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'The Bible is no longer considered part of the conversation'

S

Sniffles

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Has your latest research in science revealed that the earth revolves around the sun yet?
Well considering that I clearly stated that Copernicus was an ordained priest.

I'd still like to see a study that says we have more fundamentalists overall now than we did decades and centuries ago. Most Americans still identify as Christian, but bible literalism has declined. No one is using the Bible to support slavery or burn witches and attack heretics anymore. Christianity used to dominate a large portion of people's lives compared to now. The trend is simple.

No the trend isn't simple. And for the record, I'm not defending Biblical literalism nor fundamentalism either. As I said, the irony is that the number of both atheism and evangelicals is rising according to what the polls say.

And as for the overall trend: mainstream churches are in decline while Christian revivalist movements are rising in greater numbers now. And much of the force behind these revivalist movements are younger people.

So we have an interesting dynamic at work in the world today and well into the future.
 

ptgatsby

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And as for the overall trend: mainstream churches are in decline while Christian revivalist movements are rising in greater numbers now. And much of the force behind these revivalist movements are younger people.

What gives you that impression? Every year the overall population that identifies themselves with religion decreases... And young people identify the very least with any religion... although there is a hump around "slightly religious", they are the minority in 'religious' and the strongest in 'secular'.
 
S

Sniffles

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I didn't say the majority of young people are deeply religious; however a significant and growing minority of them are becoming more deeply religious and are the driving force behind numerous Christian revivalist movements.
 

ptgatsby

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however a significant and growing minority of them are becoming more deeply religious

I find the opposite - less and less identify strongly.

and are the driving force behind numerous Christian revivalist movements.

I also don't see any evidence of this. The 'revivalist' movements seem dominated by fundamentalists, which also dominant the 'deeply religious'... young and old.

Every statistic I see shows the following trend:

* Every segment of the population is getting less religious
* The greatest growth for the young population is in Islam and Buddhism (all variants)
* The largest decrease in religious preference in young people is towards secularism and slight religion... down from strong religion. (ie: the entire curve is shifting towards less religion/less strength).

Do you have something that contradicts this?
 
S

Sniffles

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Do you have something that contradicts this?

Yes, among other things, the research of Colleen Carroll Campbell:

There is no one number available that tells us how many new faithful are in America today. But there is a growing body of statistics that certifies the existence and growth of this grassroots movement. I quoted many of these statistics in The New Faithful, which was published in 2002. Since then, even more studies have emerged to document this trend.

One of the most recent was released this year by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. Researchers there found that one-fifth of American college students are “highly religious,” a term that describes those who frequently attend religious services and retreats, read sacred texts, and join campus religious organizations. These students, who tend to be morally conservative, closely resemble the young adults I concentrated on in The New Faithful.

But the appeal of religion is not limited only to these highly committed young believers. The UCLA study also found that three in four college students say they pray, discuss religion or spirituality with their friends, and find religion to be personally helpful. The federally financed National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health similarly found that two-thirds of today’s teen-agers describe themselves as “religious” or “very religious.”

That heightened religious sensibility is beginning to attract notice from pollsters because it connects to another counter-intuitive trend among the young – their increasing conservatism on issues of personal morality. As I mentioned earlier, the UCLA study found that students who described themselves as “highly religious” were much more likely than non-religious students to frown on casual sex, oppose legal abortion, and object to the legalization of marijuana.

Other studies have found signs of this shift among the broader youth population. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed that among young adults, support for legal abortion – which has been steadily dropping since the early 1990’s – hit a new low in 2003, with less than four in 10 young Americans supporting it. That’s down from nearly 50 percent who supported abortion rights a decade earlier. Federal statistics also show a significant increase in the number of teen-agers reporting that they abstain from sex. More than half of all male high school students reported in 2001 that they were virgins. In 1990, only 39 percent said the same.

Though many factors may lie behind such trends, data analysts have found a clear relationship between religion and morality in the lives of the young. A report from the National Institutes of Health in 2003 found that teen-agers with strong religious views are less likely to have sex than are less religious teens, largely because their religious beliefs lead them to view the consequences of having sex negatively.

Reporting on the ‘new faithful’ in America

We also see this within Catholicism of more young people attending traditional Latin mass than more modern ones. The Latin masses I attend are a mixture of young and older.
 

ptgatsby

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We also see this within Catholicism of more young people attending traditional Latin mass than more modern ones. The Latin masses I attend are a mixture of young and older.

I couldn't see any references in that article. You don't happen to have the book so that I could spot check them? (Or know a reference to them?)

I'm using The Association of Religion Data Archives | Surveys, fwiw, and can only identify the opposite trend (although it slowed dramatically over the last 10 or so years.)
 

Geoff

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Actually Jedi is a growth religion, particularly in the UK.

it has sufficient supporters in the last Census to make it an official religion of the UK.

Of course, it was just a fun internet driven stunt, but I enjoyed it.
 

Mole

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Catholic Apologetics is built like a fortress.

And unsurprisingly it is built entirely for defence.

In fact most of Catholic Theology is in response to heresy.

So most of Catholic Theology is entirely defensive.

And it invites frontal attack because it knows it can repel even a full frontal assault.

So Catholic Theology is the Marginot Line of Christianity.

So all a bold General has to do is to go round the ends of the line and he can outflank Christianity itself.

And this is just what has happened.

Catholicism attracts those with defensive personalities. And gives them great strength when they are attacked from the front, but it is their weakness when they are attacked from the side.

And psychology is an attack from the side.

Psychology seeks to dismantle the ego defences to free us from the fortress, so that we might be free for empathy and creativity.

Psychology seeks to free us from our body armour so that we might dance together.

Psychology seeks to replace paranoia with understanding.

And naturally this is met by resistance.

And Catholic Apologetics is the Resistance.

So we weep over the walls of the fortress as they dissolve in our tears.
 

Owl

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Convenient isn't it!

The other thing "built in" is identification and recognition of outsiders.

Religions nearly always introduce pointless rules "thou shalt not work on the sabbath" or "eat anything of a cloven hoof" etc etc. They are always there so one can identify the believers and cast out the enemy.

Forgive me, Geoff, but you've hit a pet peeve of mine, and I can't remain silent.

Those rules aren't pointless, and their primary purpose isn't to identify outsiders.

Of the ten commandments, the fourth is always the first to be dropped--even by Christians--as if this law were arbitrary or could be abrogated. However, the law concerning the Sabbath originates in human nature and therefore is easily knowable: to bring into being and to sustain in being requires work, and to complete a work is to cease from that work, and to cease from work is to rest.

But work is not the end in istelf: it is a means to the end, and, insofar as we wait for the end to be brought into being by our work, we work with the hope that the end will be attained. The end of the Christian life is to know God, and the knowledge of God is through the work of dominion, naming the creation by understanding the natures of things created. And as God completed and rested from the work of creation, so man will complete and rest from the work of dominion.

The law itself is not about resting one day in seven. That is arbitrary. That one day is seven was mercifully given to man by God so man could rest and reflect on his origin and destiny in anticipation of the completed work and the rest to come. But to rest from work on the Sabbath assumes that you've been working. And this is the law itself: we are to work with true hope for the good. We are not to give up hope by thinking the good cannot be attained by work, and we are not to think that the good will be attained without work. When a Christian rests on the Sabbath, he visibly proclaims his hope that through his work, and the work of the church, the good will be attained, that the work of dominion will be completed, that the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

As for the food law you mentioned, ancient Israelites were not to eat animals with a cloven hoof that "did not chew the cud" such as pigs. Unlcean animals were generally those that had been more greatly affected by the curse. Orginally, the green plants were given to the animals for food. There were no carnivores, scavengers, or bottom feeders. The laws that governed what was clean to eat were pedagogical--they were to draw the Israelite's attention to the curse and so remind him to stop and think about the curse, why it had come upon man, and how it was to be removed.

So, yeah, not pointless. Sorry about my verbosity.
 

Geoff

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Forgive me, Geoff, but you've hit a pet peeve of mine, and I can't remain silent.

Those rules aren't pointless, and their primary purpose isn't to identify outsiders.

Of the ten commandments, the fourth is always the first to be dropped--even by Christians--as if this law were arbitrary or could be abrogated. However, the law concerning the Sabbath originates in human nature and therefore is easily knowable: to bring into being and to sustain in being requires work, and to complete a work is to cease from that work, and to cease from work is to rest.

But work is not the end in istelf: it is a means to the end, and, insofar as we wait for the end to be brought into being by our work, we work with the hope that the end will be attained. The end of the Christian life is to know God, and the knowledge of God is through the work of dominion, naming the creation by understanding the natures of things created. And as God completed and rested from the work of creation, so man will complete and rest from the work of dominion.

The law itself is not about resting one day in seven. That is arbitrary. That one day is seven was mercifully given to man by God so man could rest and reflect on his origin and destiny in anticipation of the completed work and the rest to come. But to rest from work on the Sabbath assumes that you've been working. And this is the law itself: we are to work with true hope for the good. We are not to give up hope by thinking the good cannot be attained by work, and we are not to think that the good will be attained without work. When a Christian rests on the Sabbath, he visibly proclaims his hope that through his work, and the work of the church, the good will be attained, that the work of dominion will be completed, that the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

As for the food law you mentioned, ancient Israelites were not to eat animals with a cloven hoof that "did not chew the cud" such as pigs. Unlcean animals were generally those that had been more greatly affected by the curse. Orginally, the green plants were given to the animals for food. There were no carnivores, scavengers, or bottom feeders. The laws that governed what was clean to eat were pedagogical--they were to draw the Israelite's attention to the curse and so remind him to stop and think about the curse, why it had come upon man, and how it was to be removed.

So, yeah, not pointless. Sorry about my verbosity.

Thanks for the response. Do you accept that Christianity (and the Bible) contains many ceremonies/ideas, the only point of which is to distinguish between those who partake and those who do not?
 

Totenkindly

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There's a multiplicity of reasons a particular requirement could exist, and much of the time theological understanding is read into things after the fact -- after the commandment itself was established. It's hard to discern what things were part of the reasoning that led to the establishment of a particular social (and legal -- it was a theocracy) rule, versus what was created to additionally justify it after its creation.

Theology is helpful to explain why certain truths might exist but it doesn't mean the system was immaculately designed ahead of time; various aspects could have naturally evolved even as we see witness of them doing today.

Usually rules are driven by immediate need.
 

Owl

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The only point of which?

hmmm...

I 'spose only the sons of Aaron could be priests, and it doesn't seem there was anything about Aaron or his line that made this distinction necessary, so this distinction between the priests and non-priests was rather arbitrary, er, let's say contingent.

^this is the most explicit example I can think of. I don't want to say that there are no ideas/ceremonies that only distinguish between those who partake and those who don't, but I'd not say that Christianity contains many such distinctions. If they do exist, (as the above seems to be a case), they seem to be the exception, and even these distinctions connote the sovereignty of God.
 
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