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Re:Alan Watts, for all his faults, was an imaginative and pr... by roughly on Saturday January 27, 2024 @01:33PM (#39158342)
There's depth in the Christian community (as there's always been, of course). I think you're right that a fundamental driver of conversion is people looking for a home, but a running problem for the church today, and especially for many of the more evangelical varieties, is the tail wagging the dog, so to speak - the parishioners pushing the priests, as opposed to the priest guiding the parish. There are churches who provide welcome homes for people and who build their communities towards love and support of their fellow people, but there are also plenty churches who see themselves as the armies of the culture war, and whose members indeed joined because that appealed to them.

Incidentally, re: "modern spirituality feels hollow" - there was a good article in the Atlantic* recently arguing that the fundamental problem for the modern church isn't that it asks too much of its members, but that it asks too little - that by not requiring its members to actually demonstrate their beliefs, it robs those beliefs of any tangibility and makes the whole exercise hollow.

I'm not a Christian, but I do think there was something lost in the country when we discarded the church as a common moral frame - the only other shared philosophical framework we have is the market, and whatever the limits of the church, the morals of the market seem to be making for a much colder society.

* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/christian-...

Re:Alan Watts, for all his faults, was an imaginative and pr... by maroonblazer on Saturday January 27, 2024 @04:03PM (#39159814)
> I do think there was something lost in the country when we discarded the church as a common moral frame

My hope, disguised as a hypothesis, is that we're gradually shedding the superstitions of our past, and in so doing, are descending, albeit temporarily, into a local minimum. Eventually, we'll find our way up to a higher peak where compassion and collaboration are the order of the day without attachment to unfounded beliefs.

Re:Alan Watts, for all his faults, was an imaginative and pr... by 2snakes on Saturday January 27, 2024 @08:45PM (#39161743)
Or a leap forward in consciousness due to said beliefs turning out to be founded.
Re:Alan Watts, for all his faults, was an imaginative and pr... by factotvm on Saturday January 27, 2024 @09:01PM (#39161813)
I would imagine consciousness shrinks in the presence of an all-powerful god.
Re:Alan Watts, for all his faults, was an imaginative and pr... by anjel on Sunday January 28, 2024 @12:52AM (#39162948)
>the only other shared philosophical framework we have is the market, and whatever the limits of the church, the morals of the market seem to be making for a much colder society.

If things are colder, it's not amorality, it's colder as a side effect of cultivated self pre-occupation. For the "market" depends upon narcissism to keep consumers keep consuming. It's getting more pronounced with each successive generation. Adam Curtis - The Century of the Self is the long history of how and why: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&pp=ygUTY2VudHVyeSBvZ...