A new opinion poll from the US lists some of the reasons why people abandon ‘organised religion’. These are the so-called ‘nones’, as in “my religion is ‘none’”. If a similar poll was done here, the reasons given for abandoning religion would be similar I am sure. The reasons range from the hypocrisy of some Christians, to the alleged conflict between science and religion, to a dislike of organised religion to a preference for a more personal ‘spirituality’.

As Bishop Robert Barron points out in this blog, the reasons given for abandoning organised religion (note: most people who say they don’t belong to any given religion still believe in God), are ones anyone remotely familiar with apologetics could give a decent response to.

As usual what strikes me reading the poll findings is the extremely powerful effect of social norms. Most older people went to church because of social norms and most younger people don’t go to church because of social norms. Religious people are often accused of having an ‘unquestioning faith’, but non-believers often have an ‘unquestioning scepticism’. That might seem like a contradiction in terms, but it’s not because they have often been conditioned by social norms to be sceptical about the claims of religion without really even knowing why. They ought to be more sceptical of the religious scepticism.

Take the common canard about there being a conflict between science and religion. How many people who believe this have actually checked for themselves to see it is true, or have they simply heard something about Galileo being persecuted by the Church?

Have they asked themselves how many of the technical achievements of science (cars, indoor heating, air travel, smart phones, antibiotics etc) would have been denied them if the Church was still as powerful as it was in say, 1300? The only one I can think of is artificial contraception.

Galileo clashed with the scientific consensus of his day which still borrowed heavily from the ideas of Aristotle, and the Church foolishly become involved in that clash.

A few centuries later, it was really only biblical literalists who objected strongly to the theory of evolution.

After that, you would be struggling to come up with many other examples despite the fact that Christianity is 2,000 years old. Other examples, such as that the Church ‘taught’ that the world was flat sometimes turn out to be totally false.

On the other hand, the argument has been made that the Church helped to prepare the way for modern science by teaching that the universe is ordered and rational.

As Alfred North Whitehead, one of the great philosophers and mathematicians of the first half of the last century explained, the Middle Ages was “one long training in the intellect…in the sense of order”. From this, he said, came science, which was “an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.”

This is just one quick example of how common misconceptions about Christianity can be challenged.

The trouble is that they are very rarely challenged, not by priests, teachers, parents, or by ordinary lay Christians because they too often lack the knowledge, or inclination, or both, to do it. Therefore, certain erroneous, easily challenged ideas and norms take hold and the result is that it has become unusual for younger people to be an active and practicing member of a church. As Robert Barron points out in his blog. we can and must do better.