I know this is meant to be a casual conversation and this topic can get deep fast, but I’d love to hear everyone’s elevator pitch for their religion or lack thereof. peace and love<3
No, but I try hard not to be an asshole about it. People can believe what they want as long as it isn’t directly hurting someone.
Personally I find religious studies fascinating simply because of the influence it has had on culture both locally and worldwide.
No, I’m not religious. There’s no elevator pitch, because it doesn’t need one.
Religion is abuse.
Do you actually believe that all religion is abusive?
It’s mind rot
No. I used to be agnostic but it relied on this idea that humanity was overall essentially sensible and large groups would not just believe some bs and then pass it on to their kids and it would keep going. I kept up this belief besides the evidence of obvious cults and such. The real nail in the coffin was the internet age and things like qanon, flat earthers, anti vaxers, anti maskers, etc. etc. Just how easily and quickly people whole heartadly believe bulltrump has brushed away any fence sitting I had left and I now recognize that the universe is wysiwyg.
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😳
No. It’s not really something I think about apart from curiosity on an anthropological level on how it all came about.
There has been written a lot of fantasy the last 3000 years, but I prefer the more recent ones.
Honestly, the fiction that exists today has the capability of teaching incredibly valuable lessons with thousands of years of progress incorporated into it. I often find myself feeling all the warm and fuzzies when a fiction book of today touches important ethics amidst a simple sci-fi or fantasy story. 💜
There are certainly some good things to learn from ancient morality, like the Golden Rule, but it really cannot beat modern ethics. Many philosophies of long ago are still potent today, but many more (should) have become deprecated with the advent of modern science and ethics.
This is kind of why I’ve been gravitating towards Humanism. It’s much of the goodness of religion, but without God.
I was raised in a devout Christian family. It never felt right to me. It just never felt capital “T” True.
After expressing that feeling at an early age, I was scolded and made to feel afraid of expressing any dissenting opinions about it. I guess I kind of internalized that fear, more as a coping mechanism than an actual belief.
When I got older, I rejected it outright, and went searching for the TRUE religion. I didn’t find it, lol, and I began identifying as an atheist. Albeit, an atheist with a lot of knowledge of various religious and spiritual traditions.
Then, I read the Principia Discordia. That book changed my perspective on everything. It led me to Leary/Wilson’s concept of reality tunnels. A person who only views things from one perspective (be that perspective religious, philosophical, scientific, or whatever) has a very narrow reality tunnel; a person who views things from multiple perspectives has a wider one. Our perception of reality is based on the perspectives we bring to it.
I think that most religions are structurally unsound as a whole. They fall apart under their own weight. But some of the discrete pieces of those religions can stand on their own, and when I find those pieces, I add them to my reality tunnel.
I’m drawn to non-dual forms of spirituality, because that’s what feels true to me. I feel that way because of experiences I’ve had, or things that just feel true to me.
I don’t expect anyone to feel the same way I do about it though. We don’t have the same perspective, because we haven’t had the same experiences. Expecting others to see things the way I do would be unfair, and wildly irrational.
It’s funny you say this. After I became an apostate and left my faith, as I learned and grew behind that… I came to the conclusion that I knew what true salvation was now. Or at least perhaps one kind of salvation.
Salvation lies within ones ability to embrace different perspectives.
So much pain, struggling, and strife can be resolved by a change in perspective.
Nah, catholic church was very boring and always seemed like a scam to me as long a I can remember. Also Occam’s razor. I’m not an evangelical atheist though: that seems like a waste of time and effort.
No. I was never raised on it and it doesn’t make sense to me. I think religions should be seen more as a cultural thing than anything else and without positions of power involved. Organized religion with any type of power is just nuts to me. Spirituality and less dogmatic things make more sense though, it’s just us trying to understand the reality we exist in. It can be fun speculation, especially when drugs are involved.
Whether they recognize it or not, all humans have religious needs. The need to feel like a good person (whether you are or not) is a religious need. The need to have hope for the future (whether hope is reasonable or not) is a religious need. The need for something bigger than yourself to look up to (regardless of how capable you are) is a religious need. People don’t always meet these needs through what would be recognized as an organized religion, but they still usually meet these needs through religious means.
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I was very, very devout. After a long long while, I finally gathered enough courage to embrace apostasy (at no small cost). I’m much happier and healthier now.
No but not for any hard reasons. It just never appealed to me
Nah, cuz retrovirus in chimps. Also, whales.
lots of people are theistic evolutionists though.
They can have their agency, as do I.
It’s the conclusion I arrived at and there’s nothing in my flavor of abrahamic faith I grew up with that can reconcile that. Well, unless Isa/Jesus comes down from the sky, then I’ll cross the bridge when I come to it.
