Religion

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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Juggernaut Nihilism
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Re: Religion

Post by Juggernaut Nihilism »

All religions preach an ethic that supports a particular social order. There is a reciprocal effect in which revealed religion works on the moral considerations of the population, and in return the moral evolution of the population brings about a reconsideration of the morality of the revealed religion. Religions that are too inflexible and cannot respond effectively to the moral evolution of the people will simply be left behind. There is nothing perverse about this process: a religion belongs to a particular people, just as those people belong to the religion.
"The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance."
Jnalum Persicum

Re: Religion

Post by Jnalum Persicum »

Juggernaut Nihilism wrote:.

All religions preach an ethic that supports a particular social order. There is a reciprocal effect in which revealed religion works on the moral considerations of the population, and in return the moral evolution of the population brings about a reconsideration of the morality of the revealed religion. Religions that are too inflexible and cannot respond effectively to the moral evolution of the people will simply be left behind. There is nothing perverse about this process: a religion belongs to a particular people, just as those people belong to the religion.

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Interesting

Basically you saying religion evolves with community standard

Very dangerous and very wrong

Leaving aside G_D, how can Slavery considered good by Jews and Christians when well before Christianity CYRUS the Persian explicitly said Slavery is evil and in his empire there will be no slavery ? ? ? Cyrus should be the G_D

No, JN, Religion must represent "absolute and timeless Moral Laws" .. otherwise it does not
deserve to be called a religion


Cyrus being the G_D is what is called Persian Paganism (Germanic paganism)


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Parodite
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Re: Religion

Post by Parodite »

z1TZYtssa00
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Ibrahim
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Re: Religion

Post by Ibrahim »

I think that settles that.
HAL9000

Re: Religion

Post by HAL9000 »

Jnalum Persicum wrote:
Leaving aside G_D, how can Slavery considered good by Jews and Christians when well before Christianity CYRUS the Persian explicitly said Slavery is evil and in his empire there will be no slavery ? ? ? Cyrus should be the G_D


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Cyrus was truly a great person. Pomegranates were not into slavery as a culture.

But why on Earth did the Arabs indulge in slave trade so heavily? The Christians bought the African Black slaves from Arabs in some cases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

I have read that Some Jewish criminals also sold slaves to Europeans and Americans for financial gain, but this was extremely rare (rarity being a relative concept, always compared to others):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_and_the_slave_trade
Like their Christian and Muslim neighbors, Jews owned slaves and participated in the slave trade. In the middle ages, Jews were minimally involved in slave trade.[1] During the 1490s, trade with the New World began to open up. At the same time, the monarchies of Spain and Portugal expelled all of their Jewish subjects. As a result, Jews began participating in all sorts of trade on the Atlantic, including the slave trade.
In 1991, the Nation of Islam published the book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews which alleged that Jews dominated the North Atlantic slave trade. Several scholarly works were subsequently published refuting that thesis.[2] These scholars demonstrated that Jews did not dominate the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas,[3][4] and that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery.[3][4][5][6] They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean, and in no period did they play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades.[7]
Slavery historian Jason H. Silverman described the part of Jews in slave trading in the southern United states as "minuscule", and wrote that the historical rise and fall of slavery in the United States would not have been affected at all had there been no Jews living in the south.[8] Jews accounted for 1.25% of all Southern slave owners, and were not significantly different from other slave owners in their treatment of slaves.[8]
But for Arabs who were supposed to be religious, and since Islam is supposed to be a socialist religion against financial usury and injustice, how did the Muslim scholars allow this violation of the religious law? Christianity was dominated by feudal and aristocratic elites in Europe, who were in collusion with the clergy, and so they could do anything they wanted, and similar collusion also worked as far as slave oriented businesses were concerned in the Southern states in America, but my question is this: how did business interests gain control of the Muslim clerics to get away with slave trade?
Jnalum Persicum

Re: Religion

Post by Jnalum Persicum »

HAL9000 wrote:.
Jnalum Persicum wrote:.

Leaving aside G_D, how can Slavery considered good by Jews and Christians when well before Christianity CYRUS the Persian explicitly said Slavery is evil and in his empire there will be no slavery ? ? ? Cyrus should be the G_D


.
Cyrus was truly a great person. Pomegranates were not into slavery as a culture.

But why on Earth did the Arabs indulge in slave trade so heavily? The Christians bought the African Black slaves from Arabs in some cases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

I have read that Some Jewish criminals also sold slaves to Europeans and Americans for financial gain, but this was extremely rare (rarity being a relative concept, always compared to others):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_and_the_slave_trade
Like their Christian and Muslim neighbors, Jews owned slaves and participated in the slave trade. In the middle ages, Jews were minimally involved in slave trade.[1] During the 1490s, trade with the New World began to open up. At the same time, the monarchies of Spain and Portugal expelled all of their Jewish subjects. As a result, Jews began participating in all sorts of trade on the Atlantic, including the slave trade.
In 1991, the Nation of Islam published the book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews which alleged that Jews dominated the North Atlantic slave trade. Several scholarly works were subsequently published refuting that thesis.[2] These scholars demonstrated that Jews did not dominate the slave trade in Medieval Europe, Africa, and/or the Americas,[3][4] and that Jews had no major or continuing impact on the history of New World slavery.[3][4][5][6] They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean, and in no period did they play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades.[7]
Slavery historian Jason H. Silverman described the part of Jews in slave trading in the southern United states as "minuscule", and wrote that the historical rise and fall of slavery in the United States would not have been affected at all had there been no Jews living in the south.[8] Jews accounted for 1.25% of all Southern slave owners, and were not significantly different from other slave owners in their treatment of slaves.[8]
But for Arabs who were supposed to be religious, and since Islam is supposed to be a socialist religion against financial usury and injustice, how did the Muslim scholars allow this violation of the religious law? Christianity was dominated by feudal and aristocratic elites in Europe, who were in collusion with the clergy, and so they could do anything they wanted, and similar collusion also worked as far as slave oriented businesses were concerned in the Southern states in America, but my question is this: how did business interests gain control of the Muslim clerics to get away with slave trade ?

.

Thank you HAL for confirming Pomegranates were not into slavery as a culture .. all Persian empire, including Persepolis, was built by paid day laborer .. and thanks re Cyrus

re Slavery in Islam :

Mecca, Kaaba, was home of all those TOTEMS that Arabian tribes from Yemen and and and came on yearly pilgrimage .. that was big business .. and (Hadj) still is big business

Moh introducing Islam ran the danger of destroying that big business .. there was big resistance from all powerful families that controlled (owned) those Totems, Ghoreysh etcetc

So, my senses is, Moh had to keep many traditional customs (slavery) and many traditional Totem worshiping ceremony intact and incorporate them into Islam .. the whole Hadj ceremony pre dates Islam and is just meant to keep business flowing (to keep the powerful families controlling that business happy - still same story today)

Moh must have been aware slavery was evil and G_D would not condone it .. but outlawing it would equal to destroying the Arab economy, a deal braker

Entire economies , Roman, Greek and and were based on free labor, slavery



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Parodite
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Re: Religion

Post by Parodite »

Jnalum Persicum wrote:Moh must have been aware slavery was evil and G_D would not condone it .. but outlawing it would equal to destroying the Arab economy, a deal braker
It's not so obvious what Moh exactly thought on specific issues. Maybe Ibs can jump in with sources. My guesstimate is that he can best be described as a poet and social reformer. I read that poetry as a folk art was a wide spread cultural activity. The most inspired and productive poets whose words came out effortlessly were considered to speak the words of the highest source, thusly "Allah spoke..". As the geniusses in music will say that their best compositions did not come via much effort but more like revealed pieces already "cooked in heaven" ready to be served.

He had is own little army to defend his community against raids of various bands; in the offensive he may not have a clean sheet but his personal role in armed conquest can be disputed, I don't know. The big conquests that formed Islamic empire were primarily the work of later warlords who considered the codified Quran a convenient totem/banner and use its content to mold the conquered minds into a new group identity easier to control and put to use for Empire. My bet would be that slavery was then a normal practice as in any Empire.
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Ibrahim
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Re: Religion

Post by Ibrahim »

Everything Rhapsody is saying is wrong.

HAL and Azari are wrong, ancient Pomegranates practiced slavery on a large scale, and technically under the Sassanid dynasty every subjects was a "slave" of the king/emperor.

Islamic laws on slavery are similar to anyone else's. Muslims could not take other Muslims as slaves, but then again you don't see plantation owners in South Carolina buying other white Protestants to pick cotton, so that's usually the rule of all societies.

Slavery in general is a universal fixture of human civilization until such time as technological advances were created which ended the economic incentive of slavery, starting in the United Kingdom where industrial machinery was first invented, and radiating outwards from there. Methods of economically-induced de facto serfdom persist to this day, among migrant construction workers in Saudi Arabia, or Mexican fruit pickers in Florida, etc.

This was a religion thread, the discussion of slavery isn't really instructive with regards to the original topic. Slavery was a function of all religions and secular philosophies for most of history, today it is part of none.
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Juggernaut Nihilism
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Re: Religion

Post by Juggernaut Nihilism »

Jnalum Persicum wrote: Interesting

Basically you saying religion evolves with community standard

Very dangerous and very wrong

Leaving aside G_D, how can Slavery considered good by Jews and Christians when well before Christianity CYRUS the Persian explicitly said Slavery is evil and in his empire there will be no slavery ? ? ? Cyrus should be the G_D

No, JN, Religion must represent "absolute and timeless Moral Laws" .. otherwise it does not
deserve to be called a religion.
Then nothing deserves to be called religion. All claims to being absolute and timeless aside, we all know that every religion evolves with its people over time. Or, there are those that don't, but we don't know what they are called because they were forgotten as no longer relevant or useful. Religious morality is both forward and backward looking, and both are useful. It challenges the morality of the day as insufficient and calls for men to rise to a higher level, but as time goes on it challenges innovation by providing a standard of tradition for comparison. And both functions are useful. Not all innovations are good, after all.

Why is it dangerous to believe the simple fact that a religion evolves with its people? Is it dangerous to admit this fact, or is it dangerous to say that perhaps this is OK and the way it should be?

That Cyrus spoke against slavery when later peoples permitted it is not an argument against moral evolution. There is not one mankind, but many. The Pomegranates were one. The Jews, Romans, and Greek Christians were others. Each evolves, taking or leaving influence from the others as they go. Maybe I should have used a term other than evolution, since I didn't mean to imply a progressive teleological change toward "Good". Just that morality changes to reflect the changing experience of a people, its needs, and its relationship to its environment. When those things change, morality changes, or else becomes an inquisition trying to stop something that can't be stopped. Although perhaps evolution is still the correct term, since morality is always becoming more considered and complex, being built on previous ideas and incorporating or rejecting them, if not necessarily "better".

A way of life arises as a way to secure the needs of life for a given people in a given environment. To the extent that the way of life is successful, and the necessities of social life begin to be taken for granted, the reasons for the "way we do things" are forgotten or reconsidered. The morality needed by a community wandering for decades through the Arabian desert is simply not the same as that needed by a community of 10 million all living in elevated concrete boxes in Manhattan. Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and Love thy neighbor as thyself remain, but the specific rules that those commandments inform will change because while God is timeless and free of space, religion is the specific possession of a specific people rooted in a specific time and place.
"The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance."
Ibrahim
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Re: Religion

Post by Ibrahim »

Juggernaut Nihilism wrote:There is not one mankind, but many.
Both science and religion agree that this statement is incorrect.
HAL9000

Re: Religion

Post by HAL9000 »

According to this book, Caesar's Messiah by Joseph Atwill, Jesus may have been invented by the Roman emperor in order to divide and subvert the Jewish revolt .
http://www.amazon.com/Caesars-Messiah-C ... 461096405/
Book Description
Publication Date: May 18, 2011
Was Jesus the invention of a Roman emperor? The author of this ground-breaking book believes he was. "Caesar’s Messiah" reveals the key to a new and revolutionary understanding of the origin of Christianity, explaining what is the New Testament, who is the real Jesus, and how Christ's second coming already occurred. The clues leading to these startling conclusions are found in the writings of the first-century historian Flavius Josephus, whose "Wars of the Jews" is one of the only historical chronicles of this period. Closely comparing the work of Josephus with the New Testament Gospels, "Caesar’s Messiah" demonstrates that the Romans directed the writing of both. Their purpose: to offer a vision of a “peaceful Messiah” who would serve as an alternative to the revolutionary leaders who were rocking first-century Israel and threatening Rome. Similarly, "Caesar’s Messiah" will rock our understanding of Christian history as it reveals that Jesus was a fictional character portrayed in four Gospels written not by Christians but Romans. This Flavian Signature edition adds Atwill’s latest discoveries of numerous parallel events in sequence which ultimately reveal the identity of the true authors of the Gospels.
And here is an interview with Joseph Atwill:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuqwmMpV2oo

In the end, it is very difficult to find clear proof that the Gospels were written by Romans, but it sounds plausible that most of everything has been distorted in all religions.

One remark Joseph Atwill makes is that in the Christian texts, Jesus is making many specific predictions about what the Romans were going to do in the future, various catastrophes, etc, and according to Atwill, years after the death of Jesus, many of these predictions came true, and this, according to the author, is an indication that the Romans may have invented Christianity as disinformation and psychological warfare.
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Re: Religion

Post by Ibrahim »

That would be Rome's only use of the "theological hoax" tactic, as opposed to the "kill, conquer and crucify" methodology they used every other time, including the final Jewish revolts against Roman rule.
HAL9000

Re: Religion

Post by HAL9000 »

Ibrahim wrote:That would be Rome's only use of the "theological hoax" tactic, as opposed to the "kill, conquer and crucify" methodology they used every other time, including the final Jewish revolts against Roman rule.

That's the whole thesis of the book, Atwill claims that because the Jews were so militaristic and so adamant about resisting Rome, that even killing most Jews there and even torture did not bring total victory, and as a last resort Romans tried this trick of inventing a domesticated and easy-going version of Judaism that would pay its taxes and turn the other cheek to the Romans. The book may still be incorrect, but in view of the fact that many of the predictions of Jesus (in Christianity) actually materialized after decades of his death, this might be an indication.
Ibrahim
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Re: Religion

Post by Ibrahim »

HAL9000 wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:That would be Rome's only use of the "theological hoax" tactic, as opposed to the "kill, conquer and crucify" methodology they used every other time, including the final Jewish revolts against Roman rule.

That's the whole thesis of the book, Atwill claims that because the Jews were so militaristic and so adamant about resisting Rome, that even killing most Jews there and even torture did not bring total victory, and as a last resort Romans tried this trick of inventing a domesticated and easy-going version of Judaism that would pay its taxes and turn the other cheek to the Romans. The book may still be incorrect, but in view of the fact that many of the predictions of Jesus (in Christianity) actually materialized after decades of his death, this might be an indication.
Except that isn't what ended the revolts. Systematic military invasion, sieges, destruction, and mass killing, culminating in the Jewish diaspora, is what ended the revolts.

Just seems like a stretch is all. If the Romans ever did try a trick like this, they would probably have waited until they needed to.
Jnalum Persicum

Re: Religion

Post by Jnalum Persicum »

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Tehran to host festival on Rumi

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When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth,

but find it in the hearts of men

Rumi

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Jnalum Persicum

Re: Religion

Post by Jnalum Persicum »

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Modernity, Secularity & Islam


Talal Asad - Oxford-educated noted anthropologist and author of the acclaimed "Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity" - discusses: (a) the impossibility of imposing Western modernity on Muslim societies on account of fundamental differences with their culture and history; (b) the need for Western secularism to accommodate religious - including, Islamic and Christian - expression; (c) the failure of the West to appreciate its "modernity" as a constantly evolving - and not, static - phenomenon; and (d) the irrational behavior of European societies in dealing with Muslim immigration. This interview was recorded in October 2008.
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Talal Asad (born 1933) is an anthropologist at the City University of New York.

Asad has made important theoretical contributions to post-colonialism, Christianity, Islam, and ritual studies and has recently called for, and initiated, an anthropology of secularism. Using a genealogical method developed by Friedrich Nietzsche and made prominent by Michel Foucault, Asad "complicates terms of comparison that many anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, and political scientists receive as the unexamined background of thinking, judgment, and action as such. By doing so, he creates clearings, opening new possibilities for communication, connection, and creative invention where opposition or studied indifference prevailed"
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Enki
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Re: Religion

Post by Enki »

http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynu ... berID=1608

A third of American adults under 30 report no religious affiliation.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
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Juggernaut Nihilism
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Re: Religion

Post by Juggernaut Nihilism »

Enki wrote:http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynu ... berID=1608

A third of American adults under 30 report no religious affiliation.
And yet they all worship something and display religious behaviors on a daily basis. The behavioral and psychological needs remain even after the content on offer has gone out of fashion.
"The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance."
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Re: Religion

Post by Marcus »

Juggernaut Nihilism wrote:
Enki wrote:http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynu ... berID=1608

A third of American adults under 30 report no religious affiliation.
And yet they all worship something and display religious behaviors on a daily basis. The behavioral and psychological needs remain even after the content on offer has gone out of fashion.
I don't think the content has changed all that much if at all. What has gone out of fashion is the packaging.
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon
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Enki
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Re: Religion

Post by Enki »

Marcus wrote:
Juggernaut Nihilism wrote:
Enki wrote:http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynu ... berID=1608

A third of American adults under 30 report no religious affiliation.
And yet they all worship something and display religious behaviors on a daily basis. The behavioral and psychological needs remain even after the content on offer has gone out of fashion.
I don't think the content has changed all that much if at all. What has gone out of fashion is the packaging.
Yeah...this. I agree with Marcus. It used to be that you would just say you were whatever religion you were brought up in and go about your day without giving it much thought. Now people don't feel the need to say that anymore.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
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Juggernaut Nihilism
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Re: Religion

Post by Juggernaut Nihilism »

Enki wrote:
Marcus wrote:
Juggernaut Nihilism wrote:
Enki wrote:http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynu ... berID=1608

A third of American adults under 30 report no religious affiliation.
And yet they all worship something and display religious behaviors on a daily basis. The behavioral and psychological needs remain even after the content on offer has gone out of fashion.
I don't think the content has changed all that much if at all. What has gone out of fashion is the packaging.
Yeah...this. I agree with Marcus. It used to be that you would just say you were whatever religion you were brought up in and go about your day without giving it much thought. Now people don't feel the need to say that anymore.
I don't think this is right at all. People feel the need very acutely, and are neurotic wrecks because they are unable to. People are rootless, and to some - you maybe - this lack of a shared tradition and community identity is experienced as liberation, but to the great majority of people it will always be felt as a loss. It is only really in the post-war period that we have convinced ourselves that adopting a faith (or anything) because this is the faith of "my people" is some sort of prison sentence, an absolute evil indicative of deviant tribalism and possibly even mental illness. And the post-war period hasn't been our finest showing, in many ways.
"The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance."
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Juggernaut Nihilism
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Re: Religion

Post by Juggernaut Nihilism »

People tend to mistake their not needing the protective world-dome and psychological immune reactions as their parents for being above needing these things at all. That's how every generation manages to convince itself that it has found enlightenment and freed itself from prejudice and superstition, despite the extreme improbability that this has occurred for the first time in human history at precisely the point that they have come of age.
"The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance."
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Re: Religion

Post by Marcus »

Juggernaut Nihilism wrote:. . People are rootless, and . . this lack of a shared tradition and community identity is experienced as liberation, but to the great majority of people it will always be felt as a loss. . . we have convinced ourselves that adopting a faith (or anything) because this is the faith of "my people" is some sort of prison sentence, an absolute evil indicative of deviant tribalism and possibly even mental illness. . .
Likely true for some, but not for most.

We all still need community, and faith, but the packaging has become outmoded. We are having those needs met albeit in other contexts.

I no longer need another Calvinist in order to experience Christian community. Heck, a Roman Catholic or a Methodist will suffice (provided we share Christian, as opposed to denominational, tradition).

The times they are a'changin' . . .
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon
******************
"I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels."
—John Calvin
Ibrahim
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Re: Religion

Post by Ibrahim »

Juggernaut Nihilism wrote:
Enki wrote:http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynu ... berID=1608

A third of American adults under 30 report no religious affiliation.
And yet they all worship something and display religious behaviors on a daily basis. The behavioral and psychological needs remain even after the content on offer has gone out of fashion.
So what are they worshiping? Apple?

I'm not necessarily opposed to "Like, everything is a religion, maaaaan. *takes huge bong hit*" but the point that more and more people are abandoning traditional religious identification is worth pointing out in its own right.

Others have made the point that most Evangelicals in America are only superficially religious, and only adopt religious tropes as social and economic indicators rather than symbols of genuine conviction. But even so the fact that they identify as a group has its own significance.
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Re: Religion

Post by Azrael »

Typhoon wrote:US bear market in [institutional] religion?

Image
Update here

FRED is an incredible data source, up there with the BLS and the Census Bureau
cultivate a white rose
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