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My time in the evangelical world predates social media as a significant social force, but from what I've seen, many forms of social media cut both ways.
On the one hand, it does expose Christians to "leakage" from outside their preferred "echo chamber" so Christians using social media are exposed to a lot of discourse they ordinarily wouldn't be, including people who believe in other religions, no religions, the dreaded evil-looshun, etc.
Even the Christian sub-forum here is going to expose most any random Christian to a lot more diversity than they'll ever see via their church pot-luck.
On the other hand ... the bits of social media that Christians OWN, like their personal FB page or blog, or Christian-specific sites, can amplify their preferred echo chamber.
I'd say that the jury is still out on whether that's a net gain or loss for them. I'd lean toward loss though for fundamentalists. The Internet at large is a free for all, and there's nothing a fundamentalist likes less than lack of control over unapproved thoughts.
The Internet at large is a free for all, and there's nothing a fundamentalist likes less than lack of control over unapproved thoughts.
That is probably why the net exerts greater influence than did the previous communications revolution...television. TV was regulated by the FCC, but ultimately controlled by sponsors. Advertisers did not want to alienate groups of potential customers by giving offense, so their influence made sure that network TV was largely pablum. The driving dynamic was not "Who can we please?" but rather "How do we avoid offending?" This situation insured that religion would never suffer any heavy blows, they didn't expect some outraged devotees to buy a box of Tide if Tide was sponsoring some show which questioned or belittled their beliefs.
It was alleviated somewhat by the arrival of cable and commercial free channels, but before long all those commercial free channels had commercials. (Does anyone remember that A&E, AMC and Bravo all began without ads of any sort?) Not until ad free premium channels came into being was there censorship free TV.
I think the "questioning" of religious belief that this causes goes back to the time when the internet first started getting popular in the early 90's. People were discovering new ideas and opinions all the time.
Nice posting, all. Yes; I am sure (I have heard other atheists say it) that the Internet has been the best weapon in the atheist armoury, with perhaps influential Books being a second and religious scandal a third
Of course The religious and religions have tried to make it work for them, just as the peddlers of Conspiracy theories and alterantive history.science. They can look damn' slick, too. But the truth will out, as they say. And it only takes one person on a forum like this to debunk Polystrates, Kalam or the resurrection, and it will spread.
I know about Faith, of course, but I have a belief that people DO want to think that they have good reasons for what they believe. It may take some hard soul -searching, but convincing arguments and refutations will change a person's mind. Bit by bit. Playing by the rules, irreligion, if not actual atheism - must win in the end.
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