Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
by gumby on Monday March 29, 2021 @11:35AM
(#26623323)
> In fact, you don't even need to be a religious organization to hold such beliefs. See: Alcoholics Anonymous.
Alcoholics Anonymous is an explicitly religious organization is it not? To me they certainly cast themselves so strongly in that manner that to claim they are a not is to make a distinction without a difference.
Note: I have not attended ?A itself but spent time with adjacent ?anon groups designed to support people whose friends and family members are struggling with addiction. The messages I received were, to me, pretty hard core religious, and one specific kind of religion in particular.
Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
by coliveira on Monday March 29, 2021 @11:30AM
(#26623250)
But you don't need religion for that. The ancients already knew this by creating the arts as an expression of humanity looking for its meaning. My opinion is that modern humans debased art and nowadays have difficulty finding things that are meaningful. Religion and superstition, on the other hand, have maintained their focus.
Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
by MisterBastahrd on Monday March 29, 2021 @11:37AM
(#26623358)
It isn't a strawman. It is a fundamentally accurate description of the major Western religions. The kind you would go to a church to.
The problem that religious doctrine seeks to address is one of how to preserve our sanity when we're inexplicably stuck on this rock together. Science doesn't seem to have any good explanation for why we're here either -- just that we exist and the universe has for a long time too. There a multiple colliding personal beliefs of individuals on things like: fairness, justice, or whatever a favorable outcome socially even might be. I think it's fine that people might seriously study the mythos of Greek, Abrahamic, and Eastern religion together.
People are born without a purpose other than survival and it is perfectly normal, if not recommended, that they maintain a healthy curiosity about the meaning of their existence. The alternative, unless I'm mistaken, is nihilism.