The Death of the American Catholic Church

[ding]

No. It is where you should go to be treated for the disorders caused by your militant atheism.

You admitted that agnostics like myself don't suffer from a mental disorder. Thanks for playing.

You aren't an agnostic. An agnostic has no need to troll religious forums like you do and attack the beliefs of others. You are a militant atheist who seeks to subordinate religion.

You're just jealous because I have a sane position and you can't attack it.

You are the opposite of sane, brother.

See? You can't attack my position, just me personally. You fail.

You don't have a position other than religion and believing in God are bad.

 

[Mudda]

You admitted that agnostics like myself don't suffer from a mental disorder. Thanks for playing.

You aren't an agnostic. An agnostic has no need to troll religious forums like you do and attack the beliefs of others. You are a militant atheist who seeks to subordinate religion.

You're just jealous because I have a sane position and you can't attack it.

You are the opposite of sane, brother.

See? You can't attack my position, just me personally. You fail.

You don't have a position other than religion and believing in God are bad.

Believing in things with no proof is bad, making me agnostic.

 

[Eloy]

Actually the Church is growing in numbers....but don't let facts get in the way

Can you cite support for your statement.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

Actually the Church is growing in numbers....but don't let facts get in the way

Can you cite support for your statement.

Pontifical Yearbook 2016 and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2014: dynamics of a Church in transformation

 

[Eloy]

My own parish is thriving. we have one of those "all-star" pastors. but we will shortly be consolidated into a "cluster" and lose our distinct identity. I may convert to Anglican.

Surely being loyal to one parish and rejecting incorporation with other parishes is contradictory to the spirit of Catholicism which, in its name, is catholic i.e. universal.

 

[Eloy]

Actually the Church is growing in numbers....but don't let facts get in the way

Can you cite support for your statement.

Pontifical Yearbook 2016 and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2014: dynamics of a Church in transformation

Your source, the Pontifical Yearbook, may be correct or it can be a dubious source insofar as it is a Catholic publication. Nowhere in the document does it give statistics for the USA which is the subject of this thread.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

Actually the Church is growing in numbers....but don't let facts get in the way

Can you cite support for your statement.

Pontifical Yearbook 2016 and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2014: dynamics of a Church in transformation

Your source, the Pontifical Yearbook, may be correct or it can be a dubious source insofar as it is a Catholic publication. Nowhere in the document does it give statistics for the USA which is the subject of this thread.

I don't really care, you asked I answered....that and you're a moron. Now pound sand, little dude

 

[ding]

You aren't an agnostic. An agnostic has no need to troll religious forums like you do and attack the beliefs of others. You are a militant atheist who seeks to subordinate religion.

You're just jealous because I have a sane position and you can't attack it.

You are the opposite of sane, brother.

See? You can't attack my position, just me personally. You fail.

You don't have a position other than religion and believing in God are bad.

Believing in things with no proof is bad, making me agnostic.

Agnostic? You?

 

[ding]

Actually the Church is growing in numbers....but don't let facts get in the way

Can you cite support for your statement.

Pontifical Yearbook 2016 and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2014: dynamics of a Church in transformation

Your source, the Pontifical Yearbook, may be correct or it can be a dubious source insofar as it is a Catholic publication. Nowhere in the document does it give statistics for the USA which is the subject of this thread.

Here is what you can look forward to, little dude...

Atheism and negative emotions/thoughts

To see relevant studies and historical data about the atheist population's highly unusual propensity to display negative emotions such as depression, anger, anxiety and boredom, please see:


Research suggests that irreligiousity is a causal factor for domestic violence.[1] See: Irreligion and domestic violence and Secular Europe and domestic violence
1. Atheism and depression (Cites relevant studies about atheism increasing depression)

2. Atheism and suicide (Atheists have a higher suicide rate than the general public)

3. Militant atheism and anger (Studies and historical information about atheism and anger)

4. Irreligion and domestic violence and Secular Europe and domestic violence (Research indicates that religiosity lowers one's propensity to engage in domestic violence)

5. Militant atheism (Historical information about atheism/violence/intolerance)

6. Atheism and emotional intelligence (Cites relevant studies about atheists having lower emotional intelligence). See also: Atheism and alcoholism

7. Atheism and social intelligence (Cites relevant studies and historical data showing lower interpersonal skills within the atheist population)

8. Atheism and death anxiety (Cites relevant studies and historical data related to atheism/death anxiety and related matters)

9. Atheism and meaninglessness (Cites relevant information from studies and history)

10. Atheism and irrationality (Cites studies on irreligion/irrationality/superstitious beliefs and other relevant information)

11. Atheism, obesity and loneliness (Cites studies and other relevant data)

 

[Mudda]

You're just jealous because I have a sane position and you can't attack it.

You are the opposite of sane, brother.

See? You can't attack my position, just me personally. You fail.

You don't have a position other than religion and believing in God are bad.

Believing in things with no proof is bad, making me agnostic.

Agnostic? You?

At least I'm realistic and also giving you a chance that if you ever come up with real proof of your god, I'm open to changing my mind. Can't be any fairer than that.

It's you who can't come up with real proof so you attempt to mock me. I bet there's a passage in the bible about that.

 

[rightwinger]

The American RC Church was, and remains, the largest single religious denomination in the country, but it is on life supports with no real cure to be found. Seriously, it will die within our lifetimes.

I was raised in a robust Catholic Church, where most Catholic kids attended parochial schools, and most of them continued for the entire K-12 period. The schools were generally better than the public schools (at least where I live), with a higher percentage going to college, more national merit scholars, higher average SAT's and so on. (somewhat due to the fact that a Catholic school could expel undesirables, which a public school cannot).

But a number of factors have injured the Church, and I believe that the wounds are mortal.

Public education has become much more expensive, and the taxes to pay for it more burdensome. At the same time, parents of parochial school students are being asked to pay more for educating their children (previously the parish paid almost all of the cost). When confronted with high property taxes and "high" tuition costs on top of that, most Catholic parents elect to send their kids to public schools, planning to provide a good Catholic education at home, and with an hour or so of religious ed once a week at church. It ain't working.

Public schools have become more and more intrusive into the lives of the students. Sports and other extracurricular activities extend into the evenings and weekends (thankfully, not Sundays), and leave little spare time for Church or Church-related activities. And Sunday morning soccer practice has become more important to parents and kids than going to church. Pity.

The child abuse scandal has had a two-pronged effect: (1) some parents truly believe there is a serious threat of their kids being abused in Catholic schools now, and (2) some parents use the scandal as an excuse to drop religion from their lives.

The Church has refused to adopt the two measures that could have helped to shore up the crumbling walls when it most counted: Married priests, and women priests. And the Church is still adamant that it will "never" implement these changes, even though the prohibitions rest on very shaky (or non-existent) Scriptural justification.

The prevailing culture disdains some of the Church's main moral teachings. The shunning of divorced and remarried Catholics, the prohibition of "artificial birth control," the absolute prohibition of abortion, and the moral condemnation of "homosexual acts," are out of touch with the prevailing culture. They all may be morally and scripturally defensible, but people just don't feel comfortable with them. Further, the population just does not accept a mandate to attend church every Sunday, or to go to confession at least once a year.

According to the Church's own figures, only 15% of baptized Catholics attend church regularly by the time they are 21 years old. And that is obviously based on the prevailing conditions 21 years ago. For today's baptisms, what are we looking at? 5%?

The priesthood is an archaic, dying institution, inhabited largely by closeted homosexuals and misfits. The few all-stars that remain (including my own pastor) are extraordinary people, deserving more praise than mere words can provide. But there are too few of them around. And the seminaries are virtually empty.

Parishes - the former lifeblood of the Church - are being closed and consolidated into oblivion. The Church leadership doesn't "get" that people associate themselves with a parish that their family may have belonged to for generations, and will not keep coming when that is merely a building or a "campus" which is one of a number of other ones in a "cluster." And "we" will not continue to support a "cluster" in the same way that we have supported our "parish," particularly when "we" paid tens of thousands of dollars to build the church, school, activities building, and so on.

At the national level, the Catholic Church is all-in with the recruiting and catering to Hispanics, both legal and otherwise. Cardinal DiNardo, head of the American church, has said HIS focus for the foreseeable future will be to do everything he can to "comfort" those Hispanics (I hate that term) who are made uncomfortable by the advent of the Trump Administration,

In Western Europe, the only people going to Sunday Mass are white-hairs and foreigners, and the occasional mother with children. these majestic cathedrals, basilicas and other churches have become little more than museums where architecture and artwork of past centuries are observed and photographed.

By the time that the last Boomer dies, the Catholic Church in America will be saying Mass mainly in Spanish.

My Church is dying.

You have touched on most of the key points

The balance of power for the Catholic Church is shifting from Rome to Latin America and Africa
Its base in Europe is disappearing and its monetary cash cow in the US is drying up

The priesthood is no longer a desirable option for young Catholics. It used to be mothers would push one of her sons to be a Priest. It helped her get into heaven.
Every other religion has legacy religious leaders. My father was a Pastor. My father and grandfather were Rabbis....with Priests, your legacy dies with you.

 

[rightwinger]

Pew survey: Percentage of US Catholics drops and Catholicism is losing members faster than any denomination

A report released Tuesday by the Pew Forum finds that the total number of Catholics in the United States dropped by 3 million since 2007, now comprising about 20 percent - or one-fifth - of the total population.

And perhaps more troubling for the church, for every one Catholic convert, more than six Catholics leave the church. Taken a step further, Catholicism loses more members than it gains at a higher rate than any other denomination, with nearly 13 percent of all Americans describing themselves as “former Catholics.”

 

[rightwinger]

Big demographic shifts within Catholicism continue to change the face of the church. Hispanic Catholics now comprise 41 percent of the US church, up 6 points from 2007. And the average Catholic is getting a bit older, with the median age of 49 up four years. Immigration from Latin American countries has kept Catholic number stable in recent years, and 39 percent of American immigrants are Catholic.


More than a third of all millennials - those born between 1981 and 1996 - claim no affiliation, and just 16 percent identify as Catholic.

 

[ding]

You are the opposite of sane, brother.

See? You can't attack my position, just me personally. You fail.

You don't have a position other than religion and believing in God are bad.

Believing in things with no proof is bad, making me agnostic.

Agnostic? You?

At least I'm realistic and also giving you a chance that if you ever come up with real proof of your god, I'm open to changing my mind. Can't be any fairer than that.

It's you who can't come up with real proof so you attempt to mock me. I bet there's a passage in the bible about that.

Realistic? You?

 

[Fenton Lum]

You admitted that agnostics like myself don't suffer from a mental disorder. Thanks for playing.

You aren't an agnostic. An agnostic has no need to troll religious forums like you do and attack the beliefs of others. You are a militant atheist who seeks to subordinate religion.

You brought your religion to a political forum pard, you're being very, very subjective again.

lol, this is a religious and ethics forum, pard. You brought your religion of socialism to the right place. Did I mention that socialism is evil and that it's adherents practice evil and that I will be glad when they Darwinize themselves out of existence? Too bad you can't say what you really want to say, pard. It must be building inside you like a bomb. I wonder who you will take your anger out on today since you can't say what you really want to say, pard.

You came on here and attempted to bait someone into saying "religion should be abolished" and you failed son. Objectively speaking of course.

I don't believe I did. You have not admitted that you believe religion has done any good in mankind. In fact, the only things you attribute to religion are bad things. Your logical conclusion is that you do be,lieve that religion should be abolished but you are to cowardly and deceitful to say so. I don't have that problem. I believe your religion of socialism is evil and that the people who practice it - like yourself - are liars. See? Don't you wish you could do that?

"In fact, the only things you attribute to religion are bad things. Your logical conclusion is that you do believe that religion should be abolished, blahbiddy blah blah."

I don't think you need me for this since you came here looking for a specific argument you did not find, and had to assign a "conclusion"/position to another hominid since you didn't get the response you wanted/baited for. Go pratctice in your mirror some more. Of particular note is the fact that you obviously cannot refute the observations of the Catholic Church's factual and historical offenses on humanity.

 

[Fenton Lum]

Me: "I don't recognize your authority to demand anything from anyone."

You: "That's because you don't believe any good has come from religion, right?"

No, those two things have no relationship to each other at all. If I believe any good has come from religion, then l would recognize your authority to demand anything from anyone? Silly.

You: "Would you abolish religion if you had the power to do so?"

Again, just silly. Religion is a totally personal decision and belief system, same with athiesm or any other perceptual reality as it relates to human connections to spirituality. And it is utterly subjective by definition, religion itself is subjective. I don't have or wish for that kind of power over another human being, and the only folks I've ever heard talk/think like that, "Would you abolish religion if you had the power to do so?", are always "religious" folk.

And this all goes back to these male dominator god religions. Once you accept the notion of the creator in human form, who has given mankind (just the proper followers of the particular religion of course, not the others), dominion over the natural world and everything on/in it, followers begin to see themselves as gods with power over others, and they need for their particular religion to prevail over the others.

What should be abolished is any and every religion's goal of inserting itself in the political arena and control over any society wishing to be free.

It never ceases to amaze me how cowardly you militant atheists are. But then again it is really subversion which forces you to hide your true beliefs. If you stated your true beliefs people would gasp in horror at the evil you support. I don't have that problem. I believe your religion of socialism is evil and should be wiped from the face of the earth. See? That's how it is done.

BTW, please keep your religion out of my government and schools.

Militant athiest? Socialist? Labels for all who won't fall in line with the power structure. See? You need control, it has nothing to do with spirituality at all, your religion.

Militant atheism is a term applied to atheism which is hostile towards religion. Militant atheists have a desire to propagate the doctrine, and differ from moderate atheists because they hold religion to be harmful. Recently the term militant atheist has been used to describe adherents of the New Atheismmovement,[11] which is characterized by the belief that religion "should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized and exposed."[12]

1. Michael Hesemann, Whitley Strieber (2000). The Fatima Secret. Random House Digital, Inc.. Retrieved on 9 October 2011. “Lenin's death in 1924 was followed by the rise of Joseph Stalin, "the man of steel," who founded the "Union of Militant Atheists," whose chief aim was to spread atheism and eradicate religion. In the following years it devastated hundreds of churches, destroyed old icons and relics, and persecuted the clergy with unimaginable brutality.”
2. Jump up↑ Paul D. Steeves (1989). Keeping the faiths: religion and ideology in the Soviet Union. Holmes & Meier. Retrieved on 4 July 2013. “The League of Militant Atheists was formed in 1926 and by 1930 had recruited three million members. Five years later there were 50,000 local groups affiliated to the League and the nominal membership had risen to five million. Children from 8-14 years of age were enrolled in Groups of Godless Youth, and the League of Communist Youth (Komsomol) took a vigorous anti- religious line. Several antireligious museums were opened in former churches and a number of Chairs of Atheism were established in Soviet universities. Prizes were offered for the best 'Godless hymns' and for alternative versions of the Bible from which ... the leader of the League of Militant Atheists, Yemelian Yaroslavsky, said: "When a priest is deprived of his congregation, that does not mean that he stops being a priest. He changes into an itinerant priest. He travels around with his primitive tools in the villages, performs religious rites, reads prayers, baptizes children. Such wandering priests are at times more dangerous than those who carry on their work at a designated place of residence." The intensified persecution, which was a part of the general terror inflicted upon Soviet society by Stalin's policy, ...”
3. Jump up↑ Multiple references:Julian Baggini (2009). Atheism. Sterling Publishing. Retrieved on 2011-06-28. “Militant Atheism: Atheism which is actively hostile to religion I would call militant. To be hostile in this sense requires more than just strong disagreement with religion—it requires something verging on hatred and is characterized by a desire to wipe out all forms of religious beliefs. Militant atheists tend to make one or both of two claims that moderate atheists do not. The first is that religion is demonstrably false or nonsense, and the second is that is is usually or always harmful.” Karl Rahner (1975). Encyclopædia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi. Continuum International Publishing Group. Retrieved on 2011-06-28. “ATHEISM A. IN PHILOSOPHY I. Concept and incidence. Philosophically speaking, atheism means denial of the existence of God or of any possibility of knowing God. In those who hold this theoretical atheism, it may be tolerant (and even deeply concerned), if it has no missionary aims; it is "militant" when it regards itself as a doctrine to be propagated for the happiness of mankind and combats every religion as a harmful aberration.” Kerry S. Walters (2010). Atheism. Continuum International Publishing Group. Retrieved on 10 March 2011. “Both positive and negative atheism may be further subdivided into (i) militant and (ii) moderate varieties. Militant atheists, such as physicist Steven Weinberg, tend to think that God-belief is not only erroneous but pernicious. Moderate atheists agree that God-belief is unjustifiable, but see nothing inherently pernicious in it. What leads to excess, they argue, is intolerant dogmatism and extremism, and these are qualities of ideologies in general, religious or nonreligious.” Phil Zuckerman (2009). Atheism and Secularity: Issues, Concepts, and Definitions. ABC-CLIO. Retrieved on 10 March 2011. “In contrast, militant atheism, as advocated by Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks, treats religion as the dangerous opium and narcotic of the people, a wrong political ideology serving the interests of antirevolutionary forces; thus force may be necessary to control or eliminate religion.”
   
   Yang, Fenggang (2004). "Between Secularist Ideology and Desecularizing Reality: The Birth and Growth of Religious Research in Communist China". Sociology of Religion 65 (2): 101–119. Sign In. "Scientific atheism is the theoretical basis for tolerating religion while carrying out atheist propaganda, whereas militant atheism leads to antireligious measures. In practice, almost as soon as it took power in 1949, the CCP followed the hard line of militant atheism. Within a decade, all religions were brought under the iron control of the Party: Folk religious practices considered feudalist superstitions were vigorously suppressed; cultic or heterodox sects regarded as reactionary organizations were resolutely banned; foreign missionaries, considered part of Western imperialism, were expelled; and major world religions, including Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism, were coerced into "patriotic" national associations under close supervision of the Party. Religious believers who dared to challenge these policies were mercilessly banished to labor camps, jails, or execution grounds.".
   
   Yang, Fenggang (2006). "The Red, Black, and Gray Markets of Religion in China". The Sociological Quarterly47 (1): 93–122. http://www.purdue.edu/crcs/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Yang3Markets.pdf. "In contrast, militant atheism, as advocated by Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks, treats religion as a dangerous narcotic and a troubling political ideology that serves the interests of antirevolutionary forces. As such, it should be suppressed or eliminated by the revolutionary force. On the basis of scientific atheism, religious toleration was inscribed in CCP policy since its early days. By reason of militant atheism, however, atheist propaganda became ferocious, and the power of “proletarian dictatorship” was invoked to eradicate the reactionary ideology (Dai 2001)".
4. Jump up↑ Multiple references:Karl Rahner (28 December 2004). Encyclopædia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi. Continuum International Publishing Group. Retrieved on 2011-06-28. “ATHEISM A. IN PHILOSOPHY I. Concept and incidence. Philosophically speaking, atheism means denial of the existence of God or of any (and not merely of a rational) possibility of knowing God (theoretical atheism). In those who hold this theoretical atheism, it may be tolerant (and even deeply concerned), if it has no missionary aims; it is "militant" when it regards itself as a doctrine to be propagated for the happiness of mankind and combats every religion as a harmful aberration.”
   
   Charles Colson, Ellen Santilli Vaughn (2007). God and Government. Zondervan. Retrieved on 21 July 2011. “But Nietzsche's atheism was the most radical the world had yet seen. While the old atheism had acknowledged the need for religion, the new atheism was political activist, and jealous. One scholar observed that "atheism has become militant . . . inisisting it must be believed. Atheism has felt the need to impose its views, to forbid competing versions."”
5. Jump up↑ Multiple references:Kerry S. Walters (2010). Atheism. Continuum International Publishing Group. Retrieved on 10 March 2011. “Both positive and negative atheism may be further subdivided into (i) militant and (ii) moderate varieties. Militant atheists, such as physicist Steven Weinberg, tend to think that God-belief is not only erroneous but pernicious. Moderate atheists agree that God-belief is unjustifiable, but see nothing inherently pernicious in it. What leads to excess, they argue, is intolerant dogmatism and extremism, and these are qualities of ideologies in general, religious or nonreligious.” Karl Rahner (28 December 2004). Encyclopædia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi. Continuum International Publishing Group. Retrieved on 2011-06-28. “ATHEISM A. IN PHILOSOPHY I. Concept and incidence. Philosophically speaking, atheism means denial of the existence of God or of any (and not merely of a rational) possibility of knowing God (theoretical atheism). In those who hold this theoretical atheism, it may be tolerant (and even deeply concerned), if it has no missionary aims; it is "militant" when it regards itself as a doctrine to be propagated for the happiness of mankind and combats every religion as a harmful aberration.” Julian Baggini (2009). Atheism. Sterling Publishing. Retrieved on 2011-06-28. “Militant Atheism: Atheism which is actively hostile to religion I would call militant. To be hostile in this sense requires more than just strong disagreement with religion—it requires something verging on hatred and is characterized by a desire to wipe out all forms of religious beliefs. Militant atheists tend to make one or both of two claims that moderate atheists do not. The first is that religion is demonstrably false or nonsense, and the second is that is is usually or always harmful.”
6. Jump up↑ Multiple references:Harold Joseph Berman (1993). Faith and Order: The Reconciliation of Law and Religion. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Retrieved on 2011-07-09. “One fundamental element of that system was its propagation of a doctrine called Marxism-Leninism, and one fundamental element of that doctrine was militant atheism. Until only a little over three years ago, militant atheism was the official religion, one might say, of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party was the established church in what might be called an atheocratic state.” J. D. Van der Vyver, John Witte (1996). Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Legal Perspectives. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Retrieved on 2011-07-09. “For seventy years, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the closing years of the Gorbachev regime, militant atheism was the official religion, one might say, of the Soviet Union, and the Communist Party was, in effect, the established church. It was an avowed task of the Soviet state, led by the Communist Party, to root out from the minds and hearts of the Soviet state, all belief systems other than Marxism-Leninism.”
7. ↑ Jump up to:7.0 7.1 Alister E. McGrath. The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World. Random House. Retrieved on 2011-03-05. “So was the French Revolution fundamentally atheist? There is no doubt that such a view is to be found in much Christian and atheist literature on the movement. Cloots was at the forefront of the dechristianization movement that gathered around the militant atheist Jacques Hébert. He "debaptised" himself, setting aside his original name of Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grâce. For Cloots, religion was simply not to be tolerated.”
8. Jump up↑ Multiple references:Gerhard Simon (1974). Church, State, and Opposition in the U.S.S.R.. University of California Press. Retrieved on 2011-07-09. “On the other hand the Communist Party has never made any secret of the fact, either before or after 1917, that it regards 'militant atheism' as an integral part of its ideology and will regard 'religion as by no means a private matter'. It therefore uses 'the means of ideological influence to educate people in the spirit of scientific materialism and to overcome religious prejudices..' Thus it is the goal of the C.P.S.U. and thereby also of the Soviet state, for which it is after all the 'guiding cell', gradually to liquidate the religious communities.” Simon Richmond (2006). Russia & Belarus. BBC Worldwide. Retrieved on 2011-07-09. “Soviet 'militant atheism' led to the closure and destruction of nearly all the mosques and madrasahs (Muslim religious schools) in Russia, although some remained in the Central Asian states. Under Stalin there were mass deportations and liquidation of the Muslim elite.”
9. ↑ Jump up to:9.0 9.1 9.2 The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion and Politics). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved on 2011-03-05. “Seeking a complete annihilation of religion, places of worship were shut down; temples, churches, and mosques were destroyed; artifacts were smashed; sacred texts were burnt; and it was a criminal offence even to possess a religious artifact or sacred text. Atheism had long been the official doctrine of the Chinese Communist Party, but this new form of militant atheism made every effort to eradicate religion completely.”
10. Jump up↑ Rodney Stark; Roger Finke (2000). Acts of Faith: explaining the human side of religion. University of California Press. Retrieved on 16 July 2011. “The militant atheism of the early social scientists was motivated partly by politics. As Jeffrey Hadden reminds us, the social sciences emerged as part of a new political "order that was at war with the old order" (1987, 590).”
11. ↑ Jump up to:11.0 11.1 11.2 Ian H. Hutchinson. Ian Hutchinson on the New Atheists. BioLogos Foundation. Retrieved on 29 September 2011. “Ian Hutchinson tells us in this video discussion that New Atheism -- a term used to describe recent intellectual attacks against religion -- is actually a misnomer. It is better, he says, to call the movement “Militant Atheism”. In fact, the arguments made by New Atheists are not new at all, but rather extensions of intellectual threads which have existed since the late 19th century. The only unique quality of this movement is the degree of criticism and edge with which its members write and speak about religion. According to Hutchinson, the books written by New Atheists in the past decade simply restate many of the same arguments which have emanated from atheist thinkers for decades. The militant edge of these arguments is what makes “New” Atheism unique and elevates it to a level of popularity within a subset of the population. It is because these Militant Atheists show no respect at all for religion, says Hutchinson, that they are receiving status as a new movement.”
12. Jump up↑ Multiple references:
    • Simon Hooper. The rise of the 'New Atheists'. Cable News Network (CNN). Retrieved on 10 March 2011. “What the New Atheists share is a belief that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises.”
    Amarnath Amarasingam. Religion and the New Atheism (Studies in Critical Social Sciences: Studies in Critical Research on Religion 1). Brill Academic Publishers. Retrieved on 10 March 2011. “For the new atheists, tolerance of intolerance (often presented in the guise of relativism of multiculturalism) is one of the greatest dangers in contemporary society.” Stephen Prothero. God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter. HarperOne. Retrieved on 10 March 2011. “For these New Atheists and their acolytes, the problem is not religious fanaticism. The problem is religion itself. So-called moderates only spread the "mind viruses" of religion by making them appear to be less authoritarian, misogynistic, and irrational than they actually are.”

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn, I suppose a frothy mouthed zealot's work is never done, paste away friend, in the name of jesus of course.

Sure.

Communism is naturalized humanism. Karl Marx

When you find this follower of Marx you came here with a burning desire to confront you can share that with him/her.

 

[Fenton Lum]

See? You can't attack my position, just me personally. You fail.

You don't have a position other than religion and believing in God are bad.

Believing in things with no proof is bad, making me agnostic.

Agnostic? You?

At least I'm realistic and also giving you a chance that if you ever come up with real proof of your god, I'm open to changing my mind. Can't be any fairer than that.

It's you who can't come up with real proof so you attempt to mock me. I bet there's a passage in the bible about that.

Realistic? You?

He's correct, you can offer no proof, your entire perceptual reality is subjective by definition.

 

[ding]

Big demographic shifts within Catholicism continue to change the face of the church. Hispanic Catholics now comprise 41 percent of the US church, up 6 points from 2007. And the average Catholic is getting a bit older, with the median age of 49 up four years. Immigration from Latin American countries has kept Catholic number stable in recent years, and 39 percent of American immigrants are Catholic.


More than a third of all millennials - those born between 1981 and 1996 - claim no affiliation, and just 16 percent identify as Catholic.

I see you changed your signature. Good move, lol.

 

[ding]

You don't have a position other than religion and believing in God are bad.

Believing in things with no proof is bad, making me agnostic.

Agnostic? You?

At least I'm realistic and also giving you a chance that if you ever come up with real proof of your god, I'm open to changing my mind. Can't be any fairer than that.

It's you who can't come up with real proof so you attempt to mock me. I bet there's a passage in the bible about that.

Realistic? You?

He's correct, you can offer no proof, your entire perceptual reality is subjective by definition.

That would be your opinion, brother. Not mine. There is plenty of evidence for the existence of a Creator. You just reject it all. I don't.

 

[Fenton Lum]

Believing in things with no proof is bad, making me agnostic.

Agnostic? You?

At least I'm realistic and also giving you a chance that if you ever come up with real proof of your god, I'm open to changing my mind. Can't be any fairer than that.

It's you who can't come up with real proof so you attempt to mock me. I bet there's a passage in the bible about that.

Realistic? You?

He's correct, you can offer no proof, your entire perceptual reality is subjective by definition.

That would be your opinion, brother. Not mine. There is plenty of evidence for the existence of a Creator. You just reject it all. I don't.

You just can't tell us about it. The Papal Bulls of the 1400's are very insightful as to the Church's view of its own role on the planet. And apparently you fecklessly hope to continue that fine tradition.