Summary
Churches across the U.S. are grappling with dwindling attendance and financial instability, forcing many to close or sell properties.
The Diocese of Buffalo has shut down 100 parishes since the 2000s and plans to close 70 more. Nationwide, church membership has dropped from 80% in the 1940s to 45% today.
Some churches repurpose their land to survive, like Atlanta’s First United Methodist Church, which is building affordable housing.
Others, like Calcium Church in New York, make cutbacks to stay open. Leaders warn of the long-term risks of declining community and support for churches.
That’s not magic. Magic is supernatural, meaning it does not obey physical laws.
If things do not always obey physical laws, such as much of what happens in the Bible in terms of magic, then how can you ever trust the scientific method?
How is there a valid scientific method in a universe where 40 days of rain covers an entire planet with water or a staff can be thrown onto the ground and turned into a snake?
Not defending the Bible, but I think a lot of the big claims of the Bible (that take place in the “real world”) could be attributed to mistranslations, misunderstandings, or lies.
Like I said, Christianity or science. It can’t be both. If it’s a mistranslation, a misunderstanding or a lie, it doesn’t matter. The Bible as written and believed as the fundamental doctrine of Christianity says it’s true.
And if there is no magic, Jesus loses a great deal of his importance. He’s certainly not worthy of worship if he had no magic powers. Veneration, maybe, but hell defies any sort of scientific scrutiny. A fiery furnace for an etherial soul, as it is described, makes no sense in a rational world.
My head canon is that Jesus was kind of a flamboyant street magician (if not a con artist) whose tricks were exaggerated by storytellers of the time.
Optimistically, things in the Bible weren’t meant to be taken literally, but got corrupted over the centuries. And it also explicitly became a tool to control people.
I think that people who take the Bible literally are probably going against the idea that the authors and Jesus (separately) had about what they’d said/written.
But I’m an Atheist, not a theologist or anything, lol
Optimistic and not reflective of the beliefs at the time. Jesus himself is pretty explicit about following the Old Testament laws, so I’m guessing he thought the rest of it was true or he wouldn’t say to follow them considering there are 613 of them. And the Jesus story fulfils a bunch of Old Testament prophecy, which means that seeing into the future is possible and cause-and-effect are reversible.
Good point!
It’s allegory. I am an atheist but the magic doesn’t actually need to exist for the morality tale’s conclusion to exist. Religion uses mysticism because it’s a philosophical shortcut for idiots, but the real intention has always been to push some pretty stabdard normative ethics on the population. In some cases those things are good like “don’t be a jealous prick,” and sometimes they are bad, like “fear the outsiders.” And in many cases they are just anachronistic.
Honestly, as much as I truly want the world to be mature enough for secular versions of this philosophy, I would also be totally fine if we could just scare people into not running red lights, or wearing masks when sick, via some divine cosmic consequences framework. But the older I get the more I realize how much religion plays a role in keeping idiots in line. It just needs continued updating for modern times.
I agree completely. And it seems like it continues to be used that way, but not for good – it tends to get idiots to fall in line with fascists. Not all the time, but in many parts of the world, this seems to be what’s happening.