Yasir Qadhi – Moralistic Therapeutic Deism – The New Secular Liberal Religion

			Now we're all aware that the current religious trends of the western world is that across every
single denomination without exception, there has been a decrease in church attendance, mosque
attendance, and in attendance in all organized religion. And every single faith tradition is dealing
with its own crises. We are not immune from the problem is happening in the broader society. And
what we discover is that many of the millennial generation are affiliating with no organized
religion, and also not quite embracing atheism. The term that has been given in some academic
literature is the nuns not the Mun nun, Dr. Maha Juba, nuns, the nuns, those that have nothing, no
		

			and II. And if you look at statistics, this is a Gallup survey, one of the most comprehensive
surveys done about religiosity. I want you to take a look at this statistic over here in the year
2019. So this is like two or three years old now. Almost 40% of those of the millennials said that
they don't identify with any religion 1/3 More than 1/3, almost a half. And within 510 years, it
will be more than a half by the way. This is in America, in Nordic countries in Sweden, for example,
upwards of 70 or 80% of the population says that they don't identify with any faith tradition, and
obviously the elders they still do. You can tell if you're above 70 years old, then yes, there's
		

			still religion. But this is the generation as we all understand, that's gonna grow up to be these
people in 510 2030 years or graft is slowly going to be shifting right words. And unless and until
we do something, similar rates not to this level are being found in our own communities. Now,
contrary to popular perception, the alternative to religion is not atheism. That is not the default.
Those who self identify as atheists are still a minority. The alternative to religion is some
vacuous ideology that has been called by some researchers, moralistic therapeutic, deism, MTD,
moralistic therapeutic deism is the one can call it I call it the religion of secular liberalism,
		

			this is what it is. And surveys have shown that the default amongst the next generation, the largest
group of affiliated ideologies of religion larger than Christianity, much larger than any other
faith tradition of the millennials is a hodgepodge of ideas that have come under the rubric of MTD,
there is no creed per se, but some general trends can be observed. There is a belief in some higher
power.
		

			And the belief that this higher power, the goal of life is that we should be kind and good to one
another. And if we do that, and find our happiness, then we have lived our lives, MTD centered
around the goal of self fulfillment and happiness, whatever that means to those generations, we have
to find ourselves we have to be happy. And there is a notion of being good unto others. And that is
why it is called moralistic. Because the emphasis is not on Aqeedah. It's not on creed. It's not on
rituals, it's not on laws, the emphasis is on being good to other people. It is therapeutic, because
it gives them a meaning in life, it makes them feel good about themselves. It's therapeutic, because
		

			when you eliminate religion from your heart, you have to replace it with something, you have to have
something that answers the beautiful questions of life, and so MTD gives them that internal therapy,
and it is deistic because it does believe in a higher power. The default of this next generation is
that yeah, there's probably some force out there, let's call him God, but that God is not an
integral part of our lives as human beings. He's not involved daily, and he doesn't care about our
daily actions. It is to petty it is the God of the philosopher by the way, even seen and others of
the back in the day, it is too petty for that divine being to really care about our personal
		

			hygiene, our eating and drinking our sexuality. Why would that Divine Being care about something of
this nature, however, if we need him, he's there for us. And so we do reach out to him at times of
distress when our children is sick, when we need to pass the exam will call out to God otherwise he
doesn't really care that much about us and He wants us to live good lives. And a lot of them do
believe in half of the octet or not the full Africa they believe in gender but not jahannam. Right.
By and large this this this category of people they're not interested in punishments. Why would a
God punish his own creation, but they do want some comfort?
		

			Have an afterlife for those that are good and so this is an again this is not a creed you will find
plenty of people who obviously would come under this rubric but then might disagree with one of the
aspects within within this list over here
		

			either gonna
		

			be a monster here doll Seanie when she
		

			told me what to feed
		

			Sunday, what
		

			are we talking
		

			down to
		

			me down in
		

			the