Shopping for religions

When I left my religion of origin, it was because it didn’t live up to its hype. It claimed to be the one and only way that God had chosen to reveal his truth to humans. Then it turned out that not only was it not the Only True System, it wasn’t even a true system. Once that became clear, the choice was simple. I got out.

If you’ve left a religion, my hat’s off to you. I don’t really mind which reason was the one that got you out. And yet it seems to me that if you do the right thing for the wrong reason, there’s a very good chance you’ll end up reverting to an earlier wrong opinion.

I’m thinking about this because I’ve noticed this result from the latest Pew survey.

More than half of all Americans have switched religions at least once, according to an in-depth survey released this week.

And that may still be “a conservative estimate,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

First off, religious mobility is a good thing. If people are becoming disaffected with their current religion, at least some of the movers will give up on religion altogether, and that will boost the numbers of ‘nones’. But to me at least, the reasons people give for leaving seem a bit weak.

The reasons people give for changing their religion – or leaving religion altogether – differ widely depending on the origin and destination of the convert: 71 percent of Catholics and nearly 60 percent of Protestants who switched to another religion didn’t think their spiritual needs were being met or they just liked another faith more, or they changed their views on religious or moral beliefs.

I know religion is a commodity, but it still seems weird to me to approach religion like a shopper. Maybe that’s because Mormons are used to putting up with their faith even if they don’t like it very much or disagree with it sometimes. After all, it claims to be the Only True Et Cetera, so what are you going to do?

This could be the scientist in me talking, but it seems to me that the only valid criteria for determining your belief system is: is it true? If it’s true, you accept it, even if it’s unpalatable. But look at these folks wandering around. They escape one religion only to bounce into another one. And how will they know if it’s the right one? Because of how they feel. Or they’ll like it more. Both poor reasons to accept an idea. They’d be better off it they’d realise that ideas are true to the extent that they match up with available data from the real world. And if they did that, they’d abandon the baseless doctrines that form the basis of all religions.

Ex-Catholics seem to have the right idea though.

Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change: Those who have quit the church, 10 percent of U.S. adults, vastly outnumber incoming Catholics, 2.6 percent of adults. Two in three of Catholics who became unaffiliated and half of those who became Protestant say they left the church because they “stopped believing its teachings.”

Well done.