However I also grew up with constant anxiety about sin and hell. It still gets back to me when my insomnia is bad.

So churches and church membership aren't necessarily a net-positive. I too wish there was some sort of community my family could belong to. But I'm not taking my kids to church anytime soon.

Catholicism is, by far, the largest Christian denomination in the US.

Moreover, large areas in the south, midwest, and California favor the "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" varieties of Protestant theology, where Hell (and inculcating mass fear of Hell) is very much the central concern today.

Your immediate local community likely does not have many of either group.

The reason to be afraid isn't "here's someone who's just waiting for you to fail" it's (speaking for myself) "I'm _very_ stubborn and _very_ set in my own ways. Can I do the work of letting God work in me? He's eager to work in me, but He won't without my consent. Can I die to myself to serve the good?"

What about those who never had a chance to hear about God? That is between them and God. But God isn't looking to throw them into Hell - if they go to Hell it is because they decided they'd rather serve "something other than the good" even if they never connected "the good" to God.

Hell is a fantasy that causes more mental illness than any marginal reduction in antisocial behavior.

How many lifetimes were wasted fearing/sacrificing, arguing, killing, and dying over meaningless and unprovable silliness like heaven and hell? How many children scarred by things they read for themselves after years of being told it's--some measure of--the highest truth?

Thankfully beliefs aren't permanent, or I'd still be anxious and miserable. Perhaps you should not permanently choose a god who has caused so much harm for no benefit.

If God, as Ipsum Esse Subsistens (i.e., not the straw man sky fairy), is the Summum Bonum, the Highest Good, and the only thing, in its infinity, that fully realizes Man, makes him whole, fulfills his nature, brings him everlasting peace, joy, and happiness (and all who are old enough can agree that nothing on earth can accomplish this end)...

If sin is willfully choosing inferior or illusory goods over and above the Highest Good, acting against what is objectively good instead of conforming to it, choosing a path away from the Highest Good toward something else...

If Man is created with the capacity to know the truth and the freedom to make choices and thus be responsible for those choices...

...then Hell is, first, his voluntary rejection of Heaven, which is unity with God and what is called the Beatific Vision, and second, justice received for committing the greatest injustice of hating God, which is frankly a kind of self-hatred because it involves hating one's own highest good. In other words, God, having made us free, does not violate the free exercise of choice, as love cannot be forced, but free. And since following one's own way away from the objective truth and the Highest Good necessarily leads to misery, and God permits that to occur even if He may "propose" through life events a change of heart, someone obstinate in his evil will be allowed to go exactly where he is choosing to go, much like a drug user can follow his drug use to his own self-destruction.

And because being forced into Heaven would be hellish for anyone who doesn't want to be there, Hell is actually a kind of mercy. But it is ridiculous to expect Hell to be a wonderful condition, as what satisfies Man is a matter of objective fact, not subjective fancy. In other words, it is not a false ultimatum between loving God or getting it good and hard, as if it were some kind of threat. Human nature points toward Heaven, something we can know to be the case, just as we can know many things that are good for us, and that by refusing them, we harm ourselves.

If thoughts of Hell are paralyzing to you, instead of instilling a healthy kind of vigilance and humility toward God, then you may come from a strange sect that is confused about the topic, suffer from scrupulosity, or have a burden of unaddressed guilt.

It's not a question of what team you're on. That relativizes the truth, making "religion" a matter of some kind of personal and preferred fairy tale. Truth is the only consideration. If these claims are untrue, then they're nonsense and should not be followed. It would be dishonest to do so. While we can tolerate a certain range of sincerely held beliefs that are obviously false, and a certain measure of that is necessary for any society, it is bad faith and a lack of integrity to "believe" instrumentally, for a purported practical result of doing so.

There's no point in favoring one natural human intuition over the other.

Then the number of people througout history who claimed to have taken revelation from God must be evaluated for authenticity of their miracles, one of which can still be verified today as his entire life is preserved through formal chain of transmissions: Muhammad (pbuh). Jesus, we can't even agree on the exact wording of the revelation he received let alone his life.

This makes no sense. There are myriad cognitive biases that prevent or hinder the ability to model reality, that may or may not be advantageous to an animal depending on the environment it is in.

Erik Butler has a fantastic book on this overall subject called "The Devil and His Advocates" that you might be interested in.

We're doing great in terms of societal bonds.

In the religious community I grew up in, the idea that the purpose of the church was "community" was loudly vilified. There was an active purism regarding sincerity of belief and the centricity faith should have in one's life.

Of course, one can see how cult-like devotion and suppression of dissent are conducive to social cohesion, but as a young adult, I only wanted to get away from an environment that stymied my mind and spirit, and that feeling writ large has shuttered churches, I think.

I just don't think that is true for or to many, likely most, religious people. Community is an aspect but at its core it's a religion. You can't be a part of the community without believing, or at least pretending to believe, in the religion.

In the past (of course it depended on the exact time and place) occasionally going to church even if many treated it mostly as a formality was the default for most people. Even if you didn't, chances are that you couldn't ignore it entirely because you still had some links to the community surrounding it through family members, various organizations, events etc.

Just like ordinary organisms, it undergoes mutations and evolution - its characteristics are seldomly 'designed'.

Without community to keep it alive, it will die out. So religions that include practices to tie communities together are at an evolutionary advantage.

"Religion" in this case is not just about religion either, but also nations. The U.S. has our gods, such as Washington & Hamilton, and places of worship such as the "temples" in D.C., but we've also censored leaders like Jackson & Lee, and torn down slave-owning statues.

We're living through a deconstruction of history and rebuilding an inverted digital world. I don't think it's been productive. It actually almost feels like an end to history to me.

It is a problem, but… religion isn’t true. How do you square that with any sort of culture that values reality?

If you don't believe in it, you should just do all the actions and move on as normal. This is the 'liturgical' approach to religion and doesn't require belief.

I myself have confessed many times to my priest a lack of belief, but by virtue of the fact I'm there, I'm clearly still practicing. I mean, as a very analytical person, sometimes I feel very skeptical, and sometimes I feel as if God obviously exists. But either way, it doesn't matter because the answer is unknowable by observation, so it's a choice to believe or not. But even if my choice feels strained, being liturgical[1] about it still provides the same benefits.

[1] By liturgical, I mean, doing the actions, like kneeling, standing, bowing, etc. This builds community independent of any belief.

These views are replete with many untestable and non-falsifiable axiomatic assumptions, which must be accepted on "faith."

That word means "accepting the validity of those axioms _despite_ their lack of congruence with reality."

Regardless, I personally find all of that to be vastly preferable to whatever the fuck is happening to us in the absence of Christianity.

Protestants in Europe are also very different from the US btw - they are more moderate than Catholics, not less. I grew up Protestant and have always had doubts, which turned into being pretty sure that it's all bogus from age 20 or so. Having something to believe in is probably nice, but it doesn't work for me.

You examine all cultures and find that, despite their claims, none truly value reality. Then you choose to believe, or have experiences that lead you to believe, one that explicitly says that there is more to life than what you can see.

Empiricism doesn't help you with the questions of "who are my people?" or "what matters?" You can make a legitimate case for some of religion's claims being empirically unsound, it doesn't take away from the fact that religion is very effective at giving a lot of people meaning and community, orthogonal to those specific claims.

Nietzsche's aphorism about God being dead was correct, as was his prediction about the future. Religion wouldn't immediately die out but it would take increasingly pathological forms, it's arguably why religion has taken such a political turn as the capital 'f' Faith portion is just gone.

At least for Judaism that not true at all. There are enormous numbers of Jews who do not believe, and yet consider themselves Jewish and go to occasional services, and find meaning in them even while not believing.

There are even pulpit Rabbis who do not believe and yet faithfully follow all the practices and teach.

There aren't, which is exactly why they're exceptional. After the experiences of the 20th century Jews have retained an acute awareness of threats to their very survival as a group which is why they tend to adhere to practice despite secularization. It's also likely why secular Jewish women are the only secular group with a high birth rate.

There's no historical analog to this in pretty much any other modern society, which is why you don't see secular Swedes drag themselves out of bed to go to mass on Sundays.

... And the 19th, and the 18th, and the 17th, and the 16th, and...

The Jewish condition was obviously affected by the Shoah, but the fundamental elements of otherness from the communities it lived in (since the exodus), with all the very real threats that they inevitably attract, have always been there.

(Sadly any further elaboration on this point cannot be made in a public forum today.)

Personal commitments, even if idealistic are good, trying to talk yourself into facts about reality that you don't even believe is never good. And most religions of course make those demands. It's basically like being in the late Soviet Union. Everything is great, everyone is equal, you leave the house and there's a doctor selling cigarettes and vodka on the streets to survive. And basically when in your mind you see that double-think it's already over in a way.

It might be time to start judging which faith-based organizing principles produce the best outcomes.

In fact, how often is your own brain lying to you for one reason or another?

So what does that leave? Philosophy, ethics and cultural mythology? Why do we need to keep religion around for any of that, any more than we need alchemy when we now have chemistry?

It would not surprise me that on the whole our society is worse off for lack of a widespread secular tradition of discussing these concepts with your community.

edit: substitute "secular setting" for "secular state", definitely not arguing for the integration of church and state.

It's harder to call someone a "libtard" or a "troglodyte" if you have to sit next to them in a pew for the rest of your life.

Certainly you can instill reverence in people - give people a challenge that involves using a cross as a hammer to complete and they’ll recoil instinctively, but I think that’s just software tapping into something more akin to firmware.

I think it's a combination of the environment you grew up in, the behavior of the people you grew up with, the values you were raised with, and the education you received, and some of it is also purely self-driven. And so toddlers and little kids are like amoral sponges, since they're still developing their senses of justice, morality, and empathy.

That's what the intellectual cafes of 18th/19th century were. In a more bastardized way, that's what pubs can be today.

This said, school and "politics" have always been the main locations for such arguments - "politics", after all, was effectively built as an alternative to religious establishments to discuss matters without pesky clerics around.

I notice I usually walk away from conversations with fellow believers about the nature of God, the Bible etc feeling closer to and more trusting of them even compared to if I talk with them about e.g. trolley problems or what their take on moral realism is, especially if I later confirm they in fact walk the walk by living in a way which agrees with those principles. There's just something about the religious framing that gives it that extra kick.

The actual question of whether God is real is irrelevant. I just assume they're playing ball the same way I am, and that's often enough to kickstart the friendship.

Assuming you're utilitarian, you're working off of the untestable belief that making people happier has some property called 'goodness', and that there is some inherent value to it. But that doesn't even matter because happiness is a qualia that cannot be tested anyway.

So, while I agree that faith in God is not a prerequisite for morality, faith in something certainly is. And once you've allowed faith into your worldview, stating with certainty that God doesn't exist becomes inconsistent.

And theists have no empirical basis for their morality either, because faith by definition is belief in the absence of such evidence. People just believe what they believe. I prefer to be fed rather than starve, I prefer peace to suffering, I prefer liberty to slavery. I'm a social being capable of empathy and extending my beliefs about myself to include my expectations for others. I prefer others be fed, rather than starve. I prefer others have peace rather than suffer. I prefer others have liberty rather than slavery. I believe human life has value because I value my own life, and therefore value the lives of others.

What do I need to have faith in, here, other than nature and mortality?

I don't disagree that theists lack empirical basis for morality, both because I don't think anyone does and because I don't believe there is an empirical basis for God.

But it doesn't sound like you have a morality*. It sounds like you have preferences. One doesn't decide one's preferences, and even if they did, they would need a morality to do so rightly. This suggests that your being a good person is strictly luck of the draw. If my friend Bob the sadist says he loves it when people starve, would you be in the right to tell him he's wrong? On what grounds?

*Don't take this the wrong way- I don't mean to insult you, and I fully expect you do have morality. I'm only criticizing the argument here.

You first. You don't believe there is an empirical basis for God yet you believe morality absolutely presupposes faith in the supernatural. Presumably, you also consider yourself to have morality. On what supernaturally-derived basis would you (presumably) believe Bob is wrong? and given that the supernatural cannot be objectively proven, how does that faith differ from a preference, on your part?

Faith also beats preference here in that, given the premise that it is good to reduce suffering and increase happiness, I arrive at the same conclusions about morally correct actions regardless of the time and place that my mind happens to exist in. I can align my actions to the right choice even if I was raised to prefer something else. A slave owner prefers that slavery exists; a utilitarian slave owner can see that that is wrong and free their slaves.

An activist god, in the old testament sense, would be rather visible.

I was just pointing out that you said several things as if they were proven facts, and they are not. That's all.

The religious do that all the time, but only atheists ever seem to get called out for it. Why the double standard, I wonder?

What does this even mean?

> How do you square that with any sort of culture that values reality?

Is reality true? Like all these agents in the comment section below who claim to know the unknowable, are they true?

That model of reality you are describing, thinking that it is reality itself, is that true?

In the US, it's been a slow process over 35 years, since 1991.[1] England and Wales are much further along - believers are below 50%. But Islam is on the way up in the UK, at 6%.

The high-intensity religions, the ones that require religious activity once a day or more, seem to be thriving.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-reli...

That is an atheist point of view. I grew up in religious environment too and people really believed in god. Some were hypocrites and some values stand in a real life way (commitment to not lie makes for the worst business), but the basic believe that god exist was really real. And when you play the part just for social reasons, then I think you are just a hypocrite. Which would be good reason for people to leave - so that they dont have to pretend.

I don’t get this part. The only time I had a job in my local community was high school. Most of the adults (which was 95+% of the employees) commuted 20-60 minutes to get to it, though, so even that wasn’t my local community. You’d never run into your coworkers at the park or the store because they went to totally different parks and stores. Same’s held for my career as an adult. Coworkers are rarely people you’ll see anywhere other than work unless you go way out of your way to make it happen.

> The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me.

People need to acknowledge how much the downside of this kind of closeness was conformism, enforced by shunning (or worse) the noncompliant. A lot of religious communities have coped incredibly badly with the sexual revolution of the 20th century; if the only foray of your church into politics is against abortion or LGBT freedom, it's not really surprising that young people and women are going to run in the opposite direction as soon as they get a chance - often facilitated by the Internet. While simultaneously responding to actual abuse with coverups and complicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...

What is novel about the sexual revolution is that it dismissed any needs for norms. Over the past two decades we've seen non-religious attempts to reinstate those norms (consent, kink, safe words, etc). However, what's unpalatable to religious people is not the sex per se, but the lack of norms.

And we need norms to function as a community with a common culture. Throwing those out does not actually help.

You mention the sexual abuse by the Catholic church, but that was caused by the sexual revolution. At the time, the psychological community encouraged moving pedophiles around. The church was -- at the time -- attempting to modernize, and part of the modernization was listening to 'science', including psychologists. Psychologists at the time insisted these things could be cured and criminalization would not help.

The church is not the only organization to have been affected by this, but it is one of the few prominent examples of institutions being held accountable for it. The same ideology caused the German foster care scandals [1] [2].

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-exp...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Kentler

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oversight-failures-allow-sexual...

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-...

[3] https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/...

IMO, at least for Catholics, it is the Church's insistence that condoms and birth control are sinful that led to the mass defections from belief in the legitimacy of Church teaching. Yes, even more so than anti-homosexual rhetoric or the sex abuse coverups.

It's an attitude of "these delusional celibate people care too much about abstract deductive logic, not empirical observations."

There is a rush from many to just leave it.

I read the article, it has one major fatal flaw - people don't WANT those old communities, especially religious communities he describes.

People are seeking community, and finding it, elsewhere.