Growing up in the 80's (UK) as a Roman Catholic, I remember the services being full on Sunday mornings. Not been since I left home at 18, because frankly I stopped believing in God the same time I stopped believing in Father Christmas (7?). The only reason I went was to make my parents happy.
Now I'm in my 40's I do wonder if the lack of religion in society is leading us to a bad place. We know from numerous studies that 2 parent families (mother and father) give the best outcomes for children (education, jobs, etc). In modern no-religion societies, where is the pull for good old family values? What we are seeing is better rights and fairness for individuals (same-sex marriage, etc) but is that good for society as a whole?
There is no evidence that heterosexual parents are better for children than non-het parents. An important factor is that their parents have a stable relationship.
Despite (in my opinion) missing the point & also leaning a bit toward "yay heterosexuality!", what that poster said wasn't exactly insinuating anything bad about any other group.
When a child has a parent that's died, or a parent that leaves, or a parent that insert 90% of reasons for parental absence, it's natural that they'll have a harder time than anyone else. It's not that the widow would be a bad parent, it's that the kid would have to deal with the terrible situation of having a parent die.
If you were really wanting to get to the source of truth there, though, you'd also show how children that get adopted by a non-couple perform. If I had to guess, they're probably doing the best by far, because adoption as a single person is only really possible if you're incredibly stable.
> Now I'm in my 40's I do wonder if the lack of religion in society is leading us to a bad place
I'm an atheist and have considered the same quite a bit. I wonder if some people need something to believe and direction and religion helps fence these people into society friendly pockets.
I wonder today if what I would consider is that overly woke pocket (which I respect is very relative to personal views) and generally more extreme politics on all sides need something to believe in a fight for and religion when done well is a brilliant force for good in society this way to coral that energy to good places.
...but at the same time religion can be horribly controlling and toxic. And when religion finds absolute power it tends to go badly so I think the trade off between too much and too little, we are better going towards too little.
Maybe somehow we need to look at the good parts of religion and work that into a non-religious society. Even little things like I'd love to see shops closed on Sunday again and return this as more simple downtime for family, friends and self. Also realise we dont need to spend money every day.
> I wonder if some people need something to believe
I totally understand your point (and agree with the stated goal of a non-religious society with the "good bits" of religion baked in), but, the "some" in your sentence above ... there be really scary dragons.
Here's what I mean: would you say that "some" people deserve the right to vote while others don't?
The argument that "some" people need religion has the implication that they're too dumb to figure out a path for themselves without the help of a guiding book.
And that because of their limitations, the only way for them to "stick to the book" is to shrink-wrap the message into a fairy tale.
In other words, that'd be a world where one part of the population (those who don't "need" religion) brainwashes and manipulates the other part into "doing the right thing" (whatever "right" actually is).
You can see why this line of reasoning is a very slippery slope.
I dont see the slippery slope. You're way over reading into 'some'.
Some simply means, some people need to believe in something, and others dont. You cant thing this is an all or nothing position?
And the leap to conclusion with: "implication that they're too dumb to figure out a path for themselves". I've not said or implied that anywhere, nor do I see that is a obvious implication. Taking this step is creating offence where there was none.
And then concluding this could mean these people need to be brainwashed to believe the preferred format. That's a leap on a leap that had nothing to do with what I said, and pulling a worst case scenario into some semblance of the conclusion to focus on.
And not trying to have a go at you, but I do this you've over read on a work and made fallacious leaps in logic flow to a worse case. We can do that with any scenario. I cant see why it has any significant reason to be the focus point based on the previous comment, so I dont see why this is slippery slope as maybe it could happen but there is no direction from previous to align those events.
But that's me, and some people will agree, and some wont :)
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"
> In modern no-religion societies, where is the pull for good old family values? What we are seeing is better rights and fairness for individuals (same-sex marriage, etc) but is that good for society as a whole?
I understand where you are coming from, I struggle with my atheism/beliefs too.
But without doubt, this is good for society. Think about it, we had slavery because bible and other religions, approved of slavery. Then women had no rights because of religion, finally they do. These are good things. I believe homosexuality is next big step for humanity. Once this is accepted, no one would even think about questioning it.
As for old old family values, I am not really sure what it means, but if it means close family ties, then I have seen non-religious families who are very close and religious families who fight all the time. And vice versa.
Agreed - one of the other things to consider is that the vast bulk of i.e. abolitionist momentum in the US came predominantly from the church.
What slavery was doing, from an industrial and economic standpoint was wonderful for the owners, and very hard to quit - all of the objections to it were moral. I.e. "it's great apart from that pesky little detail where it's horrifically evil."
Quite a few antebellum churches desperately tried to plaster over this extreme cognitive dissonance between their teachings, and the practice of their society. You can find plenty of published material to that effect, but all of it has the same sort of flavor as Orwell's "some animals are more equal than others", wherein it has to somehow invalidate all of their core ideological principles, generally without a logically rigorous reason. ("All humans are equal" -> "well, what about them?" -> "oh well, uh, they're not really human" -> "because?" -> "reasons." )
You don't think holy books and holy leaders explicitly supporting those horrible positions had a negative effect? The Catholic Church still teaches their followers that gay sex is a ticket to hell.
In my mom's case it was religion that directly caused an incredibly toxic family life. God said have a massive amount of kids you have zero ability to care for, birth control is a sin and God will magically take care of the kids, so just keep pushing them out.
> because frankly I stopped believing in God the same time I stopped believing in Father Christmas (7?).
I had a very similar experience. My mother is a (now non-practicing) catholic and my father is more or less an agnostic. We stopped attending church about the time I was 10 because our parish had one of the pedophile priests. My "faith" died out after I learned that all of these supernatural things I was told existed actually didn't, why was the existence of god any different.
Personally, I'd say I ended up an agnostic. I don't go around telling people what I think they should believe and internally I don't really lean one way or the other. One of those "unknowable" things, along with whether there is an afterlife or not. I kind of hope there is something, I can't exactly fathom non-existence.
But as far as "family values" go, I've never felt my parents' moral teachings to be any less reasonable without an underlying fear of damnation to keep you on track. I'd like to think that I'm a good person and that being a good person is my own choice and not something I'm told to do "or else".
Maybe it was Stephen Fry who said it, but there is a quote along the lines of "I'm commiting as many murders, thefts, and rapes as I want - that number is 0" that kind of resonates with me.
This is an interesting point, I think its a valid argument that as America has fractured into vastly different competing social / political groups that the country as a whole has gotten weaker. Media now profits on widening those splits and people find themselves having less and less in common with each other. Religion very likely used to provide a common ground to people and as it fades so too does that ground. I don't think I have ever believed in God or religion but I can understand that it has provided some good. If I was an enemy with a very long timeline (say 100 years) I would work hard at continuing to widen these faults and differences.
It did occur to me that perhaps people who weren't brought up in a traditional (mother+father) Christian family might not know what "good old family values" means. Not meaning to make an assumption about you of course.
That's a term that everyone interprets their own way, without even realising that they have different values to the person standing next to them; different people's "family values" can conflict in significant and very incompatible ways.
So what are "good old family values"? If your young, unmarried daughter falls pregnant, should you cast her out or should you double-down on helping her? Both of those are good old family values.
Good old family values would discourage young, unmarried women from getting pregnant in the first place. That is absolutely not how society works today, so let's start there instead of your absurd example.
They would also encourage helping the weak, the down-and-out, etc.
There was a time in the US when a needy person could walk up to nearly any door (except perhaps those of a few known scoundrels) and expect to find a meal, a bed for the night, clothes if needed, breakfast, and (depending on circumstances) some work to do the next day for pay.
The first great awakening had a profound effect on society - sermons preached in the 1700s directly influenced the US founders, belief in God and moral accountability to him became a basic assumption of society.
"Family values" is a term that focuses on where Biblical teachings have the most impact (the family) but it fails to capture the worldview within which such values arise.
> There was a time in the US when a needy person could walk up to nearly any door (except perhaps those of a few known scoundrels) and expect to find a meal, a bed for the night, clothes if needed, breakfast, and (depending on circumstances) some work to do the next day for pay.
Do you have a source on this? Genuinely asking because I’ve never heard of this depiction of early America, but I’m also a layman and not at all educated on American history beyond 101 college. What if you were black or East Asian?
Well, to pick a more contentious example, how would you find a marriage partner for that young women?
In many parts of the world, the answer is that her parents would either simply pick her partner or heavily influence her options. In much of the U.S., that would be unthinkable! How do we reconcile those different family values?
Unless you can demonstrate how to separate what you classify as "absurd extremes" from your cultural context, I think it's fair to use any examples of stable, religiously upheld, prosperous cultures to criticize traditionalism for the sake of traditionalism.
Is there a causative study that evidences that religiosity prevents unwanted teenage pregnancies? My understanding is that, even as religiosity is decreasing, so are teenage pregnancies today!
It wasn't how it worked then, either, at least for any value of 'then' in England for the past thousand years or so. Yes, premarital pregnancy was strongly discouraged. But it still happened a lot. And both of GP's family responses were absolutely common at different times, and both came from a deeply family-centred place. So I don't see it as absurd at all. Religion has always been for the sinners as much as the saints.
That is how many societies do work today, including societies inside the United States.
Absurd example? It happens every day. Every day parents cut their children off for falling pregnant in some way that's unapproved, and every day parents support their pregnant-without-permission child.
In modern no-religion societies, where is the pull for good old family values?
Hopefully we figure out how to build more stable unions by rebuilding a supportive framework (which church used to help with). Rather than forbidding divorce- provide tools, education, safety nets, etc, that parents may be more successful nurturing their relationship with each other. I have come to believe community is really valuable for the health of families, despite the nuclear ideal.
As someone who is semi-atheist, I have started to think that the invention of God was mostly to discipline children and to give them hope. Eventually, those children grew up and told same stories to their kids and until one day those stories became religion. Then came prophets who decided to prey upon these people and sold organized religion.
I say this because I got a toddler and sometimes it is easier to make up stories instead of telling truth, like when someone dies they go to heaven. Or if you clean up your room, then maybe elves will come at night and leave a present. It is almost like I can see a religion forming in front of my eyes. Sometimes I am using traditional religious stories like for life and death questions. And at other times, I am using fairytale creatures. This whole thing has made me more atheist while at the same time let me appreciate what religion does.
Which leads me to Santa Claus. I think Santa Claus is a great way to give subtle hint for thinking minds to realize that childhood stories are not real.
But can people still feel good without believing in religion? Do we have atheist societies? What do atheists tell their young kids?
> We know from numerous studies that 2 parent families (mother and father) give the best outcomes for children (education, jobs, etc). In modern no-religion societies, where is the pull for good old family values?
That’s ironic given that the Church of England was solely setup so that the King could divorce his wife)!
> I do wonder if the lack of religion in society is leading us to a bad place
With respect, this is a popular right-wing talking point that has been repeated since the 1970s whenever the US is on the precipice of making real progress in terms of equity and rights.
I'm surprised to see this claim here, as I would have thought the previous four years of the Trump admin, and the disastrous influence of evangelicals on policy making and governance, would have prevented anyone from even bringing it up again.
More recent research indicates that when a society is under immense social pressure and internal conflict, and fails to provide for its citizens, religious adherence tends to increase. However, in peaceful societies where the citizens have access to a wide range of services, religious participation drops considerably.
There's a lot more to this than I'm summarizing, but the data is clear: nonreligious societies are wealthier, happier, and more peaceful.
In the US, the most red, religious states have some of the highest poverty in the developed world. This isn't a coincidence. Religion tends to diminish when good governance provides for its people.
And most tellingly, what did we see happening in the US during the last four years of the previous Trump admin? The rise of Christian nationalism, often aggressive and violent in nature, and the loss of basic governance and services for most Americans.
Source: Ed Diener, Louis Tay, David G. Myers. The religion paradox: If religion makes people happy, why are so many dropping out? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011
https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0024402
Yes you make some good points - although very US-focused so can't comment too much on that as I've only lived in the UK.
The whole Christian = right-wing is news to me - again coming from the UK it's not seen like that at all.
> The rise of Christian nationalism, often aggressive and violent in nature, and the loss of basic governance and services for most Americans.
Again - news to me. Do you have examples here?
I should add that I'm not religious at all, and don't think a Iran-style religious state is a good thing for anyone. My main point was that we have lost something without religion, and the woke-ideology has replaced some of that in a very bad way.
many of the largely atheist countries seem to be doing ok. But atheism isn't really anything other than a lack of belief in the claim there is a god. So what becomes more important is what you choose to make judgements, and many of the more atheist countries tend to have more secular humanist values. It's much more worthwhile talking about positive belief systems like secular humanism rather than lack of belief.
Also I'd be careful with any kind of statistics that measure people who conform more closely with Christian values in societies who are largely Christian or structured around christian ideals. Being outsiders in any society is often problematic because of how the society ends up treating/valuing you.
Now I'm in my 40's I do wonder if the lack of religion in society is leading us to a bad place. We know from numerous studies that 2 parent families (mother and father) give the best outcomes for children (education, jobs, etc). In modern no-religion societies, where is the pull for good old family values? What we are seeing is better rights and fairness for individuals (same-sex marriage, etc) but is that good for society as a whole?