By the fact that every single religion needs to consider material matters in order to survive? Because it can easily make religions not required, and if a religion is maintained as simply a private thing then it looses a great deal of authority over its members, if only because their numbers will diminsh.
Yeah, no need to fake it anymore, and, peer pressure being take away, a lot of motivation is lost.
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?I can't explain in one word answers, which rather defeats the flow.
In all seriousness, it depends on what you mean by "the religion." The "Core philosophy" may be deteriorated, but it's pretty silly to hold ideals to be things that need to be preserved (especially if they turn out to be wrong). But if by religion we mean the religious establishment, then as long as they're making their upkeep in the form of tithes-even if it's from lip service, that's not necessarily a problem.
A tithe is a set amount of money taken from parishoners towards (say) upkeep of the priests lavatory.
And members may be members of a religion for many reasons that are not distincly "religious" and one of those can be the acquisition of power, if there are no longer people paying religion much heed such people will transfer their interests elsewhere.
If being a cleric isn't an interesting career path, less parents will push their children into it. Children who would have otherwise made wonderful priests go and become philosophers or NGO workers or whatever instead.
SRSLY, nothing better than the Church for developing ivory tower intellectualism, which is underrated IMHO. For one thing, we owe it genetics.
edited 9th Jan '11 1:45:06 PM by RawPower
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?Because they will keep your church built, your souls prayed for and the people who come to church more easily ministered to if they have money to do it with.
And sometimes clerics will be motivated by stuff other than money, an escape from angry husbands is one option, and in my own case I wondered about becoming a priest because I liked helping people and ministering to them, I simply lacked the faith to become a priest and the mind neccesarily to become a doctor.
Also I didn't just mean the priests, I also meant ordinary "Lay" people can be motivated to join areligious group out of none religious reasons.
"Would the greedy really make for wonderful priests?" - Tangent
Well, even if they were personally greedy they say anti-greed things that at least sound convincing, however hypocritical they would be. One doesn't need to have a virtuous nature to have a heroic role.
I think some of the blame for that can be layed at the floor of the Gregorian reform, there is no better way to ruin a church system than insist on priests not copulating. Because what you make them into is either hypocrits or homosexuals (seriously the amount of man love that went on in monastaries is remarkable).
Anyway we are meandering about a bit here, so I have this question to ask religious people here, can you name a particular time where your religion has helped or hindered you? I am just wondering.
@Bugman Because you know, celibacy is basically impossible, yep. Although I personally believe that it shouldn't be a lifetime thing unless the priest chooses to do so. A mandatory period of at least five to ten years would be enough, and they could continue if they chose to do so or stop.
There's no justice in the world and there never was~How should I put this, when you are making the members of noble houses as well as people who have desires more secular than spiritual go into the church and force them to celibacy then problems will ensue. And whilst I am not saying that Celibacy is bad, or even that it is good what it often is in almost any time period is "hard to maintain".
Which is why forcing on an entire substrata of society (espeically the ones who run the bureuacracy) is not always going to be a good thing.
Not only that, but drives towards "purity" in religious groups are often harmful to them. Look for instance at the gregorian reform and consider for a moment how much of protestantism would not have existed had priests continued to be allowed to have kids. Seperating Lay clergy and their parishoners is a sign of trouble brewing in my view.
The priest in a lot of medieval communities was forced (through dictate from Rome if nothing else) to act as a seperate entity to most of his parishoners, the lack of familial connections, the extreme lack of training but the august language what they did know was put in as well as the emphasis on bodily and spiritual purity (and the reasons to look down on it in ones flock) lead to the dictates being ignored or causing a rift between ordinary lay people and the church that was supposed to serve them.

Secular societies are the bane of religions. Not only do they often directly contradict their rules, they make them superfluous and irrelevant by stripping them of all power.
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?