New PEW Reseach Study

[JTC]

The latest PEW study shows belief in God down while atheists & believers of nothing are up. It was a statistical study which means they don't look into why, the effects, nor what might happen in the future. I realize collage students can't do a professional study but you can do a non scientific survey that asks why this happened. I'm not being silly because me and a classmate did such a survey back in 1973-74. We asked, Do you believe in God? We found a majority did, earning ourselves A's and B's for that class.

  I'm challenging some of you to create a similar study and earn a good grade also. The PEW study focused on millennial aged people, which many of you know well. Some of you may even be millennial's. You don't need a lot of questions, I seem to remember our survey had only 20 questions. Your professor can tell you the minimum needed to get a good grade. I think this is a subject many of you probably know a lot about. The point is to learn about surveys, get a good grade, and possibly even why this happened.

  I have a hunch, but it is also my basis from 30 to 40 yrs ago. Back then I was down on couple's who had kids, and that called themselves believers because they did not show their children what a real person of God is like. A common excuse was, "kids don't know anything. They believe whatever we tell them. Their only real concern is toys, or maybe television." I always knew this was false. Children are quite bright and they watch everything their parents and other adults they know do & say. What children lack is the wisdom to process what they see & hear. They misunderstand much so they necessarily come to erroneous conclusions. Although, they may be right about their parents but wrong in how they reacted to it. Wrong from our POV of course.  Many of you are millennial aged, what is your hunch, we should discuss this. It's important and now you are either soon going to become parents or you are already. If we can get an educated guess as to why this happened maybe you can save your children from further falling away.

  I always did like helping people and I know some of you do as well. I sincerely hope some of you take this challenge to heart.

  But even if none of you do, I still think we should discuss this. You can start, I'll be back tomorrow. I had a very tiring day.

God Bless

[Clipper]

I've seen the Pew Research Survey myself, and this is a trend that's been happening and observable for a while. I'm not even a millennial, I'm Gen Z, and I can count the number of friends I know who identify as Christian on one hand. Almost every Christian identifying person I personally know are all the Catholics on the mom's side of my family, and besides a couple of them they're not very religious either.

I'm not going to bother collecting a data set to rival Pew's, their's is pretty good. The fact of the matter is every reputable data collection source has marked about the same decline in Christian identifying people over the past few decades. If you do look at Pew's report, there is a clear generational decline in Christian identifying people from the Silent Generation to Millennials, and I'd expect that to carry into Gen Z as well.

A friend of mine decided to go to a church service about a month and half ago after never attending a service in his life, he said it felt cult-like. I'm not sure what kind of church he went to, but I can easily see how Christianity can seem that way from an outside perspective and especially in an increasingly secular society.

[JTC]

15 hours ago, Clipper said:

I'm not going to bother collecting a data set to rival Pew's, their's is pretty good.

Hi Clipper,  I wasn't saying to try and rival Pew, that would be impossible for collage students. I meant this as a learning experience plus getting a good grade. I'm assuming the professors in certain classes still require projects like this. I'm not sure, since I did mine over 40 yrs ago, but I think the course was given by the Sociology dept. Or it may have been a social psychology course. We were told to first pick a partner 2. pick a topic that's relevant and partly unknown for our society. A female friend I had on campus wanted me to work with her. I think Patty chose the topic because those were my atheist years. We had to postulate what our results would be. I expected a majority would say they didn't believe in any God but Patty thought the opposite of me. We had a pathetically small sample and most were students. The questions were all multiple choice. I honestly cannot remember even 1.

  I wanted students today to get an idea of why the percentage of believers is declining. Maybe we can just discuss this, I'd like to hear what you other Worthy members think. Whatever reasons you might have, something interesting just occurred to me. We are all believers and that may color our perception of why more folks are falling away now. So after we discuss this, it would be very interesting to find out if non believers see this any different.

   Alright, I still think a major factor is the hypocrisy of parents who claim to be believers but these parents were not nice to their kids. Maybe the parents weren't even married, not to each other. This is important to know because now we are allowing gay & lesbian couples to raise kids. I think by 13 or 15 any child will find out that the God of Christians, Jews, Catholics, even the Muslim god too all disapprove of homosexuality. What will a young teen think, what will they conclude about God? My hunch is they will either decide God isn't real or else that God is mean, stupid and cruel. Especially if the teen had homosexual parents that were good.

   But what happens to a child that has 1 male and 1 female parents but those parents make the child's life more miserable than words. To top it off, suppose the child constantly heard talk about God but the parents did not live up to any of the talk. Those kids are already adults.

  I can write a book on this, but I want to hear from you.

[TraceMalin]

Just one of the reasons in declining belief I've noticed is that ever since 9/11, all religions have been in the crosshairs in America. Christianity and Judaism were dragged into the condemnation of Islamic terrorism by the left. The left controls education and you've had a generation grow up with religion being mocked. Kids learn that the Israelites killed to get the promised land in the Bible, and the Israelis are accused of being the Nazis today when it comes to the Palestinians. The Spanish Inquisition and all the deaths from missionary expansion into the New World are taught in schools rather than the values of Christianity. "Thoughts and prayers" are now being mocked by leftist politicians when it comes to mass shootings against 2A supporters. The media no longer treats priests with respect due to the scandal of sexual abuse. The only people in America not attacked for their beliefs are blacks. During the Democratic Debate in Detroit, the Perfecting Church Choir opened with "America the Beautiful." The Perfecting Church is very Biblical. Not only are they not for same-sex marriage, but they believe the husband is the head of the home and wives should submit. If they were white, they would never have been on stage. 

It's trendy to be LGBTQ+ and God is out because He discriminates. 

 

 

[JTC]

1 hour ago, TraceMalin said:

Kids learn that the Israelites killed to get the promised land in the Bible, and the Israelis are accused of being the Nazis today when it comes to the Palestinians.

This is a very good point, Trace. I'm kinda embarrassed to admit that I struggled with how the Jews got the land of Israel until 8 yrs ago. Oh sure I knew the story but I worked with a man from Egypt who made me feel the pain of being displaced from your home. So up until this decade I often wondered just what kind of God we're following. Then I went into forced retirement which gave me 10 or more hrs a day to read scripture and ponder it's meaning. I developed a new respect for the ancient Jews along with a love of God I had only heard about. I realized that the land God gave back to Israel was always supposed to be theirs. Further I learned that the chaos of the ancient world was a direct result of Gen. 6: 1-4. I always thought there must be more to this than what can be said in 4 verses. There was a lot more, there was more in the Bible and even more in an apocryphal book. Just because a book isn't inspired is no reason to reject all it says if it answers questions with no answers. We use the writing of Josephus, Philo and many others who weren't inspired of God. Most of the land God gave back to Israel was inhabited by giants. The offspring of the original giants that lead to God trying to wipe them from the globe all at once. Then most recently I've learned of a scholar of the Bible who pointed out what was there all along. I always knew there are a vast multitude of spiritual beings, I used to ignore them as God recommends. Nevertheless, the words God and then gods in Psalm 82 has bugged me for 2 yrs. I knew the gods were not equivalent to the God at the beginning. God asked these other gods to watch over all the nations except Israel after the Babel Tower incident. Those gods betrayed the Most High God as well as knifing mankind in the back. God intends to have all the other peoples and nations back. Giving the Jews the land of Israel was step 1. 

  But of course the teachers in public schools will never tell the kids all this. I can see how not knowing this can change them from Catholics & Christians into, "uhh, I don't believe in anything, really". We have to get the word out, God didn't do anything bad, it was bad angels that caused all the harm. I usually refer to them as devils, not to be confused with The Devil aka Satan.