Is it just me that Protestantism eventually leads to atheism?

[MaxUsefull]

I've seen so many cases of Protestants who become atheists or agnostics... it even seems like a pattern

[BCRanger10]

I'd say that it's at least much more likely. If, as many Protestants and Evangelicals believe, that the Bible is the sole rule of faith, then that's where I think you'd have most of the problems. How often do you see and hear people say that they became atheists because the Bible (supposedly) contradicts itself? That's why there has to be a teaching authority and a tradition.

Now yes, many Catholics leave too (as someone already pointed out), but something to keep in mind is that the Catholic Church still has the single largest population of baptized members, so that's why, up front, the appearance that the Church is collapsing faster than other Christian denominations. And while the retention rate has declined, if what I've read is correct, the Catholic Church still retains more members than others.

[slatyb]

The Bible does contradict itself, but that's not why I left the church. Even if it were completely consistent, that doesn't make it true. I left Christianity because I found it literally unbelievable.

[BCRanger10]

@slatyb The reason why I said what I said is that the Early Church Fathers were closer to the times

[BCRanger10]

... the times, languages, cultures, and styles of writing in which the books of the Bible were written. Saint Jerome spent twenty years translating them into Latin. If anyone would have thought that these were thing to be scandalized over, it would have been them.

Sorry, I accidentally hit "submit" before I finished typing this out.

Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.

[LiamJHayden]

Nope. 1 John 2:19 means that a genuine faith never disappears, so those who left were always tares among the wheat. And quite a few RCC members bail, but the same could easily hold true there.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/09/15/half-of-u-s-adults-raised-catholic-have-left-the-church-at-some-point/

[CupcakeTheDestroyer]

There are plenty of people who are raised protestant and catholic that leave the church later in life because as they grow into these ideals of forgiveness and loving thy neighbor, they realize the church is an institution that focuses on profit before it tries to teach these morals. They reject the community’s hypocrisy, sometimes that means leaving the church but not God, sometimes that means rejecting all dogmatic thought aside from atheism, sometimes it means finding a new method of spirituality. Don’t throw all atheists into the same basket, it’s simply ignorant to assume protestantism creates a greater level of hypocrisy than catholicism that causes people to leave. Both churches are struggling to keep their communities because so many people see the hypocrisy in their institutions.

[slatyb]

Knowledge leads to atheism. The more one knows of the natural world, the less one is able to believe ancient mythical explanations. That is why scientists tend to be non-religious. It also explains why many religious discourage education. The Jehovah's Witnesses are well known for discouraging their youth from attending college, because those that do tend not to remain JW.

[MaxUsefull]

I don't know, it seems to me that it's the opposite, whoever defined the big bang theory for example was a Catholic priest and it was a monk who started the study of genetic theory

[slatyb]

And? When Mendel started the study of genetic theory, apostasy was a capital crime.

[slatyb]

Tell me about the beliefs of the great 20th century physicists starting with Einstein.

[MaxUsefull]

Apostasy in the Catholic Church has never been punished with capital punishment…please don't create scarecrows

[slatyb]

Of course it has been, notoriously during the Spanish Inquisition, but the Inquisition was not confined to Spain.

[MaxUsefull]

the Spanish inquisition was not of the church but of the Spanish kingdom…technically it was a sudo inquisition

[slatyb]

You're whitewashing it. Thousands were put to death by the church.

[MaxUsefull]

Nope…. Around 1200 in 400 years

[slatyb]

And this is different from modern Islamic theocracies in what way exactly?

[slatyb]

"According to modern estimates, around 150,000 people were prosecuted for various offences during the three-century duration of the Spanish Inquisition, of whom between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed,"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

[Dargil]

PC-USA, UCC, Unitarians, Episcopals and Many Methodists have lost their testimony and sold out to political culture. Baptists, PC in A, and Pentecostals have done better. But Western Culture is trying to cancel Christianity in general.

[slatyb]

No one is "trying" to cancel Christianity. People are leaving because they can. Through the 1960's there was a social cost for being openly skeptical of Christianity. In urban areas of the US, where most people live, that's over. No one pays attention to what others do on Sunday morning. I live in Seattle and I don't know anyone who attends services with any regularity. All my bridge-playing friends are non-believers, as are almost all of my professional colleagues.

[Dargil]

@slatyb I live in the Bible belt and many churches fill up on Sunday. The local SDA fills up on Saturday. Government on all levels use the nonexistent Separation of Church and State to suppress Christian Religious observances. The FBI infiltrates the Catholics looking for "jihadists" and used covid lockdowns to suppress Christians overall.

[slatyb]

To suppress Christian Religious observances? Like what?

by the way, the Southern Baptist Convention is shrinking fairly rapidly. I expect religious belief in the South will decline just as it has in the rest of the country

[slatyb]

What Christian religious observances are being suppressed?;

[OlderAndWiser]

If there is a point you are trying to make, it should be articulated.

[MaxUsefull]

Sorry if you didn't understand, do you want me to draw it?

[FunkyMonkee]

I figure it's mostly just that people have brains.

[MaxUsefull]

Don't say that, very few worthy scientists in the world were atheists... most believed in God

[FunkyMonkee]

Well, nobody's perfect.

[Drewtate]

I don't believe so.