People are Leaving their Churches in Droves Today

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Gee, time to lose friends. :D

Realization that there is no God. No Heaven. No Hell. No supernatural. There is just this fleeting moment. Christianity is full of contradictions. "Free will" is the excuse for everything, as though a good just God would allow terrible things to happen. Babies with cancer, war, natural disasters. We're simply part of a cycle. Too many people talk about Christian beliefs, but practice something else.

VaughanJB, that’s a good question. Is there a God, and if so why does He allow bad things to happen? Our Founding Fathers did believe in one God, a creator of the universe. It was evident in science and nature to prove that to them. However, they also believed that this God was not a God who got involved in anything He created. He left it all up to nature and humanity to evolve into what it is today. Good or bad.
 

VaughanJB, that’s a good question. Is there a God, and if so why does He allow bad things to happen? Our Founding Fathers did believe in one God, a creator of the universe. It was evident in science and nature to prove that to them. However, they also believed that this God was not a God who got involved in anything He created. He left it all up to nature and humanity to evolve into what it is today. Good or bad.
That's an alluring view of God! It would solve all of my doubts! However ... how do I reconcile this with a personal, unexpected encounter with the unseen?
 
Many churches are trying to appeal to young people by having and entertainment-focused service rather than a preachy one. That may make it unappealing to the older parishoners. I went to one that didn't have a pulpit or lectern - it was a stage and they left instruments set up on it. The service was mostly singing which they put the words to on monitors and the songs seemed to go on forever. I thought they were ending one and then they just stared over. One woman got up and laid face-down in the church aisle. That was enough for me.

Don't get me going on the place were they spoke in tongues (which wasn't true tongues).

Yes, Debodun, it’s the new revival in churches to get more attendees, especially the younger generation. I just wonder how long that enthusiasm will work for them when they move away, and there is no rock concert around to motivate them?
 

That's an alluring view of God! It would solve all of my doubts! However ... how do I reconcile this with a personal, unexpected encounter with the unseen?

There are a lot of unanswered questions in life. Sometimes it’s a coincidence, or a freak accident. Who knows? The real question is did God give us reason, or did He give us religion?
 
VaughanJB, that’s a good question. Is there a God, and if so why does He allow bad things to happen? Our Founding Fathers did believe in one God, a creator of the universe. It was evident in science and nature to prove that to them. However, they also believed that this God was not a God who got involved in anything He created. He left it all up to nature and humanity to evolve into what it is today. Good or bad.
I like and respect your interpretation of God but that’s about as involved as I’m willing to go
 
There are a lot of unanswered questions in life. Sometimes it’s a coincidence, or a freak accident. Who knows? The real question is did God give us reason, or did He give us religion?
He gave us reason and emotions! Sometimes they are in conflict! Religion I am not keen on, too many people worldwide are claiming to be on the one true path to paradise! And kill each other over it!
 
I live in one of the highest areas in America of non-churchgoers.

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Thought so. Looks like I live in the Mecca of godlessness. But I’m no true believer in nothing. I just don’t think it makes sense to think of what is greater as anything like one of us. And whatever the truth of that may be, I don’t think it is the most important thing to fret over. I think God belief exists as a way to remember it is possible to put one foot in front of the other without having certain knowledge about how we do it or where we’re going. Go back far enough in your family tree and you will find creatures who had no way to represent to themselves theories of ultimate reality. But they kept putting one foot in front of the other and here we are. Did the cosmos, life and consciousness know how to become the way it has. I don’t think so. If there anything that can be called God is that capacity inside us all to recognize truth without logical argumentation. So faith is about trusting in that more ancient knowing which isn’t verbal or provable. Not to say you got to go without thinking rationally. All that matters is that you be able recognize when doing so won’t get you anywhere. At those times can you go on putting one foot in front of the other in faith that what has gotten us this far is still there in us all and wiser than we are in some matters?

I was never taught to believe in any particular notion of God and haven’t believed at all for most my life. Now I’m unlearning what I was believing on a default basis in favor of a more robust agnosticism.
 
He gave us reason and emotions! Sometimes they are in conflict! Religion I am not keen on, too many people worldwide are claiming to be on the one true path to paradise! And kill each other over it!

So true. He also gave us six senses. Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, Touch, and the six sense of intuition, curiosity, reasoning, understanding, believing, loving, caring, compassion, etc. We are blessed.
 
I've moved around a lot in my life, so I've gone to many different churches. One of the first things I do after moving is start looking for a new church. I know I'm not a good fit for a strict fundamentalist church, and I'd rather not go to one with too much contemporary music, that's just not to my taste. I usually end up choosing a church with a more traditional, liturgical service. I've been Episcopalian, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist.

I have left churches and switched to other ones because I didn't like the pastor's sermons. These days some of them slide into politics which should never happen and some seem to have an ax to grind and preach the same subjects over and over.

I've never left because of the people. Some are nicer than others, but that really doesn't matter to me too much, I'm not there to cast judgement on them. I certainly don't follow them home to see if they're being perfect all week. I know I'm not.

What I like is the feeling that, for an hour each week, I'm sitting with others who are seekers. We're people looking for a way to understand life, looking for lessons in how to improve, and help in overcoming our faults. We may all fail over and over, but we share a belief that if we try we can become better.

Most of all we're gathered together to worship a higher power, whether we're picturing our idea of Jesus or an unimaginable spirit, most of us believe that there is a God and that God is love. So I like being with them.
 
Thought so. Looks like I live in the Mecca of godlessness. But I’m no true believer in nothing. I just don’t think it makes sense to think of what is greater as anything like one of us. And whatever the truth of that may be, I don’t think it is the most important thing to fret over. I think God belief exists as a way to remember it is possible to put one foot in front of the other without having certain knowledge about how we do it or where we’re going. Go back far enough in your family tree and you will find creatures who had no way to represent to themselves theories of ultimate reality. But they kept putting one foot in front of the other and here we are. Did the cosmos, life and consciousness know how to become the way it has. I don’t think so. If there anything that can be called God is that capacity inside us all to recognize truth without logical argumentation. So faith is about trusting in that more ancient knowing which isn’t verbal or provable. Not to say you got to go without thinking rationally. All that matters is that you be able recognize when doing so won’t get you anywhere. At those times can you go on putting one foot in front of the other in faith that what has gotten us this far is still there in us all and wiser than we are in some matters?

I was never taught to believe in any particular notion of God and haven’t believed at all for most my life. Now I’m unlearning what I was believing on a default basis in favor of a more robust agnosticism.

Many non-believers go that way, Mark D. Theism, Deism, Agnosticism. Each as it’s points of beliefs built into it. I’m a Deist, as were our Founding Fathers. They believed in a Higher Power, Creator, who never intervenes. In Thomas Paine’s book, “ The Age of Reason”, he breaks it all down how he got to that point of believing that the New Testament stories about three Gods in One just don’t make sense or sound reasonable. But one God does.
 
As someone seeking eternal life through Jesus Christ, I still go to mass most Sundays. Death is the ultimate sadness. As a strongly science oriented person, I won't abandon the Christian church nor its people because I don't agree with various dogma. Nor because there are others there I don't agree with or like. I never discuss my unique views on the Bible or God with others at my current local church. It is easy to just attend churches without becoming involved with others or discussing scripture or ceremony. Most people stop attending church because they find it repetitive and boring so what's the point? Others read scripture that seems utterly impossible so increasingly view such as unscientific nonsense created by humans.

Many non-religious here would blurt out they are not afraid of dying forever non-existing. So as seniors are content to have lived the long life they did. A way to cope with what they otherwise understand as inevitable for mortal organic life that otherwise would require a supernatural God to change that. I do not believe in a supernatural God because that requires magic aka actions without forces that is logically impossible.

Instead, it is inevitable within a galaxy with billions of stars within a universe with billions of galaxies within possibly infinite universes, where intelligent creatures like we develop on planets, that eventual development of Artificial Intelligence is a certainty. It just took we humans but a moment to do so within geological time. Within the vastness of the universe, though rare, such must have already happened. Once non-organic AI level intelligence develops on a world, if not physically destroyed, it has a strong chance of eventually becoming immortal I term UIE. Once immortal over millions to billions of years, it would reach limits of what is scientifically possible and knowable within the physical universe we find ourselves in.

Because what we actually are as intelligent entities are the electromagnetic brainwave fields within our creature brain nervous systems, it is arguably possible that an ancient race of UIEs has already developed ways to capture that field and put such into non-organic containers that duplicates the impedance characteristics of nervous tissue. Each moment trillions of neutrinos pass though every centimeter of our bodies that shows matter XYZ scanned might totally describe what is inside brains. UIE's would have immense motivation to try and do so. That is the eternal life I seek, thus not expecting one anthropocentric religious narratives describe with our creature bodies. I see Jesus Christ as the last attempt by a race of UIEs to help us. Otherwise we monkeys will probably destroy our fragile blue water planet and all its advanced life just like has probably already happened on other worlds with life. I won't abandon Jesus.

First step to getting over that is to reject the belief in Bible inerrancy. The Bible is a mix of historically passed down oral traditions, some somewhat true, others somewhat false, others created for the sake of control by ruling masters over human populations.
 
Many humans are born into a religion. Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so many other religions. Each of these religions were created out of a revelation that a man had and passed it along to his tribesmen, community, or countrymen. The question is always did he have proof of the revelation at that time? Any witnesses? For example, did anyone witness Jesus rising from the dead after laying in a tomb for three days? As far as I know, there wasn’t anyone. No one was around. So, Christians are indoctrinated to have faith and believe that it happened. Again, that word indoctrination. The history of religion and Christianity depend on indoctrination. Our whole belief system depends on it. Without it, there would be no religion.
 
As someone seeking eternal life through Jesus Christ, I still go to mass most Sundays. Death is the ultimate sadness. As a strongly science oriented person, I won't abandon the Christian church nor its people because I don't agree with various dogma. Nor because there are others there I don't agree with or like. I never discuss my unique views on the Bible or God with others at my current local church. It is easy to just attend churches without becoming involved with others or discussing scripture or ceremony. Most people stop attending church because they find it repetitive and boring so what's the point? Others read scripture that seems utterly impossible so increasingly view such as unscientific nonsense created by humans.

Many non-religious here would blurt out they are not afraid of dying forever non-existing. So as seniors are content to have lived the long life they did. A way to cope with what they otherwise understand as inevitable for mortal organic life that otherwise would require a supernatural God to change that. I do not believe in a supernatural God because that requires magic aka actions without forces that is logically impossible.

Instead, it is inevitable within a galaxy with billions of stars within a universe with billions of galaxies within possibly infinite universes, where intelligent creatures like we develop on planets, that eventual development of Artificial Intelligence is a certainty. It just took we humans but a moment to do so within geological time. Within the vastness of the universe, though rare, such must have already happened. Once non-organic AI level intelligence develops on a world, if not physically destroyed, it has a strong chance of eventually becoming immortal I term UIE. Once immortal over millions to billions of years, it would reach limits of what is scientifically possible and knowable within the physical universe we find ourselves in.

Because what we actually are as intelligent entities are the electromagnetic brainwave fields within our creature brain nervous systems, it is arguably possible that an ancient race of UIEs has already developed ways to capture that field and put such into non-organic containers that duplicates the impedance characteristics of nervous tissue. Each moment trillions of neutrinos pass though every centimeter of our bodies that shows matter XYZ scanned might totally describe what is inside brains. UIE's would have immense motivation to try and do so. That is the eternal life I seek, thus not expecting one anthropocentric religious narratives describe with our creature bodies. I see Jesus Christ as the last attempt by a race of UIEs to help us. Otherwise we monkeys will probably destroy our fragile blue water planet and all its advanced life just like has probably already happened on other worlds with life. I won't abandon Jesus.

First step to getting over that is to reject the belief in Bible inerrancy. The Bible is a mix of historically passed down oral traditions, some somewhat true, others somewhat false, others created for the sake of control by ruling masters over human populations.

Well said, David777, and very interesting concept of the future. If Jesus did return and saved us, I wonder how he would do that? Would he re-program the UIE?
 
as I said the original church was an outside gathering or a house church then too many started turning up so they built summat bigger and bigger and bigger until it became a cathedral - we used to fill em up once and then not - just special occasions like coronations etc - there is a difference though between a belief and a building - one can last forever the other fall down?
 
I’m writing a book about the new phenomenon of people leaving their churches in droves these days. Similar to the Age of Enlightenment in the late sixteen hundreds and early seventeen hundreds when our Founding Fathers were writing up the Constitution. Thomas Paine’s book “Common Sense” helped our great leaders form new ideas about freedom - free speech, and freedom of religion. Did you know our first four Presidents were non-believers? Thomas Paine’s book “The Age of Reason” inspired them.
My question to you is, if you left your church, what was your reason for doing so? A bad experience? Not enough time? No longer a believer, or just tired of it? No judgement or preaching here. I left because of Thomas Paine’s book, “The Age of Reason”. I still believe in God, our Creator, and give Him thanks every day for all He has given to me. How about you?
I believe in God. I have tried to find Him in places of worship of all denominations but the place I find Him most is in solitude prayer.
 
I’m intrigued.
Buddhism I find interesting also.
Buddhism doesn’t compete or compare itself to any other religion.
i did become a buddhist for a while back then - but got bored cos I didn't have anyone to talk to on a higher level - even the monks seemed evasive?
 

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