A new poll from Gallup demonstrates
just how much Americans are moving
away from organized religion.
For the first time since Gallup has
been tracking this statistic,
America has fallen below 50%
in the number of people who claim
they belong to a house of worship.
So to give you some specific
numbers, just 47%,
again less than 50%,
of Americans reported belonging to
a house of worship down from 50% in
2018 and 70% in 1999.
In fact, US religious membership
was 73% when Gallup first measured
it in 1937.
And actually ended up staying above
70% for the next six decades.
But clearly, we're experiencing
something very different now.
Just to give you one more
stat that I think is relevant here,
the percentage of Americans who do
not identify with any religion rose
from 8% between 1998 and 2002 to
21% over the past three years,
while the percentage of nuns who do
not belong to a house of worship
has risen as well.
So you know, more agnostic,
more atheist people, at least
people identifying that way.
But that doesn't necessarily mean
that these are people who
don't believe,
they have any spirituality.
And I think that, it's really,
I think complex to explain
the difference.
And you did a really good job
explaining that on a recent
episode of Woke Bros Was.
So can you talk about that from
your perspective?
>> Yeah, I think what's
happening with organized religion,
specifically over here in America
which is largely a Christian nation
is like the second information age
in Christianity, right?
The first one happened with
the Protestant Reformation, when
essentially the Catholic Church
hoarded the language of Latin,
which is what their Bible was in.
And then people learned Latina and
they could read the Bible
themselves.
It was like, hold on I don't agree
with that interpretation.
And all these religions sort of
sprang up out of that, right?
And that's how you get, basically,
every other religion,
Christian religion that flows out
of the traditional Catholic,
Roman Catholic Church, right.
But I think now that we're living
in another information age where,
I remember speaking to a co worker
who was Seven Day Adventists and
he was like a devout
Seven Day Adventists, then one day
he learned that, like his church
was invented in like the 1950s.
And for some reason that offended
his sensibilities,
like this a new church.
What?
This is BS.
[LAUGH] >> There's no way somebody
could have just came up with some
new religion based on Jesus who was
in 2,000 years ago.
And because he was able to sort
of do the research, learn who
the guy is who founded the church,
figure out, and
I don't want to offend anybody that
had some cultish angles to it.
He was like, I don't know if
I'm really with that anymore.
But all of these people who leave
Mormonism or certain sects of
Christianity or Islam, etc, I think
all of those people still remain
connected to some type of higher
spirit or some type of mystical.
Something that you can't peg is
tangible in the physical, right?
And so they still feel
connected to that.
And so that's the people that
we call spiritual.
But those same people would be like
really, is the guy going to get 100
virgins when he dies?
I mean, really?
Did Jesus like move a rock on
Easter Sunday out of the way and
then float into outer space?
I mean, like, really?
Really, Mary?
Really?
Nobody had sex with you but
you had a baby.
Really?
>> Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I mean,
it's funny because like,
I think you and
I had similar upbringings in that,
at least when it comes to religion.
Because I grew up, you know, going
to Sunday school every Sunday,
my entire childhood and a little
bit of my adulthood as well,
not Sunday school, but, you know.
I think into my early 20s I was
still kind of visiting church and
not necessarily interpreting it
the way that it was being presented
to me, but I felt like, you know,
this is what you do.
I didn't really question it.
Until I was kind of exposed to
the dark side of Christianity,
which luckily I was not exposed
to through Sunday school.
So I didn't
learn all the hatred that
comes along with the way people use
their religion these days.
And so once I started realizing
that aspect of it and
also realizing that there's a lot
of guilt associated with it, right.
There's a lot of moralizing and
then the pressure to abide by those
moral values,
by making people feel guilty or
fearful about what would happen to
them in the after life, right.
And for me,
Genk made a really persuasive case
when he's like,
[INAUDIBLE] no after life.
And so are you really going to
waste your time, your limited time
on this planet by doing things to
appease a group of people,
like you're wasting your life away,
right?
With guilt and awful feelings,
like you should feel free as long
as you're not harming other people.
That should be your morality.
Don't harm other people and
live a happy life.
And that sounded pretty damn
good to me.
So I went in that direction.
But I think that the question of
spirituality is interesting because
you described your spirituality as
the people, I don't want to
ruin what you want to say.
>> It's not to get all Kumbaya in
here but let me light
some incense real quick.
No, I guess with my spirituality
would definitely be more humanist
approach, just the general idea
that humans are generally good.
Humans generally want to do
the right thing.
And if given the opportunity,
they're probably going to choose
the nicer, more giving thing,
more generous thing to do, right?
That's how I feel.
Obviously, there are exceptions to
every single rule.
And I think, part of what's tied to
that is your own life experience,
right.
And what resonates with you, right.
I talk about
my own sort of socialism coming
from working at a UPS facility
where we were unionized,
shout outs to the teamsters.
And by and
large, everybody, if you showed up
to work every day on time,
you could not be fired.
It didn't matter how excellent or
shabby your work was.
And guess what?
None of the attended the guys that
I work next to work their
butts off, period.
That's what they did.
And so that informs my own opinion,
that informs how I feel about what
people are capable of doing, or
what people will do if left to
their own devices, right.
And also couple that with,
you know, just the idea of me
being raised Christian and
in becoming atheist, ostensibly.
But understanding that certainly
elements of the religion still
resonated with me.
Whether it be lead he was without
sin cast the first stone,
loved your neighbor, etc, right.
Or my Jewish homie telling me about
the concept of a Mitzvah and
I'm like, that kind of that
resonates with me.
I like that, you know what I'm
saying like, I want to
be a mensch one day for sure.
And so once you understand that you
yourself can pick and choose
the elements of these different
organized religions, that you like
the most and sort of orient your
life around what resonates to you,
and in understanding
that you don't want to go out and
do harm to other people.
It's not hard to feel spiritual and
it's not hard to understand that.
When you do a good deed for
somebody how good that makes
you feel.
And for that to resonate with you
and be like, I'm going to orient my
life around those kinds of things.
It's not that difficult.
I don't need Cat telling me about,
if you jerk off, you're going to
hell before marriage and
all of that.
Who needs it and who needs it?
>> Not me, not me.
>> [LAUGH] By the way, quick,
quick fact.
In my seventh, no,
my eighth grade sex ed class,
I was going to Catholic school, and
the pastor of the church was
actually our sex ed teacher.
And I kid you not, from here,
my hand to God, I swear to God.
He explained to us that
masturbation was a sin,
because it was basically a sexual
act not performed in
service of having a kid and
I became an atheist that day.
>> Okay, but here's the thing.
[LAUGH] >> This is the correct
rebuttal to that, right?
And you made the right choice.
[LAUGH] >> The rebuttal is then why
did God make it feel so damn good.
>> [LAUGH] He wanted to test us.
He wanted to test us.
He wanted to test our resolve.
[LAUGH] >> God created man and
woman with the intention, okay,
to feel pleasure, right so are you
going to deny what God created and
why he created.
I don't know,
it's all in my opinion.
That kind of stuff is just
nonsense.
And look,
just to kind of show a parallel,
the Proud Boys have a strict rule
against that behavior, right?
And look at how it manifests,
like rage, frustration, irritation,
delusions, paranoia.
Love yourself.