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Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this is an easily answerable question, but I can see this because I grew up an atheist (and travel in those typically atheist/educated/professional circles) and have become much more aware/educated in/embracing of religion later in life myself.

If you compare apples to apples - say my average atheist friend who is a director in a FAANG and also my religious friend who is also a director in the same FAANG.

The former lives by themselves, spends their money on fun things like cars and "toys", etc. Don't get me wrong, wonderful guy (hence friend) but doesn't have those traditional things that historically have been correlated with a fulfilled life.

Meanwhile my religious-FAANG friend has 4 kids, lives in a community where everyone knows each other, lives much closer to family (intentional choice) and just overall sees his life, both the ups and the downs, as part of something purposeful and meaningful.

I would say my religious friend has much more intensity and drama/richness in his life, and maybe no time for "sadness" which I actually think is the right way to go.

I like talking about these 2 guys because outwardly they are apples to apples (same career, similar degree, etc.) but I think this generalizes well to my other friends too. At whatever level of "secular" success and safety, my religious friends just somehow seem more grounded, more belonging in their lives compared to my atheist friends, deal with setbacks better, take a more long-term view and in that traditional sense have more "to live for" than themselves which is very healthy.

America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization. When I came to the US in mid-90s (as an atheist) over half the population attended religious services regularly. Obviously that number is nothing like that today. So what registers to us as an overall change in society (fewer kids, less happy) is actually the proliferation of non religiosity in society and the corresponding magnification of the kind of challenges non-religious folks face.

As a sort of comical but sad example, most my atheist friends "would want kids" but have 30 reasons why it's impossible, between economics, politics, etc. Meanwhile my religious friends just have kids.

View on HN

Yeah, I agree. I think we're deep into a spiritual crisis, a crisis of meaning. A lot of people are blind to the trend because those aren't easy things to measure.

But if you're single, isolated, on dating apps -- or maybe caught in an unfulfilling marriage commuting from the suburbs to a job you resent -- there often doesn't seem much point to your own existence. Everything has been stripped of its meaning.

The spiritual crisis also explains why people aren't having kids. If there's no point to anything, why go through all the work and hardship? Parents often want to bring more happiness into the world. But if you're deeply unhappy, the logic changes.

> But if you're single, isolated, on dating apps -- or maybe caught in an unfulfilling marriage commuting from the suburbs to a job you resent -- there often doesn't seem much point to your own existence. Everything has been stripped of its meaning.

The scenario you paint is one where everything has been stripped of meaning. One option is to seek more meaningful work and social relationships, on an individual level, and/or on a societal movement level. Or one can seek some supernatural mental delusions, an opiate for the people, to anethisize oneself to being a miserable wage slave with a miserable life.

> Or one can seek some supernatural mental delusions, an opiate for the people

I'm very much an atheist and a positivist too. I rejected religion growing up.

But we don't have to cede the concept of spirituality to organized religion. Spirituality is so much more than that. It's about purpose, connection, and what it means to be a human. You can practice spirituality by meditating at home, just sitting with your thoughts and feelings. No delusion or supernatural beliefs required!

When you talk about the future of mankind, our role in it, and what's the most meaningful way to live our lives -- that's what I mean by spirituality.

Using a long phrase like "Purpose, connection, and what it means to be a human" seems preferable to enabling supernatural belief to slink in through the gap in the now-ambiguous word "spirituality". I say leave it to Madame Blavatsky. Oh wait that's spiritualism. Same difference.

Ooh, how about zeitgeist? I like that word. Then you'd still have spirits, but rational German ones.

I intentionally use the word because fellow atheists and positivists are too uncomfortable with it, and I believe the world needs more of it.

Yes, I'm pro-science and rational thought, but I'm increasingly thinking people like me have spent too long in left brain land and need to explore some of the deeper, subtle, and more intuitive parts of what it means to be a human, if that makes any sense.

Hey, I'm cool with Chesterton and CS Lewis and "the numinous". (There's another word option for you, BTW.) I just think "spirituality" is already crammed full of very fruity religious meaning. If when somebody says "spirituality" they might be talking about meaning and purpose or crystal healing and Jesus, that's bad for me trying to pin down their argument, and worse for their memetic victims who can be suckered into thinking the two are related, which deliberate confusion is already a big vector for the spread of religion.

What’s your proposed alternative for flourishing, content, joyful human lives?

There's humanism, but it didn't take off. I don't know if this analysis even gets to the root of ... the alleged problem. I mean, OK, lets say (other) people are miserably lonely and need to join some kind of club: they won't do that anyway, even if it's a church-like club that promises to tell them what life's all about. Possibly people already form communities as much as they honestly want to.

But people used to join those kinds of clubs at much higher frequency. Sp it’s not impossible for that behavior to change.

It’s just that historically there haven’t been many successful examples of atheist communities with the kind of shared deep purpose, meaning and connection you describe.

That would be weird

Yes it’s much better to be an atheist miserable wage slave with a miserable life.

I don't know, I'm a die hard nihilist and atheist and I'm married, have kids, friends, and think life is beautiful and generally ok. I don't see why people need to believe in imaginary stuff and I don't really see how it makes people happy.

See my other reply

Funny, I'm the exact opposite!

It’s just an empirically observable reality.

Religious people tend to be less lonely , more likely to be married and have children, and more happy and less likely to experience mental illness, on average.

It’s certainly not true for every religious person nor the opposite for every atheist, but the effect can be seen across populations.

It's also demonstrated that meditation and volunteering improves well being regardless of beliefs... and atheists like myself have no excuse not to be doing those things right now.

You don't sound much like a nihilist to me.

Existentialism and/or Optimistic Nihilism. I'm a pessimist, myself.

I'm not optimistic. I think an accurate assessment of the world is, in a sense, pretty pessimistic. But I don't see any reason to get worked up about it. It would be very stupid to let my mind tell me that I cannot experience pleasure in the world just because the long term situation looks bleak. I can't control any of that stuff anyway, so why bother feeling bad about it?

Oh so you actually are a nihilist in the sense that Nietzsche meant. That's too bad.

on your point about meaning... this is america: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_M... (book by Chris Hedges)

Some people react negatively when I say this, because there very much are real problems in the world right now, but...

Much unhappiness is not due to the fact that the world is too hard, but that it's too easy. You show up to your job and don't do any real work... and nothing happens. There are no real life or death decisions you'll make.

Life now is hard but you're not going to die in a bomb attack. So lots of our energies are turned inward, on ourselves.

> Everything has been stripped of its meaning.

A friend j got the epic ski pass, so he skied at 43 resorts this winter with his wife and kid all across the US. From Baltimore to Tahoe through about 25 states.

I thought it would be awesome, he said it was shit. Because one corporation owns all of it, they’re all identical. Same signs, same food, same rules. No adventure, nothing new at each resort . Giant monoculture.

That’s how I feel when I’m in the US.

Are you skiing for the signs or for the mountains, the views, and the experience?

The whole experience.

And it was boring monoculture

Counterpoint: I know plenty of very religious families with multiple kids who are deeply unhappy.

In my experience friends and family are the primary contributor to happiness. Provided they are good people. Else its a train wreck. It doesn't matter if they are religious or not.

I also know many religious families who have disowned their kids for being gay - it is not a one way street of great benefits. Let alone the mental gymnastics required to claim to know the creator of the universe

The idea of kids being a get-out-of-jail-free card to happiness and existential turmoil has never made sense to me. Kids are wonderful, but not because they’re not a magical gateway to happiness.

They're more motivated to pretend everything is okay, at least.

I think it's a symptom of American mentality that atheism and deep meaning are considered opposites.

I don't think you're wrong to analyse your friends, I think you're right that Americans pivot toward religion (or the ill defined "spirituality") when they feel they lack that something else.

But in many other places, including where I live, it's natural to lean on philosophy, personal connections, family, teaching, social work or any other "deep fulfillment activities", and in fact the kind of empty success you describe is frowned upon, among atheists just as much as among religious people.

Philosophy is part of the basic school curriculum from secondary school, and dealing with the big questions is not left for mass.

Secularism in the US began rising steadily in 1990 and has actually been declining since 2020. That trend doesn't line up well with any of the data we're talking about.

Unless the data is a lagging indicator

I doubt it's quite that simple, but this does seem likely to be a big factor. I say this as an atheist myself. Religion does seem to give people a purpose and a community that's difficult to find elsewhere, and that translates to happiness. Sometimes I wish I could do it, but I can't.

While a fall in religiosity may be part of the cause, I don't think a return to religion is the answer. We need to find ways to replicate the non-supernatural aspects of religion without the weird stuff.

I think this is a common reaction that I used to agree with but no longer. I think religion tends to capture something essential about reality that atheism excluded by definition.

There's a reason no atheist society has historically arisen and thrived in the way that you are suggesting. If it was possible why hasn't it happened. The idea of atheism is ancient - why has it not worked?

Large sections of China, Japan, etc are atheists. Why do you think it hasn't worked?

Well for one obvious example is both of those societies are only recently atheist (<100 years) and that they both have an absolute dismal birth rate that makes it hard to imagine how they will look like a hundred years from now.

Every society has had gods at some point in the past. Why didn't every society improve then? And China's growth has been very recent(after the 80s). And birth rates have absolutely collapsed across the world. It's not some unique Chinese/Japanese situation. Before their silly 1 child policy change China had insane population growth. As non religious people. Almost like these aren't really connected at all.

This is your second post in this thread insisting things are unconnected which is of course a commendable attempt to validate the atheist religious belief that everything is random and pointless. I don't subscribe to your religion.

I'll give you one data point about birth rate collapse. In the US atheists have fertility rate of 1.2 (half of replacement) somewhat religious people have the rate of 3.3 and "orthodox" closer to 6.

So you can for example visit a neighborhood on Brooklyn that suffers from a fertility crisis and then cross the road onto a neighborhood that doesn't. Across incomes and education levels - religion and lack thereof correlate almost perfectly with birth rate.

So if you told me China is atheist and suffering demographic collapse - I would say of course. If you told me there are demographic groups within China that are more religious and manage to have more kids that wouldn't surprise me as well although I don't know China well enough. I do see that exact pattern in the US both anecdotally among my vast peer group and in the stats I cited.

PS: I just looked it up. In China religious groups (eg Muslim uighurs, tibetan Buddhists and Christians are obviously prosecuted minorities that manage to have 2x the kids vs national average. Completely predictable in my framework, completely "not connected" in yours.

> This is your second post in this thread insisting things are unconnected which is of course a commendable attempt to validate the atheist religious belief that everything is random and pointless. I don't subscribe to your religion.

I am not an atheist. Nor do I think everything is random and pointless. You have 11 comments on this topic. Discussion is the point of this forum.

> religion and lack thereof correlate almost perfectly with birth rate

No arguments there. More religious people absolutely do have more kids. I want to point out that poverty/development and lack thereof also correlate almost perfectly with birth rate. Check out the countries who still have very high TFR.

But I was pointing out that non religious countries still had tons of kids before. Birth control and more choice for women have certainly brought down birth rates. India's birth rate is down to 1.9; And its a very religious country. There has been incredible progress in women's rights and they choose to not have 6 kids.

"There's a reason no atheist society has historically arisen and thrived in the way that you are suggesting. If it was possible why hasn't it happened. The idea of atheism is ancient - why has it not worked?"

Your words. I am saying its not connected to society being great. The population being religious isn't why America or Europe grew to be super powers. If your entire argument is that population is correlated with religion then I agree. I disagree that happiness and the state of a country is tied to that.

> I'll give you one data point about birth rate collapse. In the US atheists have fertility rate of 1.2 (half of replacement) somewhat religious people have the rate of 3.3 and "orthodox" closer to 6.

PS. can you post your sources for those TFR numbers? Because they seem wildly exaggerated. Maybe I am looking at the wrong sources? "Data on religious fertility differentials for the 2020-2025 period in Pew Research Center projections shows a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.9 for Christian women, 1.6 for religiously unaffiliated women, and 2.0 for women of other religions."

> In the US atheists have fertility rate of 1.2 (half of replacement) somewhat religious people have the rate of 3.3 and "orthodox" closer to 6.

Other main drivers of birthrate are education and access to contraceptives. Give people more education and better access to contraceptives, and they tend to have fewer children.

The numbers you've quoted may be correct (a quick search suggests they aren't, but whatever), but they don't mean all that you think they mean. Religiosity is certainly a factor, but there are many factors (more than the two I mentioned) when it comes to birthrate.

> This is your second post in this thread insisting things are unconnected which is of course a commendable attempt to validate the atheist religious belief that everything is random and pointless.

Maybe think a little more critically instead of throwing around unfounded bullshit. Atheism isn't a "religious belief". It's a lack of religious beliefs. And we don't believe that everything is random and pointless. That's a straw man you seem to have chosen to attack for some reason.

Buddhism is an atheist philosophy. It has been around longer than Christianity. It has hundreds of millions of adherents.

Do you disregard it because you don't think they are successful, or numerous enough?

Technically with Buddhism I'd say god itself it's the Tao, which perfectly maps to the concept of Logos in the Western world.

"Buddhism is an atheist philosophy"

Not in the way it is actually practiced by many Asian societies where believers turn their devotion to what are basically deities: Amitabha in the Pure Land, Avalokiteshvara/Kuanyin, etc. Tibetan Buddhism is chock full of the supernatural.

I mean we have academia, which is essentially secular study. Moreover Atheist don't need to go to church together to indoctrinate their beliefs, that happens every day when no miracles happen and the world continues to be kill or be killed anywhere animal intelligence has not overcome that reality in some small pocket. Atheist also tend to understand that their is no forgiveness and they have to sit with their actions for the rest of their limited days, so it's not a great idea to go out and do terrible things for treasure.

"I mean we have academia, which is essentially secular study."

It should be, but is it? If this is the case, why has the reproducibility of papers fallen off by so much? In the past, this wasn't the case but it also wasn't the case that society was so secular. In fact, secularism and inability to publish reproducible papers is positively correlated. While I'm not a believer, it does seem to me that somehow without religion, ethics at a society wide level falls off a cliff. I think those non-reproducible papers come from people with no real ethical or moral grounding. In the past I think this grounding was provided by religion. I don't have to like it to be honest enough to see it is how humans actually work. I'm not sure why anyone who is being honest would think that's weird or wrong.

> secularism and inability to publish reproducible papers is positively correlated.

It's annoying that I need to say this, but: correlation is not causation.

Are you blaming the replication crisis on atheism?

If you want to play the "lack of piracy is correlated with global warming," consider that secularism is negatively correlated with things like child mortality and firebombing civilians. If we're going to blame atheism for anything that has gotten worse in the past few decades then we also need to credit it for everything that has improved.

I think you've got this backwards. People are inherently religious. We evolved to see intent behind everything. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is psychologically powerful.

"Why has it not worked?" suggests that atheistic societies have arisen and they've failed. That's not the case. Atheism has just been historically very unpopular. It's only recently that science has advanced enough to put the "god of the gaps" in a sufficiently small box for atheism to arise on a large scale.

I think, given the knowledge available to us now, religion is obviously fiction. The only difference between worshipping Jesus and worshipping Harry Potter is that the former's authors are very long dead.

Because atheism isn't a club like an organized religion is. You don't need to join a specific community or church or organization in order to be an atheist. You just stop believing in religion, and there you are.

We don't need a "society"; having one would be counter-productive, and would even probably be more like a religion.

> I think religion tends to capture something essential about reality

I think you have this backwards; religion tends to capture people who want to believe that reality is something other than it is.

What a generalization!! plenty of religious people are sad, not all of them are particularly frugal, and not all atheists think of buying toys.

Also the US is a very religious country compared to western or northern Europe where people aren't particularly sad.

Hey he noticed it in his 6 friends he has, maybe it holds true as N grows to 8 billion? /s

Not like the entire point of the Renaissance was to ignore the scripture and stop acting like it was true and to start actually doing experiments in reality

> say my average atheist friend who is a director in a FAANG

Not a lot of "average" going on here.

What I should have said is the two guys are fairly representative and more importantly line up to the story: if we are so Rich how are we so sad. So I used to relatively rich friends as the example:)

That's totally fair. I think to the extent that wealth degrades community you're going to have a clear trend.

The counterpoint of the example I used is that among my religious friends wealth has not degraded family/community.

Small personal example - we are undergoing home renovation right now to create a larger dining room that can accommodate better our extended family. I see this kind of behavior among friends and family who are religious and can afford to.

Weird, ok, my anecdote flows in almost the exact opposite direction.

I come from a highly religious Christian background and moved in the other direction without any ill will, most of my religious male friends who have families have confided in me that they think monogamy and general family values are worn out cultural artifacts and clearly regret buying in even though they love their kids and are entrenched in their communities.

Many already have a first divorce under their belt.

Meanwhile my atheist friends had their first kid right around 40 and are somewhere between 1-3 kids and after a fair amount of relationship churn when they were younger are now in very stable relationships, some very orthodox and a few semi-orthodox.

If the trajectory hold for this generation the same as I saw for my religious parents generation I think the trajectory looks not great for mental health on the religious side.

> Meanwhile my religious-FAANG friend has 4 kids, lives in a community where everyone knows each other, lives much closer to family (intentional choice) and just overall sees his life, both the ups and the downs, as part of something purposeful and meaningful.

I am a full atheist, living in Switzerland. The community is strong, the neighborhood too and the city is a charm (Geneva). 3 kids, coding and spending my time contemplating humans at their best: having fun and getting on a higher ground. I don't have an answer regarding the bigger picture but I will surely think about it and get back to you.

EDIT As I wrote in another comment: confronting the truth (whatever the spirituality behind) in itself doesn't make someone unhappy, it's the sense of losing one's footing that does. In many ways, America was built along those lines.

> America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization.

If I understand correctly, connecting the dots from the article and your comment, beginning in 2020, everyone moved away from religion towards atheism in some kind of rapid shift?

Is this supported by the demographic data?

> lives much closer to family (intentional choice)

Living close to family is surely the single thing most could do to immediately improve their happiness.

(while not all of us are lucky to have welcoming family, the way people in the US are willing to uproot themselves and move across the country where they know nobody is extremely harmful to their senses of community)

As someone that can’t afford to live close to family this hits me in the feelings. Would love it if the government would do something about it.

It's also something that has nothing to do with religion. I am always surprised to see how religion people sometimes think you can't care about other people or your family if you don't believe in a bearded guy in the sky.

The difference is, like Jesus taught, religious people will care for others expecting nothing in return (reward is from God), but secular people will, even if it's as small as the narcissistic satisfaction of "look at me I'm such a good person." As soon as the cost-benefit of caring for family goes deeply negative, there's no reason to keep doing so.

OK, you did it again! Exactly what I'm talking about. You think that without religions we're just selfish calculating bastards.

We're not, I promise.

How do you make decisions without calculations? we're all calculators, aren't we?

Can you provide a reason to care for someone that has nothing to do with religion and nothing to do with a personal/societal gain?

Common decency.

That's exactly His argument - you're telling yourself "it's the decent thing to do" but it's actually "doing this makes me feel like a decent person."

But is there really a difference? You can can argue that any apparently selfless act is driven by a desire for self-satisfaction, but from an external view the outcome is the same in either case.

You claim that, because for religious believers this desire to help people is driven by faith rather than what you would term self-interest, it's somehow more resolute. But I'm unconvinced that that is the case, nor that people consciously or not, weigh up decisions to care for others in such a calculating manner.

If the divine impetus made you infallibly caring, I would perhaps concede the point, but I haven't see much evidence of that so far.

Right, the desire of religious believers to help others is also self-interest. But the difference is that the expected reward comes from God, not from others. That makes it more resolute, because for the secular person if the cost of the care greatly outweighs the benefit of "common decency", then there is no reason to continue. Whereas, for a religious believer, the benefit of carrying out God's will is immeasurable.

As for your last point - we're all sinners and we're not perfect. The calculation is there, but the individual's faith and/or abilities might be lacking.

> That makes it more resolute, because for the secular person if the cost of the care greatly outweighs the benefit of "common decency", then there is no reason to continue.

You seem to be latching onto "common decency" as the only reason atheists do nice things. If that's truly what you believe, I think maybe you should get out more, and talk to actual atheists about how they live their lives.

When I decide whether or not I'm going to help someone, I don't sit down with a calculator and determine the benefit to myself, vs. the burden, and only do it if the balance is in my favor. I do what feels right, or at least I strive to, even if doing so might be a net negative to me.

Why? Because I think that's the best way to live. The best way to be happy. The best way to build a community. The best way to enrich the world, one situation and one person at a time.

Religion isn't required for a moral code. If you believe otherwise, you're sorely mistaken. And this idea that religious people are more likely to do the right thing because of "faith" is just garbage. Orders of magnitude more bad things have been done in the name of religion than in the name of atheism.

You're missing the point. I "latched onto" common decency because that is what the user before you brought up as a valid reason. It was only typed for demonstrative purposes.

So the other reasons you've given are similar - it's in your best interest, and in your community's, and in the world's. Notice that that is exactly what was argued in my comment before: "Can you provide a reason to care for someone that has nothing to do with religion and nothing to do with a personal/societal gain?"

> But the difference is that the expected reward comes from God

Is there an effective difference outside of that person's own mind? It's still a reward-based system where people only do Good because there is some reward waiting for them, be it from other people or a God.

The effective difference is that the reward is immeasurably desirable. Whereas the reward of "common decency", for example, is low in comparison, and so the cost of taking care of someone can easily outweigh it - in which case there is no rational reason to continue taking care.

You said:

> The difference is, like Jesus taught, religious people will care for others expecting nothing in return (reward is from God)

But you admit that's not true. They expect something in return from God. I don't understand why this distinction even matters if the only thing that makes the reward worth it is just how 'immeasurably desirable' it is.

If atheists could get some similar reward (maybe their consciousness uploaded to a "heaven" simulation by a kindness-promoting nonprofit that feels effectively endless) depending on how kind they were to others during their lives, would they then be rational to be kind? Or would it still be chasing some sort of "reward" for their kindness?

Why does the reward originating from God matter?

Yeah, I think we're in agreement, just "speaking" past each other a bit. That the reward originates from God doesn't matter for the purpose of the argument, only that it is immeasurably desirable. If we lived in a science fiction fantasy where such a non-profit organization as you described existed then it would effectively be the same.

I want to clarify about "chasing a reward": people don't do serious things "just because". People expect a return. Jesus taught that those who do good expecting a tangible earthly return "have already received their reward". In this context, that's whether that is because you expect the person you're taking care of to repay you in the future, or you just enjoy his company, or it makes you feel like a good person, or it maintains your social status, or whatever it is. Jesus taught that those who do good not expecting a tangible worldly return will receive a reward in Heaven. In the Gospels He makes this same argument repeatedly using different words. Another one that comes to mind: "sinners are also kind to those who are kind to them, but if you will be kind to those who hate you then your reward in Heaven will be great." So I deliberately added that note in parenthesis to make the distinction that religious people (should) expect nothing in return from others, they should expect a reward from God only.

>Can you provide a reason to care for someone that has nothing to do with religion and nothing to do with a personal/societal gain?

Yes.

> Can you provide a reason to care for someone that has nothing to do with religion and nothing to do with a personal/societal gain?

Sure: because I want to. That's it. I don't need a justification. I don't need a god up in heaven threatening me with eternal punishment if I'm not good to other people.

I just think caring for other is a good thing, and not caring about others is bad. I didn't need religion to help me draw that conclusion, and personal or societal gain has nothing to do with it. I think it's the right thing to do, so I do it.

You can dive down into the depths of it and think about whether any supposedly-selfless act is truly selfless. "Well, sure, you helped out your friend, but that made you feel good, right? Selfish!" But I don't buy that line of reasoning. Even if helping someone does make you feel good, so what? That's good too! But maybe sometimes it doesn't feel good. Maybe sometimes helping someone is difficult, and causes hardship. But people do it anyway. People who aren't looking to a religion to guide them.

So your desire to believe in a God must also be a calculation you made selfishly. You do expect "something" in return for your religious devotion, and it seems to be based around your desire to not go to Hell, not some greater moral duty to your fellow man or a desire to do Good for the sake of it.

Otherwise, why does Religion need a punishment like Hell at all?

Wow, that's a load of garbage. Clearly you have some bigotry against people who don't follow your religion. Hard to take any of your opinions on this topic seriously.

That's crazy, because as a 25 year old in the US with religious family, I can promise you that churchgoing folks are the least generous people out there. I don't know what organized religion is like in other countries, but in the US churches are abused as tax havens, religious private schools are sucking up funding meant for disadvantaged children (in public schools), and the president is claiming the mandate of god as he spends tax money blowing up foreign children.

I live in a very different reality I guess.

// religious private schools are sucking up funding meant for disadvantaged children (in public schools),

What does that mean. In our case we pay about 20k a year in town school taxes only to send our kids to a private religious school. So the fact that my kids go to a religious school literally makes my money available to educate other people's kids in the school.

// churches are abused as tax haveans

Anything can be abused I guess. My synagogue is constantly raising money for secular causes like disaster relief and feeding the homeless. The fact that a congregant gets 3k back in taxes on a 10k donation still means he's out 6.

yes but to truly enjoy the religious lifestyle you have to believe in very hard to believe things - without that true belief I feel like an imposter. I feel it is very well known that religious people have the ability to be extremely extremely happy, healthy, and well-adjusted in their community, but it comes at a cost I feel. I do not know God and I do not know where I came from or where I will go. I would choose this than to pretend I know and join a group in pursuit of the lifestyle benefits it brings. And yes I spend all my time alone playing with toys I bought and not being fulfilled as my religious friends. 100% of my religious friends feel extremely fulfilled but it does not make it right choice for everyone. I don't want to believe I want to know and if I cannot know then so be it I will remain in the dark forever.

What has atheism anything to do with this?

Absolutely nothing. Religious people just tend to think they have it all figured out because they've been well trained in following tradition and avoiding questioning the status quo.

Which would make someone less sad by default, no? I certainly sort of wish I thought I had it all figured out - I'd be way happier!

That's also an extreme oversimplification of religion which describes only a very small number of individuals of most if not all faiths.

The vast majority are not hardliners, and understand the larger component of religion is community and shared purpose.

> Which would make someone less sad by default, no?

Ignorance is bliss. Is ignorance therefore good?

Because the article's question is 'how did America get so sad' and the answer is 'because it lost Christianity' because Christianity makes people less sad.

I'm not even sure it's Christianity that makes people less sad (I would argue that it isn't). It's the civic community that churches often create that breed purpose & happiness. Churches aren't the only types of communities that do this, but they're by far the most common.

Modern christianity in America is a primary contributor to my sadness.

Can you explain that?

In my experience many of them are breathtakingly judgmental hypocrites.

https://kepetersen.substack.com/p/the-gospel-of-hypocrisy-ho...

I am aware of this view, I am curious how it's the primary driver of sadness for the guy I replied to.

Hmm, in my experience it's been quite the opposite. I suppose it depends a lot on who you choose to spend your time with!

In 2026, after Trump started the war in Iran, when he is doing all he can to cover Einstein’s accomplices, after providing legal cover for the ICE agents who killed two Americans, when he called the pope weak and said he is not a fan, Evangelicals still approve of his actions 69% [0].

Sorry pal, it is the white christians who are hypocritical. Their idol is a walking version of the all 7 deadly sins.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/09/white-eva...

To respond to another comment you just made, it is not "the" driver, as in the only thing that makes me sad. It is one of the big ones. Modern politics and the loss of American mythology broadly make up the remainder. These are all arguably intertwined, of course.

Let me first correct my statement, it is a little too broad. In my circle of family and friends, I can readily identify maybe three people, one of whom is now passed, who I think of as Christians in the biblical sense. That is to say, their actions seem to closely reflect an honest attempt to answer the question "What would Jesus do?" The vast majority of Christians in my family are Evangelicals, though, and to be fair this is who I was really thinking of. They like to ask that same question, and then answer it "See Leviticus."

Why do they make me sad?

Because they are judgemental jerks who pretend that the Bible is the most important thing in their life while simultaneously giving uncritical loyalty to a man who is the closest embodiment of an antichrist that I've encountered in all my years.

They have tried to declare ownership of the word "patriot" and defined it as loyalty to their faith, while making a mockery of it at every turn.

They have declared a huge swath of their fellow Americans as evil, not someone to be disagreed with but someone to be bullied, kicked out of the country, or worse.

They make me sad when they try to talk me into hating immigrants, or minorities, when they piously say they cannot in good conscience be associated with the few people in our family who are openly gay, when they pretend to be oppressed by The Alphabet Mafia, when they act all righteous up until the moment when someone close enough to them (like their own child) runs afoul of these 'values'. And even then, more than one of them have disowned their child instead of moderate their approach to faith.

It is corrosive, antisocial, and they cannot seem to stop themselves from dragging everyone else around them into the mud. All I have ever wanted is to be predominantly left alone in my beliefs but loved by my family. I don't put conditions on my love, I am sad when they put conditions on theirs.

Not the person you're replying to, but Christianity in America makes me sad, too.

I grew up in a fairly religious area. The Christians (mostly Catholics, as my family was) I knew were largely good, friendly, helpful people, with a strong work ethic and what I'd today consider good moral fiber. No one was perfect, of course, but most people seemed to want to do good, and tried to treat other people the way they'd like to be treated themselves.

Today, I can't say the same. Most Christians I run into these days are intolerant people who only seem to care about their own in-group, and paint others (other races, LGBTQ folks, immigrants, etc.) as the cause of all of their problems. They seem paranoid, acting like non-Christians (or even Christians of other sects) are somehow threatening their religious views. They try to force their religious beliefs on others, and advocate for Christian views to be enshrined in law. They speak of Jesus and the Bible, and then treat those around them as sub-human and not worthy of compassion or opportunity. Occasionally I run into a Christian that reminds me of 30+ years ago, but they seem to be in the minority these days.

I'm not saying that this behavior is restricted to Christians (or religious people in general), but it seems a lot more prevalent in Christians these days than in anyone else.

Religion is a symptom of irrational belief and groundless hope.

Which is seemingly the superior strategy for happiness and survival.

Yeah tell that to all the people who avoided the bare minimum of advice during COVID for their own beliefs and subsequently died.

Perception is reality! Its great as long as it doesn't hurt others.

People who are lucky in life never question their faith, because why would they? That's why Christians are happier. I grew up Christian, but I was not lucky in life. Christianity did fuck all to help me. Actually, I find more peace in my lack of faith now. But everyone is different.

For those who haven’t read it yet, article engages with this explanation and doesn’t come to the same conclusion

America is swinging even more towards theocracy -- the Military Prayer Meetings say killing people is a mission from god, the White House Faith Office 1) exists, and 2) says that saying no to the rapist running government is "saying no to god"

Ok. And in parallel the average American is disconnected from religion and increasingly miserable as per the article.

No, the article showed that non belief peaked a few years ago: There are more butts in the pews than in 2020.

But sentiment hasn’t recovered.

That's not what the article says at all. Perhaps you should re-read it, especially the section that directly contradicts what you are saying about religion and happiness.

If anything, Americans are more religious than they were pre-pandemic (reversing a 30-year trend), and yet they're less happy.

I think the value add of religion per the top comment is that it typically has a built in community and sense of connection. Churches bring people together in multiple ways.

I write that as an atheist who is more isolated than I'd like. I'm working on community and connection but it's challenging when one works remotely and relocates to a new town.

While I recognize the community value of religion and the comfort it brings people, it comes at a huge cost that far outweighs the benefits. IMHO, organized religion is a cancer on modern society. I think there's other ways to get the good parts from it but that's a team effort.

>While I recognize the community value of religion and the comfort it brings people, it comes at a huge cost that far outweighs the benefits. IMHO, organized religion is a cancer on modern society. I think there's other ways to get the good parts from it but that's a team effort.

   Those who abandon the Path are evil.

   Those who reject the path to enlightenment must be destroyed!

Hallowed are the Ori!

> America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization.

I'm not so sure of that. America has rapidly moved away from believing in some kind of magical spirit in the sky, but they most certainly haven't given up on religion in general. They have latched on to other blind faiths and rituals.

What hasn't typically come with those new religions, like you allude to, is a church; a place where fellowship occurs. That is a reasonable possibility for the decline in happiness. Research regularly suggests that most people find happiness in relationships with other people.

Nothing is ever single-faceted, though.

> When I came to the US in mid-90s (as an atheist) over half the population attended religious services regularly.

No. When polled, half the population said they attended religious services regularly.

Researchers going to churches and estimating attendance found actual attendance was always less than what polls said. If people actually attended services like they said they did in polls, pews would be much more full (now and before).

Also, you know two people, but I could give examples as well - a normal secular family doing well compared to some evangelical family which is not doing well at all.

Also - there are suburbs which have, say, a sizeable Norwegian population. People go to some ELCA church. You talk to them, and a lot of them don't believe in the tenets of Lutheranism - miracles, the resurrection of Jesus etc. But they go to weddings, funerals, services, coffee after services. Dinners, clothing drives. Events around Easter. For many of them there is no belief at all, they just have coffee with their neighbors every week. Technically they are considered Christians, without believing in Christianity per se.

Even though I am personally agnostic, I do structure my life around the traditionally meaningful things you're talking about, and I do see the cultural mood a kind of spiritual crisis.

What's less clear to me is why the actual fall in happiness happened so rapidly with the pandemic. People were living spiritually vacant lives well before that!

Not to be snide, but did you read the article? The article explicitly removes decline in religion as an explanation for this particular bout of unhappiness.

Is everyone in this comment chain arguing from a perspective of, "I disagree with author's assessment" or "I read the headline and I'm offering my own conjecture"?

90% of the top-level comments here are people proffering explanations disputed in the article.

> The article explicitly removes decline in religion as an explanation for this particular bout of unhappiness.

It tried to, at least, but I'm not sure it succeeded. The growing secularization up to 2020 follows the long-term trend towards unhappiness and peak secularization and peak unhappiness line up too. Happiness has even started to improve in line with the growing return to religiosity that has occurred most recently. The data it presents as supposedly dismissing religion actually makes a reasonable case for religion.

Of course, the reality is that there never one reason. Americans are sad for millions of different reasons. The idea that if we fix that one thing all will become right with the world is pure fantasy.

> The growing secularization up to 2020 follows the long-term trend towards unhappiness and peak secularization and peak unhappiness line up too.

Are we looking at the same graphs? That's not what I saw.

Sounds like you have two happy well-adjusted friends?

Oh jeez, here we go again with this. Secularization isn't the problem. Isolation is the problem. Avoiding community and treating others as strangers to be feared is the problem.

Maybe read the article? It covers all this, and points out that secularization has been going on for far longer than this happiness crisis. Your assertion just doesn't fit the data.

And let's stop with the whole "just have kids and you'll be happy" garbage. It's lazy thinking, and such a tired argument, and falls flat in the face of actual data. As for anecdotes, I know plenty of people with and without kids with levels of happiness that run the gamut. There's plenty to be happy about with or without kids, and also plenty to be unhappy about with or without kids.

No time for sadness? HA! War and suffering continues unabated, "surprise"!

No, sadness becomes part and parcel of...everything! At least nowadays: New awesome toy! Kid got bad grade. Fun vacation last week! Friend's daughter died. PR riding bike! Dad needs help with a thing.

To your point: Life is rich with living. And yes, friends without kids, etc. talk about and buy toys. Cool! But/and no offense, gotta go now.

Life is rich and richly nuanced.

"America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization"

And yet we elected Jesus.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

A reaction to that very same secularization. Religious nutjobs feel threatened and this is their answer.

I think this is def part of it. Trump was not doing well in 2016 at all until the final debate when he cornered Clinton into a (legitimate) strong defense of her pro-choice position.

All the "moderate" Christians who couldn't stomach Trump before suddenly had no choice.

Essentially all Christian denominations + Mormons think abortion is murder. How can a candidate win a majority in a society where a plurality identifies as Christian and therefore probably takes that position?

Secularization of the majority, and the liberal culutral values that go with it just alienates these people more and more around abortion, gay rights, and most markedly, trans issues.

Although the devoutly religious are becoming more of a minority, they are far more homogeneously aligned on these core issues, and therefore easier to cohere around a "right wing" electoral block even when they do not think "right wing" around economic and political / international issues. They're willing to tolerate Trump on a whole pile of things as long as they feel he's accomplishing their "moral" goals -- and so far he mostly is.

Tying anti-abortion positions so tightly to Christianity (especially, popularizing it among protestant sects) and elevating that to a concern above most or all others (American conservative catholicism) was a deliberate move by propagandists in the last century, not something that somehow arose naturally.

Ditto trans stuff becoming a huge concern all the sudden. That wasn't "organic", it's a moral panic ginned up by people with microphones.

There's at least as much cynical-politics-affecting-religion as the reverse in the topics and positions you raise.

[EDIT] My point, as it occurs to me it may not be clear, is that "well most are christian so of course pro-choice or other 'liberal' positions struggle" is not a great explanation of what's going on, because that association isn't so guaranteed as this suggests. Things like social and economic justice are heavily connected to and promoted by christianity in some countries outside the US, but much less-so here. Historically, they have been here, too! More-Christian or less-Christian isn't the only axis here, what "Christian" tends to mean as it relates to politics hasn't been static, and that change has been in no small part driven by elite opinion and propaganda for the purposes of capturing religion for political ends, not from grass-roots demand.

A majority of American Christians support legal abortion, aside from white evangelical Protestants where support for legal abortion is 24%. Overall, 60% of Americans support it. So this doesn't really add up. I'm pretty sure Trump's sudden change in fortunes was due to James Comey suddenly announcing that Buttery Males were back on the table at the last moment. And let's not overstate how much support he actually had in the end. He won with the worst margin in history.

I think you probably follow politics too closely if you think that's why Trump won in 2016. HC was such a terrible campaigner that she simply stopped campaigning 3 weeks before the election because it wasn't helping. That and her major policy position was pro-globalism which hasn't been the position of the winning POTUS candidate since the 1980s. That's why she lost, not something that happened in a debate that maybe 0.3% of the population watched.

I don't think that had anything to do with it. A majority of Americans support some level of access to abortion, and only a small minority believes it should be banned.

The real problem was that Hillary Clinton was just not a particularly good candidate, but she was pushed hard by the establishment because it was "her turn". The last-minute hand-wringing about "her emails" is what probably put the final nail in the coffin.

> They're willing to tolerate Trump on a whole pile of things as long as they feel he's accomplishing their "moral" goals -- and so far he mostly is.

If that's the case, then these people are not particularly moral at all. I guess that's why you used scare quotes?

The fact that so many Americans listened to and followed those religious nutjobs and they were able to sweep the government with such little effort suggests no such "secularization" ever took place.

They're like people who see some pernicious "gay agenda" infiltrating all aspects of their lives just because they see two gay characters in a sitcom. Their fears are just projection. The power centers of the US have always been biased towards Christian conservatism. It's absurd to claim the US has ever been a truly secular nation when it isn't even possible for a President to get elected without professing Christian belief, because it's impossible to get elected President without the blessing of the deeply Christian south.

The US was 90% Christian and 5% None just 35 years ago. Today it's 63% Christian and 29% None. That seems pretty rapid to me. It has not reached anything close to a majority yet, so the religious still hold great sway. And the perceived threat from their decreasing belief share pushes extremism.

tbh, that seems less like "rapid secularization" and more like "a slight drop from absolute to merely near-absolute power" to me.

Percentage of reported practice doesn't allow for the cultural and legal effects of religion, and it doesn't map linearly to influence. Remember the political apparatus of the US is designed explicitly to give rural Christians outsize power.

Meanwhile in France "None" is at 51%. We did it! We outnumbered them!

Spain is 64% Christian of which 98% are Catholic. Yet they are the happiest according to the submitted article. None of this dcreasing believe share extremism.

> And yet we elected Jesus.

You mean that doctor?

What?

Religion has nice side effects (community), but vast downsides (non-scientific worldview, brainwashing). I think you can get the community feeling also by simply meeting with people you know, in hackerspaces for instance.

"non-scientific worldview"

I find this an oft repeated meme. The men to whom we own our scientific understanding were all deeply religious (not just lived in a time when everyone went to church)

For example - Darwin had trained to be an Anglican vikar prior to his journey on the Beagle and wrote to his future wife letters full of discussion of divinity.

Newton was obviously deeply religious and wrote more about religion than about physics. In fact his view of gd as singular was considered to be heretical by the Anglican church but was perfectly aligned to the old testament - what I am getting at here is that he didn't just happen to have faith by default but had a very deep and personal one. At the conclusion of principia Mathematica he wrote tons friend that he believed this work would make it obvious to a thinking man that presence of gd.

Georges lemaitre who came up with the big bang theory was a Belgian Catholic priest. The secular science at the time was adamant about the Greek model of the eternal universe, and we owe our modern view of it to someone who came into the situation already believing a moment of creation.

Einstein was famously a non practicing jew who nonetheless at age 11 had taught himself Judaism and later in life advocated for he study of talmud. I can't claim him to be a practitioner but his own writing speaks to a certain expectation of how the universe ought to be (that was later proven out in math) and a belief in a sort of spirit of the universe. The point isn't that he was an orthodox jew but that he is very far from a modern atheist.

So I don't actually agree with this idea that religion is non scientific when we owe our deepest scientific understanding to men who saw themselves and the universe through a religious lens.

That's not to say that there's no ignorance in some religions and among some practitioners but rather that religion at its best can claim really significant contributions that I don't think are matched by atheism at its best.

They were scientific in spite of being religious. Not because of it.

> that I don't think are matched by atheism at its best

There are plenty of scientists including Feynman and Hawkings. These are unrelated things.

>> They were scientific in spite of being religious. Not because of it.

Can you justify that claim?

>> plenty of scientists including Feynman and Hawkings.

Feynman is a good example of that. He was raised in a religious family and went to synagogue every week. His dad challenged him to continuously challenge the orthodox knowledge which I suspect the father himself saw within the talmudic tradition etc.

As feynman rejected Judaism and religion in general he nonetheless hung on and hugely benefited from the approach his religious father instilled on him. Similar to what I said about Einstein above I am not trying to claim feynman for religion but I think he's very far from "today's atheists" if that makes sense. If feynman didn't have his father (for whom religion was integral) I doubt he'd turn out who he was.

>> These are unrelated things

As per above I don't see it that way.

> Can you justify that claim?

Can you?

> Feynman is a good example of that.

"Do you call yourself an agnostic or an atheist? Feynman: An atheist. Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this."

> > If feynman didn't have his father (for whom religion was integral) I doubt he'd turn out who he was.

Right. If we are just gonna reach for stuff like this then I'm gonna say Feynman wouldn't turn out to be who he was if he believed in religion.

> As per above I don't see it that way.

Belief without evidence. Hey I get it now!

Brilliant response. Thank you!!

> Can you?

How could there have ever been religious men of science?

The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you. - Werner Heisenberg

An interesting postulate.

God is waiting but not the God of any organized religion - I personally believe if their is a God, we do not know him and never will

No the claim that religion is a major reason for science.

> How could there have ever been religious men of science?

Oh I have no problem with this. There will be religious scientists and non religious scientists. Just like there will be scientists who like red vs scientists who like blue. Being a scientist doesn't mean they are immune to broader cultural trends.

Turing, Higgs, Curie. All atheists. Religion has no bearing on whether or not someone achieves greatness in their life. In the past, people often were "religious" simply just to get the public to listen to them. They almost threw out Newton's life work just because he didn't believe in the "trinity" of the christian god (note: he was very deeply religious/spiritual and believed his work was proof of intelligent design.) Bottom line, we're moving away from religion in our world because it provides increasingly less social value and causes more and more issues. The way I see it, religion is a terrible curse on our world that only brings war and distrust. If you can't keep it in your chapel then you're an evangelist and your morals are fundamentally no different than the colonizers of old.

The decline of religion is happening in lockstep with declines in happiness and mental health and increases in loneliness.

Also you somehow skipped over the track record of the atheist regimes of the 20th century.

Nuance has left the chat. As long as we're here:

The resurgence of religion is happening in lockstep with the rise of Nationalism in the US. The rich and powerful are using it like a tool to manufacture compliance, which is literally the reason religion was invented. A multi cultural society cannot be a religious society. A society that values everyone equally cannot be a religious society. This has been proven again and again.

> If you can't keep it in your chapel then you're an evangelist and your morals are fundamentally no different than the colonizers of old.

disagree.

Colonization is done by force, evangelism is, in theory, consensual.

If I tell you "hey, have you tried the Emacs text editor? It's great, I love it, I recommend it to everyone looking for a great text editor, if you'd like I can show you how to set it up", that's not the same thing as saying "I claim your computer in the name of King Stallman, use Emacs or die".

Evangelism just achieves their violence societally and incentivizes via positive reinforcement vs negative. It's more like telling a starving person "Come to the dark side, we have cake" when the reason they're starving is because you only do equitable business with your in-group.

I do science and mathematics, and I am 'religious' - I believe in God, which I define simply as the universal consciousness - in other words, I believe the universe has a soul.

Much as how Erdos talked about 'proofs from the book', I believe that mathematical and scientific truths exist 'in the mind of God', ie, the universal consciousness, which, by definition, is aware of everything, already knows the truth that we seek, and the process of mathematical and scientific discovery is therefore simply a process of learning more about God. The flow state that one enters into when working is, in my mind, a sort of communion with the divine, which leads to the creation of great work.

This is similar, in my mind, to Michelangelo's quote about "seeing David in the marble and setting him free" - the statue already existed in the universal consciousness, and this consciousness guided Michelangelo into bringing it into being.

The proof of $THEOREM exists, your job is to find it, and the universe will gently nudge you in the right direction.

But obviously, that's just my opinion/point of view.

You could just as easily believe that the universe is not conscious, and truth is discovered simply by a combination of luck and effort, and that would probably work just as well ^^

I'll go further. Oppenheimer and Whitehead (neither Christian) have stated, in their respective histories of science, that the Judeo-Christian world view was absolutely necessary for the start of real science, that it could not have originated in a society with a different worldview.

Why? Because the Christian view was that God was a reasonable God, and He made the universe. And because He also gave us reason when He made us, we should be able to understand the universe by reason. All these men, from Newton down to Faraday, looked at the universe and expected to be able to find out how it worked, because of their religion.

Their religion didn't lead them to a non-scientific worldview. Their religion led them to create the scientific worldview.

That's an interesting take. Many years ago, I was chatting with a coworker who had emigrated from China; we got into topics like these, and something he said stuck with me all these years. He basically lamented that Chinese civilization is so deeply driven by Confucius thought, and expressed envy at the Western world's Christian underpinnings saying that it was better at driving people to search for "the truth."

Christianity is built upon “believe and do not doubt”. Sorry, I think your Chinese friend was a bit starry-eyed about Christianity…

Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) is almost literally a millennium old at this point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_quaerens_intellectum (and much older if you take it back to Saint John's response to the resurrection John 20:8-9)

What you wrote is quite obscure.

Much more popular is "believe and do not doubt".

Also: Jesus' response to Apostle Thomas after his resurrection from the dead is recited during every Easter mass: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Yes, on the surface the religion is the textbook antithesis of free thought. And yet I think my friend was getting at something deeper I can't quite pin down easily. Maybe it was just a lucky combination of aristocrat philosophers justifying their pursuits? Then there was the Enlightenment thing...

On the surface the religion is the antithesis of free thought? Where does persecution of scientists during the Medieval Age belong to? Is it below the surface? Above the surface?

Enlightenment runs contrary to Christian Dogma - Enlightenment advocates for the separation of Church and State.

Sorry pal, but Christianity is firmly against free thought....

Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life". And to Thomas He says _first_ (two verses earlier), "Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing".

And to add another famous example: Galileo Galilei 500 years ago was persecuted by the Christian Church because he (Galileo) defended helio-centrism. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

Sorry pal, but Christian Church is firmly in the "believe and do not doubt" camp.

https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/resources/galileo/histori...

You are one of today's lucky 10K!

That's the short version. The LONG version is https://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2009/03/galileo-affair-1-pr...

A huge surprise to the ancient Greeks, who outlined the concept of reason centuries before Christianity appeared, and invented a fair amount of math and the foundations of empiricism while they were at it.

In fact Christianity halted scientific progress in the West for around a millennium. Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence.

They did. But they never developed it into science in the modern sense.

They had a universe in which the gods did random things for random reasons. That didn't lead them to expect a rational basis for the construction of the whole universe, and so they never investigated in the way that early modern science did.

The ancient Greeks had the opportunity to invent the steam engine, but didn't. They had the beginnings of steam power, but slaves were cheaper.

common misconception:

https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...

> As we’ll see, the Roman Empire was never close to an industrial revolution – a great many of the preconditions were missing – but the idea that it might have been on the cusp of being something like a modern economy did once have its day in the scholarship

I was talking about the Greeks, not the Romans, entirely different civilisation(s) the Romans conquered. Look up "aeolipile" or "Hero's Engine". The ancient Greek steam powered device. Not sure why I'm voted down for stating historical fact. The Greeks had the beginning of steam power but never took it to the levels of the industrial revolution. If we look at ancient China too, they had a number of brilliant inventions but did not always follow through on them either.

from the article I linked: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...

> Early tinkering with the idea of using heat to create steam to power rotary motion – the core function of a steam-engine – go all the way back to Vitruvius (c. 80 BC -15 AD) and Heron of Alexandria (c. 10-70 AD). With the benefit of hindsight we can see they were tinkering with an importance principle but the devices they actually produced – the aeolipile – had no practical use – it’s fearsomely fuel inefficient, produces little power and has to be refilled with water (that then has to be heated again from room temperature to enable operation).

> Apart from the use of steam pressure, the aeolipile shares very little in common with practical steam engine designs and the need to continually refill and heat the water reservoir would have limited its utility in any case.

"the aeolipile – had no practical use"

It could have easily been improved as later models were. It would require large amounts of fuel and water... Which the UK did centuries later I suppose. But one would not expect good fuel efficiency in early prototypes.

Reddit would be that way. > In fact Christianity halted scientific progress in the West for around a millennium. Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence. I'm surprised anyone is still repeating such a laughable myth. Almost everything from classical antiquity would've been lost if not for Christians copying texts. > Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence. Do you know what scholasticism means?

All of those things predate Christianity.

Well maybe not scholasticism.

> that the Judeo-Christian world view was absolutely necessary for the start of real science

That's ridiculous.

> Because the Christian view was that God was a reasonable God, and He made the universe. And because He also gave us reason when He made us, we should be able to understand the universe by reason. All these men, from Newton down to Faraday, looked at the universe and expected to be able to find out how it worked, because of their religion.

That may be true, but that doesn't suggest that people who were secular could not have been curious about how the universe worked. Sure, that's a neat path for the religious to decide to embark on a scientific journey, but I expect if there was no religion at all, that scientific journey would have started earlier, and progressed faster. History is littered with scientists unable to publish their work (through threat of pain and death) because it conflicted with church doctrine.

Of course you can cherry pick famous scientists from the past to support your point, especially when it's an historical fact that theism was the default for centuries.

But this is a straightforwardly transparent attempt at apologetics. It looks weak when it goes up against answersingenesis.org, and a rabidly (maybe not literally, yet, but give it time...) culture of opposition to basic science, such as vaccination, among many evangelicals.

Ultimately the claims of religion are moral, and they're on very thin ice when religion has such an appalling history of support for slavery, torture, murder, exploitation, grift, war, paedophilia, and biblical literalism.

The usual argument at this point is a No True Scotsman. All those other religions do these things. Never the claimant's own.

But for every Pope Leo - who seems like an unusually decent example - there are five Kenneth Copelands, and an apparently endless series of scandals and court cases featuring youth pastors and grifting megachurch multimillionaires.

Personally I'd rather not be in any community that trades comfort for complicity and/or denial, no matter how nice its social events feel.

Community in practice should be wider than that.

There's some extra stress involved in finding your own way, especially in a culture of forced competition.

But you're far more likely to see atheists trying to progress public ethics than religious believers, especially in the US.

> It looks weak when it goes up against answersingenesis.org, and a rabidly (maybe not literally, yet, but give it time...) culture of opposition to basic science, such as vaccination, among many evangelicals.

But that's a problem with American evangelicals, not religion as a whole. The earliest universities were sponsored by the church; and the works of ancient scholars were preserved by Catholics and Muslims.

> Ultimately the claims of religion are moral, and they're on very thin ice when religion has such an appalling history of support for slavery, torture, murder, exploitation, grift, war, paedophilia, and biblical literalism.

Sure, but religion also has a long history of fighting against those claims; a lot of slaves adopted Christianity, and used it as a tool to fight against oppression. It was also a large part of the civil rights movement; Martin Luther King Jr was a Baptist Minister, and Malcolm X was a Muslim.

> and an apparently endless series of scandals and court cases featuring youth pastors and grifting megachurch multimillionaires.

Plenty of grift among the sciences too. Look at the replication crisis, or companies like Theranos and FTX. In the United States, medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death.

> Personally I'd rather not be in any community that trades comfort for complicity and/or denial, no matter how nice its social events feel.

You should probably stay off Hacker News then. For example, plenty of people here celebrate electrification, even though the raw materials needed for that are mined by children and slaves.

> But you're far more likely to see atheists trying to progress public ethics than religious believers, especially in the US.

I'm curious, do you have any examples?

> In the United States, medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death.

No it's not; this claim comes from a flawed study that even the BMJ's then-editor-in-chief has admitted was poorly researched. And even if the numbers were accurate, the number is for medical errors, not malpractice. It's an important distinction that matters to your point.

Probably the most obvious lesson you learn from studying religion(s) is that the word itself is functionally useless. It’s so broad a term that includes basically all intellectual history up to the present, political history, across all countries, civilizations, etc.

Which is why if anyone starts claiming that “religion is good/bad” in simplistic terms, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. It is far too broad a label to make such declarations.

Just wanted to say I agree. The thing that caused a savage to throw a virgin into a volcano and the thing that caused newton to seek deep into the construction of the universe shouldn't be explained by the same word.

Religion is fundamentally against scientific ideas because it presents a bunch of frankly unlikely ideas and then says we cannot test them. Christ rising from the dead cannot be tested and it lives outside of science. Also a lot of religious people in past have poined to Bible as reasons for why sceientific ideas like heliocentrism were correct and it ended up being completley wrong! You are cherry picking the few examples were Religion actually helped science when most of the time it was fought every revelation. Also 90% of people were religious back in the day that doesn't mean 90% of all inventions have religion to thank for it. The fact is that many religions are not testable and though they bring tremendous happiness to its users are not true.

>non-scientific worldview, brainwashing

This can be good, you know. I mean that was the original purpose of religion.

The idea is that everyone will be good if they are afraid of judgement day. But science came along and took that away. But science (or should I say naive "scientists") did not substitute it with something that works as well. Not even close. It didn't even try.

>This can be good, you know

No, it's not. Non-factual, non-evidence based worldview is part of the problem humanity has right now in the post-fact era.

>The idea is that everyone will be good if they are afraid of judgement day

I reject the notion that people can be good just because they are afraid of some powerful entity judging them. People are good because it's the right and rational thing to do. If they aren't good now, the environment is to blame which made them bad people.

>... "scientists") did not substitute it with something that works as well. Not even close. It didn't even try.

It's not the job of science to make sure people don't do bad things. Science can point to a problem, it's us, the people, who need to solve the problem.

> right and rational

Even you seem to agree that there is a notion of a "right" thing.

A "Rational" action can totally depend on what you want to achieve. And also considering the fact that "rationality" is not equally distributed among the people, it follows that there need to be some kind of gospel that needs to be followed so that everyone will do things that are collectively beneficial...

>It's not the job of science..

Isn't the ultimate goal of science the betterment of human condition? If you agree that, I think it is indeed the job of science to suggest a proper replacement for the stuff it is overthrowing...

Science exposes reality. If people aren't fit to deal with reality, and need imaginary entities that they need to worship for it to make sense, then these people need to work on themselves first and foremost, instead of screaming that the painted door on the wall that science removed traps them in a room. Their worldview was error prone to begin with.

>for it to make sense

Mmmm..I didn't make that argument. I was talking about keeping the behavior of the people good and aligned with the goals of the society.

Who cares if it was a lie, if it provides happiness and peace? The problem happened because the "leaders" started using it for selfish reasons. You got that problem in Science also, probably in a much worsened form.

> non-scientific worldview

Existence itself is beyond science and this is trivial to prove. Everyone with an above room temperature IQ can understand Aristotle's Prime Mover argument.

Note that this concept (which again, is at least as old as Aristotle) has nothing to do with religion.

> this is trivial to prove

Please don't forget to state the axioms before building the proof.

You can look up "prime mover aristotle" and "cogito descartes" if you're interested.

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