Why is religion Failing?

Religion can be helped with good marketing, but in the long run it has to satisfy some need or desire of the people who practice it. In a world of chaos some 'larger than yourself' direction or goal helps one to keep an even keel. Various religions do this in various ways. They provide a common social-context/frame-of-reference. (we all laugh at the same things, get concerned at the same things, do similar things, etc.) Other social organizations can do this too, but religion gives a mystical/otherworldliness to it. There can be a great sense of enpowerment when you reach for some believed in unknown.

This is not to say that there may be some genuine extra universal power to it. Blind acceptance of the explanation of that extra universiality doesn't seem prudent to me.

I am my own religion. (joking sort of)
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Why is the "church" failing? Because it is OUT OF STEP with the modern world, would be the simple answer:

The so-called "Christian Church" has slowly failed the spiritual needs of moderns for a number of centuries because of several factors which has caused it to become something of a laughing stock among thinking persons what with the Information Age in which we today live:

l. The Christian Church (like Judaeism) reflects a totally outdated and unscientific Weltanschauung ("world-view") which does NOT conform to post Age of Englightenment scientific findings (i.e. sicknesses are not caused by Fever Daemons that need to be excorcised by magic spells (e.g. Talitha cumi) as R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean believed ("Jeezuzz" to the modern Americans)---and no, Joshua did NOT command the SUN and the MOON to STAND STILL (Joshua chapter 10) so he could finish a Battle. These are the kind of mindless ravings which turn people AWAY from Churches and Synagogues.

2. The anti-Gentile (US v. THEM) racism inherent in the message is untenable to most people in the 21st century "age of Tolerance" (see Matt chapter 15: I have COME ONLY TO SAVE THE LOST SHEEP OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL...SINCE WHEN IS IT RIGHT TO TAKE THE BREAD OF THE CHILDREN OUT OF THEIR MOUTHS AND THROW IT AWAY ON THE DOGS UNDER THE TABLE?, where "dogs" refers to Goyim or Gentiles, i.e. Non Jews)

To say nothing of the exclusivist number of saved "saints" (a paltry 144,000) who all happen to be Male Virgins. Which would discount most people on the planet after age 21...(read the Apocalypse of Yohanon the Elder aka the socalled "Book of Revelation" which most Christians seem to refer to in the plural for some reason)...

3. The use of Magical Mystery Language in the socalled "Pauline corpus" is that of the Pagan Mystery Religions of the 1st century floating around the Roman Empire (e.g. Eleusian Mysteries of Demeter, the Mysteries of Dionysius, The Mysteries of Attis, the Mysteries of Orpheus, the Mysteries of Isis/Osiris, the Mysteries of Osiris-Hapi (Serpapis) etc. and is wholly unscientific in outlook with very little to recommend itself in the Information Age where we DO NOT BELIEVE in a TRIPLE DECKER UNIVERSE, or in Virgin Births (along the Pagan Models), or in Angels or Daemons, or people walking out of their graves (Matthew 24), Rabbis changing water into wine like the Greek god Dionysius who had a cult centre at Cana in Galilee curiously, or stories of "Jeeezuzz" magically walking on water, or raising dead disciples out of their rotting graves etc. etc.

People want something more scientifically tangible, not 1st century Judeo-Christian Magical Symbolism only truly understood by a Rabinnic Midrashist e.g.

("Behold I tell you a MUSTERION: we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed in a moment: in the twinkling of an eye; at the last Trumpet...but those who are left alive shall be caught up with the Lord in the Air...") where does Paul and his End Days poets think the "raptured saved" will be floating? Somewhere between Saturn and Neptune perhaps?

4. The Dead Sea Scrolls revealed to the world that the "text of the Old Testament" (i.e. the Hebrew Bible used by Christians and Jews today) was not fixed or immutable until fairly late, and that a number of parallel versions existed side by side, some of them much much older (and different) than the so called rreceived Masoretic Text (from a single text c. AD 850 from Leningrad).

Because of these vast differences between the Masoertic Text, the Hebrew Vorlage to the Seputaginta, the Aramaic Targums, the Pe#ta, the Text behind the Vulgate and all the thousands of Dead Sea Scroll variant readings we find in texts 1000 years older than the Masoretic "official" Old Testament, (which comprises some 20% of the text) it can no longer be therefore considered the Word of any "god"...

5. 20th and 21st century Archaeology has dis-proven most of the "events" in the "bible" as they are related to the true history of Palestine which Archaeology is unearthing every day (i.e. the stories in the "bible" are just that---midrashic moral stories, not modern positivistic "his-tory"") much less science.

The fact that the so-called "Genesis" Creation Myths do not agree with each other (Genesis chapter 1 verses Genesis chapter 2 are contradictory) is bad enough, but also there are unscientific ideas throughout (Gen 1:5-6: Vegetation was NOT created BEFORE the SUN and the STARS...for example, despite the P writers claims to the contrary)!

The mythical idea of a "world flood" has shown to be a local event surrounding the Black Sea Area (BC 7500-BC 5500) and not Universal, and science has disproved the other myths in Genesis in general, as well as what follows (in the Patriarchal naratives of "Avraham, Yitzaac and Yakkov" which are expressed in late, post Exilic Hebrew from BC 480, long after the time it purports to tell about) much of the the socalled "history" in the "former prophets" (Samuel/Kings) as well as "fake monotheism" before BC 480 including the size of the tiny kingdom of David, the role of pagan borrowings of the Yahwistic cults from the Jebusite priesthood and royal family (cf: the revised cult of YHWH in Jerusalem (atop Mt Moriah) during the time of David and Solomon, where Zadok the Priest usurps Abiathar etc.)

6. Linguistic Scientists now know that Moses (the so-called "Mosaic Authorship") could not have written the Torah (he does not actually admit to writing it of course, only tradition names him as the author...), but that the First 5 Books of the Old Testament are the product of c. 1000 years of editing, manipulation, excision, borrowings from pagan cultures such as the 47 Negative Confessions of Egypt and the Law Codes of Hammurabi some 500 years BEFORE Moses, as well as spuroius marginalia additions, midrashic expansions, outright mis-translations, bad etymology and re-forming at least 7 times since the time of David (BC 980) to the time of the Macabbean revolt (165 BC) which was the last stage of the re-writes.

Most of what we read in the Old Testament generally comes from the post Exilic Period after Babylon, written during the Persian Period (BC 500 to 331 BC) moreover, much of the material is expressed in a very late Hebrew dialect (especially the non-poetical portions).

Read WHO WROTE THE BIBLE ? by Richard Elliot Friedmann (a student of the great Frank Moore Cross at Harvard) who breaks down the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis for the layperson...

These are some of the reasons why the Church is losing membership worldwide (both Catholic and Protestant) and why practicing "orthodox" Judaeism (whatever that means) is seriously on the decline as well.

People want to know what REALLY happens to them when they die, not "fairy stories" with a marked "Zionist Agenda" where at the Last Judgment the Gentiles will all burn forever in some imaginary and magical Lake of Fire.

All of this has no relevance to the average person living in the Information Age where facts have become life and death, and where dis-inifrmation on just about everything has become rampant.

You can sell people dogma if your the sheep can't read.

As soon as they can read for themselves its over, see the effect the Gutenberg printing press had on the Vatican and its European control.

So its failing to con the masses into believing? Thats a good thing!

Originally posted by junior_smith

i wouldn't say failing per say, it is probably a poor choice of words, but if you look at the number of christians compared to the past 50 years it has gone down dramatically,

First let me clarify a few things. The post began with the question "Why is Religion Failing?" I for one did not particularly agree that it was, so I asked for further clarification. The first point by junior_smith to help clarify is quoted above, and though there were other comments, regarding why the question was asked, it was admitted that maybe the point was still not clear. But I would like to address the above comment because it was part of the basis of the thread (but bear in mind from the above statement it may be the perception that Christianity is failing - not religion in general. Therefore I submit the following:

There is no dramatic decrease in the number of Christians over the past 50 years. It has perhaps changed in the last century, but it has not declined.
Please see the following link. (I believe this was published in 2002, but as it discusses the the whole prior century I feel it is valid.)

World religions by the numbers GEORGE WEIGEL

www.catholiceducation.org...

Per this article:

"There were only 558 million Christians in the world in 1900 and there will be approximately 2 billion Christians by the middle of this year, a huge increase. But as a percentage of world population, Christianity has been treading water for a century: Christians were 34.5 percent of world population in 1900, and will be 33.1 percent in 2002."

So at the very least Christianity by the numbers - continue to increase, as a percentage - though not growing, they are fairly steady.

From the following site:

www.t21.ca...

You will find:

-Annual Table of World Religions, 1900-2025

Source: "Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission" by David B. Barrett & Todd M. Johnson
in International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Jan 1999, pg 24-25.

Even from 1970 to 2000 - considerable growth.

And for my own added little chuckle to those of you who are deluding yourselves about the fact that religion is now and will become increasingly unnecessary - I submit the following from the same site:

"A level growth of Nonreligious Persons.
While the growth rate of Islam is increasing, the worldwide growth of persons professing no religion, whether agnostics, freethinkers, atheists or non-religious humanists appears to have plateaued."

By the way, you all may want to make note of the part about the growth rate of Islam. Though currently the 2nd largest denomination in the world (if you lump all Christians together as the largest) it's growth far surpases any other denomination.

From the first link provided:

Note: Catholics make up approx. half of the "Christian" denomination.

"Islam is the fastest growing major religion in the world today. From a population base of 200 million in 1900, Islam grew more than fivefold during the twentieth century. The change in Muslim/Catholic demographics over the past thirty years is striking. In 1970 there were 554 million Muslims in the world, and 666 millions Catholics; by the Great Jubilee of 2000, Islam could count 1.2 billion adherents, and Catholicism almost 1.1 billion. 1.3 billion Catholics in 2025 will find themselves in a world with 1.8 billion Muslims."

Food for thought: This dramatic increase in Islam over the past 30 years, is not due to conversion as much as it is due to procreation, something the rest of the world prefers to inhibit/limit/control.

If any of you have read Valhall's recent news report, this particular fact might strike a chord.

By the way, though it's off the topic, I can't recommend Valhall's thread highly enough. Do check it out. (Quite frankly, I think it should be required reading if you are here to Deny Ignorance.)

To clarify, it is not about religion.

www.abovetopsecret.com...