Eric S. Raymond
There's an important piece missing here. I think Devon's account of how Christianity failed is correct as far as it goes, but he's leaving out the effect of an important change in its competitive environment. Religions combine cosmology, moral claims, and accounts of human psychology into total explanatory systems. Because human beings are pattern-seeking animals that are desperate for explanations that might give them some kind of grip on reality, total explanatory systems exert a very powerful draw. Starting about 350 years ago a new total explanatory system began to appear: mechanistic philosophy. It's convenient to date this from the moment when Newton's discovery of the universal law of gravity broke the distinction between the inaccessible heavens and what used to be called the sublunary sphere. Mechanistic philosophy does something religions don't. It has visible, testable consequences in the observable world. This enables technology - you can build telescopes and steam engines and eventually airplanes and skyscrapers and nuclear reactors. It is extremely difficult for religions to compete with this - especially once mechanistic philosophy develops the theory of the evolution of life. The history of religion in the west since then is one of a long withdrawing roar as it gave up territory that it used to hold. Devon's account is that Christianity failed because it didn't have practical and moral answers to the problems of modernity. This is not wrong, but the loss of authority has at least one more layer. Any belief system that has to be sustained by a tremendous emotional investment of belief in things unseen and untestable is at a very serious disadvantage against a competitor with consequences everyone can see every day. This is not a problem limited to Christianity of course. But I don't think Christianity's failure can be fully explained without it.
Devon Eriksen
A lot of Christians got the message, but some of them are determined to squirm a bit more before resorting to accountability or humility. A popular way to do this is demonstrated below. Unfortunately for Giff, I learned this trick before he was even born. Goes like this: "If someone points out a problem, pretend that he is personally asking for help with something effects only him. Then accuse him of weakness. Hopefully then he will shut up because he doesn't want to look like a loser." But Giff knows perfectly well that when I say "young people", I don't mean me. He knows that because he has met me, and I am obviously older than dirt. So this is just a word game. And word games don't move the ball forward. There is no reason for you to try and fight me. I am not trying to rob you. I am trying to help you. Because the state of the West is too urgent for us to be distracted by petty squabbles about who or what hypothetically made the universe. Here is the message: 1. The decline of Christianity is not due to opposition by unbelievers or abandonment by the faithful. These are symptoms. 2. The actual cause, which led to both the opposition and the apostasy, is a series of unforced errors by the churches themselves. 3. These unforced errors occurred because churches were confused about their primary earthly responsibilities. 4. Because the churches believe that god rules, and believe that they are the representatives of god on earth, they thought their job was to dictate morality to people, rather than care for their needs. 5. Thus, they failed to notice when the changing technological landscape made certain moral demands, which were once simple, increasingly difficult over successive generations. 6. This led to a loss of faith among the young. Not merely because they didn't want to abide the rules, or because the rules were more difficult to abide, but because they began to CORRECTLY understand that their churches weren't really listening and didn't really care. 7. It was these ranks of disaffected young people who were fertile ground for alternatives. The fact that a lot of those alternatives were terrible does not signify, because answers are a lot like food, sex, or love... if people can't get the good, healthy kind, they will take what is available. 8. Zeal-signalling Christians are declaring on twitter than societal decay must be reversed by granting the Christian faith rulership again. But they do not acknowledge that Christianity had rulership before, and failed. 9. They do not understand that rulership is not the same as leadership, and no one will ever give you the one if you are not willing to demonstrate the other. 10. I am not asking you, Christian soldiers, to be in charge. On the contrary, I am explaining why you shouldn't be. Because most of you still don't understand the problems, and those who do don't have solutions. 11. Christianity has no solutions, because just as communists think they can make economics obsolete by pointing guns at people and forcing them to ignore incentives, Christians think they can make psychology and anthropology irrelevant at the point of a moral lecture. 12. Actual solutions to widespread problems in populations involve changing the terrain so that personal incentives align with societal goals. Societies that can do this survive and prosper, until they can't, and then they die. That's it. That's the whole message. So why am I saying this? Simple. Unlike god, Christians actually exist, and can do things. You can help young people who are young today, who still have time. But in order to do that, you have to understand what is actually around you, and do what the situation requires, instead of what worked 300 years ago. No outside your own community is persuaded by your demands for a crown. Grab a shovel and pitch in with the rest of us.