Being a charitable, welcoming, helpful, giving, caring person and being religious have been nearly two separate circles on a venn diagram in my lifetime.
You clearly haven't met many christians. The majority of global charities are Christian and christians, on average, give much more to charity than non religious people. Social services like AA, food banks, soup kitchens, etc... Most churches that I have visited are like families, where members support each other and try to find ways to make a positive impact in their communities
@@growtocycle6992what I have a problem with is when church leaders fleece their own flock of money making themselves affluent driving expensive cars, owning mansions private planes etc. Most of that money could actually help multitudes more of people in need. Yes there are some really great church leaders out there, but there’s also a lot of very successful wicked men and women masquerading as pastors and church leaders that are just there to grift. 🤷🏽♂️
@@growtocycle6992 Christians globally spend about 2.5% of the income they take in on charity work, 90% of it goes to pastors wages, the remaining goes towards advertising and building maintenance
@@WeekzGod : Some of my beliefs are Agnostic and some are Atheist. My wife and I make regular contributions of various charities and political causes and candidates we believe in. We also give $1,000 a month to a family member’s 529 account so hopefully they will be able to graduate from college with no student debt. Bottom line, while I am not a religious person my wife and I are in the fortunate position financially to help those less fortunate than us with regular charitable donations. We give to organizations that help the homeless, food banks and animal welfare organizations (we are both big animal lovers). We also donate to organizations like the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders (wonderful organization) whenever there is a natural (or man made) disaster like the devastating fires on Maui last year.
I know, right? Better to get your morality from TikTok or RU-vid or the mainstream media. They love us and want the best for us. Plus, churches operate soup kitchens for the homeless, etc. That's terrible.
We do have a decline of churches---and an increase in mass shootings, crime, drugs, fatherlessness, mental disorders, etc. But churches are the problem.
@@bluegorillacookies The countries with the lowest rates of all of those things are the most Atheistic. Look at any single positive trait, income, life expectancy, happiness, equality, freedom, and then look at the religiosity of the country, there is a direct correlation between being Atheistic and running a better country
@@xXEGPXx Finland usually ranks the world's "happiest" country. Their population is about 1/60th the size of the US. They don't have the complexity of racial groups that we have. And, yes. they're able to have a pretty successful welfare state, while the history and politics of the US have destroyed our chances at this. Their 'happiness' is based on access to healthcare, etc. but there are high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide. It's not It's not how much people are smiling, that goes to the poorer countries in Latin America. But regardless, the Nordic countries have access to religion. 66% are Christian. If you want to look at how successful an atheistic country is, look at China, North Korea, communist Russia, etc. Where freedom to Christianity is/was banned. That will be more telling. Peace!
As a young adult from the south (24), for a lot of my generation it’s definitely a generational thing. I’ve talked to may parents about this before and they told me that they were made to go to church because that’s how their parents and grandparents were raised. So it seems the further that we’ve gotten away from the decades of the late 80’s and early 90’s, as the generation of my parents age became older, church was no longer mandatory and with the dawn of the internet and more entertainment and information and truth coming to light about all of these crooked preachers and self-righteous yet racists and hypocritical “christians” being full of BS, a lot of us have seen these false for who they really are are. So yeah, though I’ve never labeled myself, I’m definitely a “None.”
In regards to church run food banks closing down: my wife and I donate $200/month to an organization called Food Share in Ventura County (Southern California). As far as I know it is primarily or entirely secular and not associated with any particular religious organization.
The weirdo’s who say they love you and judge you while not practicing what they preach not to mention the pedos and fleet of planes and cars led to the decline and just smarter people are born that question every thing
I am 71 now, and I think the greatest accelerator was the church jumping in bed with politics and trying to control the narrative. As we modernize and become more secular and accepting the churches needed to adapt with it. But mostly they have been slow to change. The push of politics from the pulpit pushed a lot of people out of the pews in my opinion. Afterall, support for one political party works to cut your congregation in half already. Forcing beliefs also is a deal killer which is what they have been up to with that marriage to the politician for votes. It has been self defeating.
I first lost my religion when I was 15. Up though age 14 I went to Sunday School when my parents went to the regular worship service. SS was OK with me because there was next to no religious indoctrination - it was just a bunch of kids my age shooting the breeze about mainly sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. But when I turned 15 I couldn’t do SS anymore and had to go to the adult worship services which I absolutely hated. The sermons made no sense to me at all and as such bored me out of my mind. After 2 months of this I rebelled and told my parents flat out that I wasn’t going to church with them any longer. They told me I had to go but I stuck to my guns and never went to church again. Today as I senior citizen some of my beliefs are Agnostic and some are Atheist and I am perfectly content with that. My parents were not happy with my rejection of their religion but that was just the way it had to be.
@@teddyjam8134 : My family (mom, dad, brother and grandparents) have all passed away. But, to answer your question, I would say my relationship with my parents was complicated. My parents were good, decent people and provided me with a stable and loving upbringing for which I am grateful. But when I entered adulthood and especially after I got married when I was 28 things started to kind of deteriorate. Some of the deterioration was probably based on my religious differences with my parents but while my dad kind of accepted my rejection of religion he wasn’t happy about it. My mom went way overboard with religion in her mid 60’s and told me on more than one occasion that basically I was going to burn in hell because I didn’t accept Jesus as my lord and savior (gee, thanks mom!). My mom and I reached kind of a truce on the subject of religion after I told her that as an adult I will make my own decisions about religion and will accept whatever consequences will come from it. And, furthermore, I am not interested in discussing the issue any more. When my mom passed away (ovarian cancer) 20 years ago I had some serious mixed feelings. I was sad to lose the woman who was a good and protective mother when I was growing up but not the mother who basically wouldn’t respect my lifestyle choices as an adult. She was very jealous of my wife and did a lot of snarky things to express her jealousy. My wife and I came very close to estrangement from my parents a couple of times but in the end we just kept as much distance as we felt we could get away with.
This is good descriptively, but lacks the most important factor: what goes on in church itself, as many people no longer benefit from worship services and so leave. I am one of those people.
That's great news. Everyone should be leaving churches and "Christian" RU-vidrs. Call no one teacher. The Truth came to save lives (Luke 9:56) undo the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), by healing the sick, raising the dead, blessing the poor and bringing Heaven down. So, why do church leaders knowingly choose lies, which destroy lives, redoes the works of the devil, causes sickness, death and hell on earth?
Do you care whether what you believe is actually true? - the references you make (the gospel of Luke) were not written by Luke, they were written by a scribe centuries later making a copy of a copy of a copy after decades of oral tradition. That is, what you’re quoting are not first hand witness testimony but hand me downs ( the original first written gospel is lost) to create a religious sales document, believe this or else. Do you care about that? But dont take my word for it, go research it yourself. Youll find all the gospels are the same IE none are first hand and none are independent, in fact theres no actual independent evidence that jesus even existed. It was a common name at the time and rabbis were two a penny, doesn’t prove he didnt exist sure, but its enough to cast extreme doubt on the whole thing. The truth isnt frightened of scrutiny right?., of the hardest of questioning, so if youre confident, go check, but you might get something of a shock
This is great news for our country and the world. We need to become a more secular society. Religion and faith has done more damage to humanity than it has healed us. We need to embrace logic and reason and move away from blindly following things without evidence.
Me, too. I recommend The Urantia Book for seekers of truth. Published in 1955, it claims to be the Fifth Epochal Revelation of God to Man. Of course, like any book about God, it requires a leap of faith to believe it. Wanna know what's really going on -- you won't find this in ANY BOOK: Lucifer and Satan were detained in 30 AD, just after Pentecost, and were judged by the Ancients of Days, far from Earth, in 1985. The devil and dragon (Revelation 12: 12-13) remain on Earth. Their judgement is set for 10/10/26 -- one heavenly hour after Lucifer refused mercy (1000/24). They intend to absolve themselves by proving Mankind unfit for God's kingdom with a worldwide nuclear war. "After all," the devil argues, "Jesus, HIMSELF, tried to teach these beasts to love one another, 1,994 years ago -- almost two full days in Heaven. Surely, the Ancient of Days will judge Man at fault. Or Jesus. Not Me." 2 Peter 3: 8 Matthew 5: 44-48. The devil is delusional -- Daniel 7: 9-14 -- but OVER 93% of men and women are nearly deaf and blind spiritually. They "see" and "hear" nothing -- except perhaps, once or twice in a lifetime, while asleep. We call that, Normal. Are you any different? It has always been like this -- as in the days of Noah.
Yes, let’s definitely hope for that. My parents church closed down sometime in the late ‘90’s because of a drastic decline in attendance. It was sold to a real estate developer who tore the building down and built townhouses on the property.
That was the case when my parents forced me to go to church after I aged out of Sunday School when I turned 15. The sermons were boring and made zero sense to me. After two months I refused to go any longer. Besides, back in the late ‘60’s ABC had the NBA game of the week on Sunday morning at 10:00 AM on the West Coast and I would certainly rather be watching that during basketball season than listening to some boring sermon in church.
@@bdflatlander wow church was even boring back then? I was 7 in 2013, and i use to sleep during sermons, can’t remember any words the pastors would say. In 2022, age 16, I watched a sermon online, and fell asleep! What a drag
@bluegorillacookies kinda like the catholic inquisition and the northern and middle east crusades, more blood on christianitys hands than you'd ever believe, it's evil
Atheism does not equal communism. Lots of European countries are more secular and they have a higher standard of living, live longer, and have less inequality.
@@georgesimon1760 Maybe so, but that's mostly because Europe has a strong history of Christianity. It was Christian men who fought to end the slave trade in Europe (William Wilberforce and others), for example. Having lived a long time in cultures with no Christian roots, I can personally tell you that human rights and equality are definitely a product of the Christian faith. I was sickened by the child prostitution, the people left to die on the side of the road, etc. And why would atheists who haven't been blessed by a Western worldview of the dignity of human life care-that is, if we're merely meaningless matter and survival of the fittest is a natural mechanism? But atheist Westerners have been endowed by their environment with a sense of 'right' and 'wrong,' primarily embodied by how people treat each other. But outlaw religion and indoctrinate a generation in atheism, and that quickly fades. I personally think this is why more and more youth in America are acting so horribly in many cases, stealing cars and punching random elderly people in the face. Jesus elevated women to equal status. As He did slaves and free and people of other ethnicities. I certainly don't say you're dishonest intellectually, but it would be outrageous to deny this. Thank you for the conversation and I hope you're having a great day.
@@bluegorillacookies even if Jesus elevated women so that they weren't worth fewer shekels, god didn't in the old testament. And he condoned slavery too. Where did he tell everyone to free the slaves? It was basically Christians in the west who worked to free the slaves only because everyone was Christian, there was no one else to do it in any numbers. Christians by the thousands also fought to defend slavery. Every society has norms that have nothing to do with Christianity, because that's the only way a civilization can survive.
What's with the sad music? This needed change and second enlightenment deserves celebritory music. Once Capitalism is also shed civilization can then truly advance.
The whys and wherefores matter inasmuch as they are a sort of roadmap for further secularization of America. The important point is the demise of religion - and hopefully allied superstitions.
One day soon, people will finally realize that the church is neither a building or an organization, it is people who are believers in Christ and His finished work on the Cross and part of His kingdom. Period.
I agree!!! That’s the same thing I’ve been saying. I absolutely hate it when people say they are “going to church.” The Bible clearly states that each believer is the church.
Going to a place where you (a relatively poor individual) is praying the same prayers and putting the same or more effort in the church with the relatively wealthy IS another huge silent factor that people don’t really claim. I’ll go when I become financially stable 😒
Common sense will tell you that sitting in a pew every Sunday: watching priests do everything is against Jesus' concept of spirituality. He was all about charity, love and acceptance! Vestments - aristocracy! Candles, incense, holy water - aristocracy Communion might be valid, but everything else is Catholic exaggeration and a part of Catholic connection with aristocracy!
@@Gfish17 Drove to Hannibal MO to look for a second home on Hope Street. Boarded up church, rampant drugs, probably child trafficking. You are probably not old enough to remember when most communities were family/church oriented. You could leave you home door unlocked and you knew your neighbor. There was a time when a vast majority of families attended church pretty regularly. Whether you were a believer or not, the community was much safer. I should know as I lived at the tail end of that time. Church played a big part in all that and then the 1960s came along ...🙄
@@billsattic 99.9% of all incarcerated people in the US are Chrisitans, despite only being 63% of the population, clearly your faith is not the solution by any objective measure
@@xXEGPXxAfter 50+ years of life, the only stats I need are what my eyes see and my ears hear. I don't ever remember having to put security in schools and churches to prevent violence back in the 1980s and before. Any stats they spew out are politically compromised.
Religious people scares me. They can lie, beat me up, or do anything evil against me. Then they dont feel any guilt because they believe their faith in God will forgive the sins that they do.
I hope youre right, but right now they threaten public schools, bodily autonomy, nonreligious freedom, and our very democracy. So hopefully it fades quickly.
It's a mixture of social acceptance of decedent behaviors, and our sudden advances in technology. Such epochs cater to the flesh, and turning away from God is mistaken as personal growth.
So we should have stayed in the dark ages and not developed technology just to stay religious? It seems to me turning away from fictional gods is personal growth. It's acceptance of reality and treasuring THIS one life we get.
Using a book that was written some 200 years after Jesus supposedly lived (if he was real at all) by men (no women allowed) as a basis for how to live in the 21st century makes very little sense. Religion: fairy tales for adults. No proof required.
