Is religion finally dying?

I can understand society being better off without the proselytizing of religion as Peggyc says but I don't understand the objection to having people of faith amongst us. I like seeing families going to church, synagogues, temples and mosques. I like hearing and sometimes participating in their rituals. As Tom and Peggyc said, the poetry, the songs are just so beautiful. And the debates and discussions warm my heart.

I have absolutely no issue with people privately believing and practicing whatever they like. 

So we can stay in your society? Even though our buildings are here and we walk amongst you? We may even speak openly to one another and say God bless you, and bow our heads in prayer.

If this is true of you, my thought is that the word "finally" is too strong.

Kindly express more clearly what your objection of religion in society is. My inquiring mind would like to know.

I think I agree with this guy. 

What both the believers and the critics often miss is that religion is often far more a matter of identity than it is a matter of beliefs and practices. The phrase “I am a Muslim,” “I am a Christian,” “I am a Jew” and the like is, often, not so much a description of what a person believes or what rituals he or she follows, as a simple statement of identity, of how the speaker views her or his place in the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/opinion/bill-maher-isnt-the-only-one-who-misunderstands-religion.html?_r=0

Sure, welcome aboard. Just don't get upset if I don't say "bless you" and we'll get along fine.

imonlysleeping said:

Sure, welcome aboard. Just don't get upset if I don't say "bless you" and we'll get along fine.

Thank you. Now that I like.  

LOST, that can most definitely be true. Not always--but often. At the same time, though, the religious beliefs themselves CAN unite beyond other such identifiers.

I think I do too, lost.  That article is mind opening and clarifying for me.

Yes, but the problem is that there are a whole lot of religious people who aren't content to live and let live like you are. When people seek to impose their beliefs on everyone else then we have problems.

oneofthegirls said:

imonlysleeping said:

Sure, welcome aboard. Just don't get upset if I don't say "bless you" and we'll get along fine.

Thank you. Now that I like.  

I agree.

Yet it is not my personal experience.  I worked with a couple of Jehovah witnesses . Every day something was said to me. I liked both women so I just listened and when necessary, expressed I did'n't feel the same.

They said what they wanted and I acknowledged I heard them. We still remained friends.

Another incident was years later when a dear engineer I worked with approached me at my desk and inquired why I did not cover my head with a scarf in honor of God?  I explained as a catholic I always covered my head with a hat Or a scarf going to church. And then it became acceptable to only use a lace hanky, and then a tissue held on with a bobby pin. And then it was no longer necessary. He was from Egypt and he walked away accepting this explanation. We were working in NYC at the time.

imonlysleeping said:

Sure, welcome aboard. Just don't get upset if I don't say "bless you" and we'll get along fine.

Is this in response to a sneeze, or just in general?

I don't even expect that response from a sneeze never mind in general. I am just thankful I can be me in this society.  You are too funny ridski.

I think we are bumping up against the "Curb Your God" bumper sticker discussion McGooey started!

I don't mind people talking about their beliefs to some degree, like the engineer who asked OOTG about covering her head. That I would have found interesting as a cultural exchange. But the Jehovah's Witnesses? I would have asked them, politely, never to bring it up again. That would drive me completely banana-balls. 

Live and let live, ask questions for clarification and because you are interested, but don't try to sell me on anything, please. That is my approach to religion.

Strange. This discussion for some reason just reminded me of an exchange I had with a former co-worker years ago. Another colleague with whom both of us had worked at the same time had died of a heart attack while shoveling snow the day after Christmas, and I didn't find out about it until I saw a post on Facebook from this woman. She is intensely religious, and when she commented that this man had died, she also found it necessary to say that she believed he was not "saved."

I was furious. Really? The man is dead, and for all you know his widow and daughters are on Facebook and have just read that you think their husband/father is going to hell because he didn't share your beliefs?? I wanted to scream at her, but I didn't. I did say I thought that was inappropriate and that I mourned his passing and felt beyond bad for his young family.

What gives one person the right to pass judgment on another's  soul?

Peggyc, that is where my mom's teachings come into play for me. She always taught me "uch, pay no attention." No one can judge but God. I guess that is why Imonlysleepiing considers me a live and let live kinda gal.  I too express what I don't agree with. Good for you to say on fb what you needed to say. The "pay no attention" part is only for my truth in my relationship to God. I don't feel it any more when someone is that offensive. I just let the other know that I don't agree. 

Well that sounds pompous but it has been working for me for 68 years, I just never saw it written down. Honestly.? I don 't ever remember my mom even to bother to say she disagreed. She would just not pay her attention to anything that wasn't aligned to her to agree to. She was a very peaceful woman to be in the presence of.

Yes, I think that is the right approach, but so difficult to maintain when someone is announcing that a person you liked and have lost is actually going to hell, for all the world to hear. Deep, cleansing breaths don't do the trick for me under those circumstances.

Perhaps I should have tried JerseyBoy's, "Thank you for letting us know." ?? ;-)

Oh jersey boy is the best. He always puts a smile on my face. just remember, the thing that is being said is NOT true for you. Who then is is being said to, anyone else who is going to agree with nonsense?

My first memory of this truth was 7th grade. I went running home to mom because my name got mixed up with another in my class and the rumor was that I was pregnant! I was horrified and mom standing at the stove stirring her  pot said "Uch! Tell them you are having twins."

No one in the school agreed with this nonsense and I was never even approached to tell them I was having twins. Tee-hee.

It is not an easy approach but SOooo worth it. I rarely miss a beat when I let go of what others say when I don't agree with them.  I don't pay attention and I don't care. Yet I do feel the need to let them know I heard them even in a jersey boy kinda way, "thanks for letting me know."

Did you believe her in anyway? The way this works for me is to not agree with a statement. My mom never even looked at me, never questioned me and gave me a comic response. If one knows themselves this well,  their beliefs, their strength in them is all that matters. Mom looked at herself 24/7 through confession and communion and appeared to me to be consistently the same. This was her catholic upbringing that she passed down to me. It was a way of being that I too find comfort in. I am not alone. It just is what it is. Jersey boy has it right! Thanks for letting me know.

                          "Christian churches build on the uncertainly of human beings and attempt to preserve that

                          uncertainty for only in that way can Christian Churches keep their power. The essential

                          points of Christianity have been taken over from Judaism.

                          No human being would ever know anything of Christianity had it not been drilled into him in his

                          childhood by pastors. The so-called dear God gives no knowledge of his existence directly to young 

                          people. Astonishingly, in spite of his omnipotence, he leaves this to the efforts of the pastors. If 

                          in the future youth learns nothing more of Christianity, it will disappear by itself." 

Quoting Nazis had to happen at some point, I guess.

Well, all religion is based on a human need to explain their existence and the world around them. So it's incredibly naive to say that if we don't talk about religion to kids, eventually religion will disappear. People invented religion (as a structure for belief) because something in their nature required it, and I fully believe they will continue to create structure to make sense of their world. Science notwithstanding.

I find it really interesting that people seem to crave something more mystical than science to explain natural phenomena. You cannot have a relationship with science, but you can with a god, whether the relationship is one of an authority figure and the people it governs, or a loving parent and children, or even just spirits that inhabit rocks and trees and so on. Maybe in many cases a god is a way to give science a face?

Great insight, PeggyC. Exhibit #1: The "Singularity," which is the story of Heaven and the afterlife rewritten in tech terms- instead of ascending to Heaven after death where we will live forever, we will upload our minds to the Cloud and...live forever. 

http://www.singularity.com/

.

...that you have no visibility into or control over (says a guy who used to co-locate an Xserve to serve up his motorcycle club's website - have to say I prefer someone else taking care of someone else's computer for stuff like that).

dave said:

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 Dave, you are crushing my illusions.

Well that cloud producing someone might very well be the source of the universe. I may not trust in the cloud but I can certainly trust in the source.

I'm trying to calculate how many of us would have been burned at the stake in the Middle Ages or early modern period....

I, like everyone else who exists in the town, hail the glow cloud. All hail the glow cloud.

oneofthegirls, your words and stances are beautiful. Yours, too, PeggyC.

I went to church this morning for the second Sunday morning in a row. I was tagging along with my wife who had a choir substitute gig for just these two weeks. I found it nourishing, oddly, even though there are many tenets I disagree with. I take what I like and leave the rest. I'm not baptized, so it is improper for me to take communion, but, as the Episcopal church allows, I can go up during communion and receive a blessing. I did, and I found it very moving, bringing me to near tears.

As far as judging others, in my own personally held belief, God says that we must not, right there in the 3rd commandment.

Tom,

I often think that somewhere the Deity gets a good chuckle at all  the rules Mankind has set down for those who would have a personal relationship with him/her.

If it is honest and feels good..........if it gives you strength in trying times.......if it is a source of comfort when you need one..........

then you have found your God.  Be at peace with that my friend.

author,

Famous people are quoted as saying, "Quitting smoking is easy; I've done it hundreds of times."

Similarly, I'm pretty sure I've found God. The trouble is I keep forgetting God and I have to find God again. I suspect I share this trouble with many others. The trick is to remember. Did you know that the Muslim word for prayer (Zikr) is also the word for remembrance?