Over the past few decades, the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated—often referred to as “nones”—has grown rapidly. In the 1970s, only about 5% of Americans fell into this category. Today, that number exceeds 25%. Scholars have debated whether this change simply reflects a general decline in belief, or whether it signals something more complex. The research team wanted to explore the deeper forces at play: Why are people leaving institutional religion? What are they replacing it with? And how are their personal values shaping that process?
Good for them.
These ancient lies designed for crowd control have been horrible these past thousand years.
Not that modern political groups or sects etc are much better…
because its bullshit?
*Gen Y
Lmao because it’s horse shit that’s why
Source: me, a 37-yo exmormon who was all-in, true believer, until his mid 20s.
I feel like the unloved sect is really the unitarian universalists. They’re basically a doctrine free “church” of social justice. Like, I love going sometimes and just getting more advice on how to be an excellent human to others. And then we have snacks.
Part of this is just that the socially conservative pressure to fit in has eased. Time was you had to be “religious” to fit in to communities and it was seen as part of American identity.
I find it hard to believe 75% of Americans are religious. In the UK 37% identify as non religious. 45% identify as Christian yet churches have emptied our and most young people only end up in one for marriages or funerals. People say they’re Christian but I have no doubt a large chunk of those people are just ticking a box on a census form as it’s part of their identity.
Well, my whole life, I’ve lived in a society where organized Christianity has overwhelmingly been a force for evil, rather than a force for good. Fuck, I straight-up believe that most Evangelical Christians are devil worshipers. If your religion leads you to hate, you aren’t worshiping God, you’re worshiping the Devil.
Christianity is, by definition, a cult of human sacrifice.
Kinda puts the entire faith into perspective.
Death cult
Dooms day death cult.
Lead by Jesus, the dooms day death cult leader.
I hear he’s a “good guy.”
I don’t think dooms day death cult leaders, make believe or not and I just mean a historical grifter non magical, are good people.
Cannibal death cult, If you take part in the sacrament. That is, quite literally, internally perceived as ritual cannibalism.
They ritualistically eat the body and blood of their god/savior.
Let that sink in.
When you’re actively trying to bring about the end of the world, there’s no more apt description.
Suicidal Death Cult
They are actively doing everything in their power to bring about the end of the world.
Well, they were in luck… he’s only mostly dead. If he was all the way dead, it wouldn’t have worked. but Mostly dead? Miracle Max can work with that.
Death Cult Armageddon, great Dimmu album. My parents got it for me along with Enthrone Darkness Triumphant for Christmas one year but they wouldn’t buy me Diablo II because Diablo “didn’t fit the theme of the holiday.”
In all fairness, Diablo has an entirely different lore than Christianity, I can see where they were coming from. We want to burn Yahweh, not Anu.
Not really; one guy died, by his own choice, but came back to life two days later. A real “cult of human sacrifice” would require it as an ongoing practice and for the victims to stay dead.
Jesus alone doesn’t make it a death cult. It’s a death cult because the whole religion is predicated on death. Dying is the entire point. Your entire life is a means to gain the rewards of dying and only then will you truly be happy.
Just because there was only one sacrificial offering doesn’t mean jesus wasn’t a sacrificial offering.
The whole thing about jesus being both fully god and fully man is that no “normal” human would ever be sinless- and therefore would be an inadequate sacrifice. Therefore god became man- that is, jesus- whose sole purpose was to be a “perfect” sacrifice.
But isn’t the whole trinity thing God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit the same entity? So God sacrificed himself for himself… wouldn’t really call a two day nap for some eternal being a sacrifice either.
You’re expecting it all to make sense. It’s like a the lies a 2 year old tells to explain and justify having gotten into the chocolate cake, after having tried to lay it off like they hadn’t (missing the whole having it all over their face thing,).
The longer they’re allowed to go, and the more you poke holes the weirder it gets.
This was always my biggest struggle growing up in a catholic house. “He sacrificed himself to save everyone who came before and will come after.”
Like, is that really that big of a deal? Shit if i was presented with the option of a much smaller number than infinity, idk say 1000, id sacrifice myself. AND i don’t know that I’m god or that my father is god and that ill be taken care of for all eternity.
In all reality, that numbers way less than 1000 for strangers, and if you include anyone i know/care about, that number could be as low as 1.
He set ad and eve up, too. He meant for them to eat the dam fruit,
All so he could LARP as the White Knight™️.
No. The christoan God is evil. They’re doing exactly as their religion demands.
If your religion leads you to hate, you aren’t worshiping God, you’re worshiping the Devil.
And this is how wars between religions start…
Maybe try to move away from that God/Devil thing. It’s a foolish, naive, human-centered worldview.
Ok, we can restate it. If your religion leads you to hate, you aren’t on the side of good, you’re on the side of bad?
alright, but is the world really as black and white as that? Is there really a clear Good Side, and a clear Bad Side?
We’re already in a war of religion. One side just hasn’t admitted it yet.
there is literally nothing that religion can provide that can’t be gotten without religion
For real. You can just buy those styrofoam wafers and some cheap wine if you really want them. You don’t have to go to church.
¡obleas!
I guess messed up ideas about sexuality and consent in general aren’t strictly under their purview. Or, subservience to arbitrary authority figures.
What about rape in a rectory? Probably doesn’t happen too often outside of a religious context.
insight into why.
Because it’s not fucking real?
This isn’t rocket surgery.
That hasn’t become any more or less true in recent years, though. It’s worth asking why people are now thinking of the idea differently than they did for the past several thousand
Well I suppose there’s still no proof that there never was a so-called “divine Y-chromosome” as believed in by Christians, but before we knew about DNA, or even human cells, the ridiculous legends of religion were definitely harder to refute. The ridiculousness of those legends was a big part of their power - the more stupid and unhinged a religious story appears to us today, the more in awe believers would have been about it 300 or 400 years ago.
So while religion hasn’t become less real in recent years, it has become a lot easier to point out its absurdities.
I support a few religious organizations through volunteer work.
My rules for these organizations are simple:
- The religion takes a back seat to helping the community
- They’re not preachy or trying to convert people
- They don’t diddle little kids.
You’d think it’ll be easy to meet that criteria.
“You will know them by their fruits” ahh criteria
How would you even know if #3 was true or not, it’s not like they advertise it.
Flip a coin
We could… weigh them? And, if they weigh as much as a duck, then we know they are kiddie fiddlers!
I’m curious which is more common a failing #3 or #2.
most christian charity or aid orgs are mostly about that captive audience.
Yeah I used to think ‘‘how do Catholics manage to keep going?’’ Then my church fought a lawsuit to get them to report child abuse, then bought insurance to buffer any financial loss they might incur while protecting child rapists. I feel like Jesus telling people that if they feel like hurting kids they should stop, take a deep breath, and commit suicide, kind of forbids this sort of behavior.
Only one I can think of is Unitarian Universalist for all 3. Maybe some sort of Buddhism? Though probably have broken #3 and are very big/organized.
I do volunteer for a Unitarian church and a Buddhist temple! Nailed it.
Awesome! I just started going to a UU church again after a decade+ away…just as wholesome as I remember. Thank you for the volunteer work! You are amazing 😍
Can unitarian universalist even be considered a religion? Isn’t it just a catch-all group for people to get together and worship in a more harmonious way?
They get together and practice, which counts as a religion even if they are kinda doing their own thing.
I mean they have 8 guiding principles but it’s a fair point. I feel like the term religion is used very loosely there, but I do wonder what religion that DOES have strong guiding tenents that isn’t at least mildly aggressive about them.
They don’t diddle little kids.
You know they don’t, when they perform a song about it…
Imagine my mom used to volunteer together with JW back in the 90s
The faster the better. It’s fundamentalists creating a lot of the problems in the world as they try to force their beliefs on others.
Better understanding of the physical world than previous generations, for one thing. That and the advent of TV and Internet made it much harder to hide the hypocrisy and crimes.
I feel like they’re missing an important point
Most organized religions blue the line between clergy and god so followers need to believe their religious leaders are pretty close to infallible, like God is claimed to be.
However with modern society, information is easy to get and everywhere. So people know about organized religion’s issues, and without that structure and reinforcement, we see a slower but substantial reduction in general belief in God that will continue for generations as less people are indoctrinated into organized religion at a young age.
Not sure why the author acts like it’s a mystery
Most organized religions blue the line between clergy and god so followers need to believe their religious leaders are pretty close to infallible, like God is claimed to be.
It’s because the fundamental purpose of religion is control for the purpose of concentrating power.
It’s because the fundamental purpose of religion is control for the purpose of concentrating power.
Not at first, but the people in the organization who want that will rise to the top due to ruthlessness.
Especially because the already established religions in the area will try to crush the new one, and that persecution makes that concentration of power a necessity to fight back. Which is a reason even dominant religions still claim they’re being persecuted.
It’s not just a religious issue, it’s just sociology in general. Humans evolved for groups of like 250 people, so all our gut instincts are shit when scaled up to millions of people. To compensate we fall back to labels and generalizations, and nuance goes out the window.
Exploiting all that makes it easy to move up in any power structure, so on a long enough timeline the majority of people in charge are going to be willing to do anything to increase their organization’s power, because that increases their personal power.
Most organized religions blue the line between clergy and god so followers need to believe their religious leaders are pretty close to infallible, like God is claimed to be.
Can you explain what you mean by this? It’s probably obvious to Westerners, but I’m not sure how this works in practice.
Gen-Z is all about it though. Gen-Z is stupid and backwards… voting for Trump, going to church. What a bunch of losers.
It’s cool they’ll learn there’s no god when trump drafts their asses
To understand these trends more fully, the researchers analyzed interview data from 54 participants whose religious involvement had significantly declined over the decade.
These interviews revealed a recurring theme: many young people left institutional religion not because they stopped caring about spirituality, but because they felt a growing disconnect between their personal values and the teachings or practices of religious organizations. They spoke of churches that felt judgmental, hypocritical, or out of touch—particularly on issues of gender and sexuality. Participants described feeling alienated by institutions that seemed to limit, rather than support, their pursuit of authenticity, justice, and self-understanding.
