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I'm no longer religious, but in the past considered joining a church just because it was absolutely the easiest way to make friends in a new area. Decided not t
by AlwaysRock 3y ago
I'm no longer religious, but in the past considered joining a church just because it was absolutely the easiest way to make friends in a new area. Decided not to because it felt pretty unethical but I'm positive that is in large part why a lot of people go to church. It's a social event.
- zapataband1 3y agoThere's a few faiths and practices that come to mind that are imo seem to spread more positivity, Ba'hai faith and The Satanic Temple for example.
- moffkalast 3y agoHaha, strolling up to the local church like "how do you do fellow christians, jesus saves amirite?"
- bragr 3y agoJokes aside, if you walk into your local average middle of the road protestant church, nobody is going to ask you anything besides "New around here? what do you do?" Churches are filled with people with tepid religious convictions so if you stand up and sit down and sing along when you're supposed to, nobody is going to pin you down on philosophical questions over donuts and coffee after the service.
- AlwaysRock 3y agoRight. I don't argue that its easy to stroll into the average church and attend a service or even an event without any question. You may even be welcomed fairly well depending on the church. But if ones goal is to actually build relationships, built on anything other than lies or deception, and one doesnt actually believe the religion, its going to be difficult to do that at a religious institution.
- AlwaysRock 3y agoHaha. Exactly.
- zmgsabst 3y agoConsider just grabbing their flyer and showing up to the events, outside of the mass/service. I’m sure it varies by church, but in the large city churches I attended nobody would have cared — or likely even noticed — that you didn’t also attend mass.
- drdec 3y agoA good church will welcome a non-believer. It's an opportunity to change your mind.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoI took it to be more about the ethics of supporting the religious institution. For all the good they provide they also normalise a lot of hatred and anti-social values, even when they preach the opposite.
- francisofascii 3y agoMaybe so, but I would consider the "net good" of an institution, since most if not all institutions have at least some bad elements.
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- AlecSchueler 3y agoBeleive me, I was considering the net good as well when I suggested that it was a negative one.
- xyzelement 3y agoI have gone from complete atheist to a fairly religious and I have never encountered anything resembling "normalization of hatred and anti social values" - but it's something I hear atheists talk about a lot. I don't know what to make of that - either I've been really lucky or the folks whose apriori stance is that there's no higher power and religion is bad, try to spin it that way.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoI'm from Northern Ireland so grew up with a religious conflict in the background. Of course I understand it's different from church to church and place to place. But on the whole as I grew up and the conflict ended I still saw, for example, women's rights being denied, fast rights being denied and scientific fact (young earth, anti evolution) being denied by religious figures with political authority. From what I see around the world via the media much of these same values are limiting the same rights in the US, and even more so in the Islamic world. I've had many good experiences in churches myself and with being around religious people, but I'm also very aware of the experiences women and LGBTQIA+ people have in these environments and of how often church authorities have abused their power from covering up sexual abuse to exerting undue political influences or participating in what I would see as cultural genocides in the form of missionary colonialism.