Many Americans Say the Democratic Party Does Not Share Their Priorities

[TarSpiel]

Doesn’t feel like 60%+ is Christian. Duh.

Okay, "duh"

My question was really, why does it feel that way to you?

 

[HintonJamesHeel]

We don't know that for certain - it could easily continue dropping, especially if Republicans continue tearing down the separation of church and state. I think America is simply following the same path that most European countries, Australia, and New Zealand took decades ago. Their religious affiliations kept dropping until currently only about 1 in 10 people in those countries regularly attend church today, although higher percentages still call themselves Christian. And while about 60% of Americans still call themselves Christians, the numbers who regularly attend church is lower. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, only 21% of U.S. adults attended church every week, and 11% attended about once a month. That is a decline from 44% in 2000 and 49% in 1958.

Well we don’t know anything. The data says it’s stabilized. That’s all we can definitively point to.

 

[HintonJamesHeel]

How many of those people who “identify as Christians” are Christians?

Trump identifies as a Christian. Jerry Falwell, Jr. does. The elder Falwell did.

Does proclaiming, “I’m a Christian” make one a Christian?

Is someone who says, “I’ve accepted Christ as my Lord and savior,” a Christian?

What if they continue to lie, cheat, steal, thieve, fornicate outside of wedlock? Are they Christians?

You could also ask how at atheists pray? Polls say a lot. What do they pray to? What’s the point?

 

[finesse]

Well we don’t know anything. The data says it’s stabilized. That’s all we can definitively point to.

Oh no. We can point out that it's fallen by a third in 60 years. Dropping that much in that sort of time is more significant than a flattening of the curve. That flattening isn't without meaning but if you read deeply into the article, they don't consider it predictive.

 

[finesse]

You could also ask how at atheists pray? Polls say a lot. What do they pray to? What’s the point?

Atheists are as misguided as religious people. The only thing that makes sense is some sort of reluctant agnosticism. The universe is too big and old to say there's not one, the very same reasons that there is for thinking that it's irrelevant if there is.

 

[HintonJamesHeel]

Oh no. We can point out that it's fallen by a third in 60 years. Dropping that much in that sort of time is more significant than a flattening of the curve. That flattening isn't without meaning but if you read deeply into the article, they don't consider it predictive.

Ok. Either way. You want it lower and I’m happy it’s 60%+. Neither of us will dramatically impact it.

 

[finesse]

Ok. Either way. You want it lower and I’m happy it’s 60%+. Neither of us will dramatically impact it.

I don't actually care if it's lower if they left others alone. If they followed what Jesus taught , tried to convert by example, followed the Beatitudes and were willing to shake the dust of their feet and leave when people didn't want to listen, I'd be fine with them.

This halfbaked paternalistic prosperity gospel based on that heretic Paul's bullshit should go.

 

[Mulberry Heel]

I think most of this is overstated. I’ve gone to three churches in the last 10-12 years and never heard a thing partisan. My pastor has prayed for Biden, Trump, etc but only in saying we should pray for our leaders. I go to a huge church now and politics are never mentioned.

Well, good for you, but that's not been the experience of a great many people, and I've heard partisan prayers and discussions in church myself over the last 25 or so years, nearly always right-wing. I don't think it's overstated at all, especially in most Evangelical and some Catholic churches. And the major televangelist churches are nearly all right-wing and Trump supporters, such as Robert Jeffress of Dallas First Baptist. And the Southern Baptist Convention has certainly not shied away from making very partisan, very political pronouncements.

 

[UNCatTech]

 

[ZenMode]

Democratic Party hits new polling low, while its voters want to fight Trump harder​

Unlike in Trump’s first term, Democratic voters say 2-to-1 they want party leaders to fight rather than compromise, even at the risk of not getting things done, per the NBC News poll.

Democratic Party hits new polling low, while its voters want to fight Trump harder

Unlike in Trump’s first term, Democratic voters say 2-to-1 they want party leaders to fight rather than compromise, even at the risk of not getting things done, per the NBC News poll.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[sringwal]

And if they did fight harder, zen, what would be the likely outcome?

 

[an0maly]

Atheists are as misguided as religious people.

That's a gargantuan, absurd assertion that is nonsensical and indefensible. Atheism is the simple lack of one single belief--of theism. This is like, say, the simple lack of the one single belief in 90 foot tall flying arctic giraffes.

The only thing that makes sense is some sort of reluctant agnosticism.

That is false, and has gone wrong in two ways at once. First, agnosticism is and can often be a part of both atheism and theism. Agnosticism is about the inability to apply knowledge to a question or conundrum. An agnostic atheist (my position, not that it matters) says there are no facts, evidence or logical support for the general, standard god concept, thus the default position in which atheists finds themselves is a lack of theism. An agnostic theist recognizes they have the belief in god, but it does not come from knowledge from the world, but internal feeling. Most all theists are not of this variety, and believe they have knowledge from evidence, and this is undemonstrated and terminally a personal notion. I don't care to digress on that now.

Second, a phony position supposedly caught between belief and absence of belief does not "make sense," it is actually nonsense. Peole don't have such a "caught midway" belief, either. There are three mental stances, basically, to a proposition about something that may exist in the universe: I know it exists (*or not) based on facts, evidence and or logic (knowledge sometimes framed as Justified True Belief); I know it might exist, based on those three things (framed as valid speculation); and I lack any support for believing it exists, thus lacking any belief until something improves to move up to one of the previous two stances.

All of the above are provisional, and subject to change, but the lever for moving that change is still facts, evidence and or logic.

*There can be said to be a fourth stance, that research in science works with extensively, which is to provisionally rule something out, however it really falls under the first position about a proposition but simply in the negative or a "rule out" about the existence of something.

The universe is too big and old to say there's not one, the very same reasons that there is for thinking that it's irrelevant if there is.

The size and age of the universe have no connection to the proposition a god exists, or one does not. In fact people who put forward god propositions often make them intentionally ephemeral and untestable such that age or size could not be used for or against.

Now, I am willing to speculate that there are extraterrestrial intelligences with many* attributes sectarian religions of Earth give to god or gods. However, without facts and evidence, my default position is the same as atheism: I don't have belief in them. I believe speculation about the notion. I am a-ETI-ism, if I can make that awkward construction, just to make the point. I am an agnostic a-ETI-ist as yet without access to any knowledge about them.

~*Not all: some attributes I take to be impossible, a rule-out, but won't digress in those weeds unless someone asks.

 

[finesse]

Still content with my position. The bottom line is the only reason for the idea of a god is that it makes man feel important. It's the same with the idea of a soul, fwiw.

 

[ZenMode]

Still content with my position. The bottom line is the only reason for the idea of a god is that it makes man feel important. It's the same with the idea of a soul, fwiw.

 

[HintonJamesHeel]

Still content with my position. The bottom line is the only reason for the idea of a god is that it makes man feel important. It's the same with the idea of a soul, fwiw.

Only reason? Maybe but it’s hard to understand how everything comes from nothing. On the other hand, what created God? Point being - there are other reasons for a God other than man wanting to feel important.

 

[superrific]

That's a gargantuan, absurd assertion that is nonsensical and indefensible. Atheism is the simple lack of one single belief--of theism. This is like, say, the simple lack of the one single belief in 90 foot tall flying arctic giraffes.

That is false, and has gone wrong in two ways at once. First, agnosticism is and can often be a part of both atheism and theism. Agnosticism is about the inability to apply knowledge to a question or conundrum. An agnostic atheist (my position, not that it matters) says there are no facts, evidence or logical support for the general, standard god concept, thus the default position in which atheists finds themselves is a lack of theism. An agnostic theist recognizes they have the belief in god, but it does not come from knowledge from the world, but internal feeling. Most all theists are not of this variety, and believe they have knowledge from evidence, and this is undemonstrated and terminally a personal notion. I don't care to digress on that now.

Second, a phony position supposedly caught between belief and absence of belief does not "make sense," it is actually nonsense. Peole don't have such a "caught midway" belief, either. There are three mental stances, basically, to a proposition about something that may exist in the universe: I know it exists (*or not) based on facts, evidence and or logic (knowledge sometimes framed as Justified True Belief); I know it might exist, based on those three things (framed as valid speculation); and I lack any support for believing it exists, thus lacking any belief until something improves to move up to one of the previous two stances.

All of the above are provisional, and subject to change, but the lever for moving that change is still facts, evidence and or logic.

*There can be said to be a fourth stance, that research in science works with extensively, which is to provisionally rule something out, however it really falls under the first position about a proposition but simply in the negative or a "rule out" about the existence of something.

The size and age of the universe have no connection to the proposition a god exists, or one does not. In fact people who put forward god propositions often make them intentionally ephemeral and untestable such that age or size could not be used for or against.

1. It is very much NOT TRUE that most "theists" believe they have knowledge of God from evidence. Here I'm taking "most" to mean something like "dominant tendency" because we don't have any data here and I'm not sure you're even talking about data. It is also not true that the position of "I know God from internal feeling" is agnostic.

Soren Kierkegaard is but one of many philosophers/theologians who have found justification for their beliefs in the sheer absurdity of the idea -- to Kierkegaard, the absurdity was Jesus being both God and Man. It's that absurdity that gives it power, because it supports a mode of thinking that cannot be captured by scientific reasoning. That's one reason Kierkegaard found the Abraham/Isaac story so compelling.

Like him or not, Kierkegaard was tremendously influential and had a view that you're not accounting for. He was Catholic, a monk, and never wavered in his Catholicism to my knowledge. He was also probably gay, but that's irrelevant.

2. The problem with "atheism" as you've laid it out is that it privileges scientific thinking over all other. That's an a priori choice, not a default, and is going to bias the results. God can never be proven or disproven as a matter of basic logic and categorical thinking.

And this problem shows up in your post in the underlined passage. God isn't "in" the universe. God exists separately from the universe. For that reason, physics will never tell us anything about God -- just as physics cannot answer the questions, "what existed before the Big Bang," "how did all the matter in the universe get concentrated in a single point," and "why does the universe have these physical laws?" That's not a problem with physics; it's a problem of people using physics to ask metaphysical questions.

3. You're right that the age of the universe doesn't matter.

 

[doctor_octopus]

Take this God shit elsewhere.

 

[breepf]

Like him or not, Kierkegaard was tremendously influential and had a view that you're not accounting for. He was Catholic, a monk, and never wavered in his Catholicism to my knowledge. He was also probably gay, but that's irrelevant.

Kierkegaard never wavered in his Catholicism because he was, in fact, a Lutheran or, at the very least, a Protestant. It's why his interpretation of the Abraham and Isaac story recapitulates a grace-works distinction, i.e. why he ultimately prizes the faith motivating Abraham's actions rather than the actions themselves. You might also add that it's why Kierkegaard gives zero shits about what was happening to Isaac, a point of real consternation for Jewish and Catholic interpreters over the years.

 

[an0maly]

1. It is very much NOT TRUE that most "theists" believe they have knowledge of God from evidence. Here I'm taking "most" to mean something like "dominant tendency" because we don't have any data here and I'm not sure you're even talking about data. It is also not true that the position of "I know God from internal feeling" is agnostic.

I am going to concede this as a standoff, because I don't know how to find any percentages, but all the religious people and most of the religious public doctrine I have seen points to things like the efficacy of prayer and god's providence as real world evidence. They take it that way and I do not, as contra temps research on prayer not doing anything and the basic data of most religious people being more often poor and suffering (complex nexus of stuff there, in America, and worldwide, but anyway).

Soren Kierkegaard is but one of many philosophers/theologians who have found justification for their beliefs in the sheer absurdity of the idea -- to Kierkegaard, the absurdity was Jesus being both God and Man. It's that absurdity that gives it power, because it supports a mode of thinking that cannot be captured by scientific reasoning. That's one reason Kierkegaard found the Abraham/Isaac story so compelling.

Like him or not, Kierkegaard was tremendously influential and had a view that you're not accounting for. He was Catholic, a monk, and never wavered in his Catholicism to my knowledge. He was also probably gay, but that's irrelevant.

Long years ago, long in two respects, I read through all his works. To me, most of the reading was like trying to jog through mud, but I get his stance. I don't think that path leads to success in human realms, and the subjective focus defies societal benefits of the awareness of other perspectives on actual, workable and tested means of improving things for people. The idea of a leap of faith in personal choice is bound up with forgetting ethical acts that objective research can demonstrate helps our species as a whole. I could go on but enough said, I think there.

2. The problem with "atheism" as you've laid it out is that it privileges scientific thinking over all other.

It does not. This is a major error. You can read what I wrote again, but atheism is the lack of one single belief. An atheist can (possibly) doubt or hate science, they can have dozens or hundreds of other metaphysical beliefs but simply lack the specific god belief. The a- prefix means a lack, not a privileging stance on anything else. In the seventies a missionary to the Amazon discovered the Pirahas tribe, who had zero notions of any god or gods, or even of an afterlife. They were atheists, zero theism, and did not arrive at atheism in the way that I did, or the way that most atheists in Western society do, which is to find ourselves in the stance due to valuing facts, evidence and logic. Atheism is nothing other than the lack of one single belief, however the lack arises.

That's an a priori choice, not a default, and is going to bias the results. God can never be proven or disproven as a matter of basic logic and categorical thinking.

One cannot prove a negative. I can't disprove my invented notion above of flying arctic giraffes (they could be invisible, etc.) One can provide a provisional rule-out in science research, as I wrote about, but that is not proving in a permanent way.

And this problem shows up in your post in the underlined passage. God isn't "in" the universe. God exists separately from the universe. For that reason, physics will never tell us anything about God -- just as physics cannot answer the questions, "what existed before the Big Bang," "how did all the matter in the universe get concentrated in a single point," and "why does the universe have these physical laws?" That's not a problem with physics; it's a problem of people using physics to ask metaphysical questions.

These assertions are separate and mostly beyond anything but cultural invention that is designed to be free from objective analysis. When I use the general term universe, I am attempting to discuss all that exists. These "outside" all that exists propositions seem to me like a nonstarter for any discussion. It's to me like saying, "I have my own view of a square, and my view is it is a circle." Okay, I cannot do a thing with this in conversation.

3. You're right that the age of the universe doesn't matter.

 

[ZenMode]

Take this God shit elsewhere.

Of ALL the things Ds and Rs largely agree on, this has got to be the oddest.