It sucks to be a widow or widower looking for support groups to help you cope with the death of your spouse, and the only available groups are at churches who then turn the group into a mini church sermon. These churches should not have tax free status when they won’t even offer the most basic help for communities without trying to convert vulnerable people to their cult.
“Religion invents a problem—namely sin—throws a poison into you, and then offers you the cure.” - Hitchens
Yes and no. Sin is particular to Christianity. Not all religions conceive of sin as the main problem, nor salvation as the way to solve it.
Good book on this is ‘God is Not One’ by Stephen Prothero.
For instance, you could say Buddhism’s problem is suffering. But that’s not something it imposes on you; that’s something inherent to the human condition, more or less. It offers a solution to that, but you can’t exactly compare apples to oranges.
Why is this downvoted? Even on an atheist site, there is still plenty of cultural bias and assumptions. Like, the debate on whether god or not exists, why does the inherent premise assume there is only one god? Why does the debate never mention gods? Oh I know, because the monotheistic Abrahamic religion came to dominate the world. And so, the narrative and viewpoint on the debate became monotheistic, which throws the polytheistic viewpoint under the rug and pretend it does not exists.
Yes, it’s a common issue I’ve noticed in the west. When I was young, I sought out ex-Muslim spaces cause a lot of the general atheist chatter just didn’t get it.
Made me think of “there are no atheists in foxholes”. To which my response is, so religious people are only religous because they fear for thier life? That sounds healthy.
This is why I resisted AA/NA for so long. It seemed like an attempt to convert people when they were at their lowest, rock bottom.
And it may have started that way, but today there are variations. My home group was full of angry atheists and agnostics. We spent a LOT of time trashing religion and the spiritual abuse we suffered as young people.
That’s where I learned that we are all gods. Anyone who creates is god. I started praying to myself and actually still do occasionally. Since I’m the one in control of my own destiny, why shouldn’t I? It’s odd but it actually works, it’s like telling your subconscious what to do, which makes things easier for your conscious self.
I’m def not a god, it just takes time for your body to break down, for your mind to turn to dust, then you WILL feel it. You will understand what it is like to be limited, to see your entire future ahead of you.
Just pick whoever/whatever you want, I like that elephant-headed God for example. He makes me happy (Ganesh). He doesn’t need blood or anything, he’s so crazy
It doesn’t matter, none of this matters
thats why schizophrenics fall into it, and right wing looneys who had braind damage from strokes: sorbo, cavazial, dean cain, maybe cameron.
maybe cameron.
Kirk or James?
Most people “find god” when they’re children, they’re going to church with their family/friends, they’re participating in social activities under the auspices of the church, and they’re nibbling away at the propaganda of the institution. Conversions are the exception, not the rule, and are far more commonly a consequence of interfaith marriage than some personal trauma.
I would argue that people “lose god” when they’re unhappy more often than they find one. Discovering that you’re not the ideal religious worshiper - you’re selfish, you’re angry, you’re horny, you’re heretical, you’re not merely satisfied to exist as a little disposable worker bee in the business hive that keeps the church coffers well-funded - is alienating and disorienting. Discovering that church officials don’t have satisfying answers to life’s harder questions is frustrating and tense.
Big institutional churches feed on normalcy and prosperity. They do best when their congregants are looking for a certain baseline validation in their own virtue, not when they’re defeated or transitioning or questioning their social norms. Downturns don’t send people to the pews, unless the pews offer something that newly impoverished people need.
There are church missions that fill this role in some instances. But - by and large - the church exists as an amenity for the wealthy and privileged, not the poor and disempowered.
When people are at their lowest, they seek something to fill the void
When I was at my lowest, I went to my church looking for relief and I got back empty platitudes and a mysticism that didn’t hold up under the slightest pressure. I became significantly less religious and more agnostic, as I started looking outside the church for better answers.
Things might have been different if I’d been in a more Evangelical Church with a savvier group of ministers. Or if I’d been in a family that was more well-connected with the church’s philanthropic organs. But the depression, the fear, and the indignation I felt at my lowest propelled me away from a church full of pleasant-seeming do-nothing gospel singers.
This is what I imagine it’s like for the rest:
Most of my life has been shit and never once did i think to believe in “God” and i am from a very religious family, my mother stopped with that bs years ago but my grandmothers were most of their lives in church praying and all that bs and yet they were abused, beaten and treated like trash by my grandfathers to their last day… not to mention all the crap people have done and still do in the name of one god or another and all this time all this god has done is finger it’s asshole and do fuck all and if we were created in it’s image then it just enjoys the misery we have and i could type more but i have already wasted enough time as it is…
🎶We found god in a hopeless place🎶
Maybe God really does exist, he’s just a person that likes to pray on the emotionally vulnerable.
Amen to that
Which is also why the religious right is more prominent than the religious left. The latter are individuals whose faith tells them to serve others, the former are organisations calculating how to gain more power.
Oh the other hand, you can be at your lowest, then have a dream about being Yahweh’s 2nd son¹, invent your own religion, and act as a prophet for God, recruit a bunch of
cultistsahem I mean followers, and rebel against the monarchy.¹But isn’t Jesus supposed to be God? But then Yahweh is also God? Is Jesus his own father? What the fuck xD
Ever come across a shitty psychopath type of person that actively fucks with you and tries to make it seem like you need to become religious for things to normal again? That’s really evil.
That’s how they get you. That’s what’s happening in America.
You can replace religion with patriotism and it’s the same game.
The privileged have everything, while the destitute only have “god”.
It seems like a strange thing to lose or find.
