Daylight Atheism, March 15, James A. Haught: The Long, Slow Death of Religion
This piece echoes my comments a few weeks ago when discussing Michael Shermer’s HOW WE BELIEVE (here). Shermer made the point that polls showed (when he published the book in 2000) no decrease in claims of religious beliefs about God, about the afterlife, and so on, compared to 20 or 30 years before. I made the point that, 20 years on from that Shermer book, there *have* been trends in polls of religious belief — downward. Thus the so-called “rise of the nones,” i.e. those who answer such polls, which offer a selection of religious faiths, with “none of the above.” (Here’s the first item that comes up on Google for the phrase, from 2015: Pew Research Center: A closer look at America’s rapidly growing religious ‘nones’.)
Today, on Adam Lee’s Daylight Atheism site, is this Haught essay, beginning with the observation that the percentage of “nones” has risen to some 25%.
He begins the essay by citing various sociological factors that might explain this.
Various explanations for the social transformation are postulated: the Internet exposes young people to a wide array of ideas and practices that undercut old-time beliefs: That family breakdown severs traditional participation in congregations. That the young have grown cynical about authority of all types. That fundamentalist hostility to LGBTQ+ persons and abortion has soured tolerant-minded Americans. That clergy, child-molesting scandals have scuttled church claims to moral superiority. That faith-based, suicide bombings and other religious murders horrify normal folks.
But then he gets to the key point:
All those factors undoubtedly play a role. But I want to offer a simpler explanation: In the scientific 21st century, it’s less plausible to believe in invisible gods, devils, heavens, hells, angels, demons — plus virgin births, resurrections, miracles, messiahs, prophecies, faith-healings, visions, incarnations, divine visitations and other supernatural claims. Magical thinking is suspect, ludicrous; it’s not for intelligent, educated people.
This gets to my occasional comment that, even among people raised in religious communities, or bubbles, the smart ones figure this out. They realize there are a multitude of religious beliefs, past and present, all built on dubious if any evidence, all supported by authority and tradition. The holy books compiled from millennia of story-telling and mistranslations and wish fulfillment.
But more from the essay, as he recalls the oppressive nature of religion in the US just 60 or 70 years ago:
I’m a long-time newspaperman in Appalachia’s Bible Belt. I’ve watched the retreat of religion for six decades. Back in the 1950s, church-based laws were powerful: it was a crime for stores to open on the Sabbath. All public school classes began with mandatory prayer. It was a crime to buy a cocktail, or look at nude photos in magazines, or buy a lottery ticket. It was a crime for an unwed couple to share a bedroom. If a single girl became pregnant, both she and her family were disgraced. Birth control was unmentionable. Evolution was unmentionable. It was a felony to terminate a pregnancy. It was a felony to be gay. One homosexual in our town killed himself after police filed charges. Even writing about sex was illegal. In 1956, our Republican mayor sent police to raid bookstores selling Peyton Place.
But what about…?
[W]hat answer can an honest person give about the deep questions: Why are we here? Why is the universe here? Why do we die? Is there any purpose to life? [His editor) eyed me and replied: “You can say: I don’t know.” That rang a bell in my head that still echoes. It’s honest to admit that you cannot explain the unexplainable.
(Scientists are happy to admit they don’t know something. In sharp contrast to religious leaders.)
And finally,
The church explanation — that Planet Earth is a testing place to screen humans for a future heaven or hell — is a silly conjecture with no evidence of any sort, except ancient scriptures. No wonder that today’s Americans, raised in a scientific-minded era, cannot swallow it. Occam’s Razor says the simplest explanation is most accurate. Why is religion dying? Because thinking people finally see that it’s untrue, false, dishonest.
Thinking people.
