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Comment by anonAndOn | Hacker News Reader

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership...

"Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over."

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Emo Philips has another joke which I think was voted somewhere as funniest joke ever, and is a great take on western religion :

“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.”

Rarely does anyone ever ask my religion but when people do i tell them Hellenism (Belief in the greek gods). People often give me a quizzical look - but when you study the 'religion' you find interesting beliefs that help you in modern day.

For instance, claiming you don't have 100% complete faith in the myths and gods wasn't a heretic offense. Everyone respected the fact that the stories were arch-types that displayed courage, anger, revenge, ect.

Also, if someone else came up to you from Egypt and believed in an entirely different pantheon you respected their opinion and could see similarities in your own religion.

Christianity from the very early days (The skims' under Constantine) was a very absolute one. There was a right and wrong. There was only one god and you are wrong and a heretic for believing in another.

That's why Hellenism works so well for me. I do not claim to be a moral precept but i do offer you this; A peace treaty. You can believe what you want to believe as long as you respect my own moral reasoning. In the grand scheme of things as long as there is no direct harm to you for my actions you must accept and respect them but i do not have to bow to them. It cannot be a suicidal pact, meaning if i do not believe in YOUR GOD, slip up and don't call you a 'They' or say somethings 'Gay'.

I truly believe one of the biggest problems with current society is everyone believes they are a moral precept and have all the answers. Love your neighbor.

>Also, if someone else came up to you from Egypt and believed in an entirely different pantheon you respected their opinion and could see similarities in your own religion.

More than that, they believed each others gods were cultural representations of the same actual gods. After all there is only one sky. It doesn't make any sense to think that our sky god is different from their sky god, or our sun god is different from their sun god, though being gods they can manifest in different forms.

But then it's shocking how many people seem to think that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship different gods. There's only one god of Abraham, which arguably Hindus call Brahman. They're all just names and stories, there's only one reality*.

* citation needed

>More than that, they believed each others gods were cultural representations of the same actual gods.

Ironically, Christianity kind of did the same thing, rather believing everyone else's gods were just demons or sorcerers in league with Satan. In further irony, this led to a lot of syncretism of pagan beliefs and rituals into Christianity.

I'm certainly not a religious expert, but from my understanding Christianity's main innovations were not monotheism or absolute morality. Those concepts had been around for a very long time and Christianity adopted those ideas that from others and then added their own innovations on top of that.

Note that they understood the myths to be archetypes, but outright atheism was a charge punishable by death. That's what they got Socrates on.

Also note that they were pretty limited in their tolerance. If people got pissed at you, they wrote your name on a piece of pottery (ostrakon). If enough names were gathered, you were banished -- the root of the word "ostracized".

On the upside, they were very tolerant of transgender and intersex individuals. Note in particular the case of Callo/Callon, who changed their sex and pronouns.

It's weird how many Americans are completely unaware of the second largest branch of Christianity (or better call it "the trunk" and everything else - "a branch") - the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is the original Christianity without a pope, indulgences, inquisition, and other things, which have nothing to do with the early Christianity.

Yes, also Christians in the US are mostly Protestants, which purposely moved away from the things you mentioned.

I'm a Lutheran and I've studied the works of Luther. When I learned about the Orthodox church as an adult, I really liked what I saw. If Luther had been an Orthodox priest, I wonder if he would have launched his gentle rebellion (and, later, his not-so-gentle rebellion).

So it's like the relationship between modern agile methodologies and the original agile manifesto then?

No, it's more immutable vs mutable... or accepting messages with bad public key signatures.

Prior to the East-West Schism, and from the beginnings of organized Christianity, the entities which became the Eastern Orthodox Churches after the schism had the same Pope, with a somewhat different role, as Western Christianity.

Some of them also have had things not unlike the inquisition, though they don't call it that.

And, of course, outside of the Eastern Orthodox and maybe the “Old Catholics”, even those Christians who disagree with the Roman Catholic position don't see the Eastern Orthodox as having a particular claim to original Christianity.

EDIT: for example, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Church of the East are, in their current form, older than the Eastern Orthodox, and from their perspective the branch containing both sides of the 1054 Schism is a divergence from “original Christianity” in the same way that Western Christianity is viewed by the Eastern Orthodox.,,

I can understand the belief that Eastern Orthodoxy is more of a "trunk" than more recent "branches", but what about core ideas that predate Jesus? e.g. the immortality of the soul was reasoned by Plato (Republic, circa 350BC); heaven and hell have been portrayed by Virgil (Aeneid, circa 19BC). Aren't these the "trunk", and the Hebrew Bible and Jesus another branch?

Trees have roots, too.

This is a somewhat funny joke but it doesn't actually map to reality. Inter-Christian conflict is almost nonexistent in 2021 and has been so for probably a generation.

Edit: by “conflict” I mean actual real violent conflict. Not people arguing on Reddit. People literally killing each other (or pushing them off bridges) because they are “heretics.” This doesn’t happen much at all anymore in the Christian world. Even the edge cases like Northern Ireland have little to do with actual religious differences. That issue is mostly political in nature and revolves around the relationship of Ireland to Great Britain, not the intricacies of the Christian religion.

It’s easy to observe the difference when you look at the Muslim world, where there still is a lot of violent conflict and people being persecuted or killed because they are “heretics.”

Idk, man... about two years ago, I heard an evangelical dude say Catholics aren’t even Christians. As a Catholic, I found it a bit startling to learn that I am - by default - going to hell.

Pop by r/catholic and you'll come across some people's hush-hush Catholic views that Martin Luther was evil by leading away millions to eternal damnation because there's no salvation outside The Catholic Church.

No doubt. I’ve known some pretty insulated, hateful Catholics.

The Church has always taught that schism and heresy are mortal sins, and the teaching hasn't changed, even if most clergy don't talk about it.

Catholicism also teaches that every non-Catholic person is going to hell.

Catholicism isn't monolithic apparently, because that does not appear to be the first answer in a web search:

https://www.catholic.com/qa/do-non-catholic-christians-go-to...

This says non-Catholics who have not committed a mortal sin can go to heaven, which includes "have no other God before me." Further, I'm pretty sure they consider the sacrament of baptism necessary to go to heaven, defacto ruling out every non-catholic.

edit I'm apparently somewhat misremembering things, and any non-catholic without a mortal sin has a supposed chance, but I still would say that rules out all non-catholics.

That’s not true. It was long debated, and finally clarified in the Vatican II (in the mid 1960s.)

Any Catholic still saying that today is going against the Church.

To be a little more precise, Catholicism teaches that every person in Heaven is a Catholic (even if they weren't necessarily a Catholic on earth.) It admits baptism by desire and the possibility of salvation of those who are invincibly ignorant.

But, at the same time, Catholic tradition has always maintained that even most Catholics end up in Hell. There's even biblical support for the idea in the "wide"/"narrow gate" language of the Gospels.

So, if Catholicism is the one true Faith, and even most Catholics end up in Hell, why would anyone reason that those outside of the one true Faith have good odds?

Was it because the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon from Revelations, or because it's secretly a pagan religion that worships Saints and the Virgin Mary as gods? I love the rationales people put forward for that kind of stuff.

For a Guy purportedly trying to bring salvation to humanity, some Jesus's followers do seem to relish opportunities to keep the everyone they can out of the Kingdom.

I have been told the same thing. In my case it was just that they didn't know other forms of Christianity existed other than their own.

> a pagan religion that worships Saints and the Virgin Mary as gods

Sometimes I put on my 2edgy4u atheist cap and needle my lapsed-Catholic wife with that notion. It looks like a duck and a quacks like a duck, call it veneration if you like -- it's still a duck. And I do point out that there's nothing wrong with that. Given the choices I'd rather worship a once-mortal mother goddess than a tripartite sky-father who spends most of the book being terrible.

You don't know, they might be of the opinion that a good life dedicated to Jesus may be enough, regardless of how you dress it up.

But, from outside, they appear to be at least half right.

The catholic church seems to be less CHRISTian and more ... Trinity-ian. I assume it's a fairly large difference on the ground as one is all about a single person, born a regular man, who brings forgiveness for unintentional sins. The other, a story about a much more conscious god who manifests himself in a young body and proceeds to lecture on morality and the afterlife.

I don't think that's true. Churches are deeply divided on some core issues, and in some cases are splitting over these differences: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/united-methodist-conserv...

That link is about Methodists splitting over a fairly big issue (gay marriage) and not the minute differences referred to in the parent comment.

I was replying to "Inter-Christian conflict is almost nonexistent in 2021". That's a fairly categorical statement, and seems plainly false.

The "Troubles" in Northern Ireland may be over but there is still tension and violence in Northern Ireland between a subset of Catholics and Protestants. The sectarian violence still happens but does not get reported internationally because the scale is so much lower than it was up to 2010, but to say Inter-Christian conflict has been non-existent for a generation (25 years?) is wishful thinking at best.

See my edit.

As an atheist apostate who was raised in a fundamentalist, Baptist, Christian church in the Great Lakes region, it hits pretty close to home.

I was last in church a couple weeks ago for a funeral; it was a little weird hearing about the ways people from various highly-similar churches talked about Grandma's spiritual history as she was enlightened from her Christian Reformed early childhood to know a living and true God. Did she know the theological differences at age 10? We talked about the effect she had as the matriarch of our extended family bringing everyone together for decades by sponsoring an annual summer trip to a nearby Bible conference ground, and about how she justifiably ended that when the Bible conference lost their way and endorsed some speakers with relatively minor theological differences.

It's not "conflict" in the sense of the Spanish Inquisition - no one, as far as I know, would genuinely push someone off a bridge for being in a different sect - but around here they'd pray for the person to accept the truth, call for church discipline/excommunication/speaking bans if in a position of power, or they'd leave the church and find a slightly different sect that didn't make the wrong call on whatever issue was brought up by the council of 1912.

There's a paradox of intolerance at play: A group that aims to be universally tolerant cannot actually tolerate intolerance, and fundamentalist Christianity advocates a singular, accurately understood, unique truth at its core. You can and tolerate love those who hold different theologies all you want, but if you believe in one absolute universal truth as a lot of Christian culture does, then anyone who believes even a little bit differently is not right, which is to say, by definition, they're wrong.

Karl Popper was a moron. You can tolerate intolerance just fine by assuming there will be someone equally intolerant of such intolerance.

I wish people would stop quoting that denthead. It’s as silly as people claiming the Qu’ran has passages specifically commanding them to blow people up.

Your conclusion is definitionally the same as Popper's? Intolerance of intolerance is the solution. It is only a "paradox" in that unlimited tolerance leads to this seemingly backwards outcome of the triumph of intolerance.

The difference is that Popper thinks you yourself must be the intolerant one. I'm saying that if intolerance exists, then someone else will take care of it because they too must surely exist.

Taken to its logical conclusion, nothing can be tolerated but tolerance itself.

Kind of an inversion of Chesterton's 'Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.'

This is only true as far as how most Christians and churches are so casual in their beliefs, there's no meaningful difference in their lifestyle vs a non-believer's.

Maybe you need to clarify by what you mean by conflict -- do you mean violent conflict? Because ideological conflict and schism seems quite high between denominations, christian branches, and even within congregations. E.g Rob Bell vs Francis Chan / Tim Keller on whether hell is real and if Rob Bell is going there. A lot of evangelical groups today are "non-denominational" meaning they face these ideological clashes within their congregations.

I mean, as an atheist it seems obvious that they're all facing the problem of ill-defined views causing confusion. There's no ground truth so everyone's just interpreting it how they feel is right, whether that's by focusing on literal biblicisms or focusing on real world feedback / interpersonal relationships, and the lines are drawn around litmus test issues across the spectrum of christian beliefs.

In the us it's conservative christians against everyone else (mostly evangelicals but multiple other groups too, and they also fight among themselves).

The group that isn't fighting much is liberal christians (I try to define them as accepting homosexuality) and non believers. Those are the groups not fighting.

The violence is just the punchline that makes it a joke. The point is how ludicrous it is that people take these minuscule differences in dogma seriously, and just how seriously they do take it. That's what maps to reality.

And yet our society is more polarized than ever. From your anecdote, one would think that declining religion would result in peace and love overflowing in society, but we see the opposite. Public morality cannot be maintained without religion; we will sadly see the end result of that in coming years.

? how do you explain the relative stability of largely secular nations then?

The two most destructive regimes of the twentieth century were explicitly secular. The stability of modern Western Europe is more of a historical consequence of Pax Americana and the Cold War than secularism.

... and what exactly are these two destructive regimes?

Do I really need to point that out? Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

If one wants to play "edgy contrarian" and argue that the United States was somehow worse than either of those, well...the U.S. is technically secular too.

Believing that the communist countries were not religious countries is a common fallacy of the Westerners.

In reality communism was a religion and more precisely a variant of the Christian religion, but this fact was disguised by changing the names of all things related to the Christian religion.

Just a few of the correspondences between Christianity and Communism (shown as traditional word => communist word for the same concept):

Christian => atheist

Pagan => Christian

Prophets => Marx, Engels & Lenin

Holy Scriptures => the published works of Marx, Engels & Lenin

Christian martyrs => communist illegalists

Pope => general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cardinals/patriarchs => general secretaries of communist parties

Priests => members of the communist parties having functions in the party hierarchy

Religious teaching in schools => Political teaching in schools

Priest of a military unit => Political second-in-command of a military unit

Heretics => oppositionists to the party leadership

Happy life in the afterlife => happy life in the future truly communist society

Holy Inquisition => Committee for State Security

... and so on.

Writing a complete dictionary about all the words used by Christianity with their replacements in Communism would take a very long time.

While the communist vocabulary looks very different, the meanings are exactly the same as in Christianity.

All the communist countries were not countries free of religion, but on the contrary, they were countries were a monotheistic-like religion was intermingled with all the administrative & government institutions and where all the other religions were aggressively persecuted, including the true atheists or agnostics (i.e. not the communist atheists, which was the code name for the believers in the communist religion).

The claim that the communist countries were not religious was just propaganda, they were countries where there was no separation between the religion and the state.

Likewise false was the claim that the communist countries had a different economic system, in reality their economic system was an extreme form of capitalism, where everything was dominated by monopolies.

It's not that you are wrong, per se, because communism is indeed descended from a Christian culture and full of many Christian ideas. Overall, it functioned as a quasi-religious system.

However, the Soviets actively rooted every religion during their rule, especially Orthodox Christianity. So if we are to consider Soviet communism a form of Christianity, it's unclear how useful this actually is.

Your counter-argument does not work. It actually provides one more similarity between Communism and the various variants of Christianity and it makes stronger my analogy.

Yes the communists persecuted the other religions, inclusive by imprisoning and/or killing many Catholic priests and many Orthodox priests.

However, this is exactly what was previously done by some kinds of Christians against other kinds of Christians, e.g. during the many conflicts between Protestants and Catholics and between Catholics and Orthodox Christians.

Some people downvoted me, but this also just validates my affirmation that most Westerners are not aware of these facts and they do not understand Communism.

I have grown in a country occupied by communists, so I know from direct experience how Communism works, not from the fantastic depictions typical for the Western movies or novels.

When I was in school, there was nothing that I hated more than the mandatory classes of communist religion, the so-called Political teachings.

Also, due to the stupidity of one of my colleagues, a teacher discovered that I had a Bible and, because of that, I was almost expelled from High School a short time before the final exam, but I was very lucky due to some special circumstances and I could avoid the expulsion.

Many years later, after communism failed, I believed that the new generations of students will escape my fate and they will no longer waste time with the mandatory religion classes.

Unfortunately, my hope was wrong, because the mandatory Political teachings classes were not deleted from the curriculum, but they were replaced by mandatory Christian religion classes.

So nothing has changed, when the Communist religion was mandatory, I had almost lost my career because it was supposed that I might be Christian, but if I were a student today, I would have similar problems if I would attempt to criticize in school the Christian religion, for exactly the same reasons that were applicable to Communism.

But again the thing is, if you're going to take this line of thought, then secularism itself is really just a variation of Christianity. And at that point, of what use are the distinctions we are making? If Soviet communism is a kind of Christianity, it's certainly a kind significantly different enough to notice and bracket off. Certainly it has little use for say, The Bible, or priest-like figures, or various other things that do tie together the different branches of Christianity.

No, there are tremendous differences between secularism and Christianity, while Christianity and Communism have identical consequences for the life of a typical citizen.

Communism, Christianity, and also the other monotheist religions, are extremely intolerant against the believers of any other religion.

Secularism is the opposite, at most you could say that secularism is like many polytheistic religions, where it was considered normal that everyone believes in their own gods and for the other people it does not matter which are those gods.

The life of a normal citizen of a communist country was very similar, for example, to the life in Italy or Spain 600 years ago, when the Church was more powerful. It might have actually been worse, because the Communist Party might have been more powerful than the Catholic Church ever was.

Permanently you had to be very careful with everything you said, because if you ever contradicted some dogma written in the Holy Communist Scriptures or some interpretation given by a High Communist Priest, you could be singled out as an heretic and be excommunicated, with very bad consequences.

Regarding the Communist dogmas, everything was based on "have faith and do not doubt". It was absolutely impossible to have any discussion about communism based on rational arguments or on experiment results.

Like Christianity, Communism blocked any kind of scientific research that could contradict in any way its Holy Scriptures. To make progress in any career, you had to either be or simulate that you are a true believer and you had to display frequently your faith in the Communist religion.

It does not matter what words are used by Christianity or Communism, wherever any of them succeeded to control the state institutions, the consequences were the same for the citizens, no freedom of speech and severe discrimination between believers and non-believers.

Secularism was precisely the reaction against this, having the purpose of allowing the freedom of speech and religion.

Not sure whether you intended this or not, but your statement could be extended to imply that secular societies become destructive ones? Which would be quite a stretch - there are many secular stable countries and many unstable, highly religious ones as well.

No, that isn't what my comment says and it's not what I intended. Please, read what I actually wrote.

Fair enough.

Depends on how you define secular. Most secular states are simply neutral and promote plurality of culture and religion, i.e. allowing choice. The other type of secular state is one which is openly hostile to religion.

The US is becoming openly hostile to religion, as many of the comments in this thread evidence, which is distinct from neutrality. I agree with religious freedom as such, with everyone being on equal standing.

If you define secularism as the USSR or China, I would disagree with their long term stability, or even with liking their regimes.

How about church membership

Funnily enough, one of the most secular countries, Sweden, has a 50%+ church membership. But it's an anomaly; church membership is still a good litmus test for secularity everywhere else.

> Sweden, has a 50%+ church membership.

Could it be that in Sweden, you get some sort of tax rebate or discounts at supermarkets if you are officially registered with some religion?

If it’s anything like Iceland people get auto-registered as members. Much better to look at things like church attendance rates.

The evidence doesn't support your claim. The least religious countries are among the most stable and most peaceful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun...

Their crime and imprisonment rates are far below those of the US. Even on an individual level, the presence of non-religious individuals is assocated with a series of positive societal effects: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227616923_Atheism_S...

Religion isn't necessary for public morality, and as America has shown, is often actively harmful. America is full of people who assume that they are good people BECAUSE they go to church rather than because of their acts. By and large, these are generally not good people. Instead, they're among the most judgmental and least helpful members of society.

To paraphrase Gandhi, "I like your Christ, not your Christians". The religious in modern society can't even be bothered to read the Cliff Notes of their own book, otherwise they'd be focused on helping the poor and remembering that rich people have trouble getting to heaven rather than going around promoting guns, no taxes, and slashing social safety nets.

I think the argument could be made that most of the top countries you mentioned are linguistically and racially homogenous. I don't really have a conclusion on whether religion helps or hurts a more racially diverse population but just something worth pointing out.

I don't think China is racially homogenous.

I am trying to avoid a flaming discussion here but am also trying to moderate your comment. I am trying to promote guns, no taxes, and slashing social safety nets but am also spending much time, talent, treasure on helping of those needy. I am disagreeing with state force but am also disagreeing with selfishing. I hope that the comment here is clarifying your view on the generalised population.

Same here. Frankly if the GP's "Cliff Notes" version tells them that the Bible says to agitate politically for taking away other people's means of self-defense, or for seizing other people's property by force to be redistributed to the GP's preferred causes, then the GP really needs to put down the abridged version and read the original. Pacifism and charity are portrayed as virtues, to be sure, but it says nothing about forcing those virtues on others, and doing so strays about as far from the core message as it's possible to get.

The Bible's thoughts on self defense, taxation, and even "forced charity" aren't obscure - they're well known direct quotes.

https://biblehub.com/context/matthew/5-38.htm

https://biblehub.com/mark/12-17.htm

Jesus teach importance of forgivenes but also realise there exist bad people. Luke 22:36 "Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one."

On tax, Jesus was giving that response to an entraping question from Pharisees they asked because He had in past criticised of harsh tax policy. Force tithing is not a thing of New Testament but old.

Yes, these quotes are indeed very well known. Thank you for reinforcing my point.

Matthew 5:38 — He advises his followers not to retaliate when attacked. He does not tell them to go out and disarm anyone else, or petition the Roman government to hypocritically do so on their behalf.

Mark 12:17 — When the Pharisees attempted to entrap Him with a question when could not be answered either "yes" or "no" without enraging either the Romans or the religious leaders, He evades the original question and turns it into an admonition to give people (and God) what they are due. Note that he never actual said that the coin was owed to Caesar, though many people seem to assume so. He only asked whose face was on the coin. The idea that not just the tax being demanded but all coins actually belonged to Caesar just because his face was stamped on them would rightly have been considered ludicrous. And no matter how you take that conversation, the fact remains that he never made any comment on the merit of the taxes themselves. There aren't any statements in support of the practice of taxation, and all the points about providing for others, supporting the poor, etc. involve personal contributions, not political action.

A Gallop poll serves as your evidence for religion's impact on stability and peace? This is pie-in-the-sky cherry picked data, stylized as a scientific inquiry.

> The US is becoming openly hostile to religion

I don't think the US is becoming openly hostile to religion.

It is becoming hostile to religion in the public sphere, a good thing if there ever was one.

Just like your sexual practices, keep your religion at home and please stop bothering other people with it.

People wonder if they are only temporarily stable, since the only subset groups that are reproducing at replacement rates are the religious.

Religion isn't a genetically inherited.

Cultural inheritance...

It’s not binary is the point.

I'd argue that the polarization is a direct result of the rise of evangelical Christianity. And as church membership decreases, their perceived persecution will fan the flames of their crusade against soft drugs, LGBTQ+, and trans rights to name a few.

>crusade against soft drugs, LGBTQ+, and trans rights to name a few.

So then why have those crusades all but evaporated?

Weed is on its way to being federally legal. Hard drugs are becoming legal or decriminalized in some jurisdictions. Trans people are pretty much universally accepted/tolerated as being a thing that isn't going away with the remaining conflict more or less related to all the gender based stuff that's been codified in law over the years.

I mean no offense by this, but this opinion seems to be colored by your direct experience. There's is still A LOT of intolerance to these things to be found in the world. You're just not being exposed to it, most likely.

Just in the last few weeks, three states have passed new laws targeting the healthcare of transgender people and twenty five other state legislatures are considering them. It’s unfortunately not going away. [1] It’s not one of the issues you mentioned, but another similar crusade is abortion rights. It’s looking like the Supreme Court will have hearings potentially leading to the end of Roe v Wade, and a number of states have enacted laws limiting abortions, though some of them were struck down by previous Supreme Court rulings.

[1]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/transgender-rights-in-the-...

Are you claiming that marginally declining religiosity is the dominant factor to be considered in the breakdown of "public morality"? Among such factors as 50 years of stagnant wages and the rise of social media?

> Public morality cannot be maintained without religion

Do you have evidence or arguments for this, or is this just a feeling? I can see an argument for the statement "religion can be and has been used to maintain public morality" but that's not what you said, so I'm curious about your reasoning.

What is morality? It is not a physical material phenomenon and it is not scientific, so if it exists it is by definition supernatural or its synonym metaphysical

Once you are discussing the supernatural, you are discussing religion.

Since the topic of this thread is about church membership, I would assume religion in this context refers to organized religion, rather than such an abstract definition, in which case someone can believe in the supernatural without being religious.

But in either case, I'm a little confused. Wouldn't this line of reasoning apply to laws as well? They aren't physical or (necessarily) scientific. And are you saying that any study of metaphysics is necessarily religious in nature? Perhaps we are using different definitions of religion.

If you are making an argument that notions of morality do not (or did not) arise from science, or that morality arose from religion, I think that would have weight to it. But that also doesn't imply that morality cannot continue to exist without religion. For example, it's plausible to me that a sense of shared community is something that can "maintain morality" in a society. We may have lost a sense of community in part due to the decline of churches, but I don't see why it would require them to exist.

I have not heard a convincing argument that true right or wrong can exists outside of a universe with a monotheistic God.

Do you believe you morality is more right than a Nazis or a pedophiles?

If so, you need a justification of why your morality is more ultimately correct and truly "good and better." I have not heard a convincing one that ultimately doesn't end in a monotheistic God.

And if not, what are we even doing in this conversation? There can be no moral progress without an objectively better standard that we are attempting to discover.

It's an interesting argument that you lay out, and as agnostic that came from a religious family, it's something that I've personally grappled with. In the absence of religion, where do people find their moral and ethical compass? I wasn't raised atheist, and when I ask atheists this question they often dismiss it as not important or obvious. I feel like that's half the reason religion persists, because they actually attempt to answer such questions with respect.

Have you considered that it is not important, that it is obvious?

As a person that wasn't raised religious, the concept that you need religion to find a moral and ethical compass seems weird to me. My parents taught me values, I learned them, society reinforced them. They made sense to me, and I feel bad when I don't follow them. The mechanics of it are pretty simple.

Your line of reasoning is similar to "where does food come from? The grocery store, obviously!"

The underlying question is not how YOU got your moral compass but where do the people who taught you yours - and eventually society as a whole - get theirs.

If it's a set of principles that civil society generally agrees upon, then the rest are implementation details that will vary from situation to situation.

If it's a set of whims of the people in power and will vary regularly and constantly, then "damnation" comes from breaking today's rules.. maybe without even knowing what they are.

Your line of reasoning is similar to "Food comes from animals and plants. But where does animals and plants' food comes from?". Do you want to go all the way up to the Big Bang?

You learn your ethics from a combination of your parents and society, and you update your beliefs during your life, you share them to a younger generation. Repeat since humans acquired a conscience until humans cease to exist. That's all there is to it.

No, that isn’t all there is to it. You are simply ignorant of the foundations of your beliefs.

I can assure you I am not: they include the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Marx.

However, the question was:

> In the absence of religion, where do people find their moral and ethical compass?

That's what I was answering to.

Your comment squares with that guy on the $5 bill and the penny.

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”

― Abraham Lincoln

This seems to be a very privileged position to have. That if you were taught strong ethics by parents and the right social network, then everyone can obviously/simply have the same?

I think having a moral compass is important, because a lot of people will optimize for themselves in the short term, and screw up society in the long term. But I don't think this is obvious at all to people unless they're taught, or if they are really good at learning from their own mistakes.

I think others have pointed this out to you, but there is a high dependence on people learning this through good parenting, good teachers, and being around the right people, all while having security for things like food, shelter, etc.

Some of those things get wrapped up in the over-arching term called "privilege" but I think there is something to be said for the fact that you can't assume most people are securing these things. But you can assume that in the absence of this kind of security, many people (maybe even most) will lose their moral compass.

so depending on how you phrase that question, it can be perceived as an insult. it almost implies that, by default, an atheist wouldn't have a moral compass. I'm not saying you think that, just that it's a plausible interpretation for someone who's already feeling a bit defensive. also some atheists are just obnoxious.

but maybe I can answer your question. I think of morality as a way to rationalize the emotions I feel when someone treats me a certain way or I treat someone else a certain way. my morals are rules I can feel good about following.

I don't feel very defensive about it, but it is definitely insulting to me because to be an insult is about their intent. As far as my dad knew, I was Catholic until 3 months ago (when in reality I've been off that for 20 years) and suddenly I don't have a moral compass. He'll attribute what I have to my upbringing despite him being in absentia for nearly all of it. Cue eye rolling.

I think nowadays they can come from other people. Pretty much anyone/everyone (so maybe "society" is a good stand-in?) But, originally, perhaps when times were a lot different, the word of the Lord, whichever is your flavor, was more useful in keeping people on a more-fulfilling track. People with strong family ties likely didn't need to be as devout and so the church provided a good net for those alienated from society for many reasons. These days we're a lot more likely to have support and a lot less likely to be outcast (or at least not so severely) for being different.

I am also agnostic-raised-Catholic and this type of question is posed a lot. I don't struggle with it since I feel like I know the answer...BUT A) It's difficult to articulate, B) I can't really prove it, and C) it's also that I just know "the Bible" is very likely NOT the answer which just crosses one possibility off a list.

compassion and empathy shouldn't come from believing in God. It should come from believing that humans are all the same, meaning that you shouldn't do to others what you wouldn't want to be done to yourself because otherwise how could you expect other people to treat you fairly if you yourself don't do it? At least that's where I stand and I attribute this feeling of compassion a lot more to cartoons of the 80s and 90s than I do to what I learned in the church. I'm not in the church anymore because I don't believe in God. But I believe in values and if being in church helps to give you good values then church is worth it for society. I see this pragmatically.

> In the absence of religion, where do people find their moral and ethical compass?

You do all the same things, except: (1) you can make your own choices depending on your own reasoning (e.g. you can independently decide whether circumcision/being gay is good or bad, independent of what any religion says), and (2) you’re doing things to be good, not to please god.

In fact, I consider people who are “moral” just because god says so / you fear the consequences / you want to go to heaven to actually be immoral. It’s akin to only helping in an accident if the person is rich - you’re not doing it because it’s the right thing to do, you’re just doing it to get something in return.

Edit: you can also pick any number of philosophical frameworks of morality. Personally I oscillate between golden and silver rules.

1. This view also takes the idea that morality can be reached by reason on faith I am not saying I fully disagree, but even the concept of morality at its core is not rational.

2. It is possible to be religious and do good for the sake of good. Most religious people I know do. I would hope that even if I knew I was going to hell, I would still live the rest of my life on accordance with God's will as it is the right thing to do.

Well, if you’re both religious and do good for the sake of good, then you can still be good without being religious. So that solves (1).

Morality is “rational” as a solution to a game theoretic problem. You can also derive it via evolution (which is also a game theory solution).

Yeah, this is the fundamental disagreement. When discussing morality, I'm not talking about what you are. It is a law that overrides all of us, with true right and true wrong. Without a monotheistic God, these don't exist and morality doesn't either.

The morality your discussing is completely different.

I'm atheist, and my answer is simply empathy I guess? I just try to treat others in the same way I want to be treated.

People who say that morality can't exist without religion are scary. If they suddenly lose their faith, are they going to start hurting others? What if their religion has blind spots that doesn't tell them how to behave in a specific situation, or tells them that groups like gays and non-believers are fair game?

> Where do people find their moral and ethical compass?

I agree that atheists cannot point to a single book that everyone should use to define their moral and ethical compass, but I do think that utilitarianism (either act-based: "we should act always so as to produce the greatest good for the greatest number" or rule based: "we ought to live by rules that, in general, are likely to lead to the greatest good for the greatest number") provides a healthy starting framework.

Utilitarianism: Crash Course Philosophy #36 (10 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a739VjqdSI

> Public morality cannot be maintained without religion

This tired, offensive and a thousand time debunked old trope requires imo a little more argumentation than the "it is thus" justification you just provided.

I'd recommend reading Hitchens, specifically [1] where he addresses that lame claim at length.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great

[EDIT]: here's a good summary from the man himself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOHgrnaTxk0

Hitchens' knowledge of religion and philosophy borders on 0%. I would not reference him in any way if you intend to make serious arguments.

>Hitchens' knowledge of religion and philosophy borders on 0%

A rather bold claim, backed by little evidence and easily debunked by a metric ton of counter-evidence.

As example of counter-evidence, I offer:

    - The man spent a large fraction of his life studying religions of all ilks

    - He wrote a number of carefully researched books on the topic of religion.

    - From his quoting the bible, the coran, jewish sacred texts on the fly in the middle of debates with random religious folks (and usually tearing them a new one in the process), I feel confident he had at least skimmed most of those.

    - No one can accuse Hitchens of being dumb, I very much doubt he'd get into high visibility, in-depth public debate about a topic without having researched it thoroughly.

Given the above, I would say the claim that "his knowledge of religion borders on 0%" is - to remain unsarcastic, however hard that is - highly unlikely to be correct.

Anyone with a modicum of knowledge on religious studies finds his, and all of the other books by the "New Atheists" (with the possible exception of Dennett) to be laughable. I'm sorry, they simply don't have much of an intellectual foundation in anything.

Here's an example:

Chapter eleven discusses how religions form, and claims that most religions are founded by corrupt, immoral individuals. The chapter specifically discusses cargo cults, Pentecostal minister Marjoe Gortner, and Mormonism. Hitchens discusses Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, citing a March 1826 Bainbridge, New York court examination accusing him of being a "disorderly person and impostor" who Hitchens claims admitted there that he had supernatural powers and was "defrauding citizens".[31][32] Four years later Smith claimed to obtain gold tablets containing the Book of Mormon. When the neighbor's skeptical wife buried 116 pages of the translation and challenged Smith to reproduce it, Smith claimed God, knowing this would happen, told him to instead translate a different section of the same plates.

And where does our concept of corruption or immorality come from? Hitchens just lacks basic knowledge of meta-ethics. He doesn't seem to realize that modern democratic rationalist values are themselves descendants of Christian ideas.

This is the foundational problem of the New Atheists and of the "rational" set in general. They either don't know or don't understand the foundations of modern ethics, all of which has roots in religion.

This is the second 100% dogmatic and not backed by any argument answer you provided.

This is not really surprising coming from a religious person, dogma being after all the intellectual foundation of religion.

But I wonder: is there anything else you could use in your discourse toolbox?

> This is not really surprising coming from a religious person, dogma being after all the intellectual foundation of religion.

First off, I'm not religious. Second off, this kind of personal attack is not welcome here.

As I already said, every scholar of religious studies finds the books by Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. to be amusing at best. I can't educate you on the academic study of religion in a HN comment. If you are actually interested in reading criticism of such people and not just bashing non-atheistic people, I suggest looking into comparative religion and religious studies.

> his kind of personal attack is not welcome here.

This is not a personal attack.

You stated facts without backing them up. Twice. This is being dogmatic. My apologies for assuming you were religious given the fact you're defending religion, it was a fairly reasonable assumption to make

> As I already said, every scholar of religious studies

You are now moving from being dogmatic to using "appeal to authority" [1], another well known logical fallacy [2]

I'm still waiting for a properly argumented backing of the various statements you made above.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

[2] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=appeal+to+autho...

> This is not a personal attack.

Yes, it is, and again, it's not welcome here.

Read the criticism section of the Wikipedia article you posted yourself. There are more than enough intelligent criticisms written of the book.

If you think that my not writing you a lengthy essay explaining why Hitchens is uninformed is somehow indicative that he isn't, I'm not sure what to tell you. Religion is a complicated topic. Pretending that we can solve it in a paragraph is naive at best.

As I already said, if this interests you, read more about religious studies. I am simply saying that "the educated opinion on this topic is that Hitchens is just a popular writer, not a serious thinker on religion." If you disagree with that, well, take it up with the academic community?

> If you think that my not writing you a lengthy essay explaining why Hitchens is uninformed is somehow indicative that he isn't, I'm not sure what to tell you.

I'm simply saying that since the beginning of this conversation, you're stating facts without providing a shred of evidence, other than "go educate yourself on the subject".

This is how conversations usually go in my experience: when you state a fact, you back them up by - at least - a modicum of evidence instead of dropping them as self-evident and walking away.

But given your last answer, one thing you definitely cannot be accused of is lack of consistency.

Ive read Hitchens, and I am not impressed.

Subjective morality is ultimately simple preferance and ultimately just a battle of wills. I, and most other religious people, do not consider such a "moral order" to be morality at all.

Objective morality, with a judge above all judges who is justice itself, is the only way "justice" and morality mean anything at all.

“Objective” morality is a misnomer for religious morality, it's just subjective morality ascribed to some mythical authority figure (and, even if that figure actually exists, for most religions, given the diversity of different moral systems ascribed to the divine judge, those are clearly misascriptions, largely reflecting the personal subjective morality of the people doing the ascribing.)

I'm personally religious, but the myth of objectivity is a very, very dangerous thing; in masks the ways that man creates God in his own image.

I am not claiming to have perfect vision of this order, but I am asserting that it exists and we have no choice but to sit in it's judgment. We can argue and and discuss about the specifics, but when I and other religious people are discussing morality, that is what we are trying to do. To make our morals and actions more in line with the ultimate objective morality.

I do not mean this as a flame, but I honestly do not understand why a person who believes in subjective morality would even discuss morality at all. If all morality is simply in the eye of the beholder, moral progress is impossible and it is not possible for one view to be superior to another.

As opposed to the actual battles engaged in by the various religious groups over morality.

To which I say: have at it. I'll get some popcorn. Too bad about all the bystanders. But I'm sure they'll be happy knowing that they died in the service of objective morality.

There is a decline in Christianity but there is not a decline in religion. The religions many preach today are non-theistic and secular but they are religions nonetheless and they don't tolerate heretics.

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