I think organized religion turns more people away from a spiritual path then science does.
Agreed, if one means the zealous Abrahamics. One such believer wrote, "we are living in an age of spiritual darkness." This was my response:
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I think that zealous Abrahamics are, but the polytheists, the monotheistic humanists, and mindful atheists aren't. The zealous Abrahamics are the antithesis of spiritual as I define it. Spirituality is a state of mind one attains through connection with earth and the life on it, often accompanied by a sense of mystery, awe, and gratitude. The Abrahamic's worldview does violence to that. It deflects attention from the here and now to imagined realms, spirits, and afterlives. It tears that vital connection to our world. Spiritualty isn't about believing in spirits. Living your life like you're waiting at a bus stop to be transported somewhere else better than earth while imagining spirits and their commandments is as far from spiritual as one can be as I understand and use the word. One becomes as alienated and disconnected from Mother Nature as possible."
Contrast that with the pagans, who have the kind of spiritual experience with nature I just described. They haven't invented afterlives and other worlds like heaven to divert their gaze and thoughts from nature, and their gods seem like symbols to me, but maybe some think of them literally as nature pixies of some sort. I have a similar experience without a pantheon of natural minor gods.
And a really nice aspect of non-Abrahamic religions is because they don't have angry gods issuing commands, they don't have an unnatural system of values including a host of bigotries, and they don't consider other people's lives their business.
The contrast with the zealous Abrahamist is the monotheistic humanist, most being educated Christians. They still rely on reason, empiricism, and their consciences rather than ideas believed by faith (apart from a god belief) and received morals. The reject the bigotries, the political manipulation, and the antiscience anti-intellectualism that comes with zealotry.
What do you think is the top reason people leave religion and spiritual paths?
I can tell you why I did, which is a different answer from why Americans are leaving religion, which means Christianity there.
I left the religion because I could see that it was untrue and didn't keep its promises. This resulted from finding a charismatic preacher first try, who could convince me that I was feeling the Holy Spirit as we sang and clapped and smiled and laughed and (others) soke "in tongues."
These were my Army years, and I became involved because my angst level was high, first from nearly flunking out of university due to lack of self-discipline (I saw my future as a physician slipping away), which is why I enlisted - to learn that discipline and get a little older before trying again - but was exacerbated by being in the Army and being so far from home. So, I tried me some Jesus, and for about two years, I was ecstatic a couple times a week (I went Wednesdays as well as Sundays).
Then I was discharged, returned home, and over the next couple of years, tried about a half dozen other congregations led by unaspiring clergy. Eventually, I understood that what I had been feeling wasn't the Holy Spirit - either than r it stayed in Maryland when I returned to California. I might have looked for a substitute religion, but by that time, I was done with believing by faith.
Regarding national trends, it's multifactorial:
- The appearance of best sellers and the rise of the Internet have given humanists a platform (like RF) and made atheism much more respectable.
- The rising numbers of people self-identifying as atheist or irreligious makes joining them less of a social risk
- Scandal after scandal has flown by since the rise of the televangelists in the 70's continuing today, right up to the church pedophilia cover up and the failed Palin and Duggar examples of Christian family values. Jim Jones and David Koresh didn't help the church any.
- The entertainment media mostly depict the church and clergy as hypocritical, ineffectual, or irrelevant.
- People are put off by Christian homophobia and hell theology.
- People are put off the religious incursion into government and people's freedoms. The Handmaid's Tale look isn't a good one for the church.
- Science and evolution have made atheism more tenable - your suggestion.
- People find the church and religion increasingly less relevant in daily life. It doesn't meet their needs.
- Removal of the church, state-led prayer, and creationism from public schools
- And most recently, the rise of theocratic tendencies.
It's in my list, too.
The core idea of Jesus returning with a new earth is easy for me to accept. It’s easy for most Christians I’ve talked with to accept. Oh well. To each their own.
Thats because you're willing to believe by faith. I'm not, which makes that belief, which I once shared with you, impossible for me now.
Most Christians are highly intelligent people.
The most intelligent Christians are the ones who can reason well and are well educated, both of which are barriers to theism for many. And many believers are very poorly educated and unable to process information efficiently. They believe uncritically, which dilutes any native intelligence.
Also, growing up in such faiths stunts intellectual and moral development in many. If you're still afraid of death as an adult, it's probably because you've never faced and accepted the likelihood of your own mortality. If you think atheists are depraved hedonists and homosexuals an abomination to your god, or that their lives are your business, or you're afraid of hell, you've failed to develop properly.
If you correct that young enough like I did, you still might have the necessary cognitive dissonance and critical thinking skills to burrow out of that. It's difficult and disorienting, but still possible. A couple of decades later, that become much more difficult if not impossible. The experience is very analogous to quitting smoking. It's difficult and takes a year or more before you're free of thoughts of cigarettes, and for those who don't try until 60 or older, often impossible.
How are you going to leave your religion if you're still afraid of death or hell, and if your social life is centered around your religion such that rejecting it will lead to shunning and ostracism? Are you going to start all over then like I did in my late twenties? Not likely.
I think most Christians understand it as knowledge and the ones who don’t, stop being Christian.
You have a different definition of knowledge than I do. I don't include thing believed by faith or intuition as knowledge. Only demonstrably correct ideas earn that title - the kinds of ideas that allow one to predict outcomes, like a recipe or how to tie a tie - ideas that lead to anticipated and desired outcomes.
If you can’t grasp the Christian belief that Jesus died, was risen from the grave, is now in heaven and will return, then I can’t explain it to you. I guess some people get it while others do not.
It's common for people whose ideas aren't believed to assume that they weren't understood.
People don’t follow religions because they can’t cope with life’s hardship via their own wits.
My opinion on this is above. Most people get their religion as children, which can keep them in a juvenile state of dependence on a father figure who gives orders and rewards or punishes, fearful of death, ignorant, unable to think critically, and into magical thinking. As we grow, that largely disappears for those with no religion as well as for some with religion, but for too many, they remain in that juvenile state to a greater or lesser degree.
Neotony is a term from biology to refer to juvenilization, as has occurred with dogs that remain puppylike into adulthood (isn't a golden retriever a large, adult puppy?) It's also occurred
in humans on a physiological level, but I'm using the term here to refer to just intellectual and moral development.
with apologetics one shouldn’t have to defend why Christianity is the truth.
That's what Christian apologetics is: "What is apologetics? Apologetics is quite literally defense of the faith; the Greek word apologia means “defense” as a lawyer gives at a trial."
