Attending church used to be a primary source of meaningful social interaction with like-minded people. Promoting biblical values and encouraging community involvement was a pleasant side-effect of that.

How many of you now participate in 95% of your social interaction via the internet?

Blaming churches/Christianity for the KKK is like blaming Islam for modern "Islamic" terrorism. One does not create nor condone the other, and the KKK/ISIS types are clearly not following the teachings of their religion. By and large, being active and engaged in a church absolutely benefits society as a whole. For every asshat taking advantage of dumb people to buy himself a jet, there are 10,000 people who do something nice for a neighbor because of some church-related activity. For every terrorist who blows himself up in front a school, there are 10,000 people who participate in a humanitarian cause in the name of Allah.

It's possible most of those people would still do those things without an active church relationship, but probably not.

Lol @thinking capitalism has eliminated patriarchy and sexual fascism

I mentioned some ism's, that are absolutely entwined with traditional "church" values. Saying otherwise is straight forward calling black white.

Racism was not one of them.

Its an interesting talking point because "church" is one place conservatism and capitalism part ways, there Venn diagram coordinates diverge significantly.

This though is one one of the few progressive aspects of capitalism.

No, because those century old traditions (aprox 2000 years old) run deep. Capitalism would happily dissolve them though.

Patriarchy and especially sexual repression are not favourable to naked unbridled consumerism.

This discussion is so quintessentially yanklandian and at core one of the reasons the "left" in Yankland is basically to the right of hitler when compared to the "left" in Europe.

Naked capitalism is indistinguishable from Feudalism, which is quite amenable to patriarchy and sexual fascism.

Lol no. That is a horribly wrong simplification.

Naked capatalism wants you to be able to buy and sell eveything without some kind of out of capitalism moral or ethical values getting in the way.

Baby kidneys on toast whilst getting a bj from a tranny, with nothing what so ever to feel guilty about, or hide, I just paid my moneis, that's pure naked capitalism.

That is the end point of capatalism, we dont want to get there, but on the journey to there, killing off some of the legacy values bases on belief in the spaghetti monster is one progressive thing capatalism has achieved.

We just need to apply some brakes, we need to change the direction of travel, however, one thing we really do not need to do, is pull a u turn and go back to "church".

You can't get there without a discussion about who owns land, the ultimate capital.

Anyone watch the Handmaids Tale?

I don't think anyone here wants to go back to "church", but as it provided the basis of Western morality it probably does need to be replaced with something, and not consumerism.

Relying on people's innate goodness just isn't going to cut it, given the number of barbarians out there.

Part of the magical thinking is thinking that perfection is an option. You are suggesting a system or organization, composed of humans, that will make humans better than they are. Not only is that a lot to hope for and maybe impossible even in theory, it's really bad because any such organization is a magnet for the worst people.

Yea sure it needs to be replaced, to be replaced it first has to be removed. Thanks to capitalism we are half way there.

Sure capitalism is rancid **** at that second half, but achieving that first half should not be underestimated.

Hmmm not really make them better than they are.

I fall somewhere between the DVaut humans are monsters and need restraining camp and your humans are good and need freeing camp, because beyond biological functions and a few necessary social functions I don't think immutable human nature really exists.

I've always believed that if we leave humans to the whim of the markets without some support structure or method of moderating the worst that capitalism throws at people, then we are doomed. I know you're fairly anarcho-communist and this can and does work very well in some sections of society eg agriculture but I'm not convinced about its application in large industry for example.

I guess that automation may make it something of a moot point anyway, and future historians may see the current age as being preparation for a huge downsizing of the human population. There's no way under any version of capitalism I can envisage that billions of unproductive people will be fed, housed, clothed and educated, and this is probably what drives American, Chinese and Russian callousness about climate change.

If you were to go back to the 1920's and somehow remove all religious social institutions, I think you'd have had an explosion in Klan membership. It was already pretty crazy, but everyone and their grandma would sign up if they were the only group doing community-oriented activities churches do like potlucks and fairs and so on. They'd have been the only game in town.

People ITT who assert church is a net benefit to society, I think your bias is showing. While we can attribute a lot of good to organized religion, we can also attribute a lot of evil to it. It's unclear whether it's a net positive, and I would like to see some stronger evidence. Forgive me if it has already been presented.

If you want to study the benefits of church to society it seems necessary to look at atheists. Of course my anecdotes are worth very little, and I'm probably biased as an atheist myself, but I haven't noticed any lack of morality in the atheists I've met. In fact athiests' morals seem to be just as strong as Christians, although they're slightly different.

How many charities and community organizations have the atheists created?

Buffett, Munger and Gates are, I believe, all atheists who are going to pump about $200 billion into a pretty efficient life saving outfit...

Buffett claims to be agnostic. Gates seems to be Catholic-curious and sends his kids to church. No idea about Munger.

https://www.unitism.com/land/en/table-of-contents
What if we lived in a world where everyone had enough? A world where everyone mattered and where people lived in harmony with nature? What if the solution to our economic, social, and ecological problems was right underneath our feet? Land has been sought after throughout history. Even today, people struggle to get onto the property ladder; most view real estate as an important way to build wealth. Yet, as readers of this book will discover, the institution of land ownership—and our urge to make money from land—causes economic booms and busts, social and cultural decline, and environmental devastation. Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World introduces a radically new economic model that promises a sustainable and abundant world for all. This book is for those who dream of a better world for themselves and for future generations.

Almost sounds like a religion or something.

That's one super spammy/scammy looking website.

That's an odd description of a site with a book you can read online for free and no ads.

In order to be pro church one needs to do more than show it helps humanity, practically speaking, a bit more than it hurts humanity. It has to be shown that it helps a lot more. Because besides the downsides of sometimes causing racism, sexism, and homophobia, it does something even worse. It makes people think that it is OK to assign near 100% probabilities to ideas where objective evidence should make them think that the probabilities should be less than 1%.

You have no idea and that's one hell of a homework assignment.

UK, Germany and France, are all much further down the line of de Churching than Yankland.

I dont see that we have more advanced case of the pathology ascribed to that process.

People also look for a single static answer but it's quite possible that the church was leading human progress (net positive) for a long time but once sufficient progress was made it flipped to lagging (net negative)

God died. Then there was capitalism but now that too may be dying (moving from +ve to -ve)

Conversely more socialist style ideas might be moving from net negatives to positives.