Go read the article and get back to me.
I read it, Obscurity. Perhaps I overlooked it, but it did not answer the questions I raised. If one sincerely believes in the existence of God and that this God is the moral arbiter of the universe, then a bunch of nasty, dishonest hypocrites would not allay my faith. When I was a believer, there were more than a few s***-heels in my religious group. But we migrated to a different religious community when the rotten apples spoiled our bunch, as it were.
So much of this seems to be excuse-making. Blaming conservative congregations for liberals turning away from religion makes as much sense as people blaming conservatives for liberals dropping out of engaging in politics. It is my position that if one sincerely believes in God, no amount horrible human beings sharing one's religious faith is going to cause them to turn away from that belief, because one has nothing to do with the other.
After all, if you found out tomorrow that a luminary of Leftwing Libertarianism, such as Noam Chomsky, sexually assaulted multiple children over his lifetime as many Catholic priests did would that somehow make Leftwing Libertarianism a terrible ideology in your eyes, unworthy of being taken seriously?
I stopped believing once I figured out the basics of the religion are faulty. I finally stopped believing entirely when i escaped the bubble and began investing myself in studies of science.
But that doesnt matter. At the end of the day what the article indicates through a large study is more and morr people becoming unaffiliated due to the injection of christian conservative social values into politics. Moreover. As someone who identifies as a left libertarian I would find it very difficult to claim I am of the faith if more than half of the people in that faith call me not a real Christian or blame me and My political ideology for the destruction of the country.
Well certainly. But there seem to be plenty of boutique churches in the United States which specifically welcome people with left-wing politics such as yourself. If you want to go to a church led by an out-and-proud pro-LGBT, pro-Choice pastor they do exist. Perhaps if you searched hard enough, you might very well find a pastor with dogeared copy of Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival" next to his Bible. But I doubt you would go to the trouble because, as you stated, you simply do not believe in God and see no value in religious community or fellowship.
My point is this: Not as many people have the stones as you do to simply say, "I just do not believe in God. I was not traumatized by visions of Hellfire by some rightwing fire-and-brimstone pastor. I was not molested by a priest. I just do not see any evidence that merits believing in some great creator and worshipping him in perpetuity both in this world and the world to come." Much easier to blame the Christian nutjobs than to admit one's own lack of belief.
