1y ago

America's nonreligious are a growing, diverse phenomenon. They really don't like organized religion

apnews.com America's nonreligious are a growing, diverse phenomenon. They really don't like organized religion

Ask Americans what their religion is, and nearly 1 in 3 say this -- none. That’s according to the U.S. adults surveyed by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.

Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.

“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.

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I used to have that really common thought of "I don't care what you believe in. Just don't try to push your opinion on me."
No. It's bullshit.
The very existence of religion is a psychological drain on society. We are all worse off the longer it stays around. There is no such thing as a good religious person and anyone who says they are religious I immediately distrust.
- Yeah. It's at the root of a lot of the problems with conservatives in the US. Religion trains people in believing because they were told to believe, and holding to these beliefs in the face of all suffering and hardship. It's a gateway drug to conspiracy theories and paranoid delusions.
  
  Gateway drug to conspiracy theories?
  Religion IS a conspiracy theory
- I don't immediately distrust religious people but I do kind of roll my eyes and smirk a little bit on the inside.
  
  If I'm lucky I can manage to keep the eyeroll and smirk on the inside. I'm kind of inelegant with social graces though.
- There is no such thing as a good religious person
  That's a bridge too far for me.
  Yes, faith is in and off itself detrimental to our society. Religiosity is a strong detrimental force, a mind-virus, a meme that damages the ability to clearly perceive reality.
  But just like people who are infected with an infectious virus aren't bad, not all religious people are automatically bad people. I don't think they are good because they are religious, but that doesn't mean they are not good or not religious. So let us not fall into the same absolutist thoughts as the fervent deniers of secular goodness.
  
  The good ones enable the shitty ones.
  
  Agreed.
  I have met good people who are Christian. They usually don't cowl all their behavior behind god.
  There you're friends dad, who barely knows you, who helps you get your car running so his kid and friends can make it to a metal show. He didn't like metal, but he kept it to himself other than saying it wasn't his genre, which is a fair statement.
  Why did he devote an afternoon and a couple trips to auto zone? Because all in all we were good kids. He wanted us to have fun, but to arrive (and ultimately) come home safe.
  
  The comment you are responding to is reactionary in nature and surely the result of a great deal of pain and trauma at the hands of the sort of people they are referring to. In this case, I think it is ok to let someone express their emotions and assume that they don't really mean for it to be a universal statement.
  
  Why would you assume they don't mean it to be universally applied?
  The biggest religions in the world harbor the largest rings of pedophiles, bigots and oppressors of women and children that exist.
  There are surely religious people that consider themselves good and act in a moral way, but their support of organizations that allow and defend such abhorrent values and behavior defies that.
  As someone put further down "the good ones enable the bad ones". So while you or I might not take the same stance in our own lives, I can absolutely understand why someone might not want anything to do with religion or religious people.
  
  I’m trying to be charitable to the person who started this part of the thread. There are most definitely perfectly good religious people out there though they are involved with toxic organizations.
  
  Is being involved with a toxic organization not toxic? Or are you saying these people are victims of their religion?
  
  IRT the first part, I think so. Even if you're a genuinely kind person, if you support an organization that practices cruelty, you are supporting cruelty.
  IRT the second part, I wasn't saying that, but would agree with that statement--people are often a victim of their cultures.
- There is no such thing as a good religious person
  I've known extremely religious people that were very kind to everyone around them, only focused on doing good in the world, and never pushed their beliefs on anyone else. "Good" and "evil" are very reductive and simplistic terms. Good people can have beliefs that are not good for society and they are not completely defined by that. If we go to that absolute then there isn't a good person that exists. Pretty much everyone harbors beliefs, irrespective of religion, that when examined may be detrimental to society, they just don't know their own blind spots.
  
  Well said. Though I will say that we need to stop giving religions passes for bigotry.
  Churches in the US get huge tax breaks, can set up explicitly racist schools, or they can operate worse than the worst MLM. Some of the followers are somewhat to blame, but really it's the organizations as a whole that need to be revisited.
  Why should my tax dollars subsidize a church building where the pastor tells their congregation that people like me are an evil that should be purged from society? Why should they subsidize a pastor that has a private jet? Or a church that actively protects child abusers and/or wife beaters?
  And frankly, it's only certain religions that receive these sort of benefits. Any sort of native religion or niche religion won't get half the benefits we give to multimillion dollar religions.
  
  I've known extremely religious people that were very kind to everyone around them, only focused on doing good in the world
  Being religious is not a requirement for doing good in the world. If the religion did not exist these extremely religious people you know could continue to do good in the world while not simultaneously supporting organizations that enable corruption, abuse, dishonesty, violence, oppression, etc, etc..
  If anyone is still believing in these hokey stories or exploitative organizations they are either willfully ignorant to the world around them, gullible rubes who are victims of a centuries old scam, or actively benefitting from that exploitation.
  I stand by my statements. Religion is a virus. It's a net negative in the world that stands in the way of all human progress.
  
  I was responding to you saying "there's no such thing as a good religious person". I don't really disagree with the rest of your perspective, yet your arguing as if you assume I do. I think it's reductive and crass to judge someone on a single data point. That was my primary point.
- As a gay person, I have a saying that is similar: "When I meet someone who says they are conservative, I know that I have just met someone who wants me to suffer."
  
  Seeing people like J.J mcoloughs being gay and supporting the conservatives is the most dumbshit thing ever. Is he ever going to realize that most of the conservatives want him fucking dead??
- What is it you hate so much about religion? I could see disliking specific religious practices, but what problem does every religion share that makes you immediately distrust all religious people?
  
  The conflation of personal belief with objective reality.
  When someone tells me they are religious, they are saying the voices in their heads are more important than the voices in their ears. They are saying the vision in their mind's eye is more important than the vision in their eyeballs.
  When a schizophrenic tells us they are going to listen to the voices in their head, we should be worried. We should be worried even if their voices are currently telling them to be an upstanding member of society, because we don't know what those voices will be saying tomorrow.
  
  I find the comparison between religion and schizophrenia to be a little over the top. There is a big difference between believing something that cannot be proven true, and having actual schizophrenic delusions.
  Religious beliefs don't inherently impair your ability to function. And clearly they have some emotional function or value given that peoples around the world created their own unique religions without fail.
  I really don't see why you care so much about what people believe as long as their beliefs aren't hurting anyone else. You are creating a problem where there is none.
  
  There is a big difference between believing something that cannot be proven true, and having actual schizophrenic delusions.
  I would argue the former is the more worrying of the two. We all know not to trust the schizophrenic.
  But religious people aren't just saying "God Bless You" when we sneeze. They are telling us how to vote, whether to wear masks, vaccinate our children, shun our neighbors, annihilate nations, and they are doing this on the basis of entirely unsupported, yet strongly held personal belief.
  You are creating a problem where there is none.
  Any suggestion that there isn't a problem is demonstrably false, and your claim that I am creating the problem is gaslighting. I'm not going to waste a bunch of time pointing at a bunch of lesser religiously-supported evils to prove it. I'm just going to take them as read, and skip to the end: religious zealots fly planes into buildings.
  
  But religious people aren't just saying "God Bless You" when we sneeze. They are telling us how to vote, whether to wear masks, vaccinate our children, shun our neighbors, annihilate nations, and they are doing this on the basis of entirely unsupported, yet strongly held personal belief.
  Ah, so your problems with religion are actually problems with specific religious practices. Its almost like you should just hate those practices instead of directing your anger at a very broad concept.
  Your justification for distrusting all religious people is a small minority of Christians and Muslims. Grow up and treat people like people
  
  Ah, so your problems with religion are actually problems with specific religious practices.
  Where did you get that idea? I don't believe that is a valid conclusion raising from my arguments.
  It's almost like you should just hate those practices instead of directing your anger at a very broad concept.
  My "anger at a very broad concept" should have been a clue that those specific harmful practices I mentioned were exemplar, and not an exhaustive list. Further examples could be drawn from every organized religion, as well as from any and all individual "spiritual" beliefs.
  No, my distrust of religious people is not based solely on those few examples of harm that I have presented, but on the underlying philosophical model, which could be characterized as a preference for hypothesization over experimentation. This is a "content of character" question, not a condemnation of specific religions.
  
  which could be characterized as a preference for hypothesization over experimentation.
  This is an oversimplification of religion. There is a difference between someone's religious beliefs, and how they approach logic in a real world situation. A religious person does not just always make a hypothesis and assume it to be true no matter what. They are capable of being normal functioning human beings and differentiating from fact and fiction outside of their religion. If they aren't capable of this, then I agree its a problem. But its not a problem with religion, its a problem with the person.
  So your problem is that people are believing things you disagree with because it gives them a sense of fulfillment and community without harming anyone else. It could not possibly be more clear that you are the problem.
  And no, it is not gaslighting to point out why you are wrong about something. That's a ridiculous tactic to avoid the tiniest bit of self reflection.
  
  So your problem is that people are believing things you disagree with because it gives them a sense of fulfillment and community without harming anyone else. It could not possibly be more clear that you are the problem.
  None of that arises from any part of my argument. Your stated conclusions are a product of your own mind and have nothing to do with anything I have said. Your argument is, thus, a strawman fallacy.
  This is an oversimplification of religion.
  It is the fundamental basis of religion. The common denominator. The sine qua non: the component without which the philosophical model in question could not be reasonably described as religious.
  A religious person does not just always make a hypothesis and assume it to be true no matter what
  Conceded.
  They are capable of being normal functioning human beings and differentiating from fact and fiction outside of their religion.
  The capability of distinguishing fact from fiction is meaningless in the circumstances where the individual deliberately intends to reject fact. In declaring themselves religious, they indicate that there are certain circumstances where they intend to do just that.
  
  None of that arises from any part of my argument. Your stated conclusions are a product of your own mind and have nothing to do with anything I have said. Your argument is, thus, a strawman fallacy.
  From what I can gather, it effectively is your argument. You dislike that people believe things that are not supported with evidence. I do not personally think it matters because they gain value from it and do not harm others in the process. What am I missing?
  The capability of distinguishing fact from fiction is meaningless in the circumstances where the individual deliberately intends to reject fact.
  I can't disagree with that, but I just don't see why it matters so much. If they seriously gain that much value from believing something, then let them.
  
  and do not harm others in the process.
  I have presented no arguments suggesting they are harmless. I have not accepted your premise that they cause no harm. Indeed, I have provided a few examples of common, relatively minor harms, as well as references to the 9/11 attacks as non-exhaustive examples.
  You acknowledged these harms when you strawmanned my position. You can't rationally claim that no such harms exist, when you have directly acknowledged they do.
  We can disagree on the prevalence of such harms: you have indicated a belief they are rare, and I have refused to waste my time producing an exhaustive list.
  
  I couldnt agree more. I have totally underestimated how nutty religious people truly are. I used to think Christians are good neighbours and boring law abiding citizens, but when push comes to shove and you really need them it turns out that they are just nutcases who are very adept at playing the good neighbour role. At least that has been my experience. I just can't trust adults who believe in fairy tales anymore.
  
  I totally get what you're saying, but that's not at all what religion is. If someone is listening to voices in their head, they're not religious. They're just crazy. I know many religious people who do not "listen to voices in their head" and it's my belief that you've had terrible encounters and experiences with people claiming to be religious. But to generalize is not a good thing. I've met very sane religious people that do not do the things you say, I think it's unfair of you to make such a sweeping claim that anyone who claims to be religious is immediately a crazy person to you. That idea itself sounds crazy to me
  
  If someone is listening to voices in their head, they're not religious. They're just crazy.
  I did not mean to claim religious people are "crazy." What I described is "faith", but without the virtuous connotations commonly ascribed to that concept.
  Based on your comment, though, I would say I have accurately conveyed to you my state of mind upon hearing an individual proudly portray themselves as "religious" or "spiritual". It is profoundly disturbing to hear someone readily admit a belief that their thoughts supersede reality.
  
  To be fair, a large amount of Christians, including many at the church I used to attend in my younger days, will often recommend they "Ask God for advice" on big or troubling decisions or issues in their life, and those people will then say "God told me to do X" after they asked God for help.
  So... I think there actually is a pretty fair amount of crazy religious types out there. The churches I've been to almost always had a big emphasis on getting to the point where you're having a conversation with god, asking him for guidance, etc. I always interpreted that as being literal, and not a metaphor.
- Religious people push their beliefs on people all the time, that's what it is made to do so people can concentrate power. If a religious person has kids, you can guess how they are going to think. The whole idea is just complete bullshit and so stupid that anybody with a capacity to think critically knows it is false. Only people incapable of self reflection or thinking actually believe it.
- That's actually a little frightening, please refrain from making such blanket statements like this one. Surely a part of you must know this is wrong
  
  I couldn't agree more with the statement made. People who believe in fairy tales can't be fully trusted.
  
  Well, that's very short-sighted and factually incorrect. I wish you meet more people and your outlook changes
  
  I think it is somewhat hard to change my outlook at this point. My reasoning is that truly devout religious people have been infected with a mind virus. They may be nice people or pretend to be nice people, but there is also the mind virus, which is ultimately not trust worthy. In general, if hard decisions need to be made by a third party that potentially have a big impact on my life I'd not fully trust a religious person.
  In daily life I am very friendly with a bunch of religious people, but I mistrust the religious part of them.

423 comments