TheHumanist.com

Summer '23 - issue 989
https://thehumanist.com/

What Churches Offer That ‘Nones’ Still Long For

Houses of worship are, uniquely, one-stop shops of meaning, continuity and support.

..."If all the nones were represented by just five people, one of them would be an atheist, another one would be agnostic and three of them would be nothing in particulars...”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/opinion/religion-affiliation-community.html?smid=em-share

Scopes documentary

Magisteria

Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half-truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century and remain widespread today. The true history of science and religion is a human one. It’s about the role of religion in inspiring, and strangling, science before the scientific revolution. It’s about the sincere but eccentric faith and the quiet, creeping doubts of the most brilliant scientists in history – Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein. Above all it’s about the question of what it means to be human and who gets to say – a question that is more urgent in the twenty-first century than ever before. From eighth-century Baghdad to the frontiers of AI today, via medieval Europe, nineteenth-century India and Soviet Russia, Magisteria sheds new light on this complex historical landscape. Rejecting the thesis that science and religion are inevitably at war, Nicholas Spencer illuminates a compelling and troubled relationship that has definitively shaped human history.

Dechurching

The Largest and Fastest Religious Shift in America Is Well Underway

...Some people, usually self-described atheists and agnostics, said they didn’t miss anything and were happy to be rid of anything resembling worship. Unsurprisingly, those groups had the highest rate of dechurching of all: 94 percent for atheists and 88 percent for agnostics.

But many said they did miss aspects of traditional attendance, and often these people still believed in God or certain aspects of their previous faith traditions. They’d sought replacements for traditional worship, and the most common were spending time in nature, meditation and physical activity — basically anything that got them out of their own heads and the anxieties of the material world...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/opinion/religion-dechurching.html?smid=em-share

Dreaming of a New Iran

"…I detest the call to the morning prayer — that's when they execute those young kids who did nothing but fight for their rights. I have begun to question Islam. I believe that our generation doesn't truly believe in it, a religion that for so many years, in school, in the university, was imposed on us. If we are fighting them, then why should we believe in the same things they do?"
…
Dreaming of a New Iran

What god's good for

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