Religious affiliation in the USA has declined and that is beneficial to societies because people focus on now instead of after they die.

1. This is not true. Libertarianism is based off of atheism and usually goes against religion. It has nothing to do with liberalism at all.

2. I don’t think people like identifying themselves as theists. You basically have to defend the most fucked up religious groups in the word to people. Id rather practice in private than get asked why crazy islamists are killing r why priests rape kids. I obviously don’t support any of that and don’t want to explain myself every time

3. [deleted]

4. I’ve found that most secular people actually disrespect the scientific method, they just believe whatever “Experts” tell them, regardless of how much proof, or even thier own experiences.

   I’m athiest, I still don’t support abortion in anything but extreme measures because it’s… disgusting to me.

   Yes, in the first couple of days it is in fact just a clump of cells… but it is a clump of cells with the potential to become anyone and do anything, and abortion shuts down all of it… you are pre-emptively murdering someone when you abort a fetus.

   Don’t want to get pregnant? there are a bevy of options that don’t involve murdering a living thing.

   If the woman was raped, or giving birth would kill them, or the kid would have no quality of life anyway, thats different, abortion is a valid thing in those cases… but using abortion as a “Bad decision eraser” is fucking ghoulish and repugnant to me.

   ​

   I don’t support any sort of gun regulation, second amending, the right bare arms shall not be infringed and all that… making gun ownership illegal just means only outlaws will have guns… (never mind the fact that a gun ban would make hunting ones own food an even less appealing option than it already is, allowing corporations and the government even more control over the masses via controlling the food supply.)

5. I’m not here to defend religious affiliation, but I worry about being overly rosy about the decline of religious affiliation from a societal standpoint, not necessarily because I think there’s something epistemologically important being lost, but because religious institutions have historically been a way for people to accrue social capital, which we economists recognize as a very important pathway for economic mobility (especially intergenerational mobility). It would be one thing if the decline of religious institutions were being replaced by other secular organizations, but they’re not.

   This idea is summarized in Raj Chetty (and coauthors’) recent [article](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04996-4) in Nature, but other academics like Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) and others have written about it before.

   The key idea here is that cross-class networks (like those you will find in many churches) are an absolutely key input for socioeconomic mobility and social cohesion. We could all stand to be a little less sanguine about the decline of civil society in this country, even if the decline of a specific KIND of American Evangelicalism is, on the whole, good.

6. It also goes without saying that such arguments fall apart when you point to the fact that irreligious people are not necessarily non-spiritual. The supermajority (like around 70%) of irreligious or religious nones are still spiritual and maintain a belief in some theistic concept. And that’s not even counting the agnostic theists.

   This argument tends to fall apart when you’re talking about non-abrahamic religions. The Animist faiths of our ancestors were also focused on the now, and even today Pagan, Neo-Pagan, end Animist belief systems don’t often even have a concept of afterlife. Falls apart even more when you meet people who’s bigotry isn’t found in religion, or with us pagans, for example, enjoy generally hold these beliefs you attribute to being secular.

   That being said I fully agree that we’re breaking through to a ton great social developments. We can and should celebrate that, and keep working to improve society further. Education and exposure are what will bring these old beliefs down, not whatever religion people choose to believe.

7. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, unless you agree with all those topics that are in your interest.

   For the past decades we saw a destruction on local manufacturing, traditional nuclear family, traditional binary sexual identity, nationalism, religion etc.

   Progress is being made in form of large destruction, whether its constructive or destructive, it’s upto everyone’s opinion.

   But I would argue its more destructive than constructive, we have more social unrest, more inequality (and somehow blaming it on the rich instead of the lack of growth and jobs being outsourced), we have less discussion from both side (e.g. climate destruction from green energy source and unstable power grid. or whether Hormones block drug being issued to kids are safe)

   No one should be happy that the development of the society is becoming more one sided.

8. where do you get the idea religious people dont focus on this world? i am one of most religious ones in my company and one of the hardest working employees.religious want the best of both!!!!!

9. The god of the American liberal tends to be the state.

10. I struggle to celebrate people losing purpose, hope, and community even if it is in something I don’t agree with.

    Especially if they are replacing it with a hollowed out secular statist existence.

    I hope I am wrong but I fully expect this trend to lead to degeneration of people and I think we are seeing a lot of that as we focus inward and obsess over identity and building new gods in the government and a confused definition of liberty. That being a definition of “freedom from want” as opposed to “freedom from control by your fellow man”.

    I greatly prefer the company of Christians I know to the atheist i’ve tried to get to know. Every atheist group i’ve tried to participate in is just leftist political group that shrieks about wanting to kill babies, or ban guns. I find them to be kinda sad people. They honestly make me want to go to church…

11. I don’t see that the decline is as beneficial as you say. Religion (especially Christianity, in the West) is a repository of deep practical wisdom and meaning. Religiosity is associated with [a higher degree of wellbeing on a number of metrics](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/31/are-religious-people-happier-healthier-our-new-global-study-explores-this-question/), and the roots of such an association run deep into what makes religiosity itself compelling. Christians know how to be content, how to find meaning in life and in each other, how not to be invested in temporary things but also invested in the important things (i.e., virtue, their important moral relationships, their local communities, their overall place in a real moral and cosmic order worthy of reflection and investigation).

    This ability to be fully and personally invested in themselves, each other, and their wider communities is reflected in, for example, the highly religious person’s increased power to resist acting on suicidal ideation ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7310534/#:~:text=used%20census%20data%20(3.7%20million,HR%200.69%2C%20CI%200.65%E2%80%930.74)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7310534/#:~:text=used%20census%20data%20(3.7%20million,HR%200.69%2C%20CI%200.65%E2%80%930.74)), their reduced rates of divorce ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857783/#:~:text=Previous%20studies%20reported%20that%20less,strong%20negative%20correlation%20with%20divorce.)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857783/#:~:text=Previous%20studies%20reported%20that%20less,strong%20negative%20correlation%20with%20divorce.)), and [their higher degree of personal political and community involvement.](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/05/29/religion-and-society/) (sorry about some of the ugly links, Reddit doesn’t like them). Compared to religious people, non-religious people simply [don’t replace themselves.](https://ifstudies.org/blog/americas-growing-religious-secular-fertility-divide)

    These ‘worldly’ benefits are not anomalous, but precisely a result of religiosity itself. If you think that life has an objective meaning reliably communicated to you by an identifiable and supportive community, then you don’t feel the pressure to make it all meaningful for yourself. Not only that, you will see it as worth passing on to the next generation, and in particular your children. If you think fulfilling one’s marriage and family obligations as a part of one’s participation in the cosmic order before God, one will take one’s vows more seriously, and think that there is something more worth fighting for than one’s subjective self-satisfaction. If you see your suffering neighbour as made in the image of God, you will see it as a personal charge to do what you can to help him. If you think that the drama of salvation is begins with the conversion of the heart and is realised in the church, you will affirm both individual moral agency and dignity, and moral accountability to an identifiable, consistent and supportive community. The idea that moral progress and the flourishing life is made from the inside-out through coherent and sustained practice within particular, living communities rather than imposed from the top-down by political elites, is essential for preserving the space to be authentically free, helping the individual both to resist being tossed about by every trend and whim of market forces and mass opinion, and also to resist being confined to his merely personal, unreflective preferences.

    The idea of immortality in following Jesus, far from taking us away from the world, frames and motivates our living properly in the world- we think of our deeds and lives not as temporary episodes passing into nothingness, but the foundations of an eternal project of maximal significance. Even secular people often attempt a pale imitation of this when they think of the effect their deeds will have on the assessment of ‘history,’ but the genuine article is of course far more compelling. Unlike ‘history,’ God for the religious person really will bring out the truth of who we are and have been. We want, therefore, to meet God as the kind of person to whom he could say, “well done, good and faithful servant,” who loves others as we have been loved by God.

    The metrics by which you judge moral ‘progress’ don’t really put religious people in a bad light, once we grasp where they are coming from. They don’t want to be sterilised, drugged and distracted cogs in a technocratic machine whose only choices are which arbitrary distraction they’ll ‘identify’ with. Instead they’ll favour the kind of social signalling that, for example, reinforces the link between sexual flourishing and the natural family, or be rightly suspicious of centralised mandates which bypass the prudential decision-making of the private individual embedded in his social network. On the other hand, they are likely not to see human dignity as something that comes about as a result of what we do, but what we are, and to see liberty as rightly constrained by that dignity, hence they will support strong intervention in cases of a direct threat to the innocent, and will not allow the slaughter of the unborn, and build protective institutions and precedents that they can pass on. They rightly see life as lived in a community of fellow moral agents, not statistical ciphers and mere victims of circumstance, and want a legal system that recognises individual moral accountability as a result. All of these convictions, whence the immediate problems arise for the technocratic state, are themselves part of the means by which liberty, dignity and wellbeing are conserved.

    This is not to say that all state interventions are unwarranted, of course. Sometimes it is good to have a radical and general intervention by centralised authority in response to a grave crisis. But such episodes cannot be the norm: they should be expenditures of reserves of trust built up in normal times, and it doesn’t seem that our grand institutions are particularly good at fostering a high-trust society. That doesn’t seem to be the fault primarily of the institutions which subsist on and cultivate trust, as much as the loss of a common reference for values between elite decisionmakers and the people they govern.

12. Mind you, there are quite a few religions that also focus on the here and now rather than an afterlife. Not all Jewish faiths even believe in an afterlife.

13. >Research shows that secular people are more likely to support women’s reproductive rights, universal healthcare, gay rights, environmental protections, death with dignity, gun safety legislation and treating drug abuse as a medical rather than criminal problem — all of which will serve to increase dignity, liberty and well-being in America.They do not rely on a “God” to help them or wait for their reward after they die.

    >Non-religious are more likely to understand and respect the scientific method, which results in their increased willingness to get vaccinated, for instance, and adhere to empirically grounded health recommendations, a rational orientation that saves lives. Secular people are also more supportive of sex education, which reduces unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

    Why are you making a politically motivated post in a sub meant for debating religion? Why are you treating these things you mentioned as objective goods when you know very well that people have reasons to oppose these things? These are all very off-handed statements regarding complex issues that many people disagree on regardless of their religious affiliation.

14. Religious affiliation fluctuates. People change.
    A percentage of that 47% will become followers of sorts as they age.

15. Somehow, what you say is true, even though you can’t produce evidence that:

         (1) When a scientist becomes an atheist,
                 [s]he does better science.
         (2) When a scientist becomes religious,
                 [s]he does worse science.

    At least, I’ve asked atheists for such evidence hundreds of times in the past. To save you time, here are the responses I’ve gotten to-date:

    * a few anecdotes
    * cognitive dissonance or compartmentalization so perfect that they can’t be detected
    * disavowal that anything the atheist said possibly suggests (1) or (2)

16. jesus said. leave the problem of tomorrow’s to tomorrow. worrying doesnt add to your lifespan.

    been living that creed for 30 years now. i say im prioritizing living the now than worrying too much about death.

17. >Research shows that secular people are more likely to support women’s reproductive rights, universal healthcare, gay rights, environmental protections, death with dignity, gun safety legislation and treating drug abuse as a medical rather than criminal problem — all of which will serve to increase dignity, liberty and well-being in America.

    That is an assertion, not a proof. And generally, secular moral reasoning tends to be rather weak.

    >Non-religious are more likely to understand and respect the scientific method, which results in their increased willingness to get vaccinated, for instance, and adhere to empirically grounded health recommendations, a rational orientation that saves lives. Secular people are also more supportive of sex education, which reduces unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

    I don’t think pandemics such as AIDS or monkeypox are some great vindication of the new secular sexual morality. In fact the exact opposite, they are a great signifier of why things like chastity, temperance and self-control are indeed virtues and not stuffy old-fashioned prejudices that we should instinctively be hostile to.

18. > Non-religious are more likely to understand and respect the scientific method, which results in their increased willingness to get vaccinated, for instance, and adhere to empirically grounded health recommendations, a rational orientation that saves lives.

    This point is a stretch.
    If you can’t follow the scientific method to isolate the virus yourself, how is this relevant? In reality, you’re just choosing to believe an authority is telling you the truth.

    Also, most of the people I know that get vaccinated are religious. You can chalk that up to the area I live in sure, but I think it’s very few people (in comparison to the majority) who deny injections for purely religious reasons.

    All of your other points make sense though.

19. Pseudo-rational bologna.

    Let me sum up your argument:

    “Republicans are more likely to be religious than Democrats. I think Democratic policies are better, so they must be better because of the difference in religious affiliation.”

    You’ve completely glossed over your implicit assumptions, like that euthanasia, abortion, and restricting gun access are unquestionably good for society. You’ve ignored all the substance of these debates and assumed religious affiliation is the driving factor.

    You’ve also completely ignored major confounding findings, like that [despite less religious affiliation, 9 in 10 Americans believe in a higher power, and non-white Democrats (people who *also support the ideas you list*) are religiously more similar to Republicans than to white Democrats.](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/04/25/when-americans-say-they-believe-in-god-what-do-they-mean/04-25-18_beliefingod-00-10/)

    So all we’ve learned today is that white democrats in America are less likely to believe in a higher power.

20. Well stated. I think with women’s reproductive rights and gay rights you mean that the government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. That’s something that Pierre Trudeau said to Canadians in 1969.
    You make a good case that religion promotes people getting involved in other people’s business.

21. If you are only talking about Christian fundamentalist, then I agree with you.

22. It’s almost funny because, being probably influenced by the lies of the devil who mixes falsehoods with the truth, you made a mishmash of what is actually true:

    * “women’s reproductive rights” (aka the right to murder the unborn): **no**.
    * “universal healthcare”: **yes**, why not
    * “gay rights” (aka brainwashing kids into believing real marriage is irrelevant): **no**
    * environmental protections: **yes**
    * “death with dignity” (aka euthanasy): **no**
    * gun safety legislation: **yes**
    * treating drug abuse as a medical problem: **yes** for the user, **no** for the dealer

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