Plan B Forum

... for the sake of righteousness...

Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mi ... ming-back/

As I raised my now 30 year old daughter I made it a point to let her know that she could choose any organized religion, and/or belief system that she felt comfortable with. For me, the choice was hers alone to make. Along the way, and with no resistance from me, her mother's side of the family thought it necessary to have my daughter partake in the traditional catholic rites and sacraments that all RC children are expected to participate. To her credit she always went along with it -- without complaint -- to keep an uneasy truce going between her, her mother, and grandmother. However, to this day she has no particular ties to catholicism, or any other religious affiliation.

Even now, whenever I'm with her, I ask about her spiritual health and she assures me she is fine with the moral and lawful secular path she follows. She has never said outright that she's an atheist like her old man, but it's obvious she has no particular God to which she speaks seeking divine intervention. Sadly, I spent a good deal of my life trying to overcome the damaging stigma of my RC religion. I feel so relieved that my daughter has never experienced such a burden.

My daughter has many friends and work associates, many whom I've met, and of those around her own age, they feel the same as she does. She and her peers, also seem to be quite open and receptive to people of other faiths, and ethnicities, and those within the LGBTQ community. These are groups my strict RC upbringing told me to avoid lest I fall into sinful ways. For a bit of perspective, I was told by the nuns and priests alike that Jesus was killed by the Jews, and I'd go to Hell if I skipped Sunday mass and died before my next confession, and if I didn't believe in God I was nothing more than a godless communist. Thank God I tossed all these psychological mind games in the dumpster behind the convent as I left my grade school behind. All that boogeyman nonsense nearly suffocated my humanity.

Looking back realistically I truly feel Karl Marx had it right: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people". No wonder the millennials are walking away from organized religion in droves. As I always say, "religion -- it's going to kill us all."

Oh, and God bless America.

Millennials have their own religion — materialism.  They grew up on Nintendo, Pokemon — gotta catch 'em all! — and SUVs that cost more than my dad paid for the family home, and matured during the age of $700 smartphones, 'designer' craft beers, 'on-demand' TV shows, and doorstep delivery of dinner from that trendy overpriced restaurant (or even Mickey D's, because it's all about the convenience of having someone else bring it to you — after all, you're too important and your time is too valuable to do menial shit like that for yourself!)  And just like the older generations who will throw away their last dime to some TV televangelist for a "prayer cloth" or some "miraculous water" that the dude prayed over, they will bankrupt themselves to get the newest, best, most expensive version of any of them.

If any of them show signs of an older religion, it's the "prosperity gospel" version that says I'm good and I DESERVE to be rewarded by the cosmic scorekeeper.

Thanks but no thanks.  I'll still believe in the Jewish dude hanging on a cross.  And if it turns out that I die and I was wrong and there is no afterlife in a land of all good things that is flowing with milk and honey and where the streets are paved with gold, well, then, I guess I'm dead and it didn't make a damned bit of difference anyway.

-"BB"-

No one/few think they need religion when they’re 25.

At 25 I thought I needed religion. But then again, I was born before the boomers, during the Great Depression.

My hero then and now is Dietrich Bonhoeffer (see brief entry in Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer. My book shelves contain 4 biographies, several commentaries, and 11 volumes of his collected works but not the complete set)

In his later works while in prison he expressed his hope for the future--a world of followers of Jesus, without religion. I think I am living in the early evidence of that as a real possibility.

snailgate.

Burning Petard wrote:a world of followers of Jesus, without religion.

That would be quite lovely, indeed. Assuming he meant following the actual teachings of Jesus, minus all the later narratives claiming he was the son of God and creating all the bullshit dogma the various brands of Christianity have attempted to indoctrinate over generations, very often to the complete distraction from the basic message to love others as yourself and care for the least among us.

I see little evidence of such selfless love among ANY of the generations, certainly not among the many olders who don’t seem to care much for the struggles of the young in the broken economic system that’s been created since the 80s, nor for the environmental devastation being wrought to fuel that system and keep those olders swimming in plastic and SUVs and convenience at the expense of a terrible world left to their grandchildren.

All this millennial hating puzzles me - I don’t know many millennials who can afford anything like the consumption that most boomers have enjoyed, heck I don’t know many Gen X who are able to consume like that. I know many, in fact, who couldn’t afford to have children and have never been able to own homes either. I’m sure that’s all because they eat avocado toast or whatever. I do know a number of millennials who have embraced minimalism - partly because they believe strongly in that philosophy and partly because it gives one something to excuse one's inability to participate in the standard American gluttonous lifestyle.

And all this generational hating from good Christians just reminds me why I no longer believe such creatures exist. Me, who very nearly went to GTS instead of Georgetown Law.

They exist BSG, as do many good people among other religions and among the non religious. These are the people who man the soup kitchens and run the food pantries; people who work to resettle immigrants and to foster displaced children until they can be reunited with families; people who go into the prisons and mental hospitals to lend a helping hand and let those there know they are not forgotten, and the people who generally do their best to make this a better world.

Religion can help make us better or worse human beings; the choice is still ours. Sadly, many people choose the easier path and become less than we could be.

Bicycle Bill wrote:... and SUVs that cost more than my dad paid for the family home...

What a lot of old people like yourself forget is inflation over the years.

Let's say your dad paid $10,000 for a home in 1955, the purchasing power of that same amount would be $96,000 in 2019 money. And that's way more than most SUVs today.

A nice car in 1955 would average around $1,500, but with inflation, today you'd pay $15,000 -- which might buy you a 2019 Chevy Spark without many options. No wonder some millennials are buying those SUVs -- they are safer and more practical in the long run.

A long time ago I read economic/marketing reports from Ford that said their new cars were priced to sell for a third or a quarter of the buyer's annual salary. With that datum, the price of new cars today looks about the same.

Yes that '55 Chevy Bel Air could be had for less than $2000. But it would not be legal to sell today--no air bag, no seat belt, dirty exhaust, no back up camera, . . .

And that 2-speed automatic was a real bummer.

snailgate