When and why did religion begin to decline in Western Society?

>>1976309
thirty years war was when it began

french revolution was the point of no turning back

>>1976310
French revolution was the point of no turning back for FRANCE

Religion is still very important in Spain, Italy, Eastern Europe, and to an extent is one of the forces in the polarised United States

Also notice how the French are rude as fuck while the Southern and Eastern Europeans are very courteous

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>>1976309
french revolution, fucking freemasons and their shitty "god of logic" cult. Fuck Napoleon and all those other fags.

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People woke up.

>>1976319

>Southern Europeans polite
>How to tell if some one has never been to Italy

lol

Secondly, Italians are deeply distrusting of clergy and have been throughout their history, electing various governments since 1861 who have been anti-clergy or have won on a platform of taking Catholic land away. Southern Europeans see the Church as a huge institution which is always around but it's truly a religion for old women and the sick. Most people couldn't care less.

>>1976310
>>1976319
>>1976323
Thank you very much I'm doing some reading on the 30 Years War right now. You seem to be spot on.

>>1976319
>Southern and Eastern Europeans
>very courteous

>French revolution was the point of no turning back for FRANCE
that's only if you ignore the impact of the french revolution on european thought.

Also Southern Europe and a good chunk of Eastern Europe aren't really religious at all

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>>1976319
>>1976323
t.edgy reactionaries

It's only Parisians that are shit heads, same way New Yorkers are assholes.

>>1976348
>When and why did religion begin to decline in Western Society?

Too complex of a question, and an entire book could be written on it. Personally, I'd say that a disdain for religion was planted in the European mindset due to many factors, such as the Church's interference in temporal matters during the Medieval era, as well as the many Wars of Religion. As such, religion increasingly became a tool of control, rather than a genuinely held belief.

Advances in both science and historical research in the 19th century also destroyed the notion that the Biblical narratives were accurate at all; the retreat of various denominations' into convoluted apologetics also turned many people off. The development of the work-day due to the Industrial Revolution also helped turn religion into more of a burden - people as it is worked, and wanted to spend their leisure time performing leisurely activities, not attending sermons.

Theologically speaking OP, the world has been going downhill since man first offered entrails to the gods.

>>1976319
This is possibly the least traveled anon I've ever seen.

The enlightenment and the death of god, caused by reason.

Human reason is a “Benevolent Tyrant.” as opposed to the primative tyranny of world of ancient superstitions and ancient religious laws.

The human mind, unhypnotised by religion, rebels and resists all irrationality.

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The aftermath of the great war, so the 20s.

When the End of Days begun
>>1976374
Biblical narratives are accurate, though.
>>1976654
back to ribbit

>>1976374
>19th century also destroyed the notion that the Biblical narratives were accurate at all;
This has never been an issue for Catholics, read Augustine.

>>1976309
The Jesuits happened. Read 'Moral maxiums and plots against kings, queens, and churches.'

>>1976309
When people became more educated as illiteracy was virtually eliminated

>>1976351
If someone is a reactionary, to a reactionary movement what does that make them?

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>>1976309

>What was the protestant reformation for $500 Alex

>>1976309
The Protestant Reformation is when parts of the West began to forget the deeper meaning of Christianity. It's been downhill since.

>>1977226
What deeper parts?

>>1976309
WWI happened

Western is the term for our society from when it was post-Christian. Christendom was the term when it was still Christian. There is no easy way to pick the year, but I'd say it's after 1700, and before 1850.

-First we got the crusades, a well-intentioned (though a bit poorly executed) campaign turned into the pope's personal army
-Great Scism and Corrupt Popes of the Renaissance reduced the status of the papacy
-Protestant Reformation destroyed all religious cohesion in Europe and people gotten war and religious wary after all the big bloody wars that would wipe out cities, change entire political structures, pin brother against brother, and sack rome (again)
-Heliocentric controversy pretty much disproves heaven (the whole "it's in another plane" theory wasn't until later back then they thought heaven was in the heavens aka the sky).
-French revolution creates cult of reason that spreads throughout Europe via Napoleon
-and finally WWI happens which made the Euros question why would a loving god allow such a shitstorm to develop as well as question everything else

tl;dr: shitty history entails shitty creator

>>1977226
>Reformation
>began to forget the deeper meaning
wew lad, the Reformation remembered the deeper meaning of Christianity

But religion isn't declining in the western world.
It is only Christianity which is declining.
If you actually look at the statistics, literally all other religions other than Christianity are growing in the West.

huh, interesting seeing everyone name dates from anywhere between 1054 to 1945.

i wouldve said post ww2 or even 1960 coming out of democracy and (womens) emancipation and the influence of tv and mass media

>>1977917

Not exactly, overall religiosity is declining, and Christianity is declining relative to other religions.

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>>1976309
The seeds of religion's decline in the west were planted with the rise of western philosophy, when thinkers like Renee Descartes specifically isolated and defined reason as a distinct intellectual faculty from theological scholarship, while his concept of dualism allowed us to separate concepts of the natural from the supernatural and gave rise to our modern definition of religion as being one's opinion regarding the form and identity of the supernatural.

Of course the problem with Cartesian duality becomes immediately apparent when the crux of his theory was that the Pineal gland served as the link in the human body between the physical and spiritual, where subsequent physiological studies of the gland indicates no such thing, and the entire conversation since then has been on the apparently materialist nature of reality.

Religion was placed on life support by Immanual Kant who essentially codified our modern understanding of the differences between faith and reason and settled some of western philosophy's most pressing conundrums, but it was only until Charles Darwin answered one of the "big" questions (what is the origin of life?) and Karl Marx identified religion's use as a lever for social control that irreligiousness began to be seen as a viable alternative to, say, deism or pantheism

In the late 19th century Nietzsche declared that God is dead because the exercise of reason had proven so compelling that it was on the verge of completely displacing religious doctrine as a serious motivator for human behavior. Combine that with the horrors of two world wars and now you have a mass audience questioning the existence of God and over the course of the 20th century religious participation has plummeted. America managed to delay this decline because its comparatively thin social safety net kept the church as the nexus of public support, but the rise of the internet and rapid spreading of information is causing the decline to accelerate, even in America

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Church was corrupt for two thousands years straight.

We're on the history board and I am only the second person to say the Enlightenment.

Jesus Christ /his/ truly is a pile of shit!

>>1978898
Good post.

>>1979046
Enlightenment is a meme, anon.

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>>1976309
Christian split between the East and the West.

West descended into heresy and at that point there was no turning back.

corruption, philosophical arguments challenging religion and clergy, hypocrisy, overreliance on clergy to gain respect from the people instead of on faith and teaching and good example

>>1979056

'The Enlightenment' is a time period.

'Enlightenment' is a word with various uses in the English language.

>>1976708
The Catholic Church held on to a literalist view until it became inconvnient to do so. During the investigations into the positions of Copernicus and Galileo's ideas, claims were made by Cardinals and high Church officials to the effect that "the literal view of the Bible must always be preserved and preferred over a metaphorical interpretation".

And Augustine's view was his own, and not a Church position.

>>1979071
Bullshit. Philosophical mumbo jumbo not even close to challenge the eternal truth that is The Holy Bible.

>>1976309
as far as i know it declined really heavily in the aftermath of WW2 in Europe

>>1979080

You have to be 18 to post on this site.

I know that most of the answers in this thread are coming from the intellectual side of things, but I recently read a review of a book that approached it from a more sociological perspective:
>https://www.amazon.com/How-West-Really-Lost-Secularization/dp/1599474662
Basically, that religiosity in the West declined because of the decline of the family as an important social unit, not as the other way around.

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>>1979076
Because Galileo's ideas were mathematically untenable and essentially based on a hunch (to be fair, it was a really good hunch even if he could never make the numbers match up.)

It wasn't until Johannes Kepler provided more accurate observations of the movement of celestial bodies (in elliptical orbits rather than Galileo's circular ones) and Isaac Newton laid down the essential mathematical and mechanical groundwork that Copernicus and Galileo were vindicated, and once that happened even the hardliners in the church came around and the church's attitude today towards its handling of the Galileo affair is one of regret and apology, and its official position is acknowledging scientific realities such as the Big Bang and evolution, even going so far as to avoid "Intelligent Design" interpretations of the scripture.

>>1979143
> Galileo's ideas were mathematically untenable
It didn't matter in his times, because Galileo was the one who even bothered to ground anything in the mathematics.

First World War.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvoJkreZtT0

>>1979161
Nonsense, there were plenty of mathematical models grounded in the geocentric theory and the prevailing attitude of church-funded academia was "stick to professional consensus, teaching opposing theories like heliocentricism as the minority opinion that they were", which rankled a born self-promoter like Galileo.

What made Galileo groundbreaking was his use of the telescope to collect empirical data in support of his thesis. That is what makes him the first true scientist.

>>1976309

Speaking for Britain, WW1 killed religiousity here. My grandparents, raised in the 1920's, were the last generation inculcated with religion from childhood, neither of my parents had any experience of religion growing up and this is the norm for British people I've met.

>>1979109

WW2 ended Judaism as a religion, most "Jews" today are atheists. It's generally seen as a glorious "just war" and regularly invoked by politicians and priests, I doubt it had much overall effect on the religiosity of most Europeans.

>>1976309
Christianity is under constant attack from the kike-controled medias. But there are still conversion to Catholicism and Evangelicalism.

>>1979143
Nice way to dodge the issue at hand.

Galileo's or Copernicus' views are irrelevant to this discussion. What matters is the response given by the Church authorities, in which it was clearly stated: "not only the Holy Fathers, but also the modern commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Joshua, you will find all agreeing in the literal interpretation that the sun is in heaven and turns around the earth with great speed, and that the earth is very far from heaven and sits motionless at the center of the world...Nor can one answer that this is not a matter of faith, since if it is not a matter of faith 'as regards the topic."
-Cardinal Bellarmine

And: "Replies which assert that Scripture speaks according to our mode of understanding are not satisfactory: both because in explaining the Sacred Writings the rule is always to preserve the literal sense, when it is possible, as it is in this case"
-Church official Ingoli

The Catholic Church held a literalist view; they began to abandon such a stance in order to save face.

>>1979211
>the church held a literalist view
Nope.

btw scripture is still more accurate than your bad philosophy.

>>1979202
Christian world ended up with World War that was started by Christian Monarchs against each other.

With the rise of education and elightment. Back then even the educated scholars believed in god and religion. With the progress and information, they have found out about it. And with almost all of the society being literate, people found that absurd desertic idea to be unrealistic.

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>>1979216
>"Replies which assert that Scripture speaks according to our mode of understanding are not satisfactory: both because in explaining the Sacred Writings the rule is always to preserve the literal sense, when it is possible, as it is in this case."

>>1979225
This is incorrect.
>>1979226
>when it is possible
Learn to read, please.

>>1979230
Seems pretty correct to me. You can't defend the absurd idea in well informed, educated society.

>>1979236
>absurdity is wrong
btw society isn't informed or educated, just under a new dogma that jerks their ego a lot more.

See: you. Typical undergraduate fuckhead that thinks he's le genius for passing calc 2 or some crap.

>>1979241
500 years ago, a typical person was no better than a monkey. All the stories you read in history are about high-class people. Comparing with low-class scums in those times, the undergraduate fuckheads are intelligent.

>>1979230
>Learn to read, please.

You focus on the "when it is possible" as though it were something that the Church upheld: consider that the passage by Ingoli is referring to the incident of Joshua and the stopping of the sun in the Old Testament. "When it is possible" merely means "when it is convenient."

>>1979254
>500 years ago, a typical person was no better than a monkey. A
Wrong, nice revisionism though.
>>1979257
>moving goalposts
Suicide is an option

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>>1979211
Oh yes, I suppose Pope Gregory was a clueless literalist when he invented the modern calendar, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
The Catholic church is what made the careers of Copernicus and Galileo possible.

You're also ignoring realpolitik. In these days Europe was riven with sectarian strife and the Church was under intense pressure from Protestants who were accusing the church of deviating from scripture and the direct teaching of Jesus to the masses. Protestants were directly accusing the church of teaching heresy by allowing models like heliocentricism to even exist. The church was forced to shut Galileo up because he was making his boss look really bad to the people who actually wanted him dead, even as the pope kept signing his name on Galileo's paychecks.

But the fact is, aside from these notable exceptions, the church was a consistent patron of the sciences and didn't do much otherwise to impede the illustrious careers of some of the most important figures in science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_cleric-scientists

Like most religious disputes there was never a definitive "end", the entire argument just sort of petered out as each successive generation proved to be less hardline conservative than the generation before, until the Catholic church became the first Christian organization to officially recognize heliocentricism in 1822 when the evidence had become overwhelmingly indisputable even to church hardliners.

My hypothesis is that religion is naturally a part of a man's ethnicity, and that a universal religion will be just as unappealing to man's tribal nature just as much as a centralized state.

>>1976694
I swear to god, if you're this faggot >>1979689

>>1979046
You forget where you are. Fact don't matter
(see >>1979080 >>1979056 >>1979202 >>1979230 >>1979275 I bet it's pretty much one guy though)

>>1979720
>>1979671 oops, I mean this guy

>>1976319
The Mediterranean countries (excluding Greece) are culturally religious than actually religious.
Eastern Europe has a significant population of the devout, but a larger percentage is atheist or "spiritual".

>>1979046
You're thinking of the final blow, and even you're wrong on that one. It's the 19th century-20th century maturation of scientific rationalism and its application toward society as a whole.

A bunch of silly ideas (crude materialism, probabilities, skepticism, etc.) in the 17th-18th century was even supported by the some groups of progressive clergies. Father Mersenne being the prominent one. It's because all of them carried some political interests with them. Platonist-influenced clergies eschewed Scholastic castle sand logic theology, and viewed skepticism, for example, as something advantageous politically.

It's really ain't that simple, folks.

>>1976319
religious people in eastern yurop are violent, backwards apes

>>1976323
Napoleon brought Catholicism back to France, you stupid LARPing cunt

>>1976309
Protestantism was the first blow
(((French))) revolution was the killing blow where the West abandonned Christianity for nationalism and socialism
WW1 destroyed some christian monarchies
WW2 finished the remaining christian monarchies

>>1979284
The Church from its inception has always used violence against its opponents, particularly fellow Christians that it suspected of not not towing the party line. And this was particullary true from the time of Constantine, when the church became sufficiently powerful to use force.


The Reformers, not the scientists, taught mankind to stand up for the truth and also for one's own conscience.

>>1976319
>French revolution was the point of no turning back for FRANCE

Only the Parisians and the (((French))) from the big cities, we, French from the clountryside are proudly Catholic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SsWAKk0H3w

>>1979211
Got a source?

The advent of classical liberalism tbqh famalamalam

Will there be a religious revival in the west or are people becoming too fedora?

>>1980375
The only way I could see a revival is if civilization collapses or there's yet another reformation.

>>1976309
The rise of individualism after the 2nd world war.

>>1976319
>Religion is still very important in Spain
Flip here. Only oldfaggots go to church nowadays

Europe is basically a land of empty pretty churches.

>>1979173
>there were plenty of mathematical models grounded in the geocentric theory
Such as? Genuinely interested in this. Are there some books that are friendly to non-physicists?

>>1980324
I assume you're referring to the Catholic Church? My own special snowflake Reformed Church never oppresses other denominations, only sometimes badmouthing them in secret.

>>1980308
Sure did, for the Jesuits who just needed a manlet warrior to go in and sack Rome for them, depose a white Pope so the black Pope could be restored to full power by over turning Dominus ac Redemptor. Everything else about the Napoleonic wars was window dressing and red herrings.

More on topic, the Reformation because who doesn't eventually get sick of despots from Rome?

>>1976309
The rise of Leftism starting with the French Revolution, catalyzed by the Russian 1917 Commie Revolution, and critically injured Western Civilization and Christianity with the 60's social revolution.
Leftism is a cancer.
However, the fail to realize how much Christianity is ingrained in, and IS, Western Civilization - compassion, mercy, charity, respect for woman to where they aren't slaves, humility. Everything a leftist claims to be for (but aren't generally) is from Christianity being out culture.
>inb4 some pleb says "DURR Muh jew on a stick
Learn your history.

>>1977916
>piecemeal Christianity
>deeper

Nah, not a chance. If you're raised Protestant, even High Church, check out an Orthodox Liturgy, you'll be blown away.

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>>1980785
>compassion, mercy, charity, respect for woman to where they aren't slaves, humility. Everything a leftist claims to be for (but aren't generally) is from Christianity being out culture.
Yep, these things totally don't exist in other cultures and didn't exist before Christianity. kek

>>1980808
Not to the extent that they are FUNDAMENTAL to our culture. It's not anywhere else like that.
>China - has no concept of humanity, especially under Communism. People do not help the weak nor the injured, instead prefering to leave them die lest they be stuck legally responsible for the injured/dying.
>Japan - a wife MUST get her husband to sign off on any loan she may want. Get's paid much less than male counterpart.
>Taiwan - much the same as PRC, but not as Big Brother and has normal Western social media.
>India - literal rape culture, woman, especially patil women, are raped constantly and never really reported. Caste system in opposed to human rights fostered by Christianity and the West.
>Middle East (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Iraq, Yemen, Oman) - woman cannot drive, generally have to cover full burqa for natives, no freedom of religion, no care for the poor willingly (zakat is forced). Pretty much isn't Syria, Lebanon, and Iran where woman can dress to Western Standard. Egypt too, but they're Sunni spergs still with serious Christian persecution like the rest of the Middle East.
>Indonesia - Used to be more tolerant, now much like the Middle East. Fundamental Islam is gaining more popularity there with 100,000 people protests happening currently against a Governor there because he "blasphemed" against Islam by quoting the Koran at a rally as a Christian. They are calling for his execution and Muslims have bombed Churches in the country as retaliation killing little kids.
I haven't yet been to North Africa aside from Egypt. This is all from history and traveling.

>>1976309
They realized that religion is obsolete in the modern world.

>>1979173
>What made Galileo groundbreaking was his use of the telescope to collect empirical data in support of his thesis. That is what makes him the first true scientist.
He wasn't the first astronomer to gather empirical data. He was just the first one to use a telescope, which was a recent invention.

>>1980859
>Let me show you how different people are:
>Responds with orientalist memes and shit caused more by poverty rather than religion.

>>1979211
>The Catholic Church held a literalist view

Fucking kek
The Protestants were the ones with the literal view while the Catholic Church always made it clear that they are there to interpret the Bible. That's one of the reasons how it's legitimizing it's existence.

let me copy paste the 2nd half from the shitty wikipedia article you so conviently forgot to add:

>I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the center of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun, then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary, and say rather that we do not understand them than that what is demonstrated is false. But I will not believe that there is such a demonstration, until it is shown me. Nor is it the same to demonstrate that by assuming the sun to be at the center and the earth in heaven one can save the appearances, and to demonstrate that in truth the sun is at the center and the earth in heaven; for I believe the first demonstration may be available, but I have very great doubts about the second, and in case of doubt one must not abandon the Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Holy Fathers.

It was because of their aristotelian views they held at the time and any supposed 'literal' understanding of the Bible.

>>1980913
>and any supposed 'literal' understanding of the Bible.

*than any

>>1978898
Hold on! Darwin never resolved, and in fact I don't think he even set out to resolve, what was the origin of life. This continues to be a big open question in biology. His theory deals with other problems in biology (evolution and adaptation), which he of course did resolve with enormous success. That said, you are right in that he delivered a huge blow to religious thinking, as he provided a mechanism that explained man's appearance (as in origin), and placed us squarely within the animal kingdom and more precisely in the hominid lineage of the primates.

>>1980890
>missing the point and moving goalposts
The point was proving that Christianity is Western cultural this has changed Western culture in a way that other cultures world-wide do not have.
fag.

>>1980785
>critically injured

Cry me a river, faggot. People that have lived in both periods of time are constantly blow away by the quality of life and technological improvements of life today.

God I hate this board sometimes. Go live in fucking Turkey if you want a religious lifestyle.

>>1978898
>Karl Marx identified religion's use as a lever for social control
no.
Marx said it was stuff proles made up between themselves, because they were getting fucked so hard by the capitalists they needed painkiller escapism.

>>1980942
the arabs dabbled in this 500 years prior.
There's nothing new under the sun.

>"One should then look at the world of creation. It started out from the minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and animals. The last stage of minerals is connected with the first stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants. The last stage of plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of animals, such as snails and shellfish which have only the power of touch. The word "connection" with regard to these created things means that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first stage of the next group. The animal world then widens, its species become numerous, and, in a gradual process of creation, it finally leads to man, who is able to think and to reflect. The higher stage of man is reached from the world of the monkeys, in which both sagacity and perception are found, but which has not reached the stage of actual reflection and thinking. At this point we come to the first stage of man after (the world of monkeys). This is as far as our (physical) observation extends." Ibn Khaldun, Prolegomena, 1377

>>1980808
I hate when people do this.
No, not really.
Read the Anabasis, for example.
People dont understand how different the ancient mindset was.
The only culture that believed in that stuff as much as us was the persian one.
And that's only because it was codified in their religion, and Zoroaster was a moral revolutionary in his own regard.
Also mongols and nords for women's rights, maybe.

>>1980961
Nice strawman.
>Turkey
>religious
The only reason they are Muslim-majority is because their ID cards have to have religious status. Most are atheist or apostates because of their actions.