Over the past few decades, the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated—often referred to as “nones”—has grown rapidly. In the 1970s, only about 5% of Americans fell into this category. Today, that number exceeds 25%. Scholars have debated whether this change simply reflects a general decline in belief, or whether it signals something more complex. The research team wanted to explore the deeper forces at play: Why are people leaving institutional religion? What are they replacing it with? And how are their personal values shaping that process?
For me it’s because religion is brain cancer that fucks up anyone who takes it seriously.
Because it’s a grift?
Because it’s all horseshit?
I was going to say bullshit but either will do.
When it comes to bullshit, you have to stand in awe of religion.
I miss carlin. I would love to hear his take on the current bullshit.
I’ll do ya one better and go with tyrannosaurus shit.
TL;DR - it’s the hypocrisy.
My guess is that the extreme hatred flowing out of outspoken “Christians” in the US is a huge turn-off, as it should be.
No no no, this ancient religion from the Middle East based off of several other cultures mythology is the TRUTH!
I was a skeptical little kid, and I have been an atheist since I first learned of the term around 1st grade. I was also very interested in archeology and mythology, so exposure to all those other religions didn’t help the Christianity case. As a child, I assumed that the whole god/jesus thing was just like Santa and the Easter Bunny. That it was a made up story to instill morals in kids, and that eventually when I was older the adults would admit it to me. Of course, they never did. But I had a lot of friends at church and generally enjoyed my time there, so I didn’t openly talk about being an atheist until college.
I actually do kind of miss the community aspect of a church. I have always assumed that is the biggest draw that keeps people interested. Both for the support network, and sense of belonging.
Well, my whole life, I’ve lived in a society where organized Christianity has overwhelmingly been a force for evil, rather than a force for good. Fuck, I straight-up believe that most Evangelical Christians are devil worshipers. If your religion leads you to hate, you aren’t worshiping God, you’re worshiping the Devil.
Christianity is, by definition, a cult of human sacrifice.
Kinda puts the entire faith into perspective.
Death cult
They ritualistically eat the body and blood of their god/savior.
Let that sink in.
They wear symbols of a torturous execution device as jewelry, and use it to decorate their homes.
the thing is that the cross has taken on new meaning in christianity. to them, it’s not so much a “torturous execution device” as you have said, but rather proof that jesus christ can even live after that. in this way, it is a symbol of life after death, somehow.
Right. I was replying to someone who reframed a tradition of Christianity in a way which highlighted how it could be seen as disturbing or bizarre to someone who was unfamiliar with Christianity; I simply did the same with another tradition.
Well, they were in luck… he’s only mostly dead. If he was all the way dead, it wouldn’t have worked. but Mostly dead? Miracle Max can work with that.
Suicidal Death Cult
They are actively doing everything in their power to bring about the end of the world.
though according to their belief, the “end of the world” is actually the start of a new, eternal world.
also, as far as i’m aware of, it’s not so much the “end of the world”, but rather the “end of time”, where time refers to the progression towards god.
When you’re actively trying to bring about the end of the world, there’s no more apt description.
Death Cult Armageddon, great Dimmu album. My parents got it for me along with Enthrone Darkness Triumphant for Christmas one year but they wouldn’t buy me Diablo II because Diablo “didn’t fit the theme of the holiday.”
In all fairness, Diablo has an entirely different lore than Christianity, I can see where they were coming from. We want to burn Yahweh, not Anu.
Dooms day death cult.
Lead by Jesus, the dooms day death cult leader.
I hear he’s a “good guy.”
I don’t think dooms day death cult leaders, make believe or not and I just mean a historical grifter non magical, are good people.
Cannibal death cult, If you take part in the sacrament. That is, quite literally, internally perceived as ritual cannibalism.
Fwiw, the belief that it becomes the actual flesh of Jesus is a Catholic thing, by my understanding. In my Protestant upbringing, it was regarded as entirely symbolic.
Oh, and we did it with grape juice instead of wine, because apparently Jesus hated alcohol or something. Just don’t ask why then his first miracle was turning water into wine.
The grape juice was used because a lot of evangelicals are teetotalers and think even a shot of wine is gonna corrupt peeps.
Which, goes to the other reason Protestants frequently don’t: they don’t see a need to serve wine, while they don’t want to potentially cause an alcoholic to stumble. The chance might be small, but then it’s all symbolic anyway.
Also, grape juice is cheaper.
human sacrifice
like a candle that burns and therefore melts.
Not really; one guy died, by his own choice, but came back to life two days later. A real “cult of human sacrifice” would require it as an ongoing practice and for the victims to stay dead.
Jesus alone doesn’t make it a death cult. It’s a death cult because the whole religion is predicated on death. Dying is the entire point. Your entire life is a means to gain the rewards of dying and only then will you truly be happy.
So much wrongitude here I don’t know if this is genuinely what you think or if you’re just trolling.
Jesus came to earth so that we could know God, here and now. To nick someone else’s quote: It’s not pie in the sky when you die, it’s steak on your plate while you wait. John 10:10: “I have some so that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
I suggest you read the Bible some time. Start with the Gospels, either Luke or John. Not as a means to convert you, but so that you can understand what Christianity is really about, instead of spouting uninformed nonsense about it. You’re currently the equivalent of those Christians who say the equivalent of “evolution is just a theory”.
Your reward is in heaven right? So the endgame is death. You might get to eat steak while you are alive but you dont get the whole meal until you die. That’s a death cult.
No. John 17:3 “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
My “reward” is right here, right now. While I’m still alive.
A death cult encourages people either to kill or to die. Christianity is not one of those.
Just because there was only one sacrificial offering doesn’t mean jesus wasn’t a sacrificial offering.
The whole thing about jesus being both fully god and fully man is that no “normal” human would ever be sinless- and therefore would be an inadequate sacrifice. Therefore god became man- that is, jesus- whose sole purpose was to be a “perfect” sacrifice.
But isn’t the whole trinity thing God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit the same entity? So God sacrificed himself for himself… wouldn’t really call a two day nap for some eternal being a sacrifice either.
You’re expecting it all to make sense. It’s like a the lies a 2 year old tells to explain and justify having gotten into the chocolate cake, after having tried to lay it off like they hadn’t (missing the whole having it all over their face thing,).
The longer they’re allowed to go, and the more you poke holes the weirder it gets.
This was always my biggest struggle growing up in a catholic house. “He sacrificed himself to save everyone who came before and will come after.”
Like, is that really that big of a deal? Shit if i was presented with the option of a much smaller number than infinity, idk say 1000, id sacrifice myself. AND i don’t know that I’m god or that my father is god and that ill be taken care of for all eternity.
In all reality, that numbers way less than 1000 for strangers, and if you include anyone i know/care about, that number could be as low as 1.
He set adam and eve up, too. He meant for them to eat the dam fruit,
All so he could LARP as the White Knight™️.
No. The christian God is evil. They’re doing exactly as their religion demands.
If your religion leads you to hate, you aren’t worshiping God, you’re worshiping the Devil.
And this is how wars between religions start…
Maybe try to move away from that God/Devil thing. It’s a foolish, naive, human-centered worldview.
Ok, we can restate it. If your religion leads you to hate, you aren’t on the side of good, you’re on the side of bad?
alright, but is the world really as black and white as that? Is there really a clear Good Side, and a clear Bad Side?
If your religion leads you to hate, the religion and its followers are bad. The end.
Religious people seem to think so. But we can restate again: If your religion leads you to hate, your religion may cause you to act unethically.
I was trying to make the point that there is no Good and Bad baked into the universe. There is no meaning to those words inherent to the universe - they are not like positive charge and negative charge.
IMO what people generally mean when they say a person is “good” is the person makes decisions based on what is beneficial to society at large, while a “bad” person makes decisions based solely on what benefits them. The idea of Good and Bad, the idea you can judge someone as either Good or Bad, these are ideas which have arisen under evolutionary pressure, it’s a mechanism whereby you can enforce a particular behaviour across a community.
There’s nothing magic about it. If a person is good, they help make their community stronger: if they are bad, they weaken it. People raised in a traditional religious household seem to cling on to the misplaced idea that there is an absolute Good and an absolute Bad sewn into the fabric of the universe.
However, there is a way to determine more rigourously what actions are good and what are bad. It requires clear thinking, objective appraisal of the situation, and an unbiased enumeration of the choices available. Then you can hope to come to a realistic assessment of each choice, and finally make your decision.
You won’t be certain, you shouldn’t be certain. You should be aware of the limitations of your understanding, and always ready to adapt to new information. And you certainly will not be influenced by what you might imagine the Devil would make of it all.
We’re already in a war of religion. One side just hasn’t admitted it yet.
Everyone, myself included always come back to the same reason - there is no proof.
If I was given actual proof of a god or pantheon or any other ridiculous nonsense I’d absolutely change my mind but actual proof magic exists can’t exist because magic isn’t real
I fully accept that I don’t and can’t truly understand the universe but where the fuck does that somehow morph into “god did it” it’s ok not to know everything I don’t need made up bullshit to fill the gaps so I can feel better about not having every answer. Live with not knowing, that’s what being human is meant to be, acceptance
god definitely exists, as it’s just a philosophical concept to say the “cause of all causes”. by definition, such a thing exists, i would say.
the issue is more with organized religion. there’s a lot of rules and bureaucracy in it, and most of that is outdated.
god definitely exists, as it’s just a philosophical concept to say the “cause of all causes”.
I hope you stretched before making that leap.
Snark aside, this is just a dressed-up version of the “god of the gaps” argument, and is by no means proof of the existence of god. Changing the definition of “god” to be the “cause of all causes” is uselessly broad at best, and misattribution at worst - the “cause of all causes” may very well be a natural phenomenon, at which point attributing it to “god” is just straight up incorrect.
by definition, such a thing exists, i would say.
Actually, maybe not. There’s some new theories and evidence suggesting that it’s possible that the universe is eternal, as in it has always existed, making the existence of a “cause of all causes” impossible (unless of course you also water down the definition of that phrase to the point where it’s meaningless).
god definitely exists, as it’s just a philosophical concept to say the “cause of all causes”.
Most believers will assert that their god exists in a different, more concrete way. The number of persons able or willing to discuss the topic on your terms is an insignificant minority.
Because I don’t need God to be a good person, or know what good morals are.
Not to mention you’ll do a better job at it if you think for yourself on the subject rather than delegating it to a spiritual leader with potentially dubious agendas
I think it was Penn Jillette who put it best…
I murder all I want to, and the amount I want is zero
Most of us get our sense of decency from the inside. Some can only find it in a book. Which is more dangerous the person who sense of right and wrong are with them or the ones who are just one crisis of faith from not having any?
I support a few religious organizations through volunteer work.
My rules for these organizations are simple:
- The religion takes a back seat to helping the community
- They’re not preachy or trying to convert people
- They don’t diddle little kids.
You’d think it’ll be easy to meet that criteria.
How would you even know if #3 was true or not, it’s not like they advertise it.
Flip a coin
We could… weigh them? And, if they weigh as much as a duck, then we know they are kiddie fiddlers!
I’m curious which is more common a failing #3 or #2.
most christian charity or aid orgs are mostly about that captive audience.
Only one I can think of is Unitarian Universalist for all 3. Maybe some sort of Buddhism? Though probably have broken #3 and are very big/organized.
I do volunteer for a Unitarian church and a Buddhist temple! Nailed it.
Awesome! I just started going to a UU church again after a decade+ away…just as wholesome as I remember. Thank you for the volunteer work! You are amazing 😍
Can unitarian universalist even be considered a religion? Isn’t it just a catch-all group for people to get together and worship in a more harmonious way?
They get together and practice, which counts as a religion even if they are kinda doing their own thing.
I mean they have 8 guiding principles but it’s a fair point. I feel like the term religion is used very loosely there, but I do wonder what religion that DOES have strong guiding tenents that isn’t at least mildly aggressive about them.
They don’t diddle little kids.
You know they don’t, when they perform a song about it…
Yeah I used to think ‘‘how do Catholics manage to keep going?’’ Then my church fought a lawsuit to get them to report child abuse, then bought insurance to buffer any financial loss they might incur while protecting child rapists. I feel like Jesus telling people that if they feel like hurting kids they should stop, take a deep breath, and commit suicide, kind of forbids this sort of behavior.
Imagine my mom used to volunteer together with JW back in the 90s
“You will know them by their fruits” ahh criteria
there is literally nothing that religion can provide that can’t be gotten without religion
For real. You can just buy those styrofoam wafers and some cheap wine if you really want them. You don’t have to go to church.
¡obleas!
I guess messed up ideas about sexuality and consent in general aren’t strictly under their purview. Or, subservience to arbitrary authority figures.
What about rape in a rectory? Probably doesn’t happen too often outside of a religious context.
insight into why.
Because it’s not fucking real?
This isn’t rocket surgery.
That hasn’t become any more or less true in recent years, though. It’s worth asking why people are now thinking of the idea differently than they did for the past several thousand
Well I suppose there’s still no proof that there never was a so-called “divine Y-chromosome” as believed in by Christians, but before we knew about DNA, or even human cells, the ridiculous legends of religion were definitely harder to refute. The ridiculousness of those legends was a big part of their power - the more stupid and unhinged a religious story appears to us today, the more in awe believers would have been about it 300 or 400 years ago.
So while religion hasn’t become less real in recent years, it has become a lot easier to point out its absurdities.
Good for them.
These ancient lies designed for crowd control have been horrible these past thousand years.
Not that modern political groups or sects etc are much better…
i just want to point out that medieval christianity was actually fine. it helped the people live good lives.
the issues began around 1500, when political pressures caused europeans to go to america, and later in 1800 with the industrial revolution.
Remind me when Gallileo lived?
Lmao because it’s horse shit that’s why
Source: me, a 37-yo exmormon who was all-in, true believer, until his mid 20s.
