Why is the US so much more religous as a country than majority of developed countries

I know this is kind of off-topic but one thing that has been bugging me a little bit is the constant "God bless America!". Just seems a bit egoistic ...

 

Whenever this subject comes up, a lot of people bring up the bad things that have been done in the name of religion. There are certain individuals responsible for those things; usually it has to do with using a religious argument to justify their selfish desires. But that's not everyone, and not even most religious people from my experience. What about all of us out there (Christians, Jews, Muslims, any religion) who are trying to do it right?

 

Why?

 

Well, these certain individuals don't operate totally on their own - they usually have a large population willing to go along with their perversions of religion. And when someone tells you "God will punish you if you don't do (X)," that's a powerful motivator that is very difficult to counteract unless people have a little more skepticism toward religion. But religion rarely allows for skepticism, even when it contradicts itself.

So while humans are the ultimate source of evil, religion unfortunately is the most powerful and most used justification for evil and intolerance. Many of us are therefore wary of those who accept their religion unconditionally, because of the potential for the havoc it can create.

 

It assumes too much.

"God" is not a commodity. The words "In God We Trust" were not consistently on all U.S. currency until 1956, during the McCarthy witch hunts.

Plus it just shows how the Christian thought dominates this Country. When you truly learn about other religions (which all people should), and maybe even become a part of them, you see all of this in a completely different light. The fusion of gods and presidents who start unnecessary wars to try and remold other parts of the world to be like theirs very frightening.

If anything, the "dominating" religion of this nation should've been the earth-based, non-dogmatic spirituality of the Native Americans. But thats a whole other discussion.

Buddha Bless America.

 

I'm not sure what blessing is really all about but if it is anything near what I think it is I think when you ask God about blessing, why not have him bless everything or at least the people who need it the most? I guess it shows what you care about in some way. Of course it's not wrong to care about america, but to only care about america?

(I have got to learn how to do proper quotes one of these days)

 

I'm not sure I understand the logic. When you tell your wife you love her, does that mean you don't love your kids too? I mean, you didn't say it. What about the rest of your family and friends? You didn't say you loved them either. Does that mean you don't?

 

Preach on brother!

I don't see this at all. Is it out there, of course. But America is soo soo soo much more of a "if you're not religious there is something wrong with you" feel than the opposite.

 

The US & Religion . . . God Bless America.

The Root of War Is Fear - by Thomas Merton

In 1961 the American Trappist monk Thomas Merton entered the struggle against war with his essay “The Root of War Is Fear.” Read in the context of today’s conflict with Iraq, the essay seems prophetic, haunting and insightful. Crossroads Publishing Company and The Thomas Merton Foundation are making available excerpts from that essay so that readers today can consider Merton’s point that the wellsprings of war lie within each person as much as with a particular political situation.

By THOMAS MERTON

The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves. There is in reality not the slightest logical reason for war, and yet the whole world is plunging headlong into frightful destruction, and doing so with the purpose of avoiding war and preserving peace! This is a true war-madness, an illness of the mind and the spirit that is spreading with a furious and subtle contagion all over the world. Of all the countries that are sick, America is perhaps the most grievously afflicted. This is a nation that claims to be fighting for religious truth along with freedom and other values of the spirit. Truly we have entered the “post-Christian era” with a vengeance.

What is the place of the Christian in all this? Is he simply to fold his hands and resign himself to the worst, accepting it as the inescapable will of God and preparing himself to enter heaven with a sigh of relief? Should he open up the Apocalypse and run out into the street to give everyone his idea of what is happening? Or worse still, join in the madness of the war makers, calculating how by a “first strike,” the glorious Christian West can eliminate atheistic Communism for all time and usher in the millennium?

What are we to do? The duty of the Christian in this crisis is to strive with all his power and intelligence, with his faith, hope in Christ and love for God and man, to do the one task that God has imposed upon us in the world today. That task is to work for the total abolition of war. There can be no question that unless war is abolished the world will remain constantly in a state of madness and desperation in which, because of the immense destructive power of modern weapons, the danger of catastrophe will be imminent and probably at every moment everywhere. We may never succeed in this campaign but whether we succeed or not the duty is evident. It is the great Christian task of our time. Everything else is secondary, for the survival of the human race itself depends on it. We must at least face this responsibility and do something about it. And the first job of all is to understand the psychological forces at work in ourselves and in society.

At the root of all war is fear, not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another: They do not even trust themselves. … They cannot trust anything because they have ceased to believe in God.

It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this that makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves. …

As if this were not enough, we make the situation much worse by artificially intensifying our sense of evil, and by increasing our propensity to feel guilt even for things that are not in themselves wrong. In all these ways, we build up such an obsession with evil, both in ourselves and in others, that we waste all our mental energy trying to account for this evil, to punish it, to exorcise it, or to get rid of it in any way we can.

We drive ourselves mad with our preoccupation and in the end there is no outlet left but violence. We have to destroy something or someone. By that time, we have created for ourselves a suitable enemy, a scapegoat in whom we have invested all the evil in the world. He is the cause of every wrong. He is the fomenter of all conflict. If he can only be destroyed, conflict will cease, evil will be done with, there will be no more war. …

In our refusal to accept the partially good intentions of others and work with them (of course prudently and with resignation to the inevitable imperfection of the result) we are unconsciously proclaiming our own malice, our own intolerance, our own lack of realism, our own ethical and political quackery.

Perhaps in the end the first real step toward peace would be a realistic acceptance of the fact that our political deals are perhaps to a great extent illusions and fictions to which we cling, out of motives that are not always perfectly honest: that because of this we prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideas of our enemies -- which may of course be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own. We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives in which, perhaps, the evil predominate but where one must continue to hope doggedly in what little good can still be found. …

I believe the basis for valid political action can only be the recognition that the true solution to our problems is not accessible to any one isolated party or nation but that all must arrive at it by working together. …

We must try to accept ourselves whether individually or collectively, not only as perfectly good or perfectly bad, but in our mysterious, unaccountable mixture of good and evil. We have to stand by the modicum of good that is in us without exaggerating it. We have to defend our real rights, because unless we respect our own rights we will certainly not respect the rights of others. But at the same time we have to recognize that we have willfully or otherwise trespassed on the rights of others. We must be able to admit this not only as the result of self-examination, but when it is pointed out unexpectedly, and perhaps not too gently, by somebody else.

These principles that govern personal moral conduct, that make harmony possible in small social units like the family, also apply in the wider areas of the state and in the whole community of nations. It is however quite absurd, in our present situation or in any other, to expect these principles to be universally accepted as the result of moral exhortations. There is very little hope that the world will be run according to them all of a sudden, as a result of some hypothetical change of heart on the part of politicians. It is useless and even laughable to base political thought on the faint hope of a purely contingent and subjective moral illumination in the hearts of the world’s leaders. But outside of political thought and action, in the religious sphere, it is not only permissible to hope for such a mysterious consummation, but it is necessary to pray for it. We can and must believe not so much that the mysterious light of God can “convert” the ones who are mostly responsible for the world’s peace, but at least that they may, in spite of their obstinacy and their prejudices, be guarded against fatal error. …

For only love -- which means humility -- can exorcise the fear that is at the root of all war…

If men really wanted peace they would sincerely ask God for it and He would give it to them. But why should He give the world a peace it does not really desire? The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all.

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob brothers without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

Many men like these have asked God for what they thought was “peace” and wondered why their prayer was not answered. They could not understand that it actually was answered. God left them with what they desired, for their idea of peace was only another form of war. …

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmongers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed -- but hate these things in yourself not in another.

 

I would have to whole-heartedly disagree with you on this.

It was the religious right that motivated and showed up in record numbers while only 1 out of every 10 18-24 year old showed up.

This election had very little to do with politics and everything to do woth morals.

 

arno_ed, if I didn't know better, I would suspect that you're Dutch!







Keep D&D Civil!!

 

Absolutely, and mostly about stuff they shouldn't be worried about.

 

"You can't reason a man out of something he wasn't reasoned into" -- Jonathan Swift

 

well japan is a pretty religious place

 

The problem with religion is that by its very nature it is irrational. The Democrats ran a campaign based primarily on rational issues ie. the war on Iraq was based on a WMD threat from Saddam and since none were found the war was a mistake. While the Republicans ran on faith, for instance even though no WMD were found we believe that Saddam would become a threat and we have to trust that the President is doing the right thing.

On the same line as the rational party, as opposed to the faith party, I'm surprised that the Democrats haven't tried to use the Bible to their own advantage. I was talking to a Dem. candidate running for State Rep in a rural district who also was a Lutheran minister. He gave the typical Dem. line regarding education, health care, rural poverty and so on. What he didn't talk about was his faith and religion even though he said his district was overwhelmingly Christian conservative. I advised him that as a minister he should've been taking the lead on using the Bible to make his case. He should've pointed out that Jesus preached against inequality of wealth, tended to the poor and sick and urged peace. Jesus both in Roman times and even now is a radical leftist and if Dems want to win in the rural conservative areas they need to emphasize that.

 

first of all, i'm surprised that 5 % of america doesn't not believe in god or some universal being. am i really in the mere 5% minority? or going back to that other thread abt never being polled, does that come in? b/c no one's ever asked me where my stand was.

as for the elections, i don't understand how people can vote for a president that was deceitful and lied to the american citizens about his motive for going into war. he even admitted that he used 9/11 as a motive to start a war with Iraq. we wouldn't be in this mess if he didn't declare this war against the wishes of all other countries (cept GB) in this world.

isn't it ironic that while clinton was in the midst of his scandals, talks of his impeachment came up? did he do anything to harm the citizens? he lied to his family.

as for bush, he admitted lying to us and never once did impeachment come up. over 1000 innocent soldiers have died due to his lie and people had the audacity to trust him and elect him again? i'm apalled. do you want 1000 more to die?

sorry if i got off tangent, but i've got more. this'll due for now.

 

nothing implied here, just found it very entertaining.



Man Survives Jump Into Lion's Den
46-Year-Old Reportedly Trying To Convert Lions To Christianity

POSTED: 3:27 pm EST November 3, 2004
UPDATED: 4:59 pm EST November 3, 2004
A man was attacked and injured after jumping into a lion's den at the Taipei Zoo and trying to convert the lions to Christianity.

# The 46-year-old man leaped into the den of African lions and shouted "Jesus will save you," according to the report. He also said, "Come bite me" before one of the male lions attacked and bit the man.
Video showed the lion ripping a jacket off the man at the zoo in Taiwan's capital, clawing him and then biting the man in the leg.

Zoo workers were able to drive off the lion with water hoses and tranquilizer guns.

The lions were fed earlier in the day otherwise the man might have been more seriously injured or killed.

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

Copyright 2004 by Internet Broadcasting Systems and Local6.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

mr. link http://www.local6.com/news/3887764/detail.html#sillyman

 

This country took the stand the government would not get in the way of your religion or endorse any one religion. That lead to more religious people populating this nation for the freedom to practice it.

It is the freedom to practice your religion safely that has led to a more religious nation. Our country was founded with this in mind and we've never had our government tell us to worship here, or be this kind of Christian, or stop building churches...or whatever, so religion has flourished.

In much of Europe, the history has had violence or depression of religion of one religion over another, or one type over another in its history. We haven't had that in this country.

 

Your flawed premise is that you think you can define morality. You may live a "good" life by your standards but have failed to live a good life by the christian God's standards. The bible says that once you die, your self-defined "good" actions will be judged by the standards of the God of the bible, whether you believe in Him or not. Good luck with that.