Discussion: which religion most likely to produce Atheists?

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My understanding of the UU (a Church I am highly sympathetic to) is that they seek moral clarity and meaning in life - rather open ended questions - and do so in an environment of (vaguely) like-tempered individuals. They also provide the social capital benefits of traditional churches without the dogmatic requirements.

And, yes, I'd expect a large Church would have beautiful woman members. It's a statistical near impossibility that a Church of its size wouldn't.

Such conditions don't exist, though, so all we have is idle speculation. Even in liberal Western society, there is still social pressure to remain in a particular religion. It becomes difficult to measure the extent to which that social pressure influences people in different circumstances. And not everyone finds the prospect of Alaskan exile appealing.


There might be something to that, yes. But then you have to consider if there are practical aspects to the religion that discourage apostasy, such as the community cohesion.

In practice, there are too many confounding variables at play for this to be a useful measure.

Would you say Canadian Ultraliberal Muslims, like those affiliated with the Muslim Canadian Congress, are approaching such condiitons?

The whole OP is idle speculation of course.

The use of Alaska was just for illustration. A Jain could run off to Hawaii, cease practice, and live out their life without anyone saying boo. There are many such places in the world where religious practice is pervasive yet you dont need to blend in or make excuses. Tahiti comes to mind.




Likely so.

Last edited by Fuzzy on 05 May 2010, 12:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ah, but this girl was a real specimen. She had albinism, so I was immediately drawn to her. Turns out people with this condition have remarkably similar socialization issues to AS, but for entirely different reasons. They're "funny-looking," so people immediately judge them. They also tend to be blind, so they lack the ability to "read" social cues and respond to jokes. I'd already earned one college degree, she was a college freshman. So, as it turns out, I ended up being as much a mentor to her as I was her first boyfriend (poor girl). Oddly enough, when we split two years later, she ended up with a freshman who'd never had a girlfriend...

I really loved that girl, too, but I knew she'd never be happy for long following me around.

Anyway... She was brought up UU because her parents, who were a little on the "hippy" side from "back in the day," had come from two completely different extremes of Christianity--something like Presbyterian and Catholic, but I can't remember. They felt that UU was an appropriate middle ground, but my impression of that church was that it was a relativistic, Christian-hating enclave. To be fair, it was only one visit and I just happened to be there on a sort of intro to UU day. The preacher had expressed his horribly inaccurate view of Christians as a worldwide cult of vampiric cannibals.

The problem I see with ANY church is it can't have long-range effectiveness by remaining neutral. I can understand why a group would seek to be more inclusive--bringing Jews, atheists, Wiccans, Christians, Buddhists, and others together. What I CAN'T understand is trying to bring them all together and preaching a message that at its heart only seeks to avoid offending anyone. Sooner or later, everyone takes a position. If there's any question about this, try pointing a gun at someone and see what happens (no, don't REALLY, but hopefully you see my point).

What I wonder about is why, for example, an atheist would feel the need to go to any church. Is the atheist truly seeking after something he or she has difficulty believing in but perhaps wants to? Or does the atheist just REALLY need something to do on a Sunday? If the latter, it's remarkable that one would feel a strange need, something that is totally unnecessary to one's cause, to follow the rest of the believing world to church!

The agenda of the UU church is to cater to groups that feel displaced by other exclusivist groups; otherwise it's just a midweek and Sunday social gathering with no real, clear purpose. So by nature, it is NOT neutral.

Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge them that--it just means I don't agree with it. Who cares who/what I agree with, right? There are two groups of Christians that I absolutely DETEST (and yes, I'm a Christian myself). "Blab It and Grab It" gospel, which is the quasi-Biblical source of the secular "law of attraction," is the main one. The other form is an outright scriptural corruption often referred to as the "Emergent Church." It's not a unified church, just a loose-knit group of independent non-denominational "churches" that pick and choose little bits and pieces of the Bible, take it all out of context, and "interpret" it to mean whatever is convenient to them. It's all about peace, love, and feeling good. They would re-interpret scripture that talks about loving everyone to support controversial ideas such as homosexuality, conveniently ignoring passages in Leviticus and the NT epistles that expressly speak against it (I'm not trying to stir anything up, I'm just saying it's there). A discussion might go: "Right HERE it says Jeezus was hangin' out with SINNers. An' over HERE He dun turned WATER into WINE. JEEzus was a PARTY DUDE! And THAT means He smoked PAWT. Jeezus was a pawtsmoker, see? 'Cuz the Bible don't say NOTHIN 'bout no pawt. Y0, man, pass me that there doober."

Prosperity gospel's purpose is to make large amounts of money at the expense of the hopeless and helpless. Emergent Church philosophy is Christianized hedonism (or is it hedonized Christianity?). Anyone, to include UU, who gathers does so for a purpose, to promote one ideal or another.

Now that I think of it, I never really answered the OP question, and Prosperity Gospel comes to mind as a possible contender. I suppose if you suffered from paralysis or cerebral palsy or some other incurable condition, you might follow one of these preachers around and give them obscene amounts of money in hopes that "tonight is going to be the night, I just KNOW it" and you'll get your "healing." I suppose after a decade or so of doing this, you might come to the conclusion that there is no God. How could there be? God heals His people, I didn't get healed, therefore there is no God.

I've never believed God worked the way those people say He does. Since their main concern is making money, they won't be worried if a few people here or there give up God entirely, and that is truly sad.

Excellent post Rho.

You are saying you want some conviction behind the benediction.

I can think of several types of people that might attend services, irregardless of belief, despite being somewhat above censure.

People who enjoy gospel/religious music for instance. I knew of a Jew who loved it and who would go to catholic mass occasionally.

The other might be a politician or public figure, perhaps a high power sales person or the sheriff in a small town. Likewise a doctor.

As you said, everyone has a motivation, and these people rely on popularity and the good will of the community. Showing up in the right places is critical to doing their jobs.

That is all very true also, and I've also known people like that. I've also known "fake" Christians like that who seem to just disappear after a while. The headmaster of the private school where I do some work is/was a deacon at my church, and I've noticed I haven't seen him there in a long time.

One thing my church does that I've really enjoyed is bringing in guest speakers that address various issues that involve relationships among church members, reconciling belief with secular life, and other religions. Most recently discussions have centered on anxiety, bi-polarism, and depression. We've had two demonstration in the past led by Jewish Christians to show the celebrations of Passover and Booths. What really got our attention was when they explained that for a Jew to convert to Christianity is difficult for most Jews because it's a lot like asking your typical mainstream evangelical Christian to convert to Mormonism. I also found it fascinating that these people, while not outright calling it wrong, highly discouraged Christians from attempting to follow Torah in the way it was intended for Jews. I always wonder why that was, but now that I've actually spent time studying it's clear to me why.

I think Christianity in a modern sense is seen as a hateful religion, but more and more it seems that believers have gradually come to be a lot more accepting than they would have been 500 years ago. I think if I could change anything about the modern church, it would be the level of discipline among members. I've been reading through the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and what is striking about these two books is how sensitive these Jews were to key mistakes they'd made early in the reformation of their society and their willingness to correct these errors. The first Christians also really did try to maintain vigilance that their beliefs and practices were not compromised--most notably the Berian church. I think the Roman church probably did really well for a few hundred years, but perhaps it was the influence of Constantine that led indirectly to some of its later abuses of power. It seems that the church has truly been at its best when it was under duress, those times when it has to teach what its congregants least want to hear. The thing I like least even about some churches in my own denomination is how "fun" and "accepting" they try to be, trading doctrine for numbers. It's not an easy religion, and making it so (in my opinion) is dishonest.

While it is true that our congregation tends to be more affluent than some, I've rarely met many members who seem to be less than genuine. I guess you'll have that everywhere you go. Indeed, there's even the stray Sunday School teacher or two that appear to assume that role as just a part of social standing. I'd even go so far to say that extends to deacons in the past (before I started attending that church), and deacon selection seems now to be more genuine than it perhaps had been at an earlier time. I'm also employed by the church as a musician (I've had a Catholic church try to steal me away, actually, and I'm not Catholic!), and there are certainly better musicians there than me with better social standing. So even though the congregation happens to be made up of wealthier members, most of them certainly aren't snobs. For the most part, they seem genuine about their spiritual motivations, not really making church a social obligation that some seem to do.