Religion Decline in US

But we knew this. Tangle brings it up gleefully all the time. I think that belief will always be with us. Perhaps not as dogmatic and organized.Are you still a Zen Deist? What do you believe?Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

One of my favorite topics is addictions and brain science. One of the "programs" that addicts of all shapes and sizes us for a solution is Rational Recovery, also known as common sense. Basically, they preach that the human brain has a rational mind and an animal brain, known in their parlance as "The Beast".Let's discuss religion in the context of addiction and see where the can of worms takes us. I'm not scared.

TOPIC SYNOPSIS:Lets examine RAZD's First, the Link. Study Shows Religion In The U.S. Is In Decline

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A new study finds a slow decline in American religiosity over time, demonstrating that religion in the United States is declining and mirroring patterns found across the western world.
The new research shows that contrary to anecdotal evidence, the United States is no different than other modern societies in the inevitable move towards secularization.

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To clarify terminology, allow me: Thus, religiosity = strong feeling or belief, especially excessively,obtrusively, or sentimentally. Now...as this move towards secularization is inevitable, according to the article and our very own tangle, what does that mean? The club is not as popular and "cool" as it once was. dwise1 did bring up a good point, however: jar taught me the value of critical thinking. Specifically logic, reason, and reality. The experiences that I had in my past, however, shaped my belief. OK, so lets examine belief. Do I have confidance in what I have experienced? Would i feel as confidant if i admitted that there is no objective proof? How does this fact influence my belief? I never received anything tangible, apart from an enormous sense of optimism and dare i say arrogance and power once I became saved. Critics would say that atheists can be smug and arrogant as well...in different ways. One mans comic book is another mans Bible. Edited by Phat, : added jabberwocky

yeah, but at least Canada has no nutjobs that we know of...although they thought that about New Zealand. Bless those kids!

That letter is so good, im going to post it in full:

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Princeton, 3. 1. 1954

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Dear Mr Gutkind,

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Inspired by Brouwer's repeated suggestion, I read a great deal in your book, and thank you very much for lending it to me. What struck me was this: with regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common. Your personal ideal with its striving for freedom from ego-oriented desires, for making life beautiful and noble, with an emphasis on the purely human element. This unites us as having an "unAmerican attitude."

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Still, without Brouwer's suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and whose thinking I have a deep affinity for, have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything "chosen" about them.

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In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolization. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

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Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e; in our evaluations of human behavior. What separates us are only intellectual "props" and "rationalization" in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

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With friendly thanks and best wishes,

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Yours,

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A. Einstein

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What jumps out at me is this phrase: As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted,...Can anyone shed any light on what that means?

What she means, I think is that the reformers were outside of the Catholic Church yet were themselves still aware of the content of the scriptures. One can be an outsider and still have some scriptural knowledge after all. Witness: Ringo