
But everyone's experience is different. I hope we end up in a place where people who are religious are free to practice, but the norm is to keep it out of the public sphere and make it opt-in instead of opt-out. And I hope that is a better world for you.
That's fairly modern. For most of history, people had personal, family and tribal gods, and it would've made no sense to kill someone over them. They were yours, there was no conversion. The gods...
That's fairly modern. For most of history, people had personal, family and tribal gods, and it would've made no sense to kill someone over them. They were yours, there was no conversion. The gods is Sumer, the lands of Sumer, the language of Sumer were all part of the Sumerian package, for example. It's only now that we've disconnected religion from culture like this.
But I mean, ethnic and folk belief systems still exist. Shinto aren't killing anyone over the lack of acceptance of Amaterasu. Tengri worshipers aren't burning down other centres of worship. This...
But I mean, ethnic and folk belief systems still exist. Shinto aren't killing anyone over the lack of acceptance of Amaterasu. Tengri worshipers aren't burning down other centres of worship. This is mostly a problem for universal religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc), not for ethnic ones.
So it is extremely relevant. Don't universalise (mostly) Abrahamic problems. That's not all religion does.
EDIT: And even for ostensibly universal religions, some of them are de facto ethnic ones, like Eastern Christianity, Druzes, Yazidis, etc. there are zero Assyrians that want you to convert to their religion. It's their religion.
Shinto has absolutely been turned into a militaristic tool in the past. There are still modern Japanese who are into that whole emperor as a deity thing still.
I'm not saying that religion can't be turned into a weapon of war. I'm saying that no reasonable person would see Imperial Japan's conquest of China as a Shinto religious war. You can turn...
I'm not saying that religion can't be turned into a weapon of war. I'm saying that no reasonable person would see Imperial Japan's conquest of China as a Shinto religious war. You can turn anything into a weapon of war and hate. Some Americans tell the descendants of Mexican immigrant to speak English. That doesn't suddenly turn language into the cause of conflict. Any difference can be weaponised.
What's wrong with seeing the emperor as a deity? Again, this isn't inherently a problem. Millions of Americans think that their dead relatives turn into sky bird people that can talk to them in their dreams. They're still peaceful.
The argument was that all religion does is divide people. IMHO, that's just inherently untrue, and quite unfair to a part of culture that's been part of human civilization since the dawn of sapience.
Honestly, I think the divine right of kings ranks up there with thinking that skin colour or what hangs (or doesn’t) between our legs matter in the continuum of most awful ideas humanity has produced.
What's wrong with seeing the emperor as a deity? Again, this isn't inherently a problem.
Honestly, I think the divine right of kings ranks up there with thinking that skin colour or what hangs (or doesn’t) between our legs matter in the continuum of most awful ideas humanity has produced.
I daresay that racism and sexism do more damage than a random elderly Japanese lady thinking that the emperor is the Son of Heaven. Yes, if the emperor was leading a war of conquest, it would be a...
I daresay that racism and sexism do more damage than a random elderly Japanese lady thinking that the emperor is the Son of Heaven.
Yes, if the emperor was leading a war of conquest, it would be a problem. But he's not. He's less powerful than King Charles.
Only because we have made such substantial progress in defanging the divine right of kings. And only through the expenditure of vast amounts of blood and treasure, I should point out.
Only because we have made such substantial progress in defanging the divine right of kings. And only through the expenditure of vast amounts of blood and treasure, I should point out.
Sure, but does that make a difference? There are billionaires in the US right now that might as well be Achaemenid monarchs for all the money, power and immunity to any laws they have. If someone...
Sure, but does that make a difference? There are billionaires in the US right now that might as well be Achaemenid monarchs for all the money, power and immunity to any laws they have.
If someone wants to believe that Emperor Showa was a demigod, I can think of much worse (and stupider) non-religious beliefs our society holds today. I don't particularly understand why that's being singled out.
There's a lesson in the cults of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Musk, or any number of other figures who don't claim divine right to rule [Trump is something of an edge case], but are granted superhuman...
There's a lesson in the cults of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Musk, or any number of other figures who don't claim divine right to rule [Trump is something of an edge case], but are granted superhuman status anyway.
My completely unresearched feeling is that it's a measure of the human sense of powerlessness in the face of suffering with unknown, uncontrollable causes, the child's demand for a more potent parent figure to take care of them.
"Divine right of kings" is a handy explanation that works for established dynasties, in an already-believing population. It usually reflects a bargain between separate centers of political and religious power.
Religion (specifically Christianity) is what props up that racism and sexism. Mormons had official doctrine declaring black people as a cursed subclass until the 1970's. They're one of the largest...
Religion (specifically Christianity) is what props up that racism and sexism.
Mormons had official doctrine declaring black people as a cursed subclass until the 1970's. They're one of the largest Christian sects out there.
Look at how anti-abortion and anti-contraceptive the most religous parts of the country are. How there's a huge overlap between crosses hanging on walls and "The woman's place is in the kitchen."
Christianity is a very patriarchal religion. Its a very higharchal system where the local minister represents the lowest man on the org chart that os your direct messanger to the great unseen unknowable creator that promises you eternal life...so long as you listen to the minister.
A few examples do not establish, at least in my mind, that the problem here is religion itself. That racists, sexists, etc-ists couch their evil propensities in religious clothing does not...
A few examples do not establish, at least in my mind, that the problem here is religion itself. That racists, sexists, etc-ists couch their evil propensities in religious clothing does not implicate the religion itself. The same is true for “democracy” and “marketplace economics.”
Regardless of whether the religion is the cause, it's the armor. Science has been sexist and racist too, but that can be - and has been - argued with and proven wrong. When Christianity is the...
Regardless of whether the religion is the cause, it's the armor. Science has been sexist and racist too, but that can be - and has been - argued with and proven wrong. When Christianity is the justification, you can't argue against the idea that a woman is supposed to submit to her husband. You shouldn't, because in that context the idea is correct. The Bible does in fact say that.
I'm not completely anti-religion, I do think it can do good things, but I think having such a majority of one religion that it seems remotely reasonable for us to be governed by it could never be a good thing. We need to be able to argue our policy stances in a way that can't be won using a rulebook that's separate from reality.
Christianity isn't patriarchal because it's Christianity. It's patriarchal because it was the religion of the Roman state, which was a very patriachal society before Christianity even existed!...
Christianity isn't patriarchal because it's Christianity. It's patriarchal because it was the religion of the Roman state, which was a very patriachal society before Christianity even existed!
This is my point about religion; you are attributing things to it that precede it. Racism isn't part of religion. Racism as we know it is a modern European invention. The Christian Roman Empire did not have the concept of race. Our concept of race arose in response to the massive chattel slavery we propped our systems on.
Religion just isn't that important and changes much less than what you think.
That’s true only if the belief is that the deity is omnipotent, omnipresent, and infallible. In hebrew and hellenistic religions, adherents argue and wrestle with deities, and sometimes even prevail.
That’s true only if the belief is that the deity is omnipotent, omnipresent, and infallible. In hebrew and hellenistic religions, adherents argue and wrestle with deities, and sometimes even prevail.
And again.....you're bringing up religions that have like less than 3% representation in America....the country in question. America's religious breakdown is roughly as follows: 65% - Some sort of...
And again.....you're bringing up religions that have like less than 3% representation in America....the country in question. America's religious breakdown is roughly as follows:
65% - Some sort of Christian
30% - Atheist/Agnostic
5% - Literally anything else. Jews are < 1%. As are any given polytheistic religion.
This Umbrella Christianity does believe that the Holy Trinity is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Infallible. So in the context of the country under discussion, with the exception of a small rounding error of "Other," subjects will follow the word of their god without question.
Please recognize that there is a wide variety of "Christian" in the USA. On paper, you're right - if you are Christian, then by definition you believe in the Christian God, which is omnipotent,...
Please recognize that there is a wide variety of "Christian" in the USA.
On paper, you're right - if you are Christian, then by definition you believe in the Christian God, which is omnipotent, omnipresent, infallible, etc. But saying that the "subjects will follow the word of their god without question" is not fair to the wide variety and extents of belief, both within the USA and within the wider Christian/religious world.
If every Christian was "following the word of their god without question", then God is putting out a lot of mixed signals. Which, readers of the Old and New Testaments would surely agree with. Glib commentary aside, though - they can't all be acting on God's will - because some believers say God loves everyone, and some believers say God will condemn people to hell if they don't follow their particular flavor of Christianity.
Just ... recognize that painting all Christians as unquestioning followers does them a disservice, just as painting scientists as acting purely on logic and rationality is similarly inaccurate.
I recognize I'm going to bat quite a bit for religion here; I'm a bit of a contrarian, so that's playing into things.
To restate @drewbahr, christianity in the us is hardly monolithic. Certainly Franklin Graham aligned folks fit your description, but only the hardest of core catholics believe that God’s...
To restate @drewbahr, christianity in the us is hardly monolithic. Certainly Franklin Graham aligned folks fit your description, but only the hardest of core catholics believe that God’s proclamation, independent of god themself, are subject to interpretation and contextual application.
Israel literally means “wrestles with god,” a huge part of all abrahamic religions.
40% of America thinks the Earth is 10,000 or less years old. That's all the evidence I need that 40% of America is incapable of properly interpreting or contextualizing any doctrine and...
40% of America thinks the Earth is 10,000 or less years old.
That's all the evidence I need that 40% of America is incapable of properly interpreting or contextualizing any doctrine and reconciling it with modern knowledge.
So that leaves about 20% of Christians whom might possible be capable.
That 40% of Americans that believe in Young Earth isn't probably all Christian or otherwise religious, but that's a fair point. Good thing that number is decreasing, albeit slowly. For all the...
That 40% of Americans that believe in Young Earth isn't probably all Christian or otherwise religious, but that's a fair point.
Good thing that number is decreasing, albeit slowly.
For all the going-to-bat-for-religion I've done, I will restate that I'm agnostic atheist - and there is, in my mind, no question that the earth is billions of years old, life evolved from single-celled common ancestors, and all of that.
I may be a contrarian, but I'm not that contrarian.
I promise you, no one is following the word of the emperor. More people would die for Trump than for the emperor. Showing again that a figure being religious is not the problem. The problem is...
I promise you, no one is following the word of the emperor. More people would die for Trump than for the emperor. Showing again that a figure being religious is not the problem. The problem is society. There's something broken in American society, and removing religious won't fix it even a little bit.
It is worth noting that trump is very much posturing himself as a religious (Christian Nationalist) emperor, so I'm not sure your metaphor here really pans out ...
It is worth noting that trump is very much posturing himself as a religious (Christian Nationalist) emperor, so I'm not sure your metaphor here really pans out ...
I mean, Musk then. Or one of the secular far right lunatics on YouTube. It doesn't really matter. Removing religion doesn't remove Trump, or Musk, or Bolsonaro, or Putin. They use religion the...
I mean, Musk then. Or one of the secular far right lunatics on YouTube. It doesn't really matter. Removing religion doesn't remove Trump, or Musk, or Bolsonaro, or Putin. They use religion the same way they use language, ethnicity, class.
A few people still do. The US forced a constitutional change, but that didn't alter everyone's religious beliefs. And like I said before, those people are less dangerous than the January...
A few people still do. The US forced a constitutional change, but that didn't alter everyone's religious beliefs.
And like I said before, those people are less dangerous than the January insurrectionists, even though Trump isn't a god to them. Removing religions doesn't fix the problems we're looking at, is my point.
While it does indeed provide context, it doesn't influence the now in any meaningful way. If someone is being affected by religious violence, it doesn't help them if you tell them it didn't always...
While it does indeed provide context, it doesn't influence the now in any meaningful way. If someone is being affected by religious violence, it doesn't help them if you tell them it didn't always use to be like that.
Except it very much did, at least by any Christian-dominant nation. The Church has always had a thing about persecuting anybody not part of The Church. Talking about religions that haven't...
Except it very much did, at least by any Christian-dominant nation.
The Church has always had a thing about persecuting anybody not part of The Church.
Talking about religions that haven't tangibly existed for over 2000 years as support of its existence is a good bit disingenuous.
42% of the world is not Christian or Muslim. And even within that 58%, most people live in peace with their neighbours. Religious peace is far more common than religious strife.
42% of the world is not Christian or Muslim. And even within that 58%, most people live in peace with their neighbours. Religious peace is far more common than religious strife.
I mean, there was an episode of Eureka that showed the high school. Well, there were several but I'm thinking of one in particular. Where it showed the school's hierarchy was ordered around the...
I mean, there was an episode of Eureka that showed the high school. Well, there were several but I'm thinking of one in particular. Where it showed the school's hierarchy was ordered around the intelligence of the students. And the smartest kids were picking on those below them in that ranking. The scene was a nerd knocking the books out of a (smart) football player's hands, and taunting him.
People will always find divisions. They will always have a reason to sort and tabulate and label people into different buckets. America uses race, religion, money; primarily. Geography shows up some (think New Yorkers shitting on non-New Yorkers, or how everyone basically shits on the South or Midwest and then have the gall to wonder why Southerners and Midwesterners get so bent out of shape over being treated like incapable hicks). More than one or two western nations add class into that mix. Some cultures/nations prize or discount age, as another common one.
If America turned atheist, it'd just be other stuff being weaponized. Do religious adherents take things too far? Often, yes. But so do the wealthy, for example. Taking religion off the board won't be a pancea of harmonious relations. It's in our nature to divide and battle. Humans always find a reason to.
I'm less concerned about the divisions religion creates, (for the reason you've explained, not because it's not important) and more concerned about the specific instances of poor policy that can't...
I'm less concerned about the divisions religion creates, (for the reason you've explained, not because it's not important) and more concerned about the specific instances of poor policy that can't be handled with reason because they're not based in reason. Abortion bans, barriers to contraceptive access, resistance to comprehensive sex ed being taught in schools, and legal barriers to gay and trans rights, are all largely rooted in religion.
That's not to say that no one would ever harass gay people without religion, but the idea that "marriage is between one man and one woman" is a religious idea that can't be approached with any sort of logic. At least someone who believes the purpose of legal marriage should be to encourage reproduction and build strong family units can be reasoned with. You can discuss the history and purpose of marriage and other similar contracts, what purpose they serve, whether that purpose can be served by other means. There's room for learning and for minds to be changed.
With religion, it's just "look here in this book where it says 'Adam and Eve'." And within that religion you can argue about what the book actually says and how it's been translated and whether it's literal or a metaphor and so on and so forth, but that's not so useful for someone to whom the book doesn't apply at all. I'm not going to learn all the rules of baseball and how they've historically been interpreted so that I can make sure that I'm not breaking them while I'm walking around my house specifically not playing baseball, and I shouldn't have to. Furthermore if I, someone who has never watched or played baseball, argues that my daily routine is not incompatible with the rules of baseball based on an obscure umpire's interpretation, that's not going to carry a lot of weight with avid baseball fans.
At least without religion we can hold each other to rules that can be reasonably discussed, if not agreed upon. We can understand each other's frameworks and discuss the times when they may not apply.
Having grown up religious in my early childhood I still cannot get over the fundamental lie at the heart of religion, particularly the abrahamic faiths. Being told that there is an arbiter for...
Having grown up religious in my early childhood I still cannot get over the fundamental lie at the heart of religion, particularly the abrahamic faiths.
Being told that there is an arbiter for things like morality and that you - as a member of the religion - have a connection with them is just lying to your child. Sure, there's nuance there, but they don't have the ability to pick it apart. They'll take it at face value.
I think that in a modern, globalizing society, our current religions do more harm than good. Before we could fill in a lot of the gaps I'm sure that it was a very good way to find "meaning", but now that we can examine our books with a more scrutinizing eye and actually inform people "hey, there's probably no-one really up there", is it not morally correct to do so?
Faith is fine at face value. Someone can believe in a bunch of things without assigning an absolute truth to them like a lot, maybe most religions do. The spiritual can be a helpful and inspiring source, but a lot of ours is just awfully tainted with dated and outright false information that is written to promote a specific way of thinking.
We need to move on. We need to address the fact that the world these religions were built around is fundamentally different today in terms of its values. We need to stop lying to our kids. Ironically, Jesus' approach to faith is in my eyes an example of a great religion (sans the promise of heaven), but if everyone followed it for the past 2000 years... We'd probably be much nicer to each other, and not having this conversation.
I find the framing of this article odd. People are people and as such have incredibly diverse views regardless of if they are Christian (Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic (Franciscan, Jesuit...), Evangelical, Baptist (Southern/Norther), Anglican...), Muslim (Sunni, Shia, Sufi), Hindu (Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, Smartism...) or whatever, there is divergence everywhere. It's pretty unsurprising that for non-religious folks they too have divergent opinions on what (gestures arounds) all this means.
Honestly, I think the actual Pew stats and write-up are much more interesting than the WP article.
The framing from Burges highlights pretty disturbing, but mainstream Christian viewpoint. My guess is he views these questions as "open minded", but they look like the same old Christian rhetoric to me.
It always seems weird to me when these sort of articles try to come up with all these complicated social reasons for people to be dropping religion. They always tip toe around the fact that most religion are objectively ridiculous and people just have a better idea of how things work than they used to.
Honestly I think very very few people actually truley believe in their religion.
I think you are underestimating the capacity people have for self-delusion. For example, I grew up Catholic. We went to church every week. My mom (who died about 20 years ago in her early 50s) once asked my atheist friend how he could be atheist considering how scary death was. Even at the time, I thought the question was completely absurd. Your fear of death should not inform your beliefs about life after death. I, myself, am absolutely terrified of dying, but that doesn't make the evidence for Christianity more compelling to me. (If anything, it makes it less compelling.)
The point is, people can be very good at performing the mental gymnastics necessary to maintain their belief in something they want to be true or that aligns with their expectations. People who are born religious often maintain their religion and I don't think most people carefully, deliberately examine their beliefs. My sister, for example, hasn't attended church in close to two decades, but if you ask her what her beliefs are, she would probably say she is "spiritual." That belief system is built on a foundation of pop culture and wish fulfillment.
In fact, I think you see that reflected in the Pew data — even among the "nones," a very large percentage don't seem to have any kind of specific belief system. They just kind of nebulously feel like they don't align with everything else around them. For people with low openness to experience, religious or otherwise, I believe that their beliefs are largely unquestioned.
Same for me. Grew up Catholic, am atheist now. I can very easily remember having faith. It's not difficult for me to imagine really believing in a religion; I was an altar boy!
I've seen the sentiment that religious people don't really believe their own stories, and I'm never sure how to respond. I can confirm that they do.
I mean as a child, we all believe ridiculous things. Most adult Christians are not even close to Bible literalists though. Definitely some — I’ve met people who believe humans lived among the ancient dinosaurs, 6000 years ago, but in America they are down to only 20%.
The fact that a fifth of this country are biblical literalists still is kind of shocking. On the other hand, it also explains a lot. It's a damning indictment of human nature, I would say.
I was raised Catholic, so I never was a Bible literalist. I think that's uniquely a thing in American Protestantism. I learned about evolution and the Big Bang in my private Catholic school from my science teacher, a nun.
We all have irrational beliefs. I know some atheists who believes in trickle down economics, or that rich people are rich because of hard work. Is that less ridiculous than believing Enlil the wind god is the reason for your poor harvest?
I daresay all adults believe in ridiculous, irrational things.
I think we might be saying kind of the same thing. A lot of people have a vague spiritual feeling and a lot of people are part of a religious group for social reasons or out of habit. But I don't consider that to be true belief in a specific religion.
How many people who claim to be Christian have never read the bible. I'm going to assume it's most of them. But think about what actual belief in Christianity actually means.
It's hard to imagine a true believer that 100% believes God is real, controls/created everything, and will send you to hell for eternity if you piss him off, but they haven't gotten around to reading the Bible. Nothing in your life matters except pleasing this entity, but you can't find the time to read the guide to keeping it happy?
If I thought God was real I'd be reading that thing cover to cover constantly. Hell I'd be learning extra languages just to make sure I didn't have to trust a translation. Unless someone is like a monk or the most wackjob type of religious nut, they probably know deep down its not actually real.
I find that very easy to believe, honestly. Especially when Christians are told that they're going to go to heaven just for being Christian, they just don't accept that they have to do with thing they don't want to do in order to get a reward that they kind of nebulously feel like they're going to get anyway.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that most American Christians probably get more of their understanding of how their religious beliefs work from pop culture than they do from churches they have attended. How many of them, for example, believe that Satan is in charge of hell? It's an absurd proposition, theologically speaking, but I would still imagine it's very popular.
Most people are deeply incurious. They don't examine their morality, their psychology, their political beliefs, or their religious beliefs. I don't think religion gets any sort of special treatment. In fact, I often like to say that culture is stronger than religion. Which is why the Christianity of 2024 America is very different from the Christianity of 1450 Italy.
I do want to add that this is normal, and how humanity has worshipped for all of history. Sumerian scribes and priests knew why this ritual was done for Inana, why this was was for exorcism, and this one for a fever. Normal people didn't. We're not any different.
It's also not stupid. I went to a mystic a few months ago for an ailment, he wrote an arcane script into a piece of paper, I brought the script to an apothecary, he gave me mysterious rocks that I consumed, the ailment went away. I don't know chemistry or physics, but I trusted all those people because of my cultural context and education. Obviously the reality of it is different, but the human experience of it is identical. Humans haven't changed even a little bit.
Right. The priestly groups of every organized religion have always been the people who have dived the deepest into theology, ritual, and defining orthodoxy.
The only thing that I think really sets the Abrahamic religions apart from other religions around the world is the deeply legalistic perspective it has. (Okay, the monotheism is a little weird too. But less so.) It's something we just take for granted in our culture, like the centrality of faith in religion. We can't even imagine a religion not having a single canonical holy book, one that is endlessly poured over for divine insight. We can't imagine huge, important schisms that aren't driven by differing interpretations of a holy text.
Compare that to the experience of pre-Christian Roman religion and it's night and day. There's no holy book, there's no set theology. Hell, which gods are the important ones was constantly in flux. In fact, no one even cares if you believe in the gods or not. All anyone cares about is that you observe the state-mandated rituals. And that's to say nothing of its lack of hostility to syncretism. It was a very different beast.
But, importantly, even with that very different approach to organized religion, there was still a priesthood. (It just so happened that the pontifex maximus was also the princeps/Augustus.) After all, everyone can't be an expert in reading the augers!
Satan isn't really in the Bible. He isn't a fallen angel, he isn't the ruler of Hell. In fact, hell isn't even well defined in the Bible.
At best, Satan is expected to be thrown into hell along with all other non-Christians at the Second Coming of Christ.
This Reddit thread wouldn't be a bad place to start.
Go a bit further; the serpent, Lucifer, Satan and the devil are all different characters in the Bible, perform different roles, and are ascribed to different cultures. But dualism is a hell of a drug, and Christians wanted an anti-God.
Yeah, the religious syncretism to Zoroastrianism seems pretty blatant.
Hell, the entire concept of a Jewish/Hebrew afterlife is a much later invention (relative to the primacy/exclusivity of Yahweh). I could be wrong, but I don't know if there was even complete consensus around that fact among Jewish theologians by the time of Jesus. But modern Christians just take it for granted—in their minds, the ancient Hebrews always knew that there was always a heaven and a hell. Because of biblical inerrancy and all of that.
I love that the non-Christian ideas are so integrated. Like, so many Americans think their dead relatives become angels and can still communicate with them. That's the most pagan shit, it's incredible. It's not even a matter of interpretation, it's just outright not what angels are. But humans have the ability to fit anything into the pre existing belief systems they'd rather have. So there we are. Humans become angels, who are in Heaven. Sometimes they talk to you in dreams. Sure, it sounds like ancestor worship, but don't worry about it, it's Christian!
It's bad, but I think it's just another manifestation of where Christianity came from in the first place. Theologically, it really isn't terribly compatible with ancient Hebrew beliefs.
So today it's "dead people go to heaven to become angels." 2,000 years ago, it was the idea that the Messiah was not a king to restore the kingdom of Israel and throw off the Palestinian people's Roman oppressors. Instead, it was some dude who died in obscurity but said some stuff that really affected a small number of people people that would one day go viral, particularly among non-Jews.
Religions are always reinventing themselves. The worst thing that happened to all of them was probably widespread literacy, making it possible to contradict the newer claims of uninformed believers. Not that that has stopped the aforementioned misconceptions about Christian theology from spreading. (Though even that presupposes that the Bible has special authority for Christians. There's really nothing stopping a potential heretic from rejecting it outright and saying they have better, more accurate revelations to work off of.)
So my spouse actually did go down the route of learning extra languages so he wouldn't have to trust a translation, and it permanently broke his faith. He came from a very devoutly Catholic, but highly educated family - half of his uncles were in the priesthood. He went to Catholic schools through college, with considerable encouragement towards becoming a priest himself. He studied Latin, Aramaic, and even went to yeshiva to learn Hebrew... then dug into the history of the Gnostic gospels. The historical politics and inconsistencies of the text made it impossible for him to consider the Bible as the inerrant word of God, and things pretty much fell apart from there.
So imagine how uncommon it is to find people willing to undertake that effort. It's hard to conceive having the courage and intellectual honesty to invalidate your entire framework of understanding when the people closest to you are committed to convincing you otherwise.
Yeah, reading the Bible in English was enough for me. Especially when I could easily contrast it with other ancient myths.
It's a lot easier to put it on a pedestal if you don't really have anything to compare it to, though. Or haven't actually read it. I think a lot of people are satisfied with having authority figures like priests and pastors who just tell them what they need to know from that long boring book that they don't really think they have to read.
But I also grew up Catholic in Northern California, so my experience isn't exactly representative of other Americans. Evangelicals in the South probably feel a lot more pressure to actually read the Bible. But do they read it cover to cover? And among those who do, do they read it critically? And in the context of other books of ancient myth?
25 years ago, I remember asking my parents what religion we were. The answer: "shrugs Christian." I bet a lot of parents were like mine, and that's why we see such a natural decrease.
I would say none of those questions matter and are none of anyone's business. My beliefs, or yours for that matter, should have no impact on how we live our lives and ships have no impact on others.
The word "should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentiment.
I agree with you - matters of faith shouldn't have an impact on the lives of anyone but their holders. But in the USA, we live in what amounts to an increasingly Christo-fascist state. Christianity is being used as a cudgel with which to remove the rights of people, regardless of their views.
The same can be said of other nations, with other religions - and even non-religions. Science has been used as a cudgel too.
I'm surprised and glad to read this. I think religion can do more good than harm, but in America it has been weaponized and absolutely does more harm than good.
I think historically the "harm" side of the scale is too weighed down to salvage. Globally. We'd be better off abandoning all forms of magical thinking.
I think that, if people were to abandon all forms of religious/magical thought ... we'd just find other reasons to kill and discriminate against each other.
I'm an agnostic atheist. I also do not hold a high opinion of humanity at large. We make terrible decisions on the regular, and we find ways to hate each other all the time. You don't need to be religious to be bigoted, even if there's a lot of history connecting the two.
There is always an out group.
It would be a better situation if no group had a magic book with explicit instructions to be awful though. The problem with these magic books is there’s no way to really rationally argue against any of their tenets because they are pretty much by definition taken on faith that supersedes rational thought.
Sure, individuals can decide to opt out of sections be choosing to see them as allegorical or not relevant because of historical context, or whatever way they need to rationalize their way out of doing what the book says, but very existence of these books always provides an avenue for fundamentalists to go back to taking them literally.
Other magic books will fill the void, though.
Eugenics was considered good science for a good period, and continues to be misused to this day. There's plenty of books that get cult followings without any ties to religion, that get used to sort and divide people.
Hell, there's whole cults out there that aren't based on religion at all.
Again, I only say all of this because while there's plenty of shit we can lay at the feet of religion, we should be wary of just saying it is the SOLE REASON things are a certain way, or that people do certain horrible things.
Eugenics has been pretty thoroughly smashed by science though. We don’t still have 70% of people fully on board with eugenics, 20% on the edge, and a small minority that outright reject it, like we have with atheists versus religionists. And that only took a couple decades, the big religions have been defying science for millennia.
While this is strictly speaking true nowadays, it absolutely isn't an honest reflection of the history of science and eugenics. Eugenics came from the scientific community and flourished within it. There's a reason it's often uttered in the same breath as "scientific racism." And the idea that it "only took a couple decades" is simply ridiculous. Eugenics was wildly popular throughout the Western world for far longer than "a couple decades" and for a significant period of time, denying eugenics would have been considered "defying science". Our modern world still feels the effects of this era and has absolutely not been even close to entirely rid of eugenicist rhetoric and policy.
There is not some neutral force disconnected from other humans called "Science" that is the arbiter of truth. Science is practiced by scientific communities, and horrific things have been done time and time again as part of science -- the creation and proliferation of eugenics being only one example thereof. I'm a big fan of science, for what it's worth! I almost became an academic myself. But the idea that there's some abstract perfect ideal of Science that isn't doing all the horrible things scientists do is... kinda deifying the concept of science.
Religions cannot have been defying science for millennia btw, because science as something independent of philosophy and religion has not been around that long. The further back in time you go, the harder it is to separate the precursors to modern science from religion, because millennia ago no one made such a distinction. The "science vs. religion" framing arose in the Enlightenment and is not a reflection of any natural dichotomy -- it is perfectly possible for someone to be religious and not "defying science", and it is perfectly possible for a scientist to also be religious. Denying these possibilities only validates the religious dogma and anti-intellectualism among religious people who do deny science.
This is my exact point. People come up with stupid ideas in the name of both science and religion, but science has a built-in mechanism for flushing out nonsense while religion does not.
Religion has been defying basic elements of reality for millennia, even in the face of evidence.
There was also the Tuskegee Experiments, the countless people who've been experimented on, the animals and everything else...
Again, I'm not trying to say science is worse. Im simply pointing out that people can, and will, find ways to be horrible to each other, with or without religion.
A couple issues with your statement. First, eugenics is just one manifestation racism, which persists, and has for milennia. Score one for “science” maybe that it ended its association with the practice.
Second, eugenics as a thing has a much smaller scope than religion. And a large part of religion m’s scope, perhaps even the greater share, is good. Religion can and has brought people together to end bad things (poor people’s campaign), and do good things (love your neighbor as yourself).
Religion affects more than just an outgroup. It also creates dogma with the ingroup that may go against the common good. You see this with topics such as sex education, history, geology, and more.
If abolishing religion achieves all of those things except solve discrimination, it'll still be worth it.
But yes, if not religion we'll just kill each other over some other perceived slight.
Religion isn't the only social structure that creates in-groups and dogmatic principles.
Abolishing religion may achieve some benefits, while creating a whole host of new negatives - including a loss of some forms of social cohesion, some elements of social safety nets, that sort of thing.
The argument is a bit of a non-starter - there is no universe in which we "eliminate" religion across 8+ billion people. Even if we did, it is very hard to predict the consequences - and naive to assume they are all positive.
I think there is definitely a universe where we eliminate all of the more obviously absurd religions. I’m talking about translating scrolls out of a magic hat, aliens riding comets, walking on water, transmuting water into wine, seducing people in the form of a swan, that kind of nonsense. The more abstract versions that don’t really make any claims like deism probably have more staying power, but they are also correspondingly inoffensive.
How would you even do that as a practical matter without despotism? Foundationally, religion is ideas. And all attempts to control and the generally unsuccesful, often counterproductive, and sometimes, very dangerous. Maybe also it’s unjust?
It gets down to a core political question: what freedom should we have?
I don’t have an answer to that question, but I do have a solution: grow better religions with better ideas. Indulgence of faith and spiritual experience do not squelch inclusivity, generosity, en-dignification (the inverse of enshittification - you heard it here first, folks!). Real religion is about connecting people and their environment, to the good of everyone.
I don’t think we have to do “do” anything to achieve that. Just look at the trajectory of irreligion — people are steadily abandoning the supernatural. In the marketplace of ideas, religion versus irreligion is losing.
Why not just… not? What if the best idea is realizing that imagining a higher power is not actually a good idea?
I’m not persuaded that there is not a higher power. Neither the affirmative nor negative can be proven; I abide by the bard: There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in the minds of men…
But even if there is none, I will continue to exhort a profession whose noble goal is to promote goodness alone.
I don’t think it’s possible to have definitive evidence either way of something so vague as a “higher power” but I am absolutely convinced that if there is one, it isn’t getting involved in our day to day lives, either now or in the time of the “prophets.”
Are you referring to priests, or?
More generally to clergy, one of the three classical professions (others are doctors and lawyers).
Clergy’s sole noble role is to profess goodness. Doctors profess health, and lawyers, justice.
God/deity is only so useful as the extent to which it helps people be good, to a true cleric.
Simply being open to a higher power isn't a religion, it's agnosticism. Agnosis is a state of not having knowledge. Religions are attempts to understand, describe, even speak for, that higher power.
I agree that religion has caused a lot of problems for humanity, and that the rise of the Christian nationalists in the US is pretty bad. You can check my post history if you want to read more about my own run-ins.
That said, I think framing religion as mere "magical thinking" is both dismissive and reductive. Especially when you're talking about the sincerely held beliefs of billions of people that has given us thousands of years of thought, art, and culture.
Some of the best ideas I heard about keeping religion from running away from itself have come from a political theologian named Stephen Backhouse. He's probably not the original source of all of them, but he's how I came by them. It boils down to constructing our institutions to be frail instead of enduring, because when they start to endure too long, they take on a life of their own and start to do things for the sake of the institution itself rather than the original purpose it was founded for.
But this is not just a problem with churches. Businesses, social movements, and even governments fall prey to this as well. China has been actively suppressing all forms of religion belief to encourage loyalty to the state, and look at how that is turning out. Which makes me think it's probably a problem with human nature, not religion.
I agree that it’s dismissive but I would characterize it as simply accurate rather than reductive. Magic fills in the gaps where we didn’t know how things worked.
I stand by reductive. There is a lot more to religion than just magical thinking (borrowing Wikipedia's definition, "belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects").
Religion is a structure for social order, a center for building community and relationship, a mode of supporting people in the community, a place to raise and teach one's kids. The ISKCON-founded Akshaya Patra feeds 2 million children a day.
Like all human endeavor, religion can get out of hand, and when those structures take on a life of their own, it can be bad as well. But even the bad is not just magical thinking. It's politics, manipulation, and will to power which all manifest just fine for humans outside of religious contexts.
Dismissing the importance of religion in the world and reducing it to mere magical thinking fails to engage in an incredibly nuanced topic. Even if we had a way to unwind that particular part of human behavior, you's still have politics, manipulation, will to power. Like @Drewbahr said here, "we'd just find other reasons to kill and discriminate against each other".
The social benefits aren’t integral to religion, they’re integral to society. We associate them with religion because religion has sunk its teeth so deeply into many societies that it’s hard to see where one ends and the other begins.
You're technically right, but in my experience, local Christian organisations do a hell of a lot more for the poor than most atheists I know. In theory, there's nothing stopping a local atheist group from opening a soup kitchen. And indeed, I'm sure some do. But it sure is a hell of a lot rarer. Certainly none in my area.
What you may be surprised at is the number is the number of atheists who volunteer at charities. They aren’t very visible because they are just an assortment of random people, instead of representatives of an intrinsically self promoting group.
Non-religious NGOs are in fact quite common, and impactful. Medicines sans frontiers, Oxfam, and the united way come to mind immediately.
Those are secular organisations, not atheist ones. And again, I'm 100% sure that there are many atheist soup kitchens out there. But again, in my personal life, if someone is volunteering their personal time on a Sunday to feed the homeless, that person is waaaaay more likely to be religious. Atheists can do it. I once helped with houses after an earthquake, and I'm an atheist. But I can't hold a candle to some of those church groups.
Belief in an arbiter of morality does have positive effects, and it's silly to pretend otherwise.
Again, this is my point. Atheists don't have a group identity that has an intrinsic need to proclaim why it they doing something. They aren't (usually -- there are a small number of people, Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.) defined by what they don't believe. They're just random people doing good things, without religion. When they form organizations, they're generally not specifically non-religious organizations, they're just organizations.
I don’t really agree, but I don’t have high quality studies to point to on the matter.
I'll grant that. But again (anecdotally), the people I know in my life that are atheists volunteer less of their personal time than Christians. My mom just went to Guatemala to give food to poor children, as part of her religion. She's not conservative, she votes liberal, but it was her religion that led her to make that personal journey. My uncle volunteers his time every month or so. He's conservative, but he still does that. By contrast, I can't get my atheist friends to even vote, even though they complain about politics all the time, let alone volunteer any time for anything that's not personal enjoyment.
Al anecdotal, but it's my experience.
Given how conservatives are also much more likely to be religous than not, it's hard not to see that as self-serving back patting. Sure they'll run a soup kitchen. But they'll use the running of that soup kitchen to justify virtually nonexistent social safety nets. They certainly don't support policies that would eliminate the need for homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and food banks. "The churches take care of that, we don't need the state."
Ancedotally, all the atheists I know are also a lot more willing to just give cash or food to the homeless whom are begging.
Part of it is also just the general isolationist society...if you don't fear eternal damnation, you're a lot less likely to get up on sunday morning and trudge to whatever pulpit brand your parents dragged you to as a kid and meet people. Doubly hard to start up a new atheist non-profit organization.
You're completely right, and that's usually the spread. Conservatives are way more likely to vote for people running on making sure poor people can't sleep on a park bench, and are way more likely to volunteer their personal time for a good cause. Liberals are way more likely to vote for someone who promises a fair society, but (in my experience) way less likely to show up to that same soup kitchen.
Welcome to the party, St Augustine :)
Thanks, please feel free to call me Gus :)
Intentionally dismissive, mind you. I'm so sick of living under the Christian cultural default.
That's fair. There's a lot that I am sick of, too. I ended up in this place of disgust with Christianity, and it has been very damaging for relationships and friendships because I wasn't able to separate the Christian nationalist maniacs I was reading about online from my friends and neighbors who are just quietly living their (religious) lives.
But everyone's experience is different. I hope we end up in a place where people who are religious are free to practice, but the norm is to keep it out of the public sphere and make it opt-in instead of opt-out. And I hope that is a better world for you.
Agreed. All religion does is divide people into groups and set them against each other.
That's fairly modern. For most of history, people had personal, family and tribal gods, and it would've made no sense to kill someone over them. They were yours, there was no conversion. The gods is Sumer, the lands of Sumer, the language of Sumer were all part of the Sumerian package, for example. It's only now that we've disconnected religion from culture like this.
That may be the case, but it's hardly relevant. We live in the now.
But I mean, ethnic and folk belief systems still exist. Shinto aren't killing anyone over the lack of acceptance of Amaterasu. Tengri worshipers aren't burning down other centres of worship. This is mostly a problem for universal religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc), not for ethnic ones.
So it is extremely relevant. Don't universalise (mostly) Abrahamic problems. That's not all religion does.
EDIT: And even for ostensibly universal religions, some of them are de facto ethnic ones, like Eastern Christianity, Druzes, Yazidis, etc. there are zero Assyrians that want you to convert to their religion. It's their religion.
Shinto has absolutely been turned into a militaristic tool in the past. There are still modern Japanese who are into that whole emperor as a deity thing still.
I'm not saying that religion can't be turned into a weapon of war. I'm saying that no reasonable person would see Imperial Japan's conquest of China as a Shinto religious war. You can turn anything into a weapon of war and hate. Some Americans tell the descendants of Mexican immigrant to speak English. That doesn't suddenly turn language into the cause of conflict. Any difference can be weaponised.
What's wrong with seeing the emperor as a deity? Again, this isn't inherently a problem. Millions of Americans think that their dead relatives turn into sky bird people that can talk to them in their dreams. They're still peaceful.
The argument was that all religion does is divide people. IMHO, that's just inherently untrue, and quite unfair to a part of culture that's been part of human civilization since the dawn of sapience.
Honestly, I think the divine right of kings ranks up there with thinking that skin colour or what hangs (or doesn’t) between our legs matter in the continuum of most awful ideas humanity has produced.
I daresay that racism and sexism do more damage than a random elderly Japanese lady thinking that the emperor is the Son of Heaven.
Yes, if the emperor was leading a war of conquest, it would be a problem. But he's not. He's less powerful than King Charles.
Only because we have made such substantial progress in defanging the divine right of kings. And only through the expenditure of vast amounts of blood and treasure, I should point out.
Sure, but does that make a difference? There are billionaires in the US right now that might as well be Achaemenid monarchs for all the money, power and immunity to any laws they have.
If someone wants to believe that Emperor Showa was a demigod, I can think of much worse (and stupider) non-religious beliefs our society holds today. I don't particularly understand why that's being singled out.
There's a lesson in the cults of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Musk, or any number of other figures who don't claim divine right to rule [Trump is something of an edge case], but are granted superhuman status anyway.
My completely unresearched feeling is that it's a measure of the human sense of powerlessness in the face of suffering with unknown, uncontrollable causes, the child's demand for a more potent parent figure to take care of them.
"Divine right of kings" is a handy explanation that works for established dynasties, in an already-believing population. It usually reflects a bargain between separate centers of political and religious power.
Religion (specifically Christianity) is what props up that racism and sexism.
Mormons had official doctrine declaring black people as a cursed subclass until the 1970's. They're one of the largest Christian sects out there.
Look at how anti-abortion and anti-contraceptive the most religous parts of the country are. How there's a huge overlap between crosses hanging on walls and "The woman's place is in the kitchen."
Christianity is a very patriarchal religion. Its a very higharchal system where the local minister represents the lowest man on the org chart that os your direct messanger to the great unseen unknowable creator that promises you eternal life...so long as you listen to the minister.
A few examples do not establish, at least in my mind, that the problem here is religion itself. That racists, sexists, etc-ists couch their evil propensities in religious clothing does not implicate the religion itself. The same is true for “democracy” and “marketplace economics.”
Regardless of whether the religion is the cause, it's the armor. Science has been sexist and racist too, but that can be - and has been - argued with and proven wrong. When Christianity is the justification, you can't argue against the idea that a woman is supposed to submit to her husband. You shouldn't, because in that context the idea is correct. The Bible does in fact say that.
I'm not completely anti-religion, I do think it can do good things, but I think having such a majority of one religion that it seems remotely reasonable for us to be governed by it could never be a good thing. We need to be able to argue our policy stances in a way that can't be won using a rulebook that's separate from reality.
Christianity isn't patriarchal because it's Christianity. It's patriarchal because it was the religion of the Roman state, which was a very patriachal society before Christianity even existed!
This is my point about religion; you are attributing things to it that precede it. Racism isn't part of religion. Racism as we know it is a modern European invention. The Christian Roman Empire did not have the concept of race. Our concept of race arose in response to the massive chattel slavery we propped our systems on.
Religion just isn't that important and changes much less than what you think.
Of course, this is a problem. Subjects will follow the word of their god without question. Blind obedience is never a good thing.
That’s true only if the belief is that the deity is omnipotent, omnipresent, and infallible. In hebrew and hellenistic religions, adherents argue and wrestle with deities, and sometimes even prevail.
And again.....you're bringing up religions that have like less than 3% representation in America....the country in question. America's religious breakdown is roughly as follows:
65% - Some sort of Christian
30% - Atheist/Agnostic
5% - Literally anything else. Jews are < 1%. As are any given polytheistic religion.
This Umbrella Christianity does believe that the Holy Trinity is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Infallible. So in the context of the country under discussion, with the exception of a small rounding error of "Other," subjects will follow the word of their god without question.
Please recognize that there is a wide variety of "Christian" in the USA.
On paper, you're right - if you are Christian, then by definition you believe in the Christian God, which is omnipotent, omnipresent, infallible, etc. But saying that the "subjects will follow the word of their god without question" is not fair to the wide variety and extents of belief, both within the USA and within the wider Christian/religious world.
If every Christian was "following the word of their god without question", then God is putting out a lot of mixed signals. Which, readers of the Old and New Testaments would surely agree with. Glib commentary aside, though - they can't all be acting on God's will - because some believers say God loves everyone, and some believers say God will condemn people to hell if they don't follow their particular flavor of Christianity.
Just ... recognize that painting all Christians as unquestioning followers does them a disservice, just as painting scientists as acting purely on logic and rationality is similarly inaccurate.
I recognize I'm going to bat quite a bit for religion here; I'm a bit of a contrarian, so that's playing into things.
To restate @drewbahr, christianity in the us is hardly monolithic. Certainly Franklin Graham aligned folks fit your description, but only the hardest of core catholics believe that God’s proclamation, independent of god themself, are subject to interpretation and contextual application.
Israel literally means “wrestles with god,” a huge part of all abrahamic religions.
40% of America thinks the Earth is 10,000 or less years old.
That's all the evidence I need that 40% of America is incapable of properly interpreting or contextualizing any doctrine and reconciling it with modern knowledge.
So that leaves about 20% of Christians whom might possible be capable.
(for @Drewbahr as well)
That 40% of Americans that believe in Young Earth isn't probably all Christian or otherwise religious, but that's a fair point.
Good thing that number is decreasing, albeit slowly.
For all the going-to-bat-for-religion I've done, I will restate that I'm agnostic atheist - and there is, in my mind, no question that the earth is billions of years old, life evolved from single-celled common ancestors, and all of that.
I may be a contrarian, but I'm not that contrarian.
I promise you, no one is following the word of the emperor. More people would die for Trump than for the emperor. Showing again that a figure being religious is not the problem. The problem is society. There's something broken in American society, and removing religious won't fix it even a little bit.
It is worth noting that trump is very much posturing himself as a religious (Christian Nationalist) emperor, so I'm not sure your metaphor here really pans out ...
I mean, Musk then. Or one of the secular far right lunatics on YouTube. It doesn't really matter. Removing religion doesn't remove Trump, or Musk, or Bolsonaro, or Putin. They use religion the same way they use language, ethnicity, class.
Not anymore. They don't see the emperor as a deity anymore afaik.
A few people still do. The US forced a constitutional change, but that didn't alter everyone's religious beliefs.
And like I said before, those people are less dangerous than the January insurrectionists, even though Trump isn't a god to them. Removing religions doesn't fix the problems we're looking at, is my point.
The now is subject to change, and not always for the better. The past provides useful context for the now.
While it does indeed provide context, it doesn't influence the now in any meaningful way. If someone is being affected by religious violence, it doesn't help them if you tell them it didn't always use to be like that.
Except it very much did, at least by any Christian-dominant nation.
The Church has always had a thing about persecuting anybody not part of The Church.
Talking about religions that haven't tangibly existed for over 2000 years as support of its existence is a good bit disingenuous.
42% of the world is not Christian or Muslim. And even within that 58%, most people live in peace with their neighbours. Religious peace is far more common than religious strife.
I mean, there was an episode of Eureka that showed the high school. Well, there were several but I'm thinking of one in particular. Where it showed the school's hierarchy was ordered around the intelligence of the students. And the smartest kids were picking on those below them in that ranking. The scene was a nerd knocking the books out of a (smart) football player's hands, and taunting him.
People will always find divisions. They will always have a reason to sort and tabulate and label people into different buckets. America uses race, religion, money; primarily. Geography shows up some (think New Yorkers shitting on non-New Yorkers, or how everyone basically shits on the South or Midwest and then have the gall to wonder why Southerners and Midwesterners get so bent out of shape over being treated like incapable hicks). More than one or two western nations add class into that mix. Some cultures/nations prize or discount age, as another common one.
If America turned atheist, it'd just be other stuff being weaponized. Do religious adherents take things too far? Often, yes. But so do the wealthy, for example. Taking religion off the board won't be a pancea of harmonious relations. It's in our nature to divide and battle. Humans always find a reason to.
I'm less concerned about the divisions religion creates, (for the reason you've explained, not because it's not important) and more concerned about the specific instances of poor policy that can't be handled with reason because they're not based in reason. Abortion bans, barriers to contraceptive access, resistance to comprehensive sex ed being taught in schools, and legal barriers to gay and trans rights, are all largely rooted in religion.
That's not to say that no one would ever harass gay people without religion, but the idea that "marriage is between one man and one woman" is a religious idea that can't be approached with any sort of logic. At least someone who believes the purpose of legal marriage should be to encourage reproduction and build strong family units can be reasoned with. You can discuss the history and purpose of marriage and other similar contracts, what purpose they serve, whether that purpose can be served by other means. There's room for learning and for minds to be changed.
With religion, it's just "look here in this book where it says 'Adam and Eve'." And within that religion you can argue about what the book actually says and how it's been translated and whether it's literal or a metaphor and so on and so forth, but that's not so useful for someone to whom the book doesn't apply at all. I'm not going to learn all the rules of baseball and how they've historically been interpreted so that I can make sure that I'm not breaking them while I'm walking around my house specifically not playing baseball, and I shouldn't have to. Furthermore if I, someone who has never watched or played baseball, argues that my daily routine is not incompatible with the rules of baseball based on an obscure umpire's interpretation, that's not going to carry a lot of weight with avid baseball fans.
At least without religion we can hold each other to rules that can be reasonably discussed, if not agreed upon. We can understand each other's frameworks and discuss the times when they may not apply.
Having grown up religious in my early childhood I still cannot get over the fundamental lie at the heart of religion, particularly the abrahamic faiths.
Being told that there is an arbiter for things like morality and that you - as a member of the religion - have a connection with them is just lying to your child. Sure, there's nuance there, but they don't have the ability to pick it apart. They'll take it at face value.
I think that in a modern, globalizing society, our current religions do more harm than good. Before we could fill in a lot of the gaps I'm sure that it was a very good way to find "meaning", but now that we can examine our books with a more scrutinizing eye and actually inform people "hey, there's probably no-one really up there", is it not morally correct to do so?
Faith is fine at face value. Someone can believe in a bunch of things without assigning an absolute truth to them like a lot, maybe most religions do. The spiritual can be a helpful and inspiring source, but a lot of ours is just awfully tainted with dated and outright false information that is written to promote a specific way of thinking.
We need to move on. We need to address the fact that the world these religions were built around is fundamentally different today in terms of its values. We need to stop lying to our kids. Ironically, Jesus' approach to faith is in my eyes an example of a great religion (sans the promise of heaven), but if everyone followed it for the past 2000 years... We'd probably be much nicer to each other, and not having this conversation.