Have you noticed which specific situations make you think about Christianity and cause the discomfort? Is it any reference to the religion, or something more specific, like during discussions of morality?
Where do you live? Different parts of the US have substantially different religious sociocultural patterns and most people are unaware of the extent to which they live in a bubble that is unusually homogeneous in a number of respects. (See Yvain’s post for examples of this in non-religious contexts.)
For religion, the number of people per 1000 who attend church regularly varies from city to city within the US, with some cities at about 998 (think Provo Utah) and others in the low 300s. There is an “unchurched belt” along the west coast where high individual and family mobility, and car oriented city planning reduces social pressures to join religious communities. Some places are mostly traditional with strong anti-novelty pressures (the “bible belt”) and others are full of meditation centers and tai chi classes and other “hippie” religions for people high in openness to new experience who can’t swallow the stories from their childhood but are less critical of novel stories that fulfill similar needs.
In The Future Of Religion, religious sociologists Bainbridge and Stark develop an explanation of religious behavior based on the theory that people “rationally” seek out religions that give them a make-believe version of things they want in real life but cannot feasibly acquire by truly effective methods. This predicts that different people should want different religions and is part of Bainbridge & Stark’s causal explanation for sect formation (IE when religions have schisms and split into pieces). Their book is full of geographic analysis showing that different regions in the US vary systematically in roughly the ways that their theory predicts. Without regional variation to analyze, their book would have lost a substantial chunk of its content.
Without knowing which “sociocultural bubble” you’re in, its hard to predict what your memetic exposure is going to be like. Its possible that instead of changing your religion to make yourself happier, you could move instead. Of course, more and more people are doing exactly this, and it is causing the regional cultural bubbles in the US to become even more extreme due to evaporative cooling...
Have you noticed which specific situations make you think about Christianity and cause the discomfort? Is it any reference to the religion, or something more specific, like during discussions of morality?
Living in America—it’s basically unavoidable in this culture.
Where do you live? Different parts of the US have substantially different religious sociocultural patterns and most people are unaware of the extent to which they live in a bubble that is unusually homogeneous in a number of respects. (See Yvain’s post for examples of this in non-religious contexts.)
For religion, the number of people per 1000 who attend church regularly varies from city to city within the US, with some cities at about 998 (think Provo Utah) and others in the low 300s. There is an “unchurched belt” along the west coast where high individual and family mobility, and car oriented city planning reduces social pressures to join religious communities. Some places are mostly traditional with strong anti-novelty pressures (the “bible belt”) and others are full of meditation centers and tai chi classes and other “hippie” religions for people high in openness to new experience who can’t swallow the stories from their childhood but are less critical of novel stories that fulfill similar needs.
In The Future Of Religion, religious sociologists Bainbridge and Stark develop an explanation of religious behavior based on the theory that people “rationally” seek out religions that give them a make-believe version of things they want in real life but cannot feasibly acquire by truly effective methods. This predicts that different people should want different religions and is part of Bainbridge & Stark’s causal explanation for sect formation (IE when religions have schisms and split into pieces). Their book is full of geographic analysis showing that different regions in the US vary systematically in roughly the ways that their theory predicts. Without regional variation to analyze, their book would have lost a substantial chunk of its content.
Without knowing which “sociocultural bubble” you’re in, its hard to predict what your memetic exposure is going to be like. Its possible that instead of changing your religion to make yourself happier, you could move instead. Of course, more and more people are doing exactly this, and it is causing the regional cultural bubbles in the US to become even more extreme due to evaporative cooling...