Are baby boomers to blame for society backsliding towards atheism?

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Yes. And also bankrupting the US. Although the so called greatest generation wasn’t all that great in my opinion either.
 
Bankrupting the US? War production finally brought the US out of the Great Depression. I knew the so-called “greatest generation.” They were patriots fighting for God and country.
 
I was a teenager in the 60’s. I was pretty conservative, but after high school (I graduated in 1970) I did begin to question the existence of God and I became the center of my universe.
I don’t know if you can blame the baby boomers. I remember one of the Beatles saying they were more famous than Jesus and TIME magazine had a cover asking if God was dead. We reacted to the culture we were living in. I experienced 3 assassinations - JFK, MLK, Jr. and RFK,
the Vietnam War, the Manson murders,
which definitely caused many of us to question the world we live in.
 
well some of us “baby boomers” haven’t lost our way

i went to a blue collar US catholic grammar school that somehow helped at least some of us stay the course
 
In Europe, it’s been argued the established churches did a lot to undermine religion before and during World War One unintentionally. They did that by mixing the calls for war with religion.
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
My parents just didn’t see it coming
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This is what I think too. That wasn’t the only thing they didn’t see coming either. There were also little Japanese cars and things of that nature.

Being blindsided has been a reoccurring problem.
 
I’ve seen that appear a number of times not only last year since it was the centenary but even before then. There’s a book I read that was originally published in 1999 that made mention of it too.
As soldiers rallied to the colors to defend their nations, so did churchmen stand ready to drape those soldiers in religious iconography. Pastors readily painted their enemies as being in league with the devil while also clothing their soldiers in the language of the martyrs. Germany depicted their soldiers as crusaders defending their homeland, while the Allies saw religious significance to their capture of Jerusalem. As the war dragged on and seemed to unleash the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, clerics easily saw their figurative specter galloping across the globe as well.
[…]
Jenkins traces how these close associations discredited religion. This led to gradual secularization and two wildly different trends.
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I didn’t read this book myself but this review I found captures a lot of what I’ve seen elsewhere.
 
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ww 1 was a century ago

the world has changed a lot since then

i’d like to think Mother Roman Church has not

i’m going to have had to have had to have hung my coat on the hook of Mother Church
 
Yes but WWI gave atheism and secularism a very good foothold in Europe.
 
In certain ways, baby boomers raised people’s consciousness regarding the plight of minorities, women, gays, the disabled, and other groups who were on the fringe of society. They also began to question all kinds of authority and the so-called establishment. In other ways, baby boomers created a society that, through its multitude of choices, confused people and set some of them on a secular path devoid of religion and solid moral values, with concern mainly for making money and the quick buck with the least effort, amassing material possessions, maintaining their youth, and having fun by means of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. I think it’s a mixed bag, as in any other revolution.
 
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My baby boomer parents were the first generation of their families to have the opportunity to go to university, for my dads side in particular they were the first generation to get a chance to meet new people and make lives outside of the community they were raised in. I imagine for many married women of this generation they were the first to have full time jobs.

Even now I don’t see much evidence of the Catholic church rising to the challenge of the changing lives of the youth. I was a child of the 90s and was still catechised as though I was living in a Catholic community where I would most likely continue to live.
 
there is a category of “baby boomers” who were too young to serve in viet nam

we went to catholic grammar school, high school. college grad-school & then served in the military

during the cold war and stood down the soviet union

somehow, someway we passed all the urine tests and manged to survive on the frontline of catholic orthodoxy
 
ATraveller said:
In Europe, it’s been argued the established churches did a lot to undermine religion before and during World War One unintentionally. They did that by mixing the calls for war with religion.
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Peter Hitchens makes that argument, I believe…
 
They fought a just war and rid the world of nazis. I’ll give you that. The rest of your statement is incorrect.
 
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I study military history. I am in contact with published authors. I think you are mistaken.
 
There’s not a single serious economist that attributes the end of the Great Depression to war spending.
 
No they didn’t. Activist groups did that, not “Baby Boomers” as a group. And they preached, and provided, illegal drugs and sexually promiscuous persons. I heard them talking. They went on welfare, and didn’t care about who they were with as long as they got a lot of sex. Aside from the ritual dope smoking, they drank a lot of booze. They preached against Christianity. My Hippie friend called fornication “performing natural acts” at the time. I was there. Others spent money like it was water. “I maxed out my credit card.” And whose fault was that? You go the mall, buy stuff, throw it into your house, buy more stuff and more and more stuff. Then declare bankruptcy and buy more stuff. If the Anarchist preachers tell you “This life is all there is” then stuff and whatever kind of fun you want is all there is.

I avoided the “revolution” by following one simple rule: Don’t participate.
 
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