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With the firm toehold the church has on society throughout a lot of western culture... I'm afraid it is going to be a couple more centuries before things really change.
First I don't think enough people are intellectually curious enough in any generation to move away from the status quo...
And secondly, we have seen Christians sites provide internet apologist content to counter information attempting to discredit Christianity.
You have to go by the statistics. Look at Christianity's decline in the last 50 years:
"About 64% of Americans call themselves Christian today. That might sound like a lot, but 50 years ago that number was 90%, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study. That same survey said the Christian majority in the US may disappear by 2070." Apr 9, 2023
So if Christianity declined from 90% in 1970 to 64% in 2020 and projections say it will be somewhere between 35% and 46% by 2070 then I stand corrected and admit that Christianity will not have disappeared by 2100. But if we can extrapolate from those numbers that Christianity might be somewhere at 20% by 2100 then it's just a short time after that that Christianity zero's out. Bear in mind I am only talking about the US, not the world.
What does this have to do with the Bible being a screenplay? A lot. It is precisely because the Bible is filled with so much supernatural mumbo-jumbo dating from 3000 years ago that young people are falling away from the Bible, being well trained in science, critical thinking and other IQ-enhancing disciplines. Such primitive beliefs have no place in the modern world.
Remember that education is the mortal enemy of Christianity. It stands to reason that the clergy in the dark and middle ages would have hated secular education because education causes a person to think critically--it's a natural outgrowth of getting educated. This causes a church member to question what they are being taught by the Church. Remember that the Church wanted their congregation to stay dumb and just accept whatever they told them without question.
When the church did promote education it was in the line of teaching the Catechism and church beliefs. I remember being educated in the Catholic system for grades 1-8 and a great deal of that was church history and the catechism. When more and more people question whether a donkey really did talk to Balaam or Lot's wife really turned into a pillar of salt or whether Samson really did kill a thousand men with the skull of a donkey or whether a man really did rise from the dead and fly into heaven then it's bound to happen that more and more are going to say, "This is a lot of malarkey" and just move past it.
The big issue here is whether belief in something supernatural which cannot be proved with any discernible evidence is wise, even healthy. I'll have more to say on your post tomorrow.
Einstein had quite a bit to say on that. He was a very unique person with A unique outlook
There is not enough artifacts found that can prove it.
The scholars are divided on these issues because..there's just not enough proof.
And I think that's how we should take it as well and then come to our own conclusions.
Of course, as more artifacts are found, more truth comes out.
Until Nag Hammadi scrolls were found the scholars could not verify what Irenaeus wrote in "Against Heresies" because no documents survived. Nag Hammadi scrolls proved his writing accurate.
True faith is a belief in something greater than us....not a Book written by men. Take the messages within the book for what they mean to you.
I tend to upset people because the Bible is just a book of stories with messages. To question the stories in the book has nothing to do with my faith in something greater. The story could change (and has for me due to researching on the internet) but that doesn't change my belief.
Even the older religions had simple messages..
my paraphrasing of what I've read:
The Zoroastrians....kind thoughts, kind words, kind deeds. (the 3 wise men that found Jesus on Christmas...one little mention..insignificant to most...but a breadcrumb to others)
From the Gospels (Matthew/Mark since they were the only 2 passed around by the early Christians before 100AD)
Jesus' sermon on the mount: Be nice, share, don't bend the knee
There will be no meaningful artifacts found. If they are out there they would have been found by now. Nothing uncovered thus far offers any evidence that there is a supernatural entity called God operating out there that is driving the direction of world events. Man is the captain of his own ship called the earth and he's driving this ship onto the rocks because of his selfishness and stupidity. We all read the scriptures and come to our own conclusions about what they mean. That's why there are as many opinions about what the Bible says as there are Christians and no two agrees completely. There's nothing divine about any of this, just a demonstration that we are all individual in our beliefs about what life is all about and nothing higher than our reasoning comes into play here.
So read the scriptures and take whatever you want from it. You'll read a scripture and come up with one interpretation, I'll read the same scripture and come up with an entirely different one and BaptistFundie will come up with yet a third.
Regardless of whether Christianity is trying to sell something which it is not, I think there is a lot of moral advice in the Bible which is would be good for people to read. If it was not 'marketed' as a religious text, I still think it would be worth reading or studying for the 'how-to-live-your-life' aspect of it all.
These days there are many people who could do with a manual on how to act towards others as it seems we have lost the community spirit by living in cities and in tower blocks. Too many people just keep to themselves and dont even know their neighbour when they live in urban environments. There will come a time when we need each other.
Are you serious? The God of the Bible ordered Saul to kill "man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" in 1 Samuel 15.2-3. The Bible contains hundreds of other cruel acts of God. How are these good and moral messages?
Are you serious? The God of the Bible ordered Saul to kill "man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" in 1 Samuel 15.2-3. The Bible contains hundreds of other cruel acts of God. How are these good and moral messages?
Are you suggesting that with due cause murder is okay?
Are you suggesting that god -- who I presume you believe is all-powerful -- could not have brought the matter to a satisfactory outcome without murder?
Are you suggesting that it is a right thing to do to lead someone into murdering?
But if we can extrapolate from those numbers that Christianity might be somewhere at 20% by 2100 then it's just a short time after that that Christianity zero's out. Bear in mind I am only talking about the US, not the world.
The assumption here is that the process is (1) relentlessly linear and (2) the decline doesn't have multiple explanatory factors (such as it's 100% caused by people deciding it's fiction / nonsense / untrue).
It's quite a bit more complex than that from what I can see. I think that religion generally will always appeal to some people so even if it becomes widely unpopular I doubt it will entirely disappear.
Conditions can change too. If civil society largely collapses and particularly if some of the accumulated human knowledge is lost and/or discounted in the process, the world could again become ripe for theism again.
Any times there's real or perceived hardship or loss of hope, it gives an opening for theists to blame lack of piety or "sin" for the problems and sell various religions as the antidote.
The assumption here is that the process is (1) relentlessly linear and (2) the decline doesn't have multiple explanatory factors (such as it's 100% caused by people deciding it's fiction / nonsense / untrue).
It's quite a bit more complex than that from what I can see. I think that religion generally will always appeal to some people so even if it becomes widely unpopular I doubt it will entirely disappear.
Conditions can change too. If civil society largely collapses and particularly if some of the accumulated human knowledge is lost and/or discounted in the process, the world could again become ripe for theism again.
Any times there's real or perceived hardship or loss of hope, it gives an opening for theists to blame lack of piety or "sin" for the problems and sell various religions as the antidote.
Thank you for bring that up, mordant because you reminded me of something I meant to point out and forgot to.
If anything Christianity's demise will speed up because of the exponential factor. Christianity didn't fall 26% between 1970 and 2020 because 26% of Americans read that Jesus divine son of God was a myth. It fell because 1 person told 2 that there is no evidence for Jesus Christ and 2 told 4 and 4 told 8 and 8 told 16 and 16 told 32 and on and on. By now you have hypothetically 10,000 telling 20,000 and 20,000 telling 40,000 etc. The Internet is helping this because a good percentage of those people are going to the Internet and researching the fact that there is zero evidence for Jesus Christ like I and others here did and are doing. They are then going out and telling their friends by the tens of thousands that Jesus Christ is a fraud perpetrated by the Church just like I am doing. I read this frequently on other religion boards and of course there are innumerable articles and books trumpeting this fact. And the process repeats itself over and over. I would expect the percentage to get larger and larger and the exponential factor continues to grow such that by 2100 I would expect that 20% to peter down to 5% by 2120-2030.There will always be a small core of adherents just there is with any religion that goes extinct. Believe it or not there are a small number of Zoroastrians in existence today.
"Recent estimates place the world's current Zoroastrian population at upwards of 110,000–120,000 people"
Thank you for bring that up, mordant because you reminded me of something I meant to point out and forgot to.
If anything Christianity's demise will speed up because of the exponential factor. Christianity didn't fall 26% between 1970 and 2020 because 26% of Americans read that Jesus divine son of God was a myth. It fell because 1 person told 2 that there is no evidence for Jesus Christ and 2 told 4 and 4 told 8 and 8 told 16 and 16 told 32 and on and on. By now you have hypothetically 10,000 telling 20,000 and 20,000 telling 40,000 etc. The Internet is helping this because a good percentage of those people are going to the Internet and researching the fact that there is zero evidence for Jesus Christ like I and others here did and are doing. They are then going out and telling their friends by the tens of thousands that Jesus Christ is a fraud perpetrated by the Church just like I am doing. I read this frequently on other religion boards and of course there are innumerable articles and books trumpeting this fact. And the process repeats itself over and over. I would expect the percentage to get larger and larger and the exponential factor continues to grow such that by 2100 I would expect that 20% to peter down to 5% by 2120-2030.There will always be a small core of adherents just there is with any religion that goes extinct. Believe it or not there are a small number of Zoroastrians in existence today.
"Recent estimates place the world's current Zoroastrian population at upwards of 110,000–120,000 people"
Your extreme (FUNDAMENTALIST) rejection is just as foolish as your extreme (FUNDAMENTALIST) acceptance was, Thrill. You will NOT be pleased with the result of your campaign against Christ, IMO.
Your extreme (FUNDAMENTALIST) rejection is just as foolish as your extreme (FUNDAMENTALIST) acceptance was, Thrill. You will NOT be pleased with the result of your campaign against Christ, IMO.
Why, what will happen? If Jesus was going to do anything to me he'd have done it already, don't you think? Jesus isn't going to do squat to me, Mystic. He'll just sit on his throne in heaven, belch, pass hot air and scratch himself.
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