I have maintained for some time that organized religion is going to have a very hard time surviving the internet with its influence intact. There is just too much good information out there and it's easy to access. I think the internet allowed people from all across the free-thought spectrum to realize, often for the first time, they were not nearly as alone as they once thought. Organized religion still exercises far too much influence over domestic politics, but that influence continues to erode year by year and I see no way that trend will be reversed.
And, staying home from church during the pandemic showed people that the world went on pretty much as before. God remained hands off - unless you think he afflicted us with tRump, in which case why would you want to believe in the horrible old sky fairy?
Anecdotally, I've heard of, or met church leaders in my area who will say, if pressed on the subject that their congregations haven't returned to pre-Covid numbers. As many UK churches have mostly elderly members, some died during Covid and some, with best part of 18-24 months in isolation or enforced lockdown, became more frail with that passage of time. Others simply drifted away. My vicar daughter's cathedral paid for professional live-streaming of its clergy-only services and then too when socially-distanced services resumed. One formerly regular communicant said how much she enjoyed that system - she could now do the ironing whilst watching the Sunday Cathedral Eurcharist.
That’s why Turning Point USA is on such a mission right now. They want to reach kids before their critical thinking skills are fully formed. They’ve used the internet/social media quite well for this purpose unfortunately.
A belief system premised on rib women, magic apples and talking snakes and donkeys can only appeal to those too young to have critical thinking skills or those adults that glorify willful ignorance.
The need for a redeemer is predicated on the story of a pair of nudists in the distant past who took dietary advice from a talking snake. All of which was written down by some unnamed third person who knew what God was thinking about.
I'll be the first to admit, I was a long time finally recognizing that religion in general and Christianity in particular was bullshit and declaring my atheism. Still, I was having problems with Christianity especially and its attempts to superimpose itself on our government, and that was reflected in pieces I wrote, particular at the beginning of the 2000s. It wasn't until I joined The Experience Project in 2009 at age 58 and fell in with a bunch of really terrific people who were all declared atheists that it finally went upside my head: Yeah ... THAT's what I'm about.
As for my reasons, they had to do with State / Church separation, as stated above, and the multiple presumptions that the Catholic Church had been making since long before I came out formally. I can still remember reacting to Paul VI's encyclical, 𝐻𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑒 𝑉𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑒, and thinking how wrong that was. Much later, when Joe the Rat was elected pope, I penned an op-ed entitled Habemus Papem, wherein I looked at the Catholic Church and its considerable problems, most notable of which I thought was its inability or unwillingness to LISTEN TO ITS PEOPLE. I was already aware of the crap that Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker had pulled on their followers, as well as that unbelievable on-air confession from Jimmy Swaggart. Though not of that quite moved me off the dime, it did contribute.
So yeah, I'm slow, but I'm trainable. My tolerance for proselytizing religion has gone from mild to nonexistent, ditto Christian Nationalists who hanker after a theocracy in the US. Once I came out, I learned all that I could about the history of atheism and its many voices, armed myself with the words of Epicurus and Robert Green Ingersoll and Madalyn Murray O'Hair, along with the more recent lights, such as the Four Horsemen, Seth Andrews, Aron Ra, and Matt Dillahunty. I've learned a shit-ton of stuff in the past 16 years, most especially that, as Christopher Hitchens said, that "I don't know anything like enough yet."
But I mean to keep learning, and I mean to keep fighting.
I LOVE that quote. To this day, I think it's among the best damned things the Hitch ever said, and humanity could do a lot worse than to take his words to heart.
When "Joe the Rat" was contemplating stepping down and requesting that the Italian Government commit to refuse to contemplate his extradition to a third country, I got an awful case of intestinal gas. I was also approaching a mental breakdown regarding my childhood abuse. In the mid 1970's I had more or less broken with organized religion, I had reviewed many "Christian" sects, other religions and even going back into mythology - basically I found that they all shared the same core beliefs. I also knew that some religious leaders did live and act those core beliefs and could be trusted, a friends family had taken me in as I recovered from a drug addiction with the only request that I go to church for appearences sake, his father was a minister. I did find a group who shared the look in my eyes but we didn't talk about what we shared, in 1986 some of them went public bypassing their failed attempts with the police - the Catholic "Mount Cashel Orphanage" scandel... and that still continues into 2026 as the local church Diocese sells off properties to cover its vicarious liability. CBC aired a "movie" 'The Boys of Saint Vincents' that gives a relatively sanitized look at what happened regarding a quashed police investigation.
The thing that bothers me about this kind of study is that it gives "Christian entrepreneurs" new imput for their evangelical sales and marketing machines. There are already those pushing "we're not Christian, we're 'followers of Jesus'" and "we have a Personal Relationship with Our Savior Jesus Christ (tm)" narratives in order to dupe those who say they are fed up with certain establishment religions. "Not part of my life"--well, let's bring on the helicopter Easter egg drops and singles nights and Christian rock bands. "I don't have time"--how about we create an app for that? You can check in with Jesus on your commute/commode. "Question religious teachings"--"make up your own! We do!" "Don't see a need"--"invest in our church-growing opportunity and 'earn' 'passive income'!" (I made that last one up.) Ultimately, American Christianity is inseparable from monetization, MLMs, and merch sales. They sell Jesus the same way the DeVos family sells Amway and your local car salesman badgers you to purchase the extended warranty.
One of the things I noticed years ago: Christians of the kind and loving Bent almost always identified themselves by their denomination.
Christians of the fundamentalist, theocratic, dominionist bent— the Nazty Nat-C type— almost always identified themselves as Christians.
And the reason for this is, to my mind, glaringly obvious. By calling themselves Christians, they are claiming to represent all of the followers of Jesus, not just their own particular brand.
Nowadays, I question when people claim the moral high ground because they are religious. The hate, the rhetoric, the belief that they are always going to be right no matter what? Yea, that's not morality. I can only come to the conclusion that religion is holding people back when it comes to being a moral person.
God's morality is do as it demands. This makes many opps for any srt of atrocity and cruelty as we have seen in Gaza. If god says hate somebody, they do. There is no regard for the hated person''s well-being. If the victim kills himself it is the victim's fault.
MY Atheist morality pretty much boils down to doing the most good and least harm to living things. YUGELY different.
A morality based in individual and societal well-being is infinitely better, more adaptable and more progressive than any biblical or religious morality I have ever been aware of.
Morality based on some deity's diktat isn't morality. It's coerced action under threat.
Jesus died for your sins. Wait, wut? By the time I was ten years old, that didn't make any sense at all. What did I do that was so bad, that somebody had to die? And how would that even work? Dude died 2,000 years before I was born! I just never could wrap my head around such bullshit. From there it was an inevitable trip to not believing in any gods at all, not even some fluffy concept of a benevolent spirit.
Having announced, with fanfares, that they would release all the Epstein files, Trump and his minions backed off, giving the impression that they were covering something up.
Having being forced to release the documents, they have now released a fraction of them, seemingly with heavy redaction (apparently one document had all its content, running to 119 pages, redacted), thus reinforcing the impression that they are covering something up...
Creationist fantasies, falsely branded as science, is what got me out of the church. Not going back with all that American Stupid Idiot Trump crap getting predominantly spewed about within the sanctuary, youth groups, and Sunday school, either.
My contention has been that 99% of people who claim to be Christian do not really believe in God/Jesus. They put on the trappings of belief...go to church, read the Bible, wear the symbols..., maybe even fool themselves that they believe. But if they really believed, they would behave differently. As gets pointed out here frequently, the 10-Cs get violated constantly and the other rules that God supposedly laid down in the Bible get completely ignored. If you truly believed in God, you would be meticulous in following the rules.
That's the whole point of having so many rules, and also the reason why so many of them concern thought crimes rather than tangible offenses. It's not possible to follow them all. No human being could reasonably keep track of them all, let alone follow each and every one- and that means 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 in any given religion is 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 guilty of 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. Religious leaders have terrible power over a true believer; one cannot 𝘣𝘦 a true believer without inadvertently breaking a bunch of their deity's rules, so they're perpetually in need of someone to grant them absolution.
VERY FEW read their bibles. Far fewer understand them. Their religion comes from what the preacher says. And that preacher knows where its money comes from.
I see this on fb groups often. KKKrtister sez god this and that. Then they get facts thrown at them. They try a couple reposts and get shot down and they disappear. I have come to love throwing their bibles and hateful gods back at them. Many kkkristers come to Atheist groups full of conversion and slink quietly away.
Well, now! Here's cause for celebration. This is the most hopeful article I've read in a while. We're fortunate to live in an era where people can find like-minded peers and support online, unlike those of us who walked away from religion in dark ages of the internet.
It's interesting to see that most people who've walked away from religion did so because they just didn't believe that crap anymore. IMO, the fact that christian churches, especially, have closely aligned themselves with Trump and Trumpism rather than the teachings of their Jesus makes it significantly easier to see the hypocrisy and falsehoods behind the dogma, and thus easier to walk away.
It’s an attempt to avoid the x and Facebook censors and stay in the algorithm. Do you remember the time before friendly atheist left patheos and there was a long list of no-no words? We kept spelling words incorrectly to get our comments to post? That’s what this is. The bots can’t decipher the words with numbers in them to determine if it is a no-no.
The sad thing is that the censoring also serves to soften the language around these horrific crimes in the social consciousness so that the perpetrators can avoid the repercussions of being monsters. Especially when we can’t collectively discuss rape, sexual assault and child predation. It goes along with Trump claiming 15 year olds are adult enough to be tried as adults, so that when we hear the solid evidence of him raping 14 year old girls, it can be excused since 14 is adult now. Of course, it might backfire when all the other republicans are trying to claim the 30-40 year old men in the “young republicans” group are kids. It only works with those who are racist, white repubelican men are kids making mistakes but 14 year old black children are grown thugs destroying our country. And 14 year old girls, no matter race (economic status might help) should have kept her legs shut, or not enticed the 40 year old white kids.
The major denominations, of course, will not see this data and use it to adapt to the times and the needs of the people remaining in their pews... rather, they will try that much harder to gain a stranglehold on political and social power, so that they can resist any change- however necessary and long overdue- with the might of the state at their backs.
They have been changing. And people don't come back. Been watching Professor archuive on YT. Churches are trapped between old school "DAMN THEM GAYS" and seeing money spent on needless upgrades while ignoring the homeless. Many preachers are going crazy literally trying to balance the competing forces. LGBTQ are doing a number on churches s they are now widely accepted but hated by the older wealthier churchers.
The internet, Gay rights and now the chiold rape scandals coming out are splitting churches. Many youinger people are meeting in homes, coffee shops nd public prks nd they discuss the bible..
Again, this applies to the UK, whether it transfers to other countries I don't know.
Children here go to a local primary (5-11) school. After this, if they live in a large town, they will go to a local secondary (11-18) school. Children in smaller towns will be bussed to a secondary school.
If they have religious parents, they will, no doubt, be taken to church each week.
If they go on to tertiary education, then there is a good chance that they will have to leave home. University means pubs, clubs, societies on more subjects than they will have seen before. But the best thing is, there are no parents making you get up and dress in your best to go to church.
It is at this point that many just give up religion.
From what I have seen, backed by blogs quoting PEW and others is church attendance is at 20% or so, This means to me that religion means litte, but theyback any sort of cruelty sme church proposes.
"From what I have seen, backed by blogs quoting PEW and others is church attendance is at 20%"
It is one of my bugbears that people conflate "identity" and "practice". Here in the UK, some 38% of people identify as Christian, but only 5% of the population attend church each week.
They ran me off cuz I R kweer. I left while still in kkkatlik gulag. I spent church time fantasizing about Chuck and wondering what was underneath jesus's loincloth. After 8th grade? Midnight mass but only cuz it was an opp to be with a guy I had a crush on.
I R A PROUD HEATHEN QUEER!!!
For your pleasure, the church of my childhood had 2 masses daily and 5 on Sunday is now a parking lot.
OT I heard yesterday that the Milwaukee judge was convicted in federal court for not helping ICE detain a man in her courtroom. As though it was she and not ICE breaking societal norms and laws.
That reminds me that we don’t see a lot of cases where churches are being used as sanctuaries during this perfect example of when churches really do come in handy. I think I heard of one case where a family was in church and ICE was waiting outside, but the services had to continue to keep them out. I’m not sure where that rule came from, that the government could invade a church as long as the services were over. I mean it’s called a sanctuary for a reason. Historically, the governments couldn’t take anyone from a church no matter what, unless they just didn’t care about laws and all that. Anyway, you would think that churches everywhere here would be taking in immigrants left, right , and center, to be more like Jesus. But I’m not seeing this.
I don't think it will ever happen, but if bigots could stop to try to seize power and inflict their dogma on everyone else, ça serait déjà un progrès majeur.
I have maintained for some time that organized religion is going to have a very hard time surviving the internet with its influence intact. There is just too much good information out there and it's easy to access. I think the internet allowed people from all across the free-thought spectrum to realize, often for the first time, they were not nearly as alone as they once thought. Organized religion still exercises far too much influence over domestic politics, but that influence continues to erode year by year and I see no way that trend will be reversed.
And, staying home from church during the pandemic showed people that the world went on pretty much as before. God remained hands off - unless you think he afflicted us with tRump, in which case why would you want to believe in the horrible old sky fairy?
Anecdotally, I've heard of, or met church leaders in my area who will say, if pressed on the subject that their congregations haven't returned to pre-Covid numbers. As many UK churches have mostly elderly members, some died during Covid and some, with best part of 18-24 months in isolation or enforced lockdown, became more frail with that passage of time. Others simply drifted away. My vicar daughter's cathedral paid for professional live-streaming of its clergy-only services and then too when socially-distanced services resumed. One formerly regular communicant said how much she enjoyed that system - she could now do the ironing whilst watching the Sunday Cathedral Eurcharist.
That’s why Turning Point USA is on such a mission right now. They want to reach kids before their critical thinking skills are fully formed. They’ve used the internet/social media quite well for this purpose unfortunately.
A belief system premised on rib women, magic apples and talking snakes and donkeys can only appeal to those too young to have critical thinking skills or those adults that glorify willful ignorance.
The need for a redeemer is predicated on the story of a pair of nudists in the distant past who took dietary advice from a talking snake. All of which was written down by some unnamed third person who knew what God was thinking about.
Ramen!
https://ibb.co/d09Q9nj6
I'll be the first to admit, I was a long time finally recognizing that religion in general and Christianity in particular was bullshit and declaring my atheism. Still, I was having problems with Christianity especially and its attempts to superimpose itself on our government, and that was reflected in pieces I wrote, particular at the beginning of the 2000s. It wasn't until I joined The Experience Project in 2009 at age 58 and fell in with a bunch of really terrific people who were all declared atheists that it finally went upside my head: Yeah ... THAT's what I'm about.
As for my reasons, they had to do with State / Church separation, as stated above, and the multiple presumptions that the Catholic Church had been making since long before I came out formally. I can still remember reacting to Paul VI's encyclical, 𝐻𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑒 𝑉𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑒, and thinking how wrong that was. Much later, when Joe the Rat was elected pope, I penned an op-ed entitled Habemus Papem, wherein I looked at the Catholic Church and its considerable problems, most notable of which I thought was its inability or unwillingness to LISTEN TO ITS PEOPLE. I was already aware of the crap that Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker had pulled on their followers, as well as that unbelievable on-air confession from Jimmy Swaggart. Though not of that quite moved me off the dime, it did contribute.
So yeah, I'm slow, but I'm trainable. My tolerance for proselytizing religion has gone from mild to nonexistent, ditto Christian Nationalists who hanker after a theocracy in the US. Once I came out, I learned all that I could about the history of atheism and its many voices, armed myself with the words of Epicurus and Robert Green Ingersoll and Madalyn Murray O'Hair, along with the more recent lights, such as the Four Horsemen, Seth Andrews, Aron Ra, and Matt Dillahunty. I've learned a shit-ton of stuff in the past 16 years, most especially that, as Christopher Hitchens said, that "I don't know anything like enough yet."
But I mean to keep learning, and I mean to keep fighting.
It is people who quit learning that still believe in fables.
[smile] Oh, dear, just got triggered again! [tsk-tsk-tsk]
𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒, 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑘 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑦𝑒𝑡, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛'𝑡 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛'𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼'𝑚 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 ℎ𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑝𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑓𝑢𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤𝑙𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑑𝑜𝑚.
-- Christopher Hitchens
I LOVE that quote. To this day, I think it's among the best damned things the Hitch ever said, and humanity could do a lot worse than to take his words to heart.
When "Joe the Rat" was contemplating stepping down and requesting that the Italian Government commit to refuse to contemplate his extradition to a third country, I got an awful case of intestinal gas. I was also approaching a mental breakdown regarding my childhood abuse. In the mid 1970's I had more or less broken with organized religion, I had reviewed many "Christian" sects, other religions and even going back into mythology - basically I found that they all shared the same core beliefs. I also knew that some religious leaders did live and act those core beliefs and could be trusted, a friends family had taken me in as I recovered from a drug addiction with the only request that I go to church for appearences sake, his father was a minister. I did find a group who shared the look in my eyes but we didn't talk about what we shared, in 1986 some of them went public bypassing their failed attempts with the police - the Catholic "Mount Cashel Orphanage" scandel... and that still continues into 2026 as the local church Diocese sells off properties to cover its vicarious liability. CBC aired a "movie" 'The Boys of Saint Vincents' that gives a relatively sanitized look at what happened regarding a quashed police investigation.
The thing that bothers me about this kind of study is that it gives "Christian entrepreneurs" new imput for their evangelical sales and marketing machines. There are already those pushing "we're not Christian, we're 'followers of Jesus'" and "we have a Personal Relationship with Our Savior Jesus Christ (tm)" narratives in order to dupe those who say they are fed up with certain establishment religions. "Not part of my life"--well, let's bring on the helicopter Easter egg drops and singles nights and Christian rock bands. "I don't have time"--how about we create an app for that? You can check in with Jesus on your commute/commode. "Question religious teachings"--"make up your own! We do!" "Don't see a need"--"invest in our church-growing opportunity and 'earn' 'passive income'!" (I made that last one up.) Ultimately, American Christianity is inseparable from monetization, MLMs, and merch sales. They sell Jesus the same way the DeVos family sells Amway and your local car salesman badgers you to purchase the extended warranty.
One of the things I noticed years ago: Christians of the kind and loving Bent almost always identified themselves by their denomination.
Christians of the fundamentalist, theocratic, dominionist bent— the Nazty Nat-C type— almost always identified themselves as Christians.
And the reason for this is, to my mind, glaringly obvious. By calling themselves Christians, they are claiming to represent all of the followers of Jesus, not just their own particular brand.
I did in 1983. It got a new head gsket free. Then it threw a rod. FREE ENGINE!
A Detroit car?
"I 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦 I can be moral without religion"
I 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 I can be moral without religion.
Nowadays, I question when people claim the moral high ground because they are religious. The hate, the rhetoric, the belief that they are always going to be right no matter what? Yea, that's not morality. I can only come to the conclusion that religion is holding people back when it comes to being a moral person.
So - I believe I 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 be moral 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 religion.
Well ... there are those who are moral with religion, but in multiple cases, less BECAUSE of religion than IN SPITE of it.
God's morality is do as it demands. This makes many opps for any srt of atrocity and cruelty as we have seen in Gaza. If god says hate somebody, they do. There is no regard for the hated person''s well-being. If the victim kills himself it is the victim's fault.
MY Atheist morality pretty much boils down to doing the most good and least harm to living things. YUGELY different.
A morality based in individual and societal well-being is infinitely better, more adaptable and more progressive than any biblical or religious morality I have ever been aware of.
Morality based on some deity's diktat isn't morality. It's coerced action under threat.
"people who had a positive religious experience growing up were far more likely to remain in it (though that’s hardly foolproof)."
It's how it happened for DM, she gradually stopped to believe and died an Atheist.
Jesus died for your sins. Wait, wut? By the time I was ten years old, that didn't make any sense at all. What did I do that was so bad, that somebody had to die? And how would that even work? Dude died 2,000 years before I was born! I just never could wrap my head around such bullshit. From there it was an inevitable trip to not believing in any gods at all, not even some fluffy concept of a benevolent spirit.
You know what you were doing. *looks disapprovingly and wgs a finger*
They do not learn, do they.
Having announced, with fanfares, that they would release all the Epstein files, Trump and his minions backed off, giving the impression that they were covering something up.
Having being forced to release the documents, they have now released a fraction of them, seemingly with heavy redaction (apparently one document had all its content, running to 119 pages, redacted), thus reinforcing the impression that they are covering something up...
Metamucilini is in them. This delay is to allow for maximum redaction while falsely claiming transparency.
Nothing says guilty like refusing to release evidence that you claim exonerates you.
"Nothing says guilty like refusing to release evidence that you claim exonerates you."
The Streisand effect appears to be kicking in...
Creationist fantasies, falsely branded as science, is what got me out of the church. Not going back with all that American Stupid Idiot Trump crap getting predominantly spewed about within the sanctuary, youth groups, and Sunday school, either.
My contention has been that 99% of people who claim to be Christian do not really believe in God/Jesus. They put on the trappings of belief...go to church, read the Bible, wear the symbols..., maybe even fool themselves that they believe. But if they really believed, they would behave differently. As gets pointed out here frequently, the 10-Cs get violated constantly and the other rules that God supposedly laid down in the Bible get completely ignored. If you truly believed in God, you would be meticulous in following the rules.
That's the whole point of having so many rules, and also the reason why so many of them concern thought crimes rather than tangible offenses. It's not possible to follow them all. No human being could reasonably keep track of them all, let alone follow each and every one- and that means 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 in any given religion is 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 guilty of 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. Religious leaders have terrible power over a true believer; one cannot 𝘣𝘦 a true believer without inadvertently breaking a bunch of their deity's rules, so they're perpetually in need of someone to grant them absolution.
Jesus became the ultimte prison wardenwhen it claimed to be ievery heart, watching constantly. Not to help, but to judge
VERY FEW read their bibles. Far fewer understand them. Their religion comes from what the preacher says. And that preacher knows where its money comes from.
I see this on fb groups often. KKKrtister sez god this and that. Then they get facts thrown at them. They try a couple reposts and get shot down and they disappear. I have come to love throwing their bibles and hateful gods back at them. Many kkkristers come to Atheist groups full of conversion and slink quietly away.
Well, now! Here's cause for celebration. This is the most hopeful article I've read in a while. We're fortunate to live in an era where people can find like-minded peers and support online, unlike those of us who walked away from religion in dark ages of the internet.
It's interesting to see that most people who've walked away from religion did so because they just didn't believe that crap anymore. IMO, the fact that christian churches, especially, have closely aligned themselves with Trump and Trumpism rather than the teachings of their Jesus makes it significantly easier to see the hypocrisy and falsehoods behind the dogma, and thus easier to walk away.
OT:
The louder they scream about something.
https://ibb.co/MDsgGb7X
"Private Christian school teacher" should always send up a red flag.
Christian fascist is synonymous with goddamm fucking stupid scumbag!
And how many times creationists blame evolution for what this creationist is clearly guilty of, himself?
Not a pastor?
"sthreexually abufiveing"
I don't get it.
It’s an attempt to avoid the x and Facebook censors and stay in the algorithm. Do you remember the time before friendly atheist left patheos and there was a long list of no-no words? We kept spelling words incorrectly to get our comments to post? That’s what this is. The bots can’t decipher the words with numbers in them to determine if it is a no-no.
The sad thing is that the censoring also serves to soften the language around these horrific crimes in the social consciousness so that the perpetrators can avoid the repercussions of being monsters. Especially when we can’t collectively discuss rape, sexual assault and child predation. It goes along with Trump claiming 15 year olds are adult enough to be tried as adults, so that when we hear the solid evidence of him raping 14 year old girls, it can be excused since 14 is adult now. Of course, it might backfire when all the other republicans are trying to claim the 30-40 year old men in the “young republicans” group are kids. It only works with those who are racist, white repubelican men are kids making mistakes but 14 year old black children are grown thugs destroying our country. And 14 year old girls, no matter race (economic status might help) should have kept her legs shut, or not enticed the 40 year old white kids.
Oops sorry I got to ranting again.
The major denominations, of course, will not see this data and use it to adapt to the times and the needs of the people remaining in their pews... rather, they will try that much harder to gain a stranglehold on political and social power, so that they can resist any change- however necessary and long overdue- with the might of the state at their backs.
They have been changing. And people don't come back. Been watching Professor archuive on YT. Churches are trapped between old school "DAMN THEM GAYS" and seeing money spent on needless upgrades while ignoring the homeless. Many preachers are going crazy literally trying to balance the competing forces. LGBTQ are doing a number on churches s they are now widely accepted but hated by the older wealthier churchers.
The internet, Gay rights and now the chiold rape scandals coming out are splitting churches. Many youinger people are meeting in homes, coffee shops nd public prks nd they discuss the bible..
"And people don't come back"
Again, this applies to the UK, whether it transfers to other countries I don't know.
Children here go to a local primary (5-11) school. After this, if they live in a large town, they will go to a local secondary (11-18) school. Children in smaller towns will be bussed to a secondary school.
If they have religious parents, they will, no doubt, be taken to church each week.
If they go on to tertiary education, then there is a good chance that they will have to leave home. University means pubs, clubs, societies on more subjects than they will have seen before. But the best thing is, there are no parents making you get up and dress in your best to go to church.
It is at this point that many just give up religion.
From what I have seen, backed by blogs quoting PEW and others is church attendance is at 20% or so, This means to me that religion means litte, but theyback any sort of cruelty sme church proposes.
"From what I have seen, backed by blogs quoting PEW and others is church attendance is at 20%"
It is one of my bugbears that people conflate "identity" and "practice". Here in the UK, some 38% of people identify as Christian, but only 5% of the population attend church each week.
I am one of the “this shit just doesn’t make sense” people.
They ran me off cuz I R kweer. I left while still in kkkatlik gulag. I spent church time fantasizing about Chuck and wondering what was underneath jesus's loincloth. After 8th grade? Midnight mass but only cuz it was an opp to be with a guy I had a crush on.
I R A PROUD HEATHEN QUEER!!!
For your pleasure, the church of my childhood had 2 masses daily and 5 on Sunday is now a parking lot.
Some good news for a change.
OT I heard yesterday that the Milwaukee judge was convicted in federal court for not helping ICE detain a man in her courtroom. As though it was she and not ICE breaking societal norms and laws.
That reminds me that we don’t see a lot of cases where churches are being used as sanctuaries during this perfect example of when churches really do come in handy. I think I heard of one case where a family was in church and ICE was waiting outside, but the services had to continue to keep them out. I’m not sure where that rule came from, that the government could invade a church as long as the services were over. I mean it’s called a sanctuary for a reason. Historically, the governments couldn’t take anyone from a church no matter what, unless they just didn’t care about laws and all that. Anyway, you would think that churches everywhere here would be taking in immigrants left, right , and center, to be more like Jesus. But I’m not seeing this.
Dirty Harry didn't get the memo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtN2tkXeyyU
But Quasimodo DID:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5zzRcKlxKI
AFAIK, they can stay as long as the church will have them. IANAL. I have seen rreports sgowing this long-term to be true.
Looking forward to the day when all Nones everywhere finally reject ALL religious belief of any sort.
I don't think it will ever happen, but if bigots could stop to try to seize power and inflict their dogma on everyone else, ça serait déjà un progrès majeur.
Ça, c'est vrai!