| dsgrue3 said: Even the religious are turning away from organized religion and are simply unaffiliated with any church. Churches tend to preach fundamentalism, which is total nonsense and sometimes very harmful. This is positive direction for the human race. |
Actually, the number of members of most big churches is not falling, but growing. While the numbers of members are significantly falling in the rich, western countries, worldwide they're actually increasing. And over the next decades, this trend may even become much stronger.
Many atheists have a very one-sided view of religion etc. They seem to be completely incapable of acknowledging just any positive aspect of religion, churches etc., they're only seeing the negative parts.
Take Nietzsche for example, whom you're so prominently quoting in your sig. If he hadn't been raised in a very religious environment, he most probably wouldn't have become such a remarkable critical thinker.
And just months after he published the the sentences you're quoting, he became a lunatic, incapable of doing almost anything. And once again, it was his religious environment that actually helped him most: It was his own, very religious family, his mother and sister, who got him out of the lunatic asylum and cared for him until he died about a decade later. So Nietzsche himself was actually lucky that his religious family didn't feel the same disgust about touching atheists that Nietzsche claimed about touching religious people.
