Their Bishops and Cardinals (dirty old men) are giddy at the change to get right of gay rights and control women.
I celebrate every time I hear a RCC church close it's doors. May the Born Agains follow.

With that said, the extremists are exposing the folly of listening to such stories from ignorant people from thousands of years ago.
Human knowledge is so much more today than it was 5000 years back.

75% were raised in the Catholic Church. Their rules are anti women and that is a biggie. Being anti gay and child molesters didn't help to keep people coming to their church.

I'm never going to apologize for that. The same goes for their parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and other assorted relatives, unabashedly progressive sanctuary city brand Catholic and Christian.

I have exactly the same sort of complicated relationship with the Church as I have with the nation I was born in.

If I went full out "Fuck the U.S.A." or "Fuck the Catholic Church" then where would I be? We don't choose the communities we are born to. I was born in Los Angeles to culturally Catholic American Wild West heretics of various flavors, NOT-Mormon white San Francisco, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Montana.

Most certainly, hell yes, if everything is turning to complete shit here in the U.S.A. then I'll walk or sail away from it, just as my ancestors did from Scandinavia, Ireland, and Crown controlled British Isles.

Until then I'll keep pushing for progress here on the insides.

My last American immigrant ancestor was a mail order bride from Scandinavia to Salt Lake City. She didn't like sharing a husband so she ran off with a monogamous guy who was passing through town and they established a ranching homestead that's named in google maps, owned by my mom's cousin, and still about as far away from the nearest McDonalds or Wal-Mart as you can get here in the continental 48 states.

There are pockets of anti-intellectualism in the Catholic, Orthodox, and some of the mainstream Christian Protestant Churches, but Trump supporting "Christians" (deliberate scare quotes) are largely another breed.

Progressive Christians of many flavors are not your enemy.

are just odd little "pockets" of weirdos that are far outside the mainstream. That would insult the intelligence of everyone here. The majority of Christian voters in the US cast their ballots for Trump. That's just a fact. Pretending it's not true isn't helpful in the least.

No benefits to them. Why bother?

That's what I think, anyhow.

That's the reality. Religion has nothing to offer except an empty promise. And that can only be cashed in when you die.

The other thing millenials don't need are the socially restrictive and obsolete rules.

Religious supporters try to sell the communal aspects of religion, but with modern social media, who needs a cathedral?

was the social aspect: a way to meet people, build relationships, build a social safety net of friends who might help out in times of trouble, etc.

I think social media is filling some of those needs now--including discussion websites like this one. It's not a complete fix--if I break both my legs and need a ride to my doctor, chances are DU or some such won't be much help, whereas if I belonged to a church it might be easier to find a quick ride.

But a large part of organized religion's social function is being met elsewhere-- either that or young people don't feel the same need for personal weekly interaction.

Just a thought, anyway.

It also explains why people who were not religious or were, but only when they were younger, return to the church in old age.

You know, like "Did you see what she was WEARING at the Service"??!?!?

Millennials I know,(like my kids) see organized religion as intolerant. Many young people today know someone, or have friends who are gay or of differing ethnic backgrounds. Watching churches like the Mormans spend major $$$ trying to defeat anti-discrimination efforts has disgusted them. Since they are intelligent enough to see bullshit when it's pushed in their face, they abandon it altogether.

And there is no going back. I think it was Neil Degrasse Tyson who said as science advances, the window on god beliefs gets narrower and narrower. Christopher Hitchens said we used to have polytheism in ancient times. Now there's only monotheism. And we're getting closer to the actual number of gods all the time. (he was quoting someone else, I believe)

Combine the hypocrisy of today's Evangelicals supporting the most Un-Christian like shitstain in the WH, and no wonder people are turned off by religion.

Just wait when Roe v Wade gets overturned by the fascists. You'll see an acceleration of non-belief never before seen in the US.

Maybe the kids are leaving religion because religion is nonsense and they're less gullible than their parents. Wait, that can't be it. Let's blame video games and cell phones.

A loving, inclusive message from our local paragons of tolerance, who definitely, certainly do not hate atheists at all.

in order to be part of a group, you probably needed to belong to a church. It was one of the few ways you could build lasting relationships, and humans generally need that.

Now, with the internet, and the various ways it can create relationships and groups, and the way the young have adopted it wholeheartedly, you don't need religion for that connection.

So even if you ignore politics or debates about rules or whatnot, it is my contention that what is really going to hurt churches in the US is the internet and it's ability to foster meaningful relationships.

the Masons, the Shriners, Rotary clubs, Optimist clubs, Kiwanis, community centers, book clubs, bowling teams, gun and rod clubs, bridge groups, golfing buddies, softball leagues, scouting, youth sports, local politics, chambers of commerce, and thousands of other groups that people took part in.

But the Internet has several orders of magnitude more. Groups that you can easily move in and out of. Groups that are specifically created for a single event. Groups that anybody in the world can join.

were religious linked, and many other were pretty narrow. You had to share that narrow interest.

Religion is broad, all-encompassing.

people can join. The point was that religions are not the only outlet for becoming part of a social group. And as someone else pointed out, the internet offers an even broader selection of groups - more than can be counted.

and major outlet, particularly 20-30 years ago and going back even further.

I'm the person who said the internet offers a large selection of groups, I in fact said that the internet is one of the reasons FOR the decline in religious belief among the young BECAUSE it offers a wider array and easier access to the ability to belong to a group.

I could be part of at that time. Millenials know more than I did in 1965, and about more things.

If Preacher says something that strikes them as ridiculous, they can easily google and find out that Preacher is full of shit. Once upon a time, it took a trip to the library and hours of research to even try to find the correct information.

Also, the millennials I know have a very low tolerance for hypocrisy.

Young people today have information at their fingertips, and they know how to use technology to find it quickly. It isn't as easy to pull the wool over someone's eyes when they can factcheck you in seconds.

He says that the secular press and "intolerant atheists" are responsible for the failure of the Ark Encounter. He didn't come right out and say that those evil atheists are responsible for declining church attendance, but they probably are. Not enough rebuking of demons going on, I think.



[link:https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/is-ken-hams-lifesize-noahs-ark-theme-park-a-sinking-ship/news-story/315bd1d074b8ca74b3340d1115599a9e|