Religion
Related: About this forumReligion may not survive the Internet - link added (sorry about that)
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/16/religion_may_not_survive_the_internet/WEDNESDAY, JAN 16, 2013 08:30 AM PST
There's a reason churches are struggling to maintain membership, and it has nothing to do with Neil deGrasse Tyson
BY VALERIE TARICO, ALTERNET
As we head into a new year, the guardians of traditional religion are ramping up efforts to keep their flocksor, in crass economic terms, to retain market share. Some Christians have turned to soul searching while others have turned to marketing. Last fall, the LDS church spent millions on billboards, bus banners, and Facebook ads touting Im a Mormon. In Canada, the Catholic Church has launched a Come Home marketing campaign. The Southern Baptists Convention voted to rebrand themselves. A hipster mega-church in Seattle combines smart advertising with sales force training for members and a strategy the Catholics have emphasized for centuries: competitive breeding.
In October of 2012 the Pew Research Center announced that for the first time ever Protestant Christians had fallen below 50 percent of the American population. Atheists cheered and evangelicals beat their breasts and lamented the end of the world as we know it. Historian of religion, Molly Worthen, has since offered big picture insights that may dampen the most extreme hopes and fears. Anthropologist Jennifer James, on the other hand, has called fundamentalism the death rattle of the Abrahamic traditions.
In all of the frenzy, few seem to give any recognition to the player that I see as the primary hero, or, if you prefer, culpritand Im not talking about science populizer and atheist superstar Neil deGrasse Tyson. Then again, maybe Iam talking about Tyson in a sense, because in his various viral guisesas a talk show host and tweeter and as the face on scores of smartass Facebook memesTyson is an incarnation of the biggest threat that organized religion has ever faced: the internet.
A traditional religion, one built on right belief, requires a closed information system. That is why the Catholic Church put an official seal of approval on some ancient texts and banned or burned others. It is why some Bible-believing Christians are forbidden to marry nonbelievers. It is why Quiverfull moms home school their kids from carefully screened text books. It is why, when you get sucked into conversations with your fundamentalist uncle George from Florida, you sometimes wonder if he has some superpower that allows him to magically close down all avenues into his mind. (He does!)
more at link
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)and find a new planet before their god destroys this planet like he did before
cbayer
(146,218 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)rurallib
(62,433 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)cbayer
(146,218 posts)He seems to think that the terms we use now are too simplistic and do not embrace the "spiritual but not religious" demographic.
I agree with him to some extent. I think most people have more in common than they do differences and their religious affiliation or lack of affiliation often has nothing to do with it.
Phillip McCleod
(1,837 posts)seems worth noticing that 99% of everyone is being peaceful 99% of the time. its the outbursts of violence and anger that account for the remainder, still too many of those but the point is we are basically peaceful creatures. sedentary really.
Moonwalk
(2,322 posts)...and I think it's very right in that the internet has given secularism a power it never had before. Not twenty years ago organized religions still held most of the cards, churches, temples, etc. being the traditional and primary places where communities found social, psychological, cultural and world views; contradictory information, doubts or arguments either didn't enter into such places or were crushed. Now when someone has doubts or questions that were traditionally shut down, the internet offers them a way to explore them--and meet others who might have had the same thoughts.
However, I think the one thing that the article ignores is that the internet can and does do the opposite. It offers up new religious views and ideas that were also stifled by the dominance of established churches, giving them more equal footing to the institutionalized religions. That which validates feelings and intuition still holds, I think, more sway over people than facts. So, once again, the idea that the Internet could spell the "end of religion" is, I think, premature.
What I think is true is that the internet is undermining the power of old, established religions to dominate the conversation on topics of values, morals, who and what we are, our place in the universe, etc. It gives dissenting views, whatever those may be, equal footing with the powerhouses like never before. It will be interesting to see how this changes the religious landscape in the long run.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)As opposed to killing off religion, I think it will modify it, which is not necessarily a bad thing at all.
More options, more diversity, a fairer playing field.