The intellectual tyranny of a past unscientific age sadly continues with The Climate Religion of the current one

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A way of avoiding the disease was discovered.

This is to doubt that what is being passed from the past is in fact true, and to try to find out ab initio again from experience what the situation is, rather than trusting the experience of the past in the form in which it is passed down. And that is what science is: the result of the discovery that it is worthwhile rechecking by new direct experience, and not necessarily trusting the [human] race[‘s] experience from the past. I see it that way. That is my best definition. ...

The experts who are leading you may be wrong.

I have probably ruined the system, and the students that are coming into Caltech no longer will be any good.

We live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television–words, books, and so on–are [sic] unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science. -- Richard Feynman 1966

Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down

... villainy is never at a stop ... crimes lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin.

-- Samuel Johnson, General Observation on King Lear, 1765

Ryan Burge puts nondenominational Protestant Christianity in America at about 13% of adult population using the General Social Survey

 Which would be about 33 million.

Using the 2020 Religion Census the number is only 21.1 million.

He discusses the data here. 

 

What wretches feel when they give all

 

Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne’er turns the key to th’ poor.

-- William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4

Book reviewer in the self-loathing Christianity Today doesn't mention how Paine had to delay publishing part of his work in America because he was so hated

Early Americans Read the Bible in a Way That Nearly Destroyed America :

As Mark Noll explains in America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794–1911, figures like Paine were instrumental in shaping America’s commitment to independence, which in turned shaped how its people engaged the Bible. In Paine’s mind, and in the minds of many of his contemporaries, Americans had the right to use the Bible however they saw fit, lest they bite the hand—independence—that fed them their freedom.

Yeah, that's why only six people came to Paine's funeral in 1809.

There is hardly a figure from America's revolutionary period who equaled Paine's fall from the heights of influence to the depths of ignominy.

The Paine revival in America came later, on the heels of Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1859.

 

So many would be great

 So much the thirst of honour fires the blood;

So many would be great, so few be good;

For who would virtue for herself regard,

Or wed without the portion of reward?

-- John Dryden

The Archbishop of York has a much bigger problem than the Lord's Prayer and the fatherhood of God: The Trinity's pronouns are he/him

Lord’s Prayer opening may be ‘problematic’, says archbishop :

 

“I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That the Father is a man, the Son is a man, and the Holy Ghost is a man is shot through the Scriptures. They'll have to chuck the whole thing in the Thames.

 

 

See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. 

-- Deuteronomy 32:39

Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he. 

-- Isaiah 41:4

Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.  I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.  ... Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it? ... I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

-- Isaiah 43:10f.,13,25 

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. 

-- Isaiah 46:4

Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last.  

-- Isaiah 48:12

I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; 

-- Isaiah 51:12

Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I.  

-- Isaiah 52:6

The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. 

-- John 4:25f.

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:  

-- John 15:26

Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!  

-- John 19:5

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 

-- I Timothy 2:5

Italian disciple of The Limits to Growth and peak oil completely unaware of a Roman citizen who envisioned the collapse of the Empire

 Ugo Bardi, professor of physical chemistry at the University of Florence, here, in September 2009:

 I think it is enough to say that the Romans did not really understand what was happening to their Empire, except in terms of military setbacks that they always saw as temporary. ... it gives us an idea of what it is like living a collapse “from the inside”. Most people just don’t see it happening ... we can’t rule out that at some moment at the time of the Roman Empire there was something like a “Roman ASPO”, maybe “ASPE,” the “association for the study of peak empire”. If it ever existed, it left no trace.

Ugo Bardi admits he's no historian, but one would like to think that a contemporary Italian would remember with pride the most famous Roman citizen of Italy's Christian past.

Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.  

-- I Corinthians 10:11

Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:  But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 

-- Galatians 4:3ff.

For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 

-- Ephesians 1:9f.

When you're so Biblically illiterate that you don't know that it's "now" as in "moreover"

 Spit-out-the-coffee funny, if you know:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He has 10.1 million followers on Twitter and has a net worth in the tens of millions of dollars. His Lakewood Church in Houston has an annual budget in the vicinity of $100 million on the strength of approximately 50,000 weekly attendees of its nondenominational services.

They should rename the place The First Church of What's Happenin' Now.

Methodist exodus makes the news at CNBC

 1 in 5 United Methodist congregations in the U.S. have left over LGBTQ conflicts :

Some 6,182 congregations have received approval to disaffiliate since 2019, according to an unofficial tally by United Methodist News Service, which has been tracking votes by annual conferences. That figure is 4,172 for this year alone, it reported. ... While most UMC congregations are remaining, many of the departing congregations are large, and denominational officials are bracing for significant budget cuts in 2024.

 

Same empire of confident illiterates, different day

 Th' illiterate writer, emperick like applies

To minds diseas'd unsafe chance remedies.

The learn'd in schools, where knowledge first began,

Studies with care th' anatomy of man;

Sees virtue, vice, and passions in their cause,

And fame from science, not from fortune draws.

-- John Dryden

Expert on moral decline who says there isn't any says eternal questions of right and wrong are for pedants

  If you think same-sex marriage is immoral, you certainly think the US is far less moral than it was before 2015. ... We can settle eternal questions of right and wrong later. For now, we only care about the parts of morality where pretty much everyone would agree ... things that we can all agree are bad.

Okay, goodbye, pedants! Onward to the science.

This is what passes for serious religious discourse at Real Clear Religion. 

In 2001 just 40% of Americans thought same-sex relations were acceptable. In 2023 it's 64%, but down 7-points from last year, according to Gallup.

The overall increase is indeed a measure of moral decline, but The Science™isn't particularly interested in that, nor in why millions of people suddenly changed their minds about it again in 2023.

 

 

Considering that the churches are all gay maybe it's a good thing

 

 

 

 

 

 

One-Third of Americans Never Attend Church

Aaron Earls, Lifeway Research

Um, hello, America was made by Christians who gave up on Europe, and would FLEE this America on the first flight out

This guy teaches at . . . Hillsdale College.

Christians Err if They Give Up on America

D.G. Hart, Wall Street Journal:

 

The U.S. was conceived as a nation that relied on civic associations, private organizations and virtuous citizens who learned morality at church, in the home and in school. ... the desire to thank God for the U.S.A. by marching in a parade with the Boy Scouts or the Rotary Club is a noble one.