Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[crashcourse]

Decline in church goers has been going on 20 plus years

unfortunately the increase in some of my relatives saying these are the end times the Jewish people are god chosen people has increased

raptures and tribulation

problem with religion is too many preach of an annihilistic end unless you believe in their faith.

two seconds later they preach of the love their god has

kinda hard to believe these loving gods will annihilate us unless we submit

[Mike]

He also always needs money for some reason.

[Mike]

Henry Kissinger has died at 100. Every time I heard him referenced in the news I thought: He’s still alive??

Well not anymore.

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Hannibal]

It’s not surprising that church attendance is in decline. The Pope is a Marxist and churches all around the country have gone woke. The church is no longer a bulwark against cultural decay but rather a contributor to it. On topof that, you have the peculiar phenomenon of Christian Zionism, which is probably also a turnoff for a lot of people.

I’m definitely not an expert on Christianity or The Bible. But from where I sit it seems as if the tenets of Christianity have been repeatedly twisted to make it a societal suicide pact. You’re a bad Christian now if you don’t want unlimited immigration and a welfare state. Because that’s supposedly what Jesus would do. But that’s not how Christianity was practiced for the previous 2000 years. Western Civilization owes its existence to Christianity, but it wasn’t built through unlimited love and tolerance, like what most churches preach now.

[iam416]

The moral code that worked was, more or less, you owe it to the community, the community doesn't owe it to you.

The decline in religion, I'd guess, is most directly traced to increase in education attainment. But that's not, by any means, the sole factor.

It's a shame. I was never and am not now religious in the faith sense. But the idea of shared community -- whether it was white church, black church, mexican church -- that was important. It's been replaced in lots of places -- certainly amongst the previously noted "educationally attained" white folks -- by Woke Church which requires almost just as much blind faith. And that's way worse than no church.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Tim Alberta had a very personal piece about how politics is ripping apart the evangelical church that his dad built. Read it or don't. Bottom line is people started leaving the church in droves after his dad died and the new, much younger preacher, largely dropped politics from the pulpit (which is what a fair amount of people wanted).

So this goes beyond "woke church", whatever that is. (Too much emphasis on love? Not enough on hellfire and brimstone?)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/evangelical-christian-nationalism-trump/676150/

[Dr. Strangelove]

Also pretty sure most consider "western civilization" to be owed to the Greek and Roman civilizations, both of which were pagan for most of their existence. Rome especially was extremely tolerant of different races and bizarre religions. The entire point of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (itself highly vulnerable to criticism today) wasn't that hedonism and depravity caused Rome to fall; it was the conversion to Christianity under Constantine.

[iam416]

Yeah, it's the Western liberalism that was made possible, in part, by Americanized christianity. And whether you agree with that last clause, the former is absolutely under attack externally and internally from folks who don't have a particularly great fondness for Western liberalism.

[Dr. Strangelove]

People increasingly identify with their political beliefs ahead of their religious ones. I think that's the bottom line. And it's affecting both left and right.

But I'm sorry, I think there are a lot more conservative churches out there than "woke" ones because by and large most of the Left quit going to church decades ago. For it to continue declining, even speeding up in recent years, it's because conservatives have started dropping out in bigger numbers. Either because the minister won't shut up about politics and current events or because the minister doesn't talk ENOUGH about politics and current events.

[iam416]

I mean, I don't think I said otherwise and apologize for any confusion. What I did say was that WOKE church is increasingly dominating on the left. And by that, I don't mean actual church -- I mean "Wokeness" as a religion -- ala John McWhorter.

[iam416]

As a general FYI, Glenn Loury has a YT channel and podcast that is usually interesting, and McWhorter is on it every other week. Those two are usually very good and, even if you disagree with them, worth the listen.

[THE_WIZARD_]

STFU

[Dr. Strangelove]

The part where Elon tells advertisers to fuck off is getting the headlines but this part was funny.

[Dr. Strangelove]