Mass Apostasy?
The latest Pew study is bad news for Christianity. (Or is it?) In a study of 36 countries, published just last week, Pew found that Christians are abandoning their faith in droves.
In many countries around the world, a fifth or more of all adults have left the religious group in which they were raised. Christianity and Buddhism have experienced especially large losses from this “religious switching,” while rising numbers of adults have no religious affiliation, according to Pew Research Center surveys of nearly 80,000 people in 36 countries. —Pew
But the biggest losses are coming from the Christian denominations. Here’s Pew again:
In most of the countries surveyed, Christianity has the highest ratios of people leaving to people joining – the largest net losses. In Germany, for example, this ratio among Christians is 19.7 to 1.0, meaning there are nearly 20 Germans who say they were raised as Christians in childhood but don’t consider themselves Christian today for every one German who has become a Christian after being raised in another world religion or in no religion.—Pew
Triumph of the New Atheists
Which religions are people switching to?
Most of the movement has been into the category we call religiously unaffiliated, which consists of people who answer a question about their religion by saying they are atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”
In other words, most of the switching is disaffiliation – people leaving the religion of their childhood and no longer identifying with any religion.—Pew
What Does It All Mean?
We can wonder about the implications of this global cultural shift, and, no doubt, we can expect to see this question debated all over the blogosphere. Let me give you my two-cents now. Actually, I’ve already given you more than a year’s salary on the subject with my podcast SOUL SCIENCE. Many of the shows were devoted to research linking Christianity to human flourishing. So my constant drumbeat has been to warn my audience that the loss of Christianity may harm people in tangible ways, such as mental health. I mean, in a nutshell, if the mind is spiritual, then mental health would certainly depend on spiritual health, right?
Enlightenment Now?
Of course, not everyone agrees with me. Just check the comments on my blog. Steven Pinker is one fellow who certainly would not agree with me. The Harvard professor has made a good living churning out non-academic books in praise of secular humanism. Pinker argued in his book Enlightenment Now that the movement away from Christianity was a step toward progress that would promote reason, science, humanism, and democratic values over authoritarianism—values that he links to the 18th-century Enlightenment. You’ve all seen the yard sign for secular humanism, I’m sure.
Enlightenment—Secular or Not?
When Pinker was challenged on his Enlightenment analysis by a critic who pointed out that the Enlightenment developed from a Christian culture, Pinker declared this to be an unverifiable and unfortunate accident of history. He is confident that the values he links to a “secular” Enlightenment are in no way causally dependent on Christianity. And he further maintains that there is just no way to test the hypothesis anyway. He is wrong. We can test his theory that Enlightenment values are antithetical to Christianity by measuring his theory against the waxing and waning of Christianity in society.
The Secular Humanist Celebrity Test
One quick barometer of Pinker’s optimism about the prospects for a new secular Enlightenment is to look at public figures who are secular humanists. Are they great champions of democracy and human rights?
- Keir Starmer: He is the first “openly” atheist British prime minister in history. When he came to the White House, he was criticized for not defending free speech by our Catholic vice president. Steven Pinker promised that secular humanists tolerate differences of opinion and that there’s no need to worry about getting arrested for thought crimes when the humanists are in charge. Well, apparently Starmer didn’t get the memo. Quite a large number of arrests have been made of British citizens who committed the crime of “free speech” online.
- Bill Gates. Bill Gates is one of Steven Pinker’s biggest secular humanist fans. But in recent interviews, he has come out as a critic of free speech. He especially opposes any speech that disagrees with him. In this interview, Gates appears to be comparing [COVID?] Vaccine hesitancy to shouting fire in a crowded theater. It’s difficult not to hear his statements as an approval of the kind of censorship of medical experts that took place during the COVID years. Ask yourself this question. Why should Bill Gates enjoy more free speech about vaccine safety than actual doctors and medical experts? The answer is that he shouldn’t. Is it the position of Steven Pinker and other secular humanists that free speech is reserved for them only? That is certainly not what Pinker advertised in his book. Pinker assured us that humanists would protect free speech, not undermine it. Yet one could write a book about all the secular institutions that actively promote censorship.
- Sam Harris: The new atheist ally of Steven Pinker advocated overthrowing a free and fair election to get his favorite candidate in power.
- Democrats: It is well established that the Democratic Party is the party of the secular humanists. Which is hard to square with a recent study that showed that 55% of surveyed Democrats favor assassination of President Trump and Elon Musk.
Materialism Over Humanism
Now I’m not accusing Pinker of lying about what in fact secular humanists believe. I’m suggesting that, while secular humanism may sound good on paper, the practice of it may actually be a different animal altogether. And that’s because the humanism of secularists competes with another of their pet dogmas—materialism.
Secularists like Pinker believe that the material world is all we have. This one physical life is our only opportunity to enjoy happiness and fulfillment. And so secularists place a very high value on the here and now. Pinker argues that secularists value our life on earth more than Christians do because Christians “value souls over lives.” According to Pinker, a Christian concern for the next life causes them to be inattentive to suffering in this life. It is this alleged lack of concern for the suffering of humanity that disqualifies Christians for inclusion among the exclusive ranks of humanists.
Dr.Leonard Sax: Materialism Always Trumps Humanism
When Dr. Leonard Sax was on the Megyn Kelly Show to discuss the Luigi Mangione assassination of insurance CEO Brian Thompson, he blamed the murder on Mangione’s education at a private, secular school. According to Dr. Sax, they don’t teach humanism in secular schools. They teach materialism. This is the view that human happiness comes from winning the biggest share of material goods and that the ends justifies the means in the competition for material well-being.
Crimes and Misdemeanors
In the movie Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen shows us how secular humanists balance their humanistic values with their materialist theory of happiness. The main character is a prominent doctor and philanthropist who sits on the boards of several charities. And he takes personal charity very seriously. He helps out his brother-in-law financially by paying for a lavish wedding for his niece. And all this charity comes from an atheist, proving that you don’t need God to be good after all.
But our charitable atheist doctor hits a bump on the road to Shambhala. Our secular humanist doctor is also a materialist who likes the good things of life. And the trouble now is that he promised his stewardess girlfriend that he would leave his wife and marry her. Of course that wouldn’t fly with his country-club friends, and his impatient girlfriend has already attempted to contact his wife. The girlfriend is also threatening to reveal to the police that he’s been embezzling from the charities he runs.
The good doctor realizes that he has only one shot at material happiness in this life, and that going to jail is a detour he can ill afford. So he does the only thing a rational man of science and disciple of secular humanism would do. He hires a hit man to bump off the girlfriend.
Just a minor bump on the secular humanist road to Shambhala.****
With that minor nuisance out of the way, the good atheist doctor can get back to his quiet, happy life and to the charity work that is so near and dear to his secular humanist heart.
Secular Humanists Are Deadly
Let me suggest that Woody Allen’s secular humanist doctor serves as a useful template for understanding today’s Leftists. They sincerely love life and humanity so much that they want to bring us all together to Shambhala. With the right political leaders and policies, Leftists believe Shambhala is attainable.
Thus, anyone who interferes with their political aims is an enemy of Shambhala. Secular humanists have convinced themselves, that, for the sake of Shambhala, they just need to kill all the Republicans, and then they can go on being the kind, compassionate people they know that they are—you know—down deep—underneath all the messiness that happens in life, when, you know—secular humanists don’t get their way.
(****Why all the references to “Shambhala”? Well, first, I think it captures Steven Pinker’s Vibe Aura. The song also serves as a perfect anthem for the Woodstock boomers like Bill and Hillary Clinton who epitomize—so completely—the utter abandonment of sixties idealism in favor of secular narcissistic materialism. Look at the video of all the Tesla Terrorists and count the disproportionate number of Woodstock Shambhalites. It makes me wonder—whatever happened to “the flowers in their eyes”?)
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