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Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4m ago
I don't think that Buddhism as such will become that important, but Buddhist stuff will continue to percolate to what could be called "Western folk religion" (compare to Chinese folk religion), ie the mix of vague Christian remnant beliefs, New Age / occult influences, Eastern influences, (often imagined) Western pagan stuff, superstitions, pseudoscience, modern cults like UFO/UAP enthusiasts and QAnon etc ec. that really characterizes what many "secular" people (and some ostensible trad religion believers) actually believe in, at least at some level. Perhaps at some point something new will come out of this mix.
The Catholic church cares and a bunch of traditional Christian churches and systems of morality care. A lot of Churches forbid masturbation and have shame circles where men confess to masturbating and try not to do it. I don't think the Catholics go that far but masturbation is still considered a sin.
Also while in traditional cultures the bride might not care if the groom is a virgin. She will care if he's a known womanizer because she wants him to be faithful to her after the wedding.
2rafa
13m ago
the supposed trend of people converting to Catholicism is mostly a few high-profile examples
Right, interestingly it mirrors a longstanding trend in England of edgier intellectuals (of both the right and left) who want something a little more esoteric and different converting to Catholicism, which has been a thing for a couple of hundred years.
MayorofOysterville
21m ago
I think America particularly will become more and more secular. I think that the TradCath community will grow but will end up like the Amish or Hasidics. I think the majority will be secularish. Axial age religions are not they only religious framework and Science can replace a lot of what pre-axial religions are very mechanistic and less concerned with morality. Sumerian religion barely had an afterlife and in that sense was rather athiestic. China was morally guided by philosophy more than religion for thousands of years. I don't think a retvrn to societies centered on moralistic religions promising eternal bliss is a given. The intense religiosity of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period seem to be something of an outlier.
I could see a kind of Progressivism as a unifying philosophy combined with many different faiths ala Confucianism. We can see this a little bit with woke people today they don't care what religion you are as long as your beliefs are subservient to woke tenants.
MayorofOysterville
32m ago
Not being against the Gays is one of the more salient points. Christianity being seen as anti-Gay has significantly harmed it's worth as a moral philosophy to modern western people. Also why the texts of Christianity are very anti materialist it tends not to be seen that way in the US.
MayorofOysterville
39m ago
Hey I appreciate your response I was pretty disappointed when my effort post didn't show up forever so glad to know you at least saw it!. For what it's worth I think despite all the time it gets holocaust education in the West is pretty bad and pretty much any thinking person is going to have them based in the high school curriculum version of it we get taught. I spend a fair amount of time on /r/askhistorians and the amount of liberals with massive doubts about the holocaust is pretty telling. Well not doubts exactly they tepidly come in writing paragraphs of disclaimers about how they believe the official story but there are massive gaps where the tory they've been told makes no sense. Most true deniers start here as well and they are almost always arguing against the version they were taught in high school. IE the camps separated out of all context and a lot of myths thrown in combined with strawman version of Nazi ideology.
Most teachers are unwilling/incapable and probably just a little scared to actually explain Nazi ideology and goals and the Eastern Front is severely undertaught and without either of those the Holocaust narrative taught doesn't actually add up. and there are tons and tons of "Good Liberals" with those same doubts they are just to scared to voice them for fear of being labeled a denier. I actually think one of the reasons people get so hysterical when the Holocaust gets even slightly questioned is because many of them can't counter skeptical arguments at all so they are just running off pure emotion.
NewCharlesInCharge
59m ago
If religion is transmissible and religious individuals are more fertile than the irreligious then it seems inevitable that the secular will be simply outbred, no?
Winning “converts” to secularism is a small tactical victory if they go on to have fewer than two children.
My understanding is that the situation with American Orthodoxy is that there's a fair amount of new fervent converts, at least compared to the previous baseline, but the general trend of secularization is also causing people from traditional immigrant communities (Greeks, Russians, Serbs) to drop out, and that they thus far balance each other out. However, if this continues, at some point the growth in new convert-run parishes could be expected to overtake the secularization process, especially if there are marriages and natural growth (though that might require appeal beyond the current category of young men...)
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