My thoughts on these “young and educated” folks who are abandoning religion (which comes from having taught college and graduate students over the past 15 years and also having hired them in my FT job):
In this age group in which religion has taken a rapid decline, so too has this their willingness to work hard, their understanding that they’re not always right, their belief that not everything they do is done well, and their acknowledgement that there are people in the world to whom they should listen as those folks are more educated, experienced, and wise than they are.
In short, we need a God and we need children to be raised as believers because a belief in God and a religious system imbues the understandings I described above: religion is hard work; religion tells you that you’re not above reproach; religion tells you from an early age that there is Someone out there who is more educated, experienced and wise than you are.
The fact that this group (and more and more Americans) have decided they’re too smart for a God has meant that they’ve decided that they ARE God. And (although I’m Catholic) they are throwing the Protestant Work Ethic right out the door with it, because if you’re God, there’s no need for that silliness.
So the lack of religion/belief is a brewing economic, societal, and political as well as ecclesiastical disater.
Extremely well said and true.
Good post!