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Because I felt like rescuing this discussion from the gay bakery thread before it vanished into the arguing-with-BK abyss.
It's complicated. My opinion does shift back and forth depending on whether my mood is "morbid" or "very morbid" at the moment, but I think it's basically a matter of short term versus long term. Short term, Christianity is in for a pounding, yes. But I do think this is partly the consequences of the diabolical bargain of the Religious Right playing out. Also, at some point following the sexual revolution, Christians made the prim decision to largely cut themselves off from the broader culture, so that there's now a sort of Christian bubble completely isolating us and we have no real voice in society. All this will have to play out, and I don't know how long it will take. I do believe that, at the end of it, we will be quite leery of future entanglements with Leviathan.
Shortly after that conversation, I read God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis. It's a collection of essays; in one of them, entitled "Meditation on the Third Commandment," he considers the question of a "Christian Party," and manages to inadvertently but quite accurately predict what happened here: political Christians weren't a big enough bloc to wield influence by themselves, so they allied with another group, compromising their principles along the way. Corruption, disgust and disillusionment set in, and since the GOP identified itself so strongly with Christianity, it took Christianity down along with it. Lewis came to the same conclusion I had before I read the essay: we need to keep politicians at arm's length, and make them court our votes. I think religion took longer to wither over here in part because we have no established church. It needs to stay that way.
As to why it did wither, I don't believe it has to do with people getting more "rational," or putting more faith in science, or what-have-you. Almost all current arguments against God have been around since Classical times. Yes, unbelief is correlated with level of education, but I believe this is because level of education is correlated with prosperity. People stop praying when they stop believing, but also when they don't feel they have much left to pray for; as the Good Book tells us, a soft, settled existence is quite inimical to religious faith.
The Western world has had more than fifty years without a major war, and epidemics and famines have ceased. We would be fools to expect that to last. Climate science indicates it almost certainly won't, and if that doesn't do it, we're also looking at a world where the U.S. is no longer willing or able to play world nanny. Conflicts are springing up all over the place. I don't believe we can keep it all down. When the **** hits the fan, I expect either a resurgence of religiosity or a sudden enthusiasm for charismatic dictators. I'm not quite pessimistic enough to expect the latter.
To speak of the U.S. in particular: religious affiliation is way down among my generation. Partly this goes along with what I've already said about material comfort--we've prolonged adolescence to a ludicrous extent (Lord knows I did). Even so, most of the much-ballyhooed "Nones" are not atheists; they tend to be spiritual-but-not-religious. I don't think that's a long-term stable state for most people. Some may become hard atheists, some may go back to traditional religion, some may organize their spirituality to make whole new religions. Hard to say how many will go where.
Okay, that's enough for now. Could say more, but there's other stuff I should be doing.
Originally posted by C0ckney
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Shortly after that conversation, I read God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis. It's a collection of essays; in one of them, entitled "Meditation on the Third Commandment," he considers the question of a "Christian Party," and manages to inadvertently but quite accurately predict what happened here: political Christians weren't a big enough bloc to wield influence by themselves, so they allied with another group, compromising their principles along the way. Corruption, disgust and disillusionment set in, and since the GOP identified itself so strongly with Christianity, it took Christianity down along with it. Lewis came to the same conclusion I had before I read the essay: we need to keep politicians at arm's length, and make them court our votes. I think religion took longer to wither over here in part because we have no established church. It needs to stay that way.
As to why it did wither, I don't believe it has to do with people getting more "rational," or putting more faith in science, or what-have-you. Almost all current arguments against God have been around since Classical times. Yes, unbelief is correlated with level of education, but I believe this is because level of education is correlated with prosperity. People stop praying when they stop believing, but also when they don't feel they have much left to pray for; as the Good Book tells us, a soft, settled existence is quite inimical to religious faith.
The Western world has had more than fifty years without a major war, and epidemics and famines have ceased. We would be fools to expect that to last. Climate science indicates it almost certainly won't, and if that doesn't do it, we're also looking at a world where the U.S. is no longer willing or able to play world nanny. Conflicts are springing up all over the place. I don't believe we can keep it all down. When the **** hits the fan, I expect either a resurgence of religiosity or a sudden enthusiasm for charismatic dictators. I'm not quite pessimistic enough to expect the latter.
To speak of the U.S. in particular: religious affiliation is way down among my generation. Partly this goes along with what I've already said about material comfort--we've prolonged adolescence to a ludicrous extent (Lord knows I did). Even so, most of the much-ballyhooed "Nones" are not atheists; they tend to be spiritual-but-not-religious. I don't think that's a long-term stable state for most people. Some may become hard atheists, some may go back to traditional religion, some may organize their spirituality to make whole new religions. Hard to say how many will go where.
Okay, that's enough for now. Could say more, but there's other stuff I should be doing.
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