Organized Religion is dying... and that's a good thing

http://www.gallup.com/poll/128276/Increasing-Number-No-Religious-Identity.aspx



People are starting to wake up to the fact that organized religion serves no good purpose.

If you believe in a deity, you don't need a middle-man to interpret your deity for you.

The middle-man just wants your money, and your obedience.


1/6 of Americans (up from 0% in the 1950's), have wised up.

Hobbes was right about that. We can't expect every citizen to come up with his own Critique of Ethics.

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I mean...that's what the Old Testament preaches... :eyes:

And The Crusades? Killing people in the name of God...yeah, that kept people good. :eyes:

And laws are set up with ethics. We don't need religion for that.

:beer:

:rofl:

People don't conform to basic social and legal norms because of Jesus freakery or some goofy Allah shit; they do it because human beings are social animals and we basically go along to get along. In nations where religion has declined much more precipitously than here people are no more prone to depravity than before.

(Harold, is that you?)

For example, religious people are more accepting of torture. There has to be some reason behind that. I think it has to do with the lack of human empathy that comes from a stark black and white world view that threatens with eternal hellfire.

That's patently absurd!

There was a survey, and religious people WERE more likely to support torture.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/

People can figure out reasons to hate other people who are different from themselves just fine without religion.

things would be even better.

I have always regarded Unitarianism and Reconstructionist Judaism as good religions for the 21st Century, and President Jefferson's "New Testament" as a good read.

What a load of hooey. Organized religion is the framework that holds you up when your mother dies, or your baby.

I really hate this self-important twaddle. Harrow Hell then come and talk to me.

Both my parents died of cancer before I was twenty one, I'm now sixty and still an atheist.

Organized religion is not necessary to cope with grief. Inner strength has many sources, religion need not be one of them.

I have been an atheist for over 25 years. What a load of hooey to tell me that the only thing that can get me through being in her hospital room while she breathes her last breath in front of me is organized religion. I don't have a god-shaped hole in my heart. I was able to make it through that stage of my life without believing in god.

How ironic that you make fun of self-important twaddle while telling me that religion is the only way to make it through the hard patches.

I am an atheist. The years of '05 and '06 were especially hellish for me. In '05 I lost my father to prostate cancer. 6 months later in '06, I lost my best friend to small cell lung cancer. 6 months after that, I lost my wonderful husband of 20 years to metastatic melanoma. And guess what? I'm still an atheist. The love and support of my friends and family are what held me up. And they didn't ask for a donation either.

But, then again, I'm Wiccan and we are definitely not organized! LOL

Some guy decides without being vetted by anyone that he can found a church and preach anything he feels like. Organized religion would never allow that.

as well. The oikumene cannot be adequately carried on in such a way.

before you can even start seminary. I've been on two parish committees that vetted aspirants for ordination, and no, it is not a rubber stamp. The second committee I was on asked such probing questions that it prompted the aspirant to give up after a couple of months.

Once approved by the parish and the diocese, the candidate takes three years of academic work followed by a year as a "transitional deacon" (i.e. priest-in-training) in an actual parish, and then you have to be called (hired) by a parish before you can be ordained.

That's how one branch of "organized religion" chooses its clergy.

Oh, and Episcopal clergy are paid on a set salary scale, depending on the size of the parish they serve, and the finances of the parish as a whole are under the control of a board of lay people (the vestry in the Episcopal church, the council in the Lutheran church). The parish's finances are studied by outside auditors every couple of years.

That's an advantage of "organized religion."

No one can use the members' contributions as a private bank.

The megachurches, with their "make up your own theology" and "ask the parishioners to buy you a new car" preachers, are the prime example of UNORGANIZED religion.

It is a hard faith to learn because it has a catechism to be committed to memory. There is a general governing body in each synod and the district leadership see to salaries and discipline. What bothers me is a lack of commitment in some churches to a standard liturgy. There was a reason for the liturgy of course so people wouldn't be improvising any old thing and so there would be a feeling of congenial uniformity from church to church.

(despite being a pastor's kid) to the Episcopalians. I hadn't been to a Lutheran service for years, and then I went to my nephew's confirmation, and the whole experience had an attitude, of, "Like, yeah, whatever, dude."

The other reason I went over to the Episcopalians is that they're more single-friendly. The typical Lutheran church seems to be all "family this" and "family that," with only a youth group, a couples' group, and a seniors' group listed on its schedule, while the fact that the Episcopal church is more gay-friendly also makes it friendlier for straight singles.

It had lost the stateliness of the red ALC hymnal which had settings by Thomas Tallis and other Renaissance composers. But my wife's church went over to some contemporary stuff which it used half the time and the green service book the other half. But now her church which we used to attend when we were back in NW Iowa has gone over to a new Lutheran splinter group, the LCMC which comprises ELCA churches which aren't accepting gay pastors or weddings etc. This is an "evangelical" assembly of churches with ties to Pro-life groups. It still has women pastors however.

On a related note, the Episcopal Church in America caused a lot of people trauma by revamping the venerable Book of Common Prayer (back in the Sixties, I think). I recall people writing long articles about that.

but some other book that contains services unlike the ones in the Green Book, just as the Green Book was a complete departure from the Red Book.

When the Episcopalians revised the Book of Common Prayer, they left the old version available as Rite 1. Both Rite 1 and Rite 2 are in the same volume. My parish has three services: Rite 1 at 8:00AM (small but loyal congregation), a Rite 2 service that they play around with at 9:00AM (attended mostly by families with children, with one of the children's choirs performing), and a Rite 2 service with full pomp and ceremony and the adult choir that I belong to). For evening festival services, such as Ascension or All Saints, we used Rite 1.

of the ELC (20's to 50's) at a Sunday service at some very early time like 7 AM. That was the one before the Red Book which a lot of old time Norse Lutherans thought was written by Catholics or Communists! Before the Black Hymnal everything was in Norwegian. My grandparents were somehow not upset to switch to an all-English service. My grandmother was always as modern as possible anyway. When I think about it, she might think the "contemporary" worship is a good thing were she still with us.

The page headings were in Gothic print.

Wow. I sure don't remember that later on. Of course, I'm old enough to remember the Latin Mass too and went to a few of them in Decorah at St. Benedict's. My grandmother was a Democrat but none of the other Lutheran women her age were so she had a number of Catholic friends and acquaintances since the Catholics were (except for the doctors) ALL Democrats in those days.

My dad always chanted the service, and when he went to a new parish in 1956, some of the council members objected until a man from Denmark told them, "In Denmark, they won't even ordain anyone who can't sing."

- Hallelujah!

I have not seen data for every country but from those I have seen I can't recall any other industrialized democracy that isn't at about twice this level for similar questions - even Ireland.

There's a phenomenon that really serves no good purpose and just wants your money and your obedience. But people continue to worship it and haven't wised up

if 10,000 pastors across the bible belt lose their ability to tell congregations that the government is put in place for a Godly reason and that Islam is a religion of evil, you might see less blind support for the MIC.

Organized religion in this country is the biggest supporter of the military-industrial complex, promoting blind support to the military (obstensibly, just "support for the troops" but in reality the whole complex and neo-imperialist agenda) and everything it stands for. Want to end bogus, unjust wars? Undermine the source that feeds them: right-wing churches and their groundswell of "patriotic" activity.

the social class that profits from armaments purchases; here one can easily imagine plausible psychological and social mechanisms, deriving from individual material interests, that produce and reproduce rationalizations for war-spending: for example, arms manufacturers and dealers have a profit motive in arms races, and by selling to various sides of a potential conflict, it is possible to stir up insecurities that accelerate the weapons trade

You can't ignore the popular support for such a class, and that support often originates in the churches, where not just fundamentalist preachers preach hatred and division, but even more "mainstream" churches as well, riling their flock up to want to see the government take arms up against the "enemy", whoever that enemy may be: Islam, or "the gays", or "the feminists", or whomever.

I just don't see the problem with those wanting to undermine this religious groundswell, by those who criticize religion, because the fact is, the majority of religious tend to be right-wing by default. So in undermining religion as a whole, fighting faith with science, it hurts right-wing ideology more than it does the left, by default.

Can't tell you how many people I've seen leave their childhood church, and leave their conservative tendencies behind with it. The two so often go hand-in-hand...