I don't know who to talk to any more.

[Drachefreunde]

Word of warning: I'm feeling emo. There are concrete reasons, and I will be better in a month or two, but this post will likely be a novella of depressive moron-juice, so leave now if your stomach is fragile.

Anyway.


As I'm sure everyone here is, I'm ******** pissed at religions at the moment. Well, the monotheistic ones at least. Errr, the evangelicals and fundamentalists.

That's just the problem: I don't know what level to place the blame at. I was raised by parents from different religions - Xianity and Wicca -- within what may have been some of the most rational, humane and humanist congregations of the most sensible denominations of said religions. Over time my parents have changed, my brother and I have changed, and I'm dubious that any of us still believe in a deity per se now... but we've all kept "spiritual" leanings of one magnitude or another, and I still remember a church and a coven who were just damned cool, full of good people trying to help each other more than anything else.

So now, these days, I can talk among atheists about how people don't need a god, and it's fun.
I can talk with anti-theists about how evil the concept of worshiping a god is, and we can share our frustration together.
But I start to have trouble with people who are anti-religious altogether.
And I'm screwed if the person I'm talking with is entirely anti-spiritual.

Don't get me wrong, I think "spirituality" is nothing more than a crutch of sorts, consciously so for me but ironically so for many people. Ideally, I feel there should be no need for anyone to worship some Big Juju that ain't really there, much lessbelong to a religious group or pretend there are floaty energy-thingies that enable consciousness... Hang on to a secular form of meditation and the rest can be thrown out completely.

And I do look forward to science finding the last details of how brains work. But there's a part of my mind that keeps hoping there'll a hook in there that something from another 'brane attaches to, like a soul. Something just in case I don't survive to and through the Singularity, because the idea of not-being can still scare me on some days.

It's stupid, it should be unnecessary, and it's filling in real pain with fake hope... But people are wired to find *something* anthropomorphic about nature, and some folks have trouble with reality if they can't explain away death and ensure free will and mete out justice when reality won't oblige. Think of it as a mental disorder -- because it really is! -- and people who have it can either go to a doctor and get medication that will help you deal with it, maybe get over it; or you can live miserably and eventually take up crack and heroin.

Now do you really want to yell at the people taking Prozac/Wicca just because they're not good enough to do without? Maybe someday they can move on to something lower-impact, like Wellbutrin or Buddhism, and eventually stand on their own with what they've learned from their time doing the drugs. But better that than jihading around with their crack-dealing priests, y'know?


Eh, I dunno, at least that's out of my system now. Half of those paragraphs were barely even paragraphs, much less ones making sense. I hope if any of you read all of that, you found something interesting in it. If not, my apologies. sweatdrop  

[Meirelle]

Here's the thing-- I don't like angry people. If you leave me and my s**t (erm... beliefs) alone, then I'll leave you and your s**t alone. I could care less what the ******** they worshiped, as long as they don't go killing people or telling them what to do according to their holy book.

Unfortunately, not many people are like that. stare

Psh. But yeah. Wellbutrin FTW! That s**t saved my life! Aaaanyway, my psychologist always says that religious people haven't grown intellectually. I agree with her.  

[OH NO ITS DEVO]

I don't believe so much that spirituality in its entirety is a horrible concept. i think that it's a great concept, yet one that i never quite understood.
My friends (i have a great deal of very religious friends) have tried again and again to introduce me to religion, but each time it has failed. I have, however, felt those feelings that attract so many to religion and keep organized religion together. why should these feelings be chastised? they've kept societies together, brought peoples together to win wars and find new things that would never have been discovered by themselves.
The wonderful feelings that religion brings are incredible. In a church, there's always a community. always people looking out for you, protecting each other from the rest of the world. And above them all is God, blessing all and giving them these wonderful feelings of joy, hope, and protection.
Even though i do not believe in these things, such as God or Jesus or anything remotely similar, these feelings draw me toward religion. not in a need-to way, but... perhaps an addiction? you feel these wonderful things, and want to feel them again. is that not an addiction? i would think so.

I think that religion, for the most part, has the wrong view of the universe. We don't need a God to keep us together, but we can do it ourselves. These feelings are perhaps the most pleasant things one can feel, aside from love in all its forms. I don't believe that it is a crutch in any way, but what truly is a crutch would be the belief in God, gods, or a dependence on anything or anyone but ourselves to accomplish whatever it is we wish. The "feelings of the numinous", as Carl Sagan might put it, are a wonderful thing, and should never be kept from humanity, as long as we know that we do not need deities for anything, nor do they need us.  

[Shaka-FireFly]

I know this might sound nuts but: Have you tried looking into a Universal Unitarian church? They all all faiths, and yes, lack of faith, and it's no dogma, all social.

I've also recently started feeling like a "emo" and have decided to try going to a UU before I leave for Basic.

Just an idea. smile  

[fhbnfghnbfgbsnbg]

I suppose religion is like a spectrum.
At one end you have the super-devout, the ones perhaps willing to kill for their faith. Maybe even more extreme.
At the other end you have the extreme atheists, who are completely anti-religional. Total. Anti. Relgion.
And in between there's everyone else, from normal churchgoers to agnostics to normal atheists who just can't find a way to believe.
I suppose it is a matter of finding your place and all.
But you can move around a lot.  

[ElenaMason]

cobe44

I think that religion, for the most part, has the wrong view of the universe.

Dude, there is NO right OR wrong in this universe. To say it has the wrong view of the universe is like telling someone that its wrong for them to believe that strawberry is better than blueberry.

We can barely begin to understand the vastness of the universe let alone is there answers to explain everything. And if everything can't go account for, who's to say what is truly wrong and what isn't? At least, stating that from a rational point of view. Also, science can only go so far. And no matter how far we get with science, I'm going to jump on a limb and say that I don't think it'll ever have all the answers because the universe is just too freaking big to say what is and what isn't no matter how much evidence there is.  

[OH NO ITS DEVO]

SaintChaos

cobe44

I think that religion, for the most part, has the wrong view of the universe.

Dude, there is NO right OR wrong in this universe. To say it has the wrong view of the universe is like telling someone that its wrong for them to believe that strawberry is better than blueberry.

We can barely begin to understand the vastness of the universe let alone is there answers to explain everything. And if everything can't go account for, who's to say what is truly wrong and what isn't? At least, stating that from a rational point of view. Also, science can only go so far. And no matter how far we get with science, I'm going to jump on a limb and say that I don't think it'll ever have all the answers because the universe is just too freaking big to say what is and what isn't no matter how much evidence there is.

I mean wrong in the philosophical sense. the fact that we must rely on something more to maintain ourselves, as a race, is not an idea i support.
I didn't mean wrong in the concrete sense, like many religions (and some atheists, unfortunately) use. just that i don't agree with it.
Yeah, that word means something i didn't want to say. oh well. I really meant to say that religion has a pitiable view of the universe, constantly expressing their faith in God and lack of faith in ourselves.  

[ElenaMason]

cobe44

SaintChaos

cobe44

I think that religion, for the most part, has the wrong view of the universe.

Dude, there is NO right OR wrong in this universe. To say it has the wrong view of the universe is like telling someone that its wrong for them to believe that strawberry is better than blueberry.

We can barely begin to understand the vastness of the universe let alone is there answers to explain everything. And if everything can't go account for, who's to say what is truly wrong and what isn't? At least, stating that from a rational point of view. Also, science can only go so far. And no matter how far we get with science, I'm going to jump on a limb and say that I don't think it'll ever have all the answers because the universe is just too freaking big to say what is and what isn't no matter how much evidence there is.

I mean wrong in the philosophical sense. the fact that we must rely on something more to maintain ourselves, as a race, is not an idea i support.
I didn't mean wrong in the concrete sense, like many religions (and some atheists, unfortunately) use. just that i don't agree with it.
Yeah, that word means something i didn't want to say. oh well. I really meant to say that religion has a pitiable view of the universe, constantly expressing their faith in God and lack of faith in ourselves.

hmmmm.......okay ^_^  

[Rick Dawkins]

Nice rant, I don't blame people for believing things up to a certain point. When you've got heaven as an option, the worm bed we're going to as atheist will never be as magical. Then again, when you've got so many fundamentalists calling the shots now, I can't help but think even moderate believers are giving them a free pass to do their worst. I spend most of my time studying Christianity and Islam so I'm still ignorant when it comes to the kind of thing you were raised with, but that group sounded awesome.  

[-GS-Sailor Nemesis]

I'm anti-theist, but the only time I'm angry is when a dumb a** theist tries to spout their nonsense at me. So far I haven't had it happen but I know I'll be that way when they do.