Why do teenagers and young adults hate Christianity ?

[Robban]

Probably JEHOVAH.

But ...

Matthew 7:22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Anyone can say they know God, but the big question is:

Does God know us?

Absolutely, better than we know ourselves.

 

[RDKirk]

He also eloquently opined that proselytizing Christianity is inherently disrespectful to other religions and like saying: “It's essentially saying 'my religion is better than yours, so please switch.'”

Does he feel the same way about television commercials?

 

[Larniavc]

Yup, but it is not Christianity or Judaism that ushers in the end of the age by slaughtering people of all the other religions.

Joseph Kony.

 

[dlamberth]

That is correct.



Yup, but it is not Christianity or Judaism that ushers in the end of the age by slaughtering people of all the other religions.

But it is what the youth are saying.

 

[All Becomes New]

But it is what the youth are saying.

The youth are usually very stupid.

 

[Larniavc]

Does he feel the same way about television commercials?

Funnily enough he had an old SkySat but it had really poor reception. Apparently the Indian ocean a rare electromagnetic profile as a result of the Java Trench which is coincidently where the wreckage of the Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 was found.

 

[Larniavc]

The youth are usually very stupid.

I certainly was. Luckily I progressed into the paragon of virtue and wisdom that you see before you.

 

[dlamberth]

The youth are usually very stupid.

You belittle the youth as stupid but they see what they see.

The youth look at Christian history. My own sons when asked about why they reject Christianity brought up the genocide of American Indians, the burning at the stake of pagans and other Christians for incorrect beliefs and the justification of slaves. They also have their own negative experiences with Christians that has touched them and they are seeing the political cult like trajectory that they see Christians have taken. And they both brought up the Christian ostracization of the "others" for what ever reason. Stupid or not, they see all of that.

 

[All Becomes New]

You belittle the youth as stupid but they see what they see.

The youth look at Christian history. My own sons when asked about why they reject Christianity brought up the genocide of American Indians, the burning at the stake of pagans and other Christians for incorrect beliefs and the justification of slaves. They also have their own negative experiences with Christians that has touched them and they are seeing the political cult like trajectory that they see Christians have taken. And they both brought up the Christian ostracization of the "others" for what ever reason. Stupid or not, they see all of that.

Sure.

None of those things means that Christ is not risen.

 

[Bradskii]

I would say the rational position is Agnosticism.

I tried not to get involved. But...

You should ask people who post here what their specific position actually is. I'm about as convinced of my position as it's possible to be. And I class myself as an atheist because it's a simple term that everyone understands. I don't have to get deep and meaningful every time I use it in relation to myself. People think 'Hey, Bradskii is an atheist. He doesn't believe in God'. Which is fine. But it's not the whole picture.

Takes deep breath...

I don't have a belief in the supernatural. I am a materialist. Hence I don't believe that gods exist. So that, obviously, will include the one that you believe in. I have no more 'rejected God' than I have 'rejected Vishnu'. And we don't hate Vishnu, do we. Wouldn't that be a really idiotic thing to say. How could we hate something we don't think exists. It would be like saying 'You know, I really hate unicorns!' So I don't hate your God either.

That said, I'm an agnostic atheist. As, I think, you'll find almost all the atheists posting on this forum are (feel freeto ask). That is, I don't believe that God exists (the evidence is insufficient for me to think he does - and don't get me started on 'tons of evidence'), but...here's the important bit...you'll never find me saying that He doesn't exist. So I may be wrong. I'm quite prepared to say that. I'm fallible.

The question might then be: Can you confirm what you have in your signature and also admit that you are fallible and could be wrong? I don't want to convince you that you are. That's not my aim. Far from it. But it would be nice to level the playing field as it were.

 

[Bradskii]

I certainly was. Luckily I progressed into the paragon of virtue and wisdom that you see before you.

When I grow up I want to be smart as well.

 

[AV1611VET]

I have no more 'rejected God' than I have 'rejected Vishnu'.

What would you do if you saw two Independent Fundamental Baptists talking to your wife on the front lawn?

Or talking to your children?

 

[dzheremi]

Oh, it is far worse than that. I have heard that there have been more Christian martyrs in the last 100 years than in the 1900 years before that combined.

The vaaaaast majority of whom have not been in or from the USA or any other western country, so this whole conversation is a bit silly. In the west, "we" have persecution fantasies and social disapproval/disavowal (hence the topic of this thread), which is by no stretch of the imagination comparable to the Christian martyrs of previous centuries, or today in places where being a Christian actually means something beyond "I want to complain about LGBT and liberalism and tell people that Jesus would too."

Hearing or reading western Christians complain on this website and other places that are bastions of such fanciful imagining about persecution frankly makes me want to side with atheists in decrying you as a bunch of Chicken Littles making mountains out molehills built out of 'holiday-themed' Starbucks drink cups and the like. Oh, the horror! Come on. Did the army run any of you over with tanks today, like they did to the mostly Christian Egyptian protestors at Maspero in 2011? Did you get sentenced to death for marrying someone of the 'wrong' religion according to the dictates of a religion that you don't even practice but the law of the country says you're bound by anyway because your father practiced it, even though he wasn't actually in your life since you were a baby, as happened to Meriam Ibrahim in Sudan in 2014? The answers to these kinds of questions are obviously no, so I guess you/we have it pretty darn good in the United States and other western countries with strong protections for freedom of belief. Maybe we ought to act like it instead of being a bunch of weirdly fragile masochists who would rather peddle self-soothing half-answers that mostly come off as anything from smug to delusional instead of actually listening to the rising number of post-Christian youth (and others) in our countries when they explain why they aren't buying what "we" are selling anymore.

 

[Larniavc]

Because I don't know the study, does not mean it's not based on evidence.

Yeah it does. If you don’t know the study all you have is hearsay. You might be quite correct but you have not given the reader any reason to believe so apart from ‘trust me bro’.

I’m not saying that you are wrong but if you are unable to support your assertions one cannot be faulted for discounting ‘trust me bro’ arguments.

 

[All Becomes New]

I guess you/we have it pretty darn good in the United States and other western countries with strong protections for freedom of belief.

I completely agree, FWIW. The persecution in the US is almost non-existent. Almost no more than anyone harming anyone else for anything else. And often, Christians are jerks. We have SO MUCH theological information at the tips of our fingers. Yet we barely read the Bible. I'm waiting to see when missionaries from Africa come to the West.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Funnily enough I was Twitter 'pen pal' with a guy from North Sentinel Island during the UK Covid lockdown I wrote to Sali asking about his experience with western missionaries and he expressed his disappointment.

“Why travel anywhere if you want your destination to be just like home?” he would ask; “Maybe if your people had opened their hearts a little, they’d have appreciated our culture more?” He was particularly annoyed at how people trying to visit would not even try to learn the language; “If your people had learnt the basics of Andamanese and then at least that would’ve been on the same page.”

He also eloquently opined that proselytizing Christianity is inherently disrespectful to other religions and like saying: “It's essentially saying 'my religion is better than yours, so please switch.'” We remained friends but eventually lost touch when he stopped using Twitter or X or whatever it's called because of Mr Musk's support for Mr Trump.

Yeah. And I can completely understand why your pen pal would say that. The reason I can understand him is because despite my religious verve, my verve is philosophically, existentially charged in nature rather than coming from a Fundamentalist mindset. Where Fundamentalist styles of intercultural engagement occur, I too can say that some of those who are missionaries use means that I find to be distasteful.

However, at the same time, there is that one core tenet Christians believe about Jesus being "The Truth, The Way, and the Life," and when one finally gets to that point, there's only just so much multicultural sugar with which one can coat that exclusive claim----------------even IF the person asserting it is, like me, an Inclusivist.

 

[AV1611VET]

I completely agree, FWIW. The persecution in the US is almost non-existent.

The first ten amendments to our constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, insures no pogrom will occur legally on U.S. soil.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

In the games I ran it used to infuriate me when the Paladin player would let party members distract him while they slaughtered the goblin prisoners if they donated to his church. I'd never let that fly now but we were kids.

Lol!........... I never had games like that. In our games, if I tried to do the "righteous thing" by decrying what other party members did to the prisoners, I'd get countermanded. In fact, the assassin in our party, just for shoots and googles, told the DM that he was making his customary 'back-stabbing' move on me.......

Our games were, in some ways, socially limited at times. Kind of like here on CF.

 

[Francis 1928]

Is Christianity out of touch or are these people simply evil and expressing there Hatred Of Christ ?

What do they mean by young adults? Im 43 ,am I a young adult? Because I am a Christian conservative .Young adults that recently graduated college just spent 4 yrs with anti christian rhetoric and liberal ideas jammed down their throats by their professors . Teenagers may not have grown up in a Christain living household .Many adults are Christian by name,but rarely read their bible,say grace ,or go to church.They got caught up with life. If their teens go to public school, God is rarely mentioned there. I Was fortunate enough to go to private school .We prayed everyday and said the pledge of Allegiance, in the classroom.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Most of us haven't either, Hans, despite what a certain, more mystical sector among Christians says about it.

The rural strain of Catholicism I come from has little time for the mystical or ornamental.

I don't think Paul makes an error as much as that for us to understand what he thought he was communicating to 1st century Romans, we have to be willing to approach his epistemic comment about the idea of "General Revelation" without assuming he was addressing a 21st century scientific paradigm to do make his comment coherent.

While he certainly wasn't referring to our times and knowledge of the natural world, he was insisting that all would see the handiwork of *his* god to the exclusion of others, and continues from there.

So, don't feel too bad. I don't see the direct reference either, and I've wrestled with this bit in Romans ch. 1 for far too long. However, I've come to realize from my more historical studies that Paul probably didn't quite mean what many today assert that he meant. [@RDKirk touches on some of the issue in his post just above]

I don't feel bad, but if people are going to make these kinds of arguments in times of modern knowledge then they are going to need better material.

This isn't to say that understanding Paul's Hellenistically Jewish, Pre-Modern, Greco-Roman epistemology will make the Bible more believable, but it does reduce some of the cognitive dissonance that comes with trying to hammer a square peg into a round hold.

I grow tired of being hammered with this square peg. I judge those with hammers appropriately.