Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by analog31 on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:47AM (#26621454)

I think there's a rhetoric out there, that "everybody needs a religion," and that identifies any vehemently held ideology or close-knit social group as a religion. It's tautological. This is exacerbated by the difficulty of forming a general definition of "religion" that isn't riddled with exceptions. Defining "religion" broadly enough to include all religions makes it end up including everything else too.

But "your group is a religion too" seems like a combination of confirmation bias and tu quoque fallacy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by beaconstudios on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:57AM (#26621608)

replace "religion" with "philosophy" and it reads better - after all, religion is just philosophy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by analog31 on Monday March 29, 2021 @11:29AM (#26623208)

Indeed, but "your group is a philosophy too" doesn't have the same rhetorical impact.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by beaconstudios on Monday March 29, 2021 @11:34AM (#26623307)

because people don't care about philosophy, but they care about religion - either being for or against their or others' religions. Mainly because many religious people don't think of it as philosophy, and atheists think of it as worthless.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by 987yghj on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:21AM (#26621109)

They have chosen new religions and a new elite priesthood, they just have different names.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by lazysheepherd on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:38AM (#26621334)

This avenue of thinking are messing with language. And language is what we organize and coordinate with as human beings. So stop this!

Religion is a very precise definition. By which your comment is not only technically wrong but also practically harmful.

Definition of the religion according to dictionary is: "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods."

So no, they are not choosing new religions. And their "priests" do not claim to be shadow of the divine, and certainly do not threaten them with afterlife.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by visarga on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:46AM (#26621447)

> And their "priests" do not claim to be shadow of the divine, and certainly do not threaten them with afterlife.

Oh yes, if you look at the peddlers of righteous outrage we have today, and their continuous infighting, there's no difference. Dare to deviate from the line? Wrongthink! Cancelled! Even their own people fall pray to this as they get accused of not being outraged enough by their comrades.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by datavirtue on Monday March 29, 2021 @10:57AM (#26622671)

Hmm...not the definition I found. Relativism abounds but it can't be "it depends" all the way down. We at least need to agree on definitions before we start arguing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by lazysheepherd on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:54PM (#26628722)

It is not a problem with langauges. For that we have dictionaries. It must be a problem with whatever "relativism" happens to be.

I've searched and took the above defition from the Oxford dictionary before commenting.

Just checked Meriam Webster and Cambridge, of course the words differ, but the meanings seemed functionally equivalent.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by igetspam on Monday March 29, 2021 @10:09AM (#26621805)

Perhaps that's for the better. I didn't "choose" the religion thrust upon me as a kid. Somewhere around the age of 10 though, the inconsistencies were too many to ignore and I "lost" my faith. I spent many years wrestling with that and the contradictions between what I was being told and what I was witnessing, even in my own family. The damage it did to me has never really been undone. There are things in this world that I recoil from because of dogma that I don't even believe. I became and actual good person, without being shackled to some deity or set of books, later in my life. I pushed everything away because of distrust and anger when I was younger. I can't begin to imagine the good I could have done, had not been stunted early on.

We don't need religion and shame on any parents that push it on their kids. They don't know better and they can't consent.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by msla on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:43AM (#26621401)

The sad thing is how many people think deepity nonsense like what you sarcastically posted here is worth consideration, as opposed to being not-even-wrong level laughably bad philosophy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by joeberon on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:28AM (#26621206)

Agreed, it's been replaced by pure materialism/physicalism

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by lapetitejort on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:50AM (#26621496)

There's probably an appreciable percentage (I have no source for this) of people who leave organized religion because of the gaudiness of megachurches and grand gilded cathedrals. Materialism is not unique to the modern era or secularism.

[ Parent | on HN ]

[dead]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by gruez on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:35AM (#26621298)

scott alexander sort of covered that.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godles...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by danbruc on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:19AM (#26621081)

They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods [...]

They choose no religion.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by fennecfoxen on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:37AM (#26621331)

They choose politics.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/03/27/religious...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by datavirtue on Monday March 29, 2021 @10:50AM (#26622537)

Religion doesn't have to equal church and rigid dogma. The word is probably ruined in our society by it's connotation.

My religion changes often based on new information, ideas, and philosophical exploration.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by ed25519FUUU on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:38PM (#26628514)

Actually they're choosing Islam, which is now by far the fastest growing religion in the world: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by thefounder on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:21AM (#26621107)

Religion is a way of life. You surely have one, it's just not very ritualistic.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by hn_throwaway_99 on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:26AM (#26621178)

I've grown tiresome of this trend to redefine words with well-known and universally understood meanings to basically "whatever I want it to mean".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by hobofan on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:31AM (#26621241)

I can understand that viewpoint (e.g. avid sports fans are a prime example), but it always seems to be a talking point of religious institutions themselves, with the goal of people thinking "oh, I'm bound to have some form of religion anyway, so I'll just stay with my current one".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by danbruc on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:26AM (#26621175)

Having a religion may be a way of life but not every way of life is a religion. At least as long as we are not stretching the definition of religion into meaninglessness.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by SketchySeaBeast on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:29AM (#26621219)

A, not the. I don't think you can argue with any sort of coherency that rejecting religion is a religion, unless you reduce the concept of religion down to a belief, in which case some people's religion is "bigfoot".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by arbitrage on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:17AM (#26621061)

> They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods

Do you have an example of such in the modern age? I don't really see many people I know "choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods"

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by flyingfences on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:22AM (#26621112)

Quakerism would fit the bill, though I don't know how many people are choosing it these days.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by xattt on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:24AM (#26621153)

This is hard to define as there is ambiguity between religion and spirituality.

Even a subscription to pure scientific worldview is a religion in itself.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by bryanlarsen on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:25AM (#26621156)

QAnon?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by PeterisP on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:33AM (#26621274)

QAnon seems to have many parallels with "prophetic" religions where you don't have a priesthood class organizing specific groups of followers e.g. parishes, but you have a priesthood class interpreting the words of a prophet and popularizing these interpretations; in this case "priesthood" isn't a formal distinction, but de facto you tend to have specific minority of people fulfilling this role.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time by bad_good_guy on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:29AM (#26621215)

Why do you assume these people are choosing religion at all?

[ Parent | on HN ]