Re:Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
by f38zf5vdt on Monday March 29, 2021 @11:32AM
(#26623279)
Universalists, Reconstructionist Judaism, Quakers with unprogrammed worship, virtually any panentheist religion which asserts that the concept of God is universal and inherent in every element we can perceive. Even early Christian Gnosticism had echoes of this style of thought.
I can't imagine such religion staying around for long, as presenting things this way leads to obvious question: what makes $holyBook special over, say, Harry Potter? Or Star Trek? Or your national fiction writer of yore that wrote stories to cheer up their readers in difficult times[0]?
This is not a joke question, by any means. I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness, so I had (my religion's interpretation of) the Bible down pat. And yet, looking back, even when I still believed I already realized my moral compass was built 50% on the Bible, and 50% on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's probably the latter that kept me from becoming a fundamentalist believer :). Alas, while I could easily find a community of people willing to wait for Jesus with me, I have a hard time finding people who want to work towards the utopian ideals of the United Federation of Planets with me.
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[0] - E.g. Henryk Sienkiewicz in my country.