Yes.

Doesn't seem like an essay question, I can do this.

Since you believe the statement to be true, do you think it's reasonable that there has been at least some level of frustration expressed by Christians across this divide?

Forgive me, I haven't read the whole thread and I'm just practicing work avoidance, but do you have any handy links by way of evidence for a large and recent split? I think I read something recently about a generational divide among evangelicals related to political affiliation, but I can't think of anything else that I've seen.

I'm curious what you think the fault lines of this new split are?

There are a number of splits that can be observed. The most obvious split happens along primarily along racial lines (white vs. non-white). Of course, there was always a split, but the gap has become more pronounced.

It's true that some of that is confounded by generational divergence (as the younger generation of Christians is more diverse than previous generations). But I think it's too much to claim that the split is *only* generational.

Here's an example (January 2017) that is a direct response to Trump's election:

https://auburnseminary.org/voices/white-christians/

The signatories of the letter are (almost?) all white Christians, some of whom have a level of prominence in Evangelical circles (such as Rachel Held Evans, acknowledging that she was sometimes controversial as a female progressive voice).

Mark Labberton (President of Fuller Theological Seminary) collected a series of writings from a number of Evangelical thinkers in 2018 that challenges the value of the Evangelical identity:

https://www.ivpress.com/still-evangelical

These writings contain more racially diverse voices. And this is also in direct response to the Trump presidency.

Outside of white Evangelicalism, there seems to be movement among Mainline Protestants (which are primarily white):

https://www.vox.com/2018/11/5/180587...midterms-trump

It's worth noting that in the first sentence, it's hard for non-white demographics to change their minds on Trump because he was already so poorly viewed to begin with.

There's also the strong statement from the Washington National Cathedral (Episcopal), which I don't think is in the habit of making strongly political statements:

https://cathedral.org/have-we-no-dec...ent-trump.html

I think you're also seeing new fault lines appear over issues such as immigration policy and gun control, but that's harder to track because the connection to religious convictions is (sadly) less clear. A lot of that will be generational again, but I think there's a lot of softening of positions on the second amendment and many Christians are struggling with the morality of how the administration is handling the lives of children at the border. I don't know how this plays out demographically or whether this can be seen in polling, but I'm quite confident that it's another cleave in the landscape.

So I think it's reasonable to say that there are new divisions that have formed within Christianity over Trump's presidency and the events that have happened during that time. There were other divisions that pre-existed the election, but I think those gaps have magnified as white Evangelicals have really started to dig in their heels in their support for Trump and white nationalist trends are being squeezed out in the process.

Edit: There may be another rift happening over abortion. I think some of the hard line stances that have been taken by some states is causing people to reevaluate their positions a bit. I'm not seeing the level of celebration over those laws as I have expected, and that silence on this particular issue is saying something.

Cheers, thanks for the links. I'll have to peruse some more of this over the weekend.

While it may not "seem" like it to you, I am trained in critical thinking, and taught the subject at two community colleges many years ago.

Statements like these suggest that you have no interest in a meaningful dialogue with me.

This will be my last post in this thread unless/until there is some evidence that you're actually interested in an adult conversation.

It's hard for me to answer this. I know where you are going with it. I do belive some Christians are good (if maybe a little miguided) people. I also believe that religion as an industry is pernicious. I'm basically a younger, dumber Chris Hitchens. Look at some of his appearances before he died, he said it better than I ever will.

.

Thank you for confirming that you have no interest in an adult conversation with me.

I look forward to following your dialogue with Aaron.

Peace.

Dude, if you want to talk about "adults", you still have an imaginary friend, and you believe some crazy batshit insane stuff like the earth it a few thousand years old and your imaginary friend made a woman out of man's rib, and some guy who lived to be 600 years old built a big boat, or something. Usually, that sort of thing is called "psychosis" and people get locked up for it, but religion, yo.

I just can't find it in within myself to take you seriously.

Aaron, thank you for posting this. Although it is not in response to me, it is well thought out, well written, and quite eye opening. I am glad that there are some religious people out there who are not total nutcases.

It shouldn't be hard.

What I believe is happening, and this has been true since you first posted here almost a couple years ago, is that you're riding a wave of ignorance. You know very little about things that you're criticizing, and you're clearly not spending time to become informed.

You have a choice:

1) Remain ignorant
2) Learn something new

Good luck.

Wow. Explain to me via any sort of probability (Bayesian or otherwise), how you can justify believing in a preternatural being. Then you might have some standing to call me "ignorant".

Probabilities in this case are pretty much just made up numbers. Arguments about metaphysical possibilities by probabilistic estimation is an exercise in stupidity. I think a more reasonable game to play would be to estimate your level of intelligence and rationality given your posts in this forum. I don't think it goes well for you.

And given that you're ignorant of plain facts about the universe, what value is there in trying to even begin to consider something beyond the natural with you?

I don't need to worry about "standing" with you. Your ignorance is obvious and you've basically admitted as much. Why not try to grow in intelligence instead of growing in volume?

Do you play heads up poker, by any chance?

"God" sees I tried to enagage with you in good faith for a couple of posts.

You're welcome to believe what you choose to believe.

Imo the most important trend is the generational one:



Young white evangelicals are not the major cultural force in their generational cohort that older ones are.

oh man I've been missing a good dose of Vintage Aaron, thank you! There is such a je ne sais quoi quality to your insults I just love them.

The "rise of the nones" is something that's been happening for a while now. And while that gap is important and relevant, it has less explanatory power when talking about gaps *within* Christianity. It's mostly observing what's happening *outside* of Christianity.

Yes, there is definitely flight away from Christianity, and there are plenty of critics among them. And so there are ripe accusations of how Christians behave from those on the outside.

But to the original point of this thread, the challenge is that "supposed Christians" aren't speaking up about things. That's clearly false from the evidence that has been provided.

I was going to say something like, "Where's uke? He should be commenting right about now..." and like Batman responding to the Bat Signal, here you are!

Sorry, my point wasn't very clear. What I meant to say was that I think there is a big split between young and old evangelicals in their background assumptions about the role of Christianity in society. Older Christians have a much stronger sense of cultural decline because they lived through times when Christianity was much more the assumed grounding of social life for most people. Young Christians have grown up in a society with greater diversity of religious views and where evangelical Christianity is only one among many religious groupings, prominent more for historical and legacy reasons than because it is more prevalent in current society.

I agree that it is false that Christians aren't speaking out against the prejudice and immorality of Trump. However, the biggest surprise for me in the 2016 election was that evangelical Christians didn't block Trump from winning the nomination. The foreign policy elite in the GOP showed themselves to be paper tigers, unable to influence either the GOP electorate or other elites sufficiently to block Trump from winning, but they clearly came out against Trump. On the other hand, while some individual conservative evangelicals opposed Trump, mostly their coalition found him acceptable if not ideal.

Got it. Yes, that is all very reasonable and I agree with you.

This is something that has received a TON of commentary. Here's a recent one:

https://medium.com/@pehenne/on-evang...g-e66d0cef92dd

What's amusing is that you can search for "Trump feature not a bug" and there are several articles that use that for different topics:

Regarding his comments about Jews: https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ture-not-a-bug

Regarding his border policies: https://brightthemag.com/border-purg...r-7d1842348717

Regarding his approach to foreign policy: https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2019/...can-diplomacy/

Regarding the Trump organization (statement found in the text and not in the title): https://www.citizensforethics.org/do...-organization/

Regarding his Cabinet (statement found in the text and not in the title): https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/71109...administration

Regarding his narcissism: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump...-fe_b_10230354

Just for fun, I also did a search for Obama under the same framework, and the only things I saw were related to Obamacare.

Someone's got to do the lord's work.

I'm really not sure what you people are attempting to prove here. Aaron, I see you don't defend the YECs (not just in this thread but in general), and I guess, props for that.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when you have to give "props" to someone for debating with a member of his or her own society who thinks that fairies are real.

You can cast all the aspersions on my intellect that you want. In fact, in a maths Olympiad, you would probably beat me, Aaron. But hey, I don't believe in fairies, so there is that.

I will restate a challenge I put up to you a while back. 10k each, escrowed, says that self-admitted religious people have a lower IQ then self-avowed atheists. Average of 100 people. We can pick 100 from tests at random, if this information is publically available. Watch it though, it has to be a fair sample.

And before you start, IQ is what IQ test measure. Nothing more, nothing less. But they are a decent proxy for intelligence, in particular, *critical thinking*, bro.

In fact, I like my side so much, I'll give you odds. Your 6.8k vs my 10k.