The thing that underscores all of my experiences has been hypocrisy. So many people just want to belong to a group, or were raised in it and know nothing better. They don’t practice what they preach.
I can’t help but think the world will be better off when we abolish big religion.
This is, consistently, what I hear from friends and family as to why they have drifted away from the Catholic church, and is solidly my own reason as well.
You see people, day-in-day out being terrible, judgmental, hateful people, except on Sunday when they're in the front row being holier than thou. It grates on you, and leaves a bad taste. It's even worse, because those people tend to be the ones who gravitate toward leadership positions within your local church.
My theory is that people have always felt that way, but it was harder to nail down these awful people before social media. Now that everyone puts everything on social media, it's easy to see, in plain black and white print, that the deacon really is an asshole.
The one thing that I do genuinely lament from the death of large religious congregations (at least in my part of the states), is that there are no replacement social constructs for people to gather and feel a sense of community. I'm certain this has something to do with the splintering of American discourse; not the religion inherently, but the social aspect is lacking and legitimately missed by most folks.
I was raised Catholic and decided, as a teenager, that I didn't want to be Catholic as an adult.
> My theory is that people have always felt that way, but it was harder to nail down these awful people before social media.
IMO, two things:
1: The changes in the 1960s to the English (native language) mass
2: The shift towards conservative politics
Have you been to a latin mass? (The old-style mass that the Church conducted until the 1960s.) It's a very different experience than modern Catholicism, and much more similar to eastern-style worship.
But, more importantly, the latin mass has a lot less preaching. It's a meditation, and then a social gathering afterwards. It's a lot more universal in the sense that you don't really have to explicitly align with the beliefs to still be comfortable with the community. (Edit: As in, if you don't believe in the whole Jesus thing, you can just enjoy the chanting at let your mind drift away.)
But, the thing that really turned me off of the Catholic church was the drift towards conservative politics. I attended a friend's wedding where the church had a massive anti-abortion billboard over their parking lot for the whole town to see. Another time I went to a mass in honor of some deceased family members and there were posters in the church advocating that members vote against marijuana legalization.
They don't, though, or at least they didn't always. No less a Church authority than Saint Thomas Aquinas said ensoulment didn't happen before quickening. The total prohibition on abortion is a relatively recent theological innovation, and this insistence that it has always been thus is one of the things above mentioned that leaves a bad taste in people's mouths can they can plainly see it isn't true.
St. Thomas said ensoulment happened at quickening because the science of the time said that the zygote was a simple thing. Given that understanding, St. Thomas held that the rational soul was not necessary to explain the developments that happened and in fact, that the soul which animated such simple matter must be simpler. Modern science tells us that the zygote is anything but simple and so St. Thomas' objection on the basis of a "simple" material component are incorrect. St. Thomas also said that all that he had ever written was "so much straw" after receiving a mystical experience of God's love (not _wrong_, just completely inadequate).
> It would be odd for the church to not openly oppose it
There's a difference between politics and religion. Getting back to my point, my opinion is that treating abortion as a political issue is one of the many reasons why people leave.
> Kerala is the only state in the south where there are no restrictions on the slaughter and consumption of cow meat
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/bee...
The comment was specifically about how it didn't seem unreasonable for the church to publicly oppose abortion, in response to a billboard on the church's property.
> the church had a massive anti-abortion billboard over their parking lot
It wasn't about the members of the church protesting at a hospital or other facility that performs abortions. Admittedly, that does happen in some places, but it's not what was being discussed.
Talk to some people from India about political/religious issues there. Eating beef, meat, and/or eggs is as offensive to some people in India, for religions reasons, as abortion is in the US.
Yet India doesn't have the same mass exodus from its churches as the US does.
But you see this nearly everywhere, with every type of organization/group. A prime example would be politicians and political groups who constantly talk about how they want to help people, but then throw those same people under the bus to get what they want. This is not something unique to any one type of organization.
From my experience, there are lots of good people in most religious organizations. I would venture to say, at least in the northeast US (which is where most of my experience is), it's the majority of the people. However, as with any organization, it's common for the bad apples to be the ones that rise in power, because they don't care who they hurt to get do so. This, too, is true everywhere.
That is exactly the opposite of my experience.
> That is exactly the opposite of my experience.
How so? Union membership has undergone a well-documented decline. While politics/political ideology does seem a lot more prominent, the role of the political parties has seemed to wither. Political activity seems much more ephemeral and individual.
So those people who want to belong to a group and believe in it without seeing what might be better can move into political groups for their identity? The actions and methods are human nature, so I think they will just move to a different domain.
The group Jesus is harshest with in the Gospels is in fact the hypocrites. He even calls them white washed tombs full of dead men's bones! What a lamentable state of things.
G.K. Chesterton's words in "What's Wrong with the World" come to mind where he points out "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried." Perhaps this applies to all major belief systems though, and not Christianity alone.
1) In theory, people go to church because they want to improve, not because they are already perfect. It's not hypocritical to make mistakes.
2) Hypocrisy is everywhere. No one really does scrum, no one really does TDD, no motivational speaker is happy all the time, and no christian is without sin. This shouldn't be surprising.
One thinks this is because ideals are meant to strived towards but not necessarily achieved.
A solution of throwing out ideals because they are hard to achieve and a little myopic in my opinion.
What i find an interesting thought is that you either believe these teachings are from a higher power or they are just from man.
The former had obvious implications, but the with the latter you will then need to answer the question is it written by lunatics or people that actually knew what they were doing?
No, I don't think that's the case. I think the hypocrisy is that they don't try. What turns people off of organized religion is seeing so many who participate with words but not with their hearts. Of course when you have Jesus Christ as your role model you're going to fail to live up to it a lot of the time, but if you're not at least trying then in what sense are you a Christian?
That said, I have serious doubts religion and hypocrisy are aligned anymore than the other sources of truth - especially when followed without applying critical thinking skills.
What are you replacing this extremely important function with? Vacuum?
Spirituality offers frameworks for dealing with, and often embracing, many of the questions for which there may never be a satisfactory answer.
Whether you believe the postulates of a religion or not, there a ton of higher-level lessons to be learned from those who do.
There are tons of higher level lessons to be learned from both religious and non-religious sources.
And even then, Christians murder more people in the US than anyone, per-capita or otherwise.
And it's not necessarily a bad thing when you frame it as a cultural institution. For many people, they grew up with the church and its traditions. Their families and friends share the same traditions, and it's part of their identity. They may not believe in the supernatural stuff or even feel aligned with the moral system, but it's still part of their culture.
You could say that's hypocritical, but we expect a an attitude of humility in regards to many cultures who have even more "backwards" practices than this. I think we ought to apply the same attitude here.
That is why the US has become so divided recently. That is why the blind devotion to a cause should be questioned by every believer. “Wait a sec, do I really believe this? Do I really want this to be my identity?”
You can be a good person without being a Catholic or a Muslim.
I think we can agree that religion and goodness can run orthogonally, but let's not be so paternalistic to assume that people are unable to participate within a community's cultural traditions without sacrificing their ability to think for themselves.
I had a coworker who went there. He had, uh, stories.
Are we discussing organized religions or political parties? Your comment could apply to either.
You can believe whatever the hell you want - but it’s not for you or society or anyone else to decide how I can live my life.
WoD wasn't started by religious authorities at all, but by (secular) technocrats. Whether the motivation was really public health or political persecution is disputed, but blaming the Church is just silly. Some quasi-religious justification was used, but that's just political strategy.
>non profit tax avoidance
All religions are guaranteed equivalent tax privileges in the United States Constitution, as Madison intended and the courts have affirmed.
There has never existed a society that didn't have a religion. Everyone has a religion, what they take to be the highest good, what they worship. It just so happens that those who naively brush off what they take to be "religion" simply, probably tacitly, take on some vulgar and crude variety.
> The war on drugs, abortion, non profit tax avoidancee, so many fucked up things
You realize that your views are also views, right? You presume some kind of objectivity while denying that right to others. Sounds kind of intolerant to me, especially if we go by your own prejudices.
You also appear to have scapegoated religion for various things you don't like (mind you, things like the opposition to abortion is a moral question, not a sectarian one, though sadly, the myth that it is seems to persist, probably because it allows militant pro-choice types to exploit "religious freedom" as a way to frame it as a "private matter" since religion under a liberal regime is subordinated to liberal doctrine, which has the interesting effect of elevating liberalism to the rank of state religion).
> the belief that my religion is better than yours and you need to believe what I believe
Hold on. Two things are being conflated. First, if there is one truth, then either a religion is true (or at least contains some truth), or it isn't (or contains falsehoods). That which is true should be accepted, that which isn't shouldn't. The idea that religion is just a thing we believe simply because we wish to believe it is absurd. You believe something because you have good reasons to believe it, not because you wish it to be the case.
Second, what do you mean by "you need to believe what I believe"? This has nothing to do with what others believe. It has everything to do with whether something is true. Of course, you shouldn't try to force anyone to believe anything, even if it is or you think it is true, though any society will punish or constrain someone _acting_ on wrong beliefs in some cases. All legal and judicial systems do this, obviously, and they can do this with a tangible tenacity.
I'd also add that there what falls under "religion" differs enough that it makes no sense to criticize "religion" categorically. This kind of approach typically conceals a particular real or imagined religion that the person in question has in mind, perhaps particular experiences, and from which that person hastily generalizes to "religion" as a category. The error here should be obvious, especially if you take into consideration what I've already written, namely, that everyone has some kind of religion, however vague or crude or mundane or insane.