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I was never a "fundamentalist" or anything that could be described that, but I was strongly religious until about 17-18 years old. However, I always had a nagging problem with biblical stories because I was also a good student and had trouble resolving the inherent conflict between those two realities. I tried since probably second grade to come up with an explanation that made sense in both worlds. Maybe that was only because I grew up in a particularly open-minded Lutheran church. It wasn't until I got older and was in confirmation classes in middle school that the assistant minister admitted that Christians literally believe the Earth is a few thousand years old. They were always very open to everyone, but they also begrudgingly concluded that homosexuality was a sin when I was in high school Sunday school classes. Incidents like that really helped to jar my personal beliefs and for the first time ever, honestly question what I believed to be true. Up until then, I partially did believe and partially did what people said. It took a lot of self-reflection (over several years) to realize that my beliefs were a direct result of being told what is "truth" in the religion that everyone I knew was a part of. I've been bringing this up in discussion with three of my friends as I was going through that period, and as a result of their own self-reflection, two have become atheist and one is more or less fed up with organized religion. It's a hard thing to face, and I can't get too upset that people react so defensively when the things they so adamantly and unquestionably believe are questioned by someone else. All I'd ask is that people make an honest effort to step back and evaluate why and how they came to their faith. Very smart people have done some amazing things while also being religious (Issac Newton basically invented modern calculus to explain the gravitational fields of the solar system and their interaction, yet was religious and an alchemist). Based on the trends of demographics, I think this issue is likely going to sort itself out over time. The only concern is how fast it will go and how much will we delay the progression of knowledge. Long-term trendlines mean far less to the person who is stuck waiting for a turn. You won't be able to berate believers into changing their minds with facts and counterarguments, regardless of their validity. That's not how the human brain works. As an aside, I just went to a wedding this weekend and got my first direct exposure to a religious event in a couple years now. Having been gone that long, the entire process felt a little creepy. Particularly when everyone kept saying "lord hear our prayer" in unison, out in the middle of the wilderness by a river. Very cult-like, but I had never thought of it that way when I was a member. |
I am far less certain of that, at least assuming that we're talking about time scales of a few generations. In fact, I don't think I could ever adequately express my gratitude for people like Sagan and Nye and Attenborough and Tyson; I often wonder if they aren't the only people that are meaningfully preventing a massive, long-term swing into anti-intellectualism and religious doctrine in the U.S.