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[deleted]

by drw3 3y ago

[deleted]

FredPret 3y ago
We should start a new, more useful religion
- jandrese 3y ago
  All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
- seti0Cha 3y ago
  19th century Germany was way ahead of you. We're still arguing about their usefulness today.
ksenzee 3y ago
I was raised in a conservative Christian denomination and left it for a progressive one, and I’ve learned you can’t say “Christianity is ___” and be at all accurate. There are too many different Christianities. There are denominations that are pro-debate, pro-introspection, pro-logic, pro-science. They’re aiming for exactly what the GP is getting at: how best to live out the commandment to love one another, to build a society on earth where we care for each other and live up to our potential. I bring this up not because I want to wave my “not all Christians” flag, but because it is really important for our common civic life that post-religious people understand there is more to religion than the sad toxic morass they grew up with. Society doesn’t need religion to die off. It needs religion to evolve. It needs people who are naturally religious (and there are a lot of us, we’ve evolved that way) to come together for the common good, not get shoved into a back closet to worship illegally in secret.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bluGill 3y ago
As a christian I already have a region that is not debatable. That helps me be more willing to debate all the things outside. Communist, capitalist, jew, muslim, hindu, cannibal, republican, democrat, green, other sect of christian - all the same to me, something I'm not religiously attached to so I can try to understand. Some of those I understand enough to conclude they are wrong. I know some who are strongly religious about their political party. I was treasurer of my local Republican party for a while, but I was able to leave them when the party it self starting going off of the things I supported them for (the local party is still pretty good). I might return in the future, we will see.
- r00fus 3y ago
  > Some of those I understand enough to conclude they are wrong. Sounds like you may be justifying your conclusions instead of the other way around.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    There is no objective way to measure most of the above. Cannibals really did exist - not in large numbers. People really did sacrifice their kids to the gods. I'm willing to state both of the above are wrong. Note that I didn't state everything on my list is wrong.
- The5thElephant 3y ago
  Genuinely curious what your personal approach is to "picking" a religion to believe in. Generally I know most people don't pick a faith and just have the one they grew up with, but you strike me as someone who actually critically examines their beliefs (based on your comments). I've had a lot of great conversations with religious people about the nature of their faith, but I have never gotten a good answer on why they chose their particular organized/named faith. Other religions have people who believe just as much as you do that their religion is the "right" one and all the others are wrong. How did you come to choose your particular form of Christianity over the dozens of other named faiths you could choose that have equal levels of historical correlation to their religious texts?
  - seti0Cha 3y ago
    Not OP, but I am a Christian convert. I was raised an agnostic/atheist, but converted due to a combination of philosophical and emotional reasons. Contrary to what is commonly believed, there are not that many intellectually serious religions to chose from. If you are curious about it, I would suggest you check out The Experience of God, by David Bentley Hart (https://www.amazon.com/Experience-God-Being-Consciousness-Bliss/dp/0300166842 https://www.amazon.com/Experience-God-Being-Consciousness-Bl...).
    - 3y ago
arcbyte 3y ago
Interestingly you're having the same experience as the person you are replying to, but you haven't reached the understanding they've reached. If all those people you say refuse to question their beliefs are actually chasing a higher form of good for themselves, why would they engage in any kind of activity that would undermine that pursuit? It doesn't make sense unless you propose to replace it with a structure that is more strongly aligned to with the goal of achieving a higher form of themselves. Which nobody ever actually is when they argue against religion, they just got hurt by somebody's interpretation of it and are trying to find validation for that hurt.
bigstrat2003 3y ago
> I know you just said “religion,” but I can only speak about Christianity as I’m deeply familiar with it. I believe you when you speak of the bad experiences you had, but you seem to think that what you've seen is the only (or at least the typical) manifestation of Christianity. But that isn't true, and if you do indeed believe it's true I respectfully suggest you aren't deeply familiar with Christianity the way you believe. I am a Christian, and I was raised Christian. I have never once seen a community such as you describe. I realize they exist (everyone knows about the WBC, for instance), but they aren't the norm. Christians I have known aren't trying to indoctrinate anyone, and they are quite happy to entertain respectful discussion and debate about their faith. They are only human, of course, and like all humans they don't wish to constantly debate things they settled for themselves ages ago (so you are sometimes going to get individuals who shut you down). But on the whole Christians are perfectly willing to engage in introspection or intellectual debate to the same extent anyone else is (because let's not forget, many people don't do introspection or intellectual debate of any topic). > It’s slowly dying in every developed country because it doesn’t make sense when logic and science are applied. You are welcome to your opinion, but it stands at odds with the fact that there have been many Christian intellectuals throughout history. Scientists, theologians, and philosophers have all found that their faith still makes perfect sense in the context of their intellectual pursuits.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  Christianity is not one singular entity. There are many different sects that can drastically vary from each other. Fundamentalist Christians like the Southern Baptists are not going to be as accepting or open minded as the more liberal Christian sects such as Catholicism.
  - vitus 3y ago
    It's odd that you describe Catholicism as liberal, when so many of its characteristics are heavily rooted in tradition. It's really only Pope Francis from this past decade who stopped shunning homosexuality and describing it as an illness (even if he upholds the church's teachings that same-sex marriage is an abomination), expressed openness to ordaining married men as priests, and suggested forgiveness for divorcees who have since remarried, but even he has his limits. He still views gender transition as a sin, upholds the Catholic Church's longstanding opposition to birth control (the pill, condoms) in favor of abstinence, and opposes abortion. And there are many Catholics in the US who do not view him as their pope, preferring Benedict XVI and especially John Paul II. There are cardinals in the US who have advocated for denying the current US president communion due to his support for abortion (he claims that he does not personally support abortion due to his faith, but would not impose his belief system on others). Yes, Catholicism might not be as unyielding as Christian evangelism or fundamentalism. But it's by no means the most accepting of faiths.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> That’s what religious people want you to believe, but if you watch how they act, how they vote, and how they discriminate it could not be farther from the truth. While your deep understanding of a few people around you is your own, Christianity alone has over a billion people from all cultures and walks of life ascribing to it. I don't think you can realistically claim to treat them as a bloc, and to attempt to might cast doubt on your ability to even judge well the people you do know.
- throwaway962237 3y ago
  But you can treat religious believers as a bloc because they hold a core set of beliefs, and those beliefs cause them to act a certain way. In fact, the whole point of a religion is to bind a "bloc" of people to a common set of beliefs. The same way you can associate conspiracy theory nationalism with Qanon believers, you can associate supernatural supremacism (i.e. "chosen by god") with Christians, Muslims, and Jews. While these religions may promote healthy behavior for "in group" morality e.g. community, family, etc. the effects on a geopolitical scale are catastrophic.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Can you list the beliefs and actions you're saying are common for all Christians?
  - Kamq 3y ago
    > they hold a core set of beliefs, and those beliefs cause them to act a certain way Do they? I'll grant you the first part, as that's the point of a religion, but it doesn't seem to automatically imply the second. The earliest Christians, very famously, went to their deaths voluntarily while publicly forgiving their accusers. While medieval Christians slaughtered thousands trying to retake the holy-land. It's pretty reasonable to argue that those two groups had relatively similar core beliefs, but hard to argue that they had the same actions. Unless you want to count farming as an action, the vast majority of adherents to basically every religion were, historically, farmers whose lives we know very little about. It seems much more likely that a group being in power causes the effects that you see. Basically every group has an in-group bias.
User23 3y ago
> Everyone already “knows” their religion is correct and is not actually willing to challenge that because it’s scary. 1 Peter 3:15-16 literally commands us to do exactly that. But sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you. But with modesty and fear, having a good conscience: that whereas they speak evil of you, they may be ashamed who falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. Believe it or not, the ignorant bible thumpers are actually a minority of Christians worldwide. There is a rich apologetic tradition going back centuries and odds are good every one of your objections was answered in the middle ages at the latest.
CaptWillard 3y ago
// It’s a refuge for indoctrination, meaning you aren’t allowed to truly question. The idea that religion has any kind of market cornered on THAT concept in the last 7-10 years is a non-starter.
r00fus 3y ago
If you want an example of current events as it applies to the danger of religion take a simple look at the Israel/Hamas war. 1) Hamas jihadists cultivate decades of repression of the Palestinian populace into a spectacular terrorist strike on Oct 7th. 2) Israel, an apartheid ethnostate, where Rabbis call for extermination of Palestinians in response to the Hamas strike (after decades of dehumanization), drops a nuclear payload worth of bombs on Gaza - which kills thousands of Palestinians (but only a few dozen Hamas soldiers). 3) In the US, Christianist pastors and churches back the Israeli government's push to ethnically cleanse Gaza - primarily because apocalyptic prophesy requires Jews to be in the "holy land" - all of whom are prophesied to perish. In all of these cases, all of the involved religions make the conflict unavoidable. There were steps to peace in previous decades but religious extremists assassinated key figures to prevent peace. This isn't exclusive to this region or these religions, of course.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  That'd be a great counter example if any of it were factually true. Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinians and it's planks include the extermination of the Jews wholesale, whether in Israel or elsewhere. Part of why Israel was created is because.. a large group of Muslims was attempting to enact an extermination of the Jews (and did kill quite a few). Israel is not an apartheid ethnostate in any sense of those words and you do dishonor to actual apartheid and ethnic conflicts even by a comparison. Gaza itself has a luxury car dealership[1]! Not only do non-Jews have equal rights in Israel but it's one of the few countries in the middle east where Arab women have a legal right to vote and free travel without an escort. I have no idea where you got three from but it's not actually in the Christian Bible or the Torah. [1]: https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/mena/libyan-luxury-cars-turn-up-in-gaza-showrooms-1.411242 https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/mena/libyan-luxury-car...
  - Larrikin 3y ago
    Did they not have luxury cars in apartheid South Africa? Does having a dealership make the whole shit show in both countries okay?
autoexec 3y ago
> It’s slowly dying in every developed country because it doesn’t make sense when logic and science are applied. It's not just the contradictions (with science, logic, it's own doctrine) that is hurting their numbers. Almost all the Christians I know have distanced themselves from the church and are embarrassed to be associated with the faith because of the way they see other "Christians" behave. If more Christians really lived their faith they couldn't act/vote/discriminate the way that they do. I can't blame my Christian friends and family for not wanting to be associated with that. I suspect that the number of Christians is higher than the falling numbers suggest, because many just don't want to be grouped in with the loud people who plainly act in ways that violate the basic message of the faith.
prosqlinjector 3y ago
> but if you watch how they act, how they vote, and how they discriminate it could not be farther from the truth. This is a low quality and bigoted comment.

[deleted]

by drw3 3y ago

[deleted]

FredPret 3y ago

We should start a new, more useful religion

jandrese 3y ago
All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
seti0Cha 3y ago
19th century Germany was way ahead of you. We're still arguing about their usefulness today.

ksenzee 3y ago

I was raised in a conservative Christian denomination and left it for a progressive one, and I’ve learned you can’t say “Christianity is ___” and be at all accurate. There are too many different Christianities. There are denominations that are pro-debate, pro-introspection, pro-logic, pro-science. They’re aiming for exactly what the GP is getting at: how best to live out the commandment to love one another, to build a society on earth where we care for each other and live up to our potential. I bring this up not because I want to wave my “not all Christians” flag, but because it is really important for our common civic life that post-religious people understand there is more to religion than the sad toxic morass they grew up with. Society doesn’t need religion to die off. It needs religion to evolve. It needs people who are naturally religious (and there are a lot of us, we’ve evolved that way) to come together for the common good, not get shoved into a back closet to worship illegally in secret.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bluGill 3y ago

As a christian I already have a region that is not debatable. That helps me be more willing to debate all the things outside. Communist, capitalist, jew, muslim, hindu, cannibal, republican, democrat, green, other sect of christian - all the same to me, something I'm not religiously attached to so I can try to understand. Some of those I understand enough to conclude they are wrong. I know some who are strongly religious about their political party. I was treasurer of my local Republican party for a while, but I was able to leave them when the party it self starting going off of the things I supported them for (the local party is still pretty good). I might return in the future, we will see.

r00fus 3y ago
> Some of those I understand enough to conclude they are wrong. Sounds like you may be justifying your conclusions instead of the other way around.
- bluGill 3y ago
  There is no objective way to measure most of the above. Cannibals really did exist - not in large numbers. People really did sacrifice their kids to the gods. I'm willing to state both of the above are wrong. Note that I didn't state everything on my list is wrong.
The5thElephant 3y ago
Genuinely curious what your personal approach is to "picking" a religion to believe in. Generally I know most people don't pick a faith and just have the one they grew up with, but you strike me as someone who actually critically examines their beliefs (based on your comments). I've had a lot of great conversations with religious people about the nature of their faith, but I have never gotten a good answer on why they chose their particular organized/named faith. Other religions have people who believe just as much as you do that their religion is the "right" one and all the others are wrong. How did you come to choose your particular form of Christianity over the dozens of other named faiths you could choose that have equal levels of historical correlation to their religious texts?
- seti0Cha 3y ago
  Not OP, but I am a Christian convert. I was raised an agnostic/atheist, but converted due to a combination of philosophical and emotional reasons. Contrary to what is commonly believed, there are not that many intellectually serious religions to chose from. If you are curious about it, I would suggest you check out The Experience of God, by David Bentley Hart (https://www.amazon.com/Experience-God-Being-Consciousness-Bliss/dp/0300166842 https://www.amazon.com/Experience-God-Being-Consciousness-Bl...).
  - 3y ago

arcbyte 3y ago

Interestingly you're having the same experience as the person you are replying to, but you haven't reached the understanding they've reached. If all those people you say refuse to question their beliefs are actually chasing a higher form of good for themselves, why would they engage in any kind of activity that would undermine that pursuit? It doesn't make sense unless you propose to replace it with a structure that is more strongly aligned to with the goal of achieving a higher form of themselves. Which nobody ever actually is when they argue against religion, they just got hurt by somebody's interpretation of it and are trying to find validation for that hurt.

bigstrat2003 3y ago

> I know you just said “religion,” but I can only speak about Christianity as I’m deeply familiar with it. I believe you when you speak of the bad experiences you had, but you seem to think that what you've seen is the only (or at least the typical) manifestation of Christianity. But that isn't true, and if you do indeed believe it's true I respectfully suggest you aren't deeply familiar with Christianity the way you believe. I am a Christian, and I was raised Christian. I have never once seen a community such as you describe. I realize they exist (everyone knows about the WBC, for instance), but they aren't the norm. Christians I have known aren't trying to indoctrinate anyone, and they are quite happy to entertain respectful discussion and debate about their faith. They are only human, of course, and like all humans they don't wish to constantly debate things they settled for themselves ages ago (so you are sometimes going to get individuals who shut you down). But on the whole Christians are perfectly willing to engage in introspection or intellectual debate to the same extent anyone else is (because let's not forget, many people don't do introspection or intellectual debate of any topic). > It’s slowly dying in every developed country because it doesn’t make sense when logic and science are applied. You are welcome to your opinion, but it stands at odds with the fact that there have been many Christian intellectuals throughout history. Scientists, theologians, and philosophers have all found that their faith still makes perfect sense in the context of their intellectual pursuits.

chaostheory 3y ago
Christianity is not one singular entity. There are many different sects that can drastically vary from each other. Fundamentalist Christians like the Southern Baptists are not going to be as accepting or open minded as the more liberal Christian sects such as Catholicism.
- vitus 3y ago
  It's odd that you describe Catholicism as liberal, when so many of its characteristics are heavily rooted in tradition. It's really only Pope Francis from this past decade who stopped shunning homosexuality and describing it as an illness (even if he upholds the church's teachings that same-sex marriage is an abomination), expressed openness to ordaining married men as priests, and suggested forgiveness for divorcees who have since remarried, but even he has his limits. He still views gender transition as a sin, upholds the Catholic Church's longstanding opposition to birth control (the pill, condoms) in favor of abstinence, and opposes abortion. And there are many Catholics in the US who do not view him as their pope, preferring Benedict XVI and especially John Paul II. There are cardinals in the US who have advocated for denying the current US president communion due to his support for abortion (he claims that he does not personally support abortion due to his faith, but would not impose his belief system on others). Yes, Catholicism might not be as unyielding as Christian evangelism or fundamentalism. But it's by no means the most accepting of faiths.

robertlagrant 3y ago

> That’s what religious people want you to believe, but if you watch how they act, how they vote, and how they discriminate it could not be farther from the truth. While your deep understanding of a few people around you is your own, Christianity alone has over a billion people from all cultures and walks of life ascribing to it. I don't think you can realistically claim to treat them as a bloc, and to attempt to might cast doubt on your ability to even judge well the people you do know.

throwaway962237 3y ago
But you can treat religious believers as a bloc because they hold a core set of beliefs, and those beliefs cause them to act a certain way. In fact, the whole point of a religion is to bind a "bloc" of people to a common set of beliefs. The same way you can associate conspiracy theory nationalism with Qanon believers, you can associate supernatural supremacism (i.e. "chosen by god") with Christians, Muslims, and Jews. While these religions may promote healthy behavior for "in group" morality e.g. community, family, etc. the effects on a geopolitical scale are catastrophic.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Can you list the beliefs and actions you're saying are common for all Christians?
- Kamq 3y ago
  > they hold a core set of beliefs, and those beliefs cause them to act a certain way Do they? I'll grant you the first part, as that's the point of a religion, but it doesn't seem to automatically imply the second. The earliest Christians, very famously, went to their deaths voluntarily while publicly forgiving their accusers. While medieval Christians slaughtered thousands trying to retake the holy-land. It's pretty reasonable to argue that those two groups had relatively similar core beliefs, but hard to argue that they had the same actions. Unless you want to count farming as an action, the vast majority of adherents to basically every religion were, historically, farmers whose lives we know very little about. It seems much more likely that a group being in power causes the effects that you see. Basically every group has an in-group bias.

User23 3y ago

> Everyone already “knows” their religion is correct and is not actually willing to challenge that because it’s scary. 1 Peter 3:15-16 literally commands us to do exactly that. But sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you. But with modesty and fear, having a good conscience: that whereas they speak evil of you, they may be ashamed who falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. Believe it or not, the ignorant bible thumpers are actually a minority of Christians worldwide. There is a rich apologetic tradition going back centuries and odds are good every one of your objections was answered in the middle ages at the latest.

CaptWillard 3y ago

// It’s a refuge for indoctrination, meaning you aren’t allowed to truly question. The idea that religion has any kind of market cornered on THAT concept in the last 7-10 years is a non-starter.

r00fus 3y ago

If you want an example of current events as it applies to the danger of religion take a simple look at the Israel/Hamas war. 1) Hamas jihadists cultivate decades of repression of the Palestinian populace into a spectacular terrorist strike on Oct 7th. 2) Israel, an apartheid ethnostate, where Rabbis call for extermination of Palestinians in response to the Hamas strike (after decades of dehumanization), drops a nuclear payload worth of bombs on Gaza - which kills thousands of Palestinians (but only a few dozen Hamas soldiers). 3) In the US, Christianist pastors and churches back the Israeli government's push to ethnically cleanse Gaza - primarily because apocalyptic prophesy requires Jews to be in the "holy land" - all of whom are prophesied to perish. In all of these cases, all of the involved religions make the conflict unavoidable. There were steps to peace in previous decades but religious extremists assassinated key figures to prevent peace. This isn't exclusive to this region or these religions, of course.

vorpalhex 3y ago
That'd be a great counter example if any of it were factually true. Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinians and it's planks include the extermination of the Jews wholesale, whether in Israel or elsewhere. Part of why Israel was created is because.. a large group of Muslims was attempting to enact an extermination of the Jews (and did kill quite a few). Israel is not an apartheid ethnostate in any sense of those words and you do dishonor to actual apartheid and ethnic conflicts even by a comparison. Gaza itself has a luxury car dealership[1]! Not only do non-Jews have equal rights in Israel but it's one of the few countries in the middle east where Arab women have a legal right to vote and free travel without an escort. I have no idea where you got three from but it's not actually in the Christian Bible or the Torah. [1]: https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/mena/libyan-luxury-cars-turn-up-in-gaza-showrooms-1.411242 https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/mena/libyan-luxury-car...
- Larrikin 3y ago
  Did they not have luxury cars in apartheid South Africa? Does having a dealership make the whole shit show in both countries okay?

autoexec 3y ago

> It’s slowly dying in every developed country because it doesn’t make sense when logic and science are applied. It's not just the contradictions (with science, logic, it's own doctrine) that is hurting their numbers. Almost all the Christians I know have distanced themselves from the church and are embarrassed to be associated with the faith because of the way they see other "Christians" behave. If more Christians really lived their faith they couldn't act/vote/discriminate the way that they do. I can't blame my Christian friends and family for not wanting to be associated with that. I suspect that the number of Christians is higher than the falling numbers suggest, because many just don't want to be grouped in with the loud people who plainly act in ways that violate the basic message of the faith.

prosqlinjector 3y ago

> but if you watch how they act, how they vote, and how they discriminate it could not be farther from the truth. This is a low quality and bigoted comment.