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Attitude to Religion and its believers.

What is your general attitude towards those who believe in religion whether they are jewish, Muslim, Christian etc etc.

Do you get on well with any religious friends and neighbours?

Have you ever thought of believing in a religion at some point?

If you do not like the faiths, why?

If you DO, also why? Does this come from your family? Maybe something went bad during your life?

I get that Lemmy might have the same stereotype in Reddit that there are loads of atheists, but there's a good reason why despite criticism of religion, it is still here.

P.S. I am not religious or anti religious in any fashion, I am agnostic.

163 comments
  • I treat religion like my penis.

    It's ok not to have one.

    It's ok to have one.

    It's ok to be proud of it.

    But don't display it in public, and don't shove it down people's throats.

    And NEVER whip it out in congress.

  • All religions are made up. No one has ever proven that a "god" or supernatural entity exists, no one, ever. It's all mythology, fiction and "supernatural" nonsense. Ghosts, angels, demons, gods, spirits, pick a name, pick a flavor, none of it is real. It's like insisting that Harry Potter, James Bond, Tinkerbell, Captain Kirk or Superman are actually real living people / spirits / entities, and they have the ability to control you now and after you die. Just because you, or someone claims it's real does not make it factual. You are allowed to believe in whatever you want to, but you are NOT allowed to force others to believe that same thing. If you truly believe in your "religion", you would research it in every way possible, reading pro and con information to get a balanced understanding of what you decided to believe in. You will learn where all the stories of your religion originate from, and that will actually decide what you choose to believe in. Religion is a lifestyle choice.

  • Mostly I find them annoying. I mildly understand the need for human meaning as it kind of, tends to come up later at night, or for the elderly, or when life really sucks or you tend to even just be really really bored right.

    I also understand some of the benefits, right, like. As much as people will despise to admit it, you don't get, say, the number zero without the Muslim science guys, and you don't get science without the enlightenment which stemmed out of some weirdass Catholic Christian theory guys. and then everyone's all like, oh no well you can't attribute that to the Catholics and if anything they hampered progress, and I'd say, well, maybe, maybe, but also maybe science sucks as we commonly understand it and maybe also you can't really divorce any part of things from their cultural context, or else things get fucky.

    On the other hand I find them annoying and I find that all to be totally null and void because the vast majority of people are just using it as an opiate to placate literally all of their anxieties about the world with a bunch of meaningless thought terminating cliche style statements, and even actively reinforce their own participation in some of the worst aspects of their own culture and society even at points in which they really don't want to or know that it's horrible and is causing them pain.

    So I dunno, mostly it sucks.

  • I just don't support dogmatic thinking and indoctrination, especially when it creeps into politics, which is inevitable at the scale of the most popular religions.

    In theory I have no problem with other people's faith, but in practice it degrades the critical thinking capacity of our population and, paradoxically, the moral capacity as well. That's a net negative in my opinion.

    Charities exist without religion. I think religions often teach good moral frameworks, though very traditional. But those come with a huge caveat that you cut out a big hole in your brain for the belief that God exists and cares about how you behave. That one idea leads to so much trouble, from false prophets to normalized misogyny and hatred of gay people.

  • I’m an ex-Christian, the more I read the Bible, the more it doesn’t make sense. But I respect others choices to believe in their higher power, whatever that may be that makes their life work. Double points if they respect back. They all can’t be right.

  • Despite the claimed ostensible "good" Religion can supposedly bring...

    We're literally in the middle of a mass extinction event and facing our own extinction and belief in this religious horseshit precludes people from caring or believing in man-made disaster.

    We're literally facing our own extinction because these people can't be fucked to face up to reality instead of playing cult games of "but I'll have everlasting life after death so who cares what happens to the planet!"

    I don't give one flying fuck what "good" it can do for an individual, it's going to be the downfall of human fucking civilization.

    Whatever "good" it brings is destroyed and overshadowed by the cult like behavior that would worship corrupt figures like Donald Trump and who choose to live in a false reality simply because it is more comforting.

  • Same way I get on wih other people who have imaginary friends, I just ignore them and worry about the inevitable indoctrination (aka abuse) of their children.

  • What is your general attitude towards those

    I pity them.

    Do you get on well with any religious friends and neighbours?

    Yes.

    Have you ever thought of believing in a religion at some point?

    I was quite religious in my youth.

    If you do not like the faiths, why?

    I believe that they limit human growth and enable the "evil" that they pretend to protest.

    I remember the huge fad of atheism that struck a few years back and led to the psychological liberation of a huge number or subjugated people. It was an inevitable eventuality of the rise of internet usage. It seemed to be mainly impacting Americans, but mass outbreaks of enlightenment also struck other western nations such as Ireland (where I'm from), freeing people from a society dominated by patriarchal oppressive and highly abusive social regimes.

    Of course there was then a backlash to the backlash and now forces of liberation are ridiculed on the western internet. Liberalism has held sway and the institutions of oppression still maintain power, particularly in the USA. This continues to enable massive human suffering, for example with America's latest genocide, enabled in part by apocalyptic Christian death cults.

    I'm not very familiar with the details but I understand that the Christians are in cahoots with the Zionists in destroying some Muslim place of worship to bring about the end times. And there's some cows mentioned in a thousands of years old book that need to have the right colour coat and stuff.

    But of course, as usual, they're not true Scotsmen religious people... etc...

    tl;dr Religion is a net negative influence in the world. Trying to suppress it is counterproductive and will never work, meanwhile it's going to kill us all.

  • I don't hold belief against people so long as they act appropriately toward others.

    I have some positive and negative opinions toward particular religions based on their foundations and practices.

    I kinda long for a sense of spiritual community, but I can't make myself have faith in something I don't believe, no matter how nice it seems. So that kinda sucks

  • When my siblings and I were kids, our parents considered themselves christian and we went to church. But as we grew up, we all stopped believing, and we convinced our parents to stop too. I don't generally want to convince most religious people to stop, but we were kids at the time and didn't really know the ramifications of disillusioning our parents. If religious people can believe in "heaven"(or equivalent) and think they are going there, it's a really nice thought that I don't want to take away from them. But people that use religion to hurt people, yeah I kind of want to take it away from them. I guess like anything else in life, if you are using it to be nice and constructive, cool. If you are using it to hurt people, take it away.

    The real version of death kind of sucks. It honestly kind of physically hurts/feels bad to even think about ceasing to exist permanently. I feel like that has always been the true purpose and main point of religion. Pretending death is absolutely anything else other than what it really is. I don't want to take that aspect away from anyone.

    • Pretending death is absolutely anything else other than what it really is. I don’t want to take that aspect away from anyone.

      I do, because choosing to believe in a comforting lie is what leads us to despots killing anyone who is different. There's a direct line between the two.

      Donald Trump is a comforting lie that a strong man (like God, the ultimate strongman) can come in and just "fix things" because it's easier to believe that than do the hard work of understanding how complex and confusing our world is. That's where we're at, the comforting lies appeal to humanity more than cold truth and it's going to fucking kill us all.

      Sorry, humans need to get the fuck over themselves with this not being able to handle death shit or wake up to our own extinction. Eternal life, reincarnation, it's every flavor of stupid.

  • I'm a Pluralistic individual. I believe everyone has a reason to believe. But I think the way someone believes is very telling about that person's personal values.

    Ergo, I don't care what a person's religious beliefs are, I care what that person's values are. I believe that is a much more honest approach that doesn't needlessly alienate anyone or stoke petty, tribalistic behavior.

  • If a person is smart an has personal opinions about everything or if they are a person of power I won't trust them. Because how can I prove they are a true believer and not a liar or sociopath?

    If a person is average human who thinks what the crowd thinks then I won't care.

  • I'm greek orthodox, my family, is greek, and the religion comes with it

    I get along with all amd you should too, religious or non-religious shouldn't be a question, a party is a party. Get messed up and regret it in the morning

    The only one's I don't really like is protestants but thats because of my racism against british people I think quite a few of the protestant demoninations strangle the meaning of what it means to be a christian.

    Although surprisingly, I've known anti/atheistic people who gave me meat on several occasions during fasting (where we go basically go vegan) even though i reminded them about it before they even started cooking.

    One of the biggest mistakes faith has done is try and influence things outside of the church espically in modern day schenanigans like politics. The church should be the peaceful escape from the outside world, not the opposite

    From how I see it, my religion is beautiful, provides me an undescribable sense of peace, and I know the people who are at my parish are people i can depend on if i ever need help

  • As long as they’re not an intolerant dick about believing or not believing, whatever they go with is fine. It’s none of my business.

  • How do you know that science is not a believe like the other ? My answer is in challenge it with other believe systems to explain reality. Of course some things make a lot more sense with science methodology, but to be faire, te main point of religions is not to explain gravity.

    I consider other believes as opportunities, no to explain to others, or to be taught by others, but making both and strengthen us all.

    However, we shall to care do not confuse religions and believes. A lot of people took part in religions and do not believes, and others believes and do not took part in a dedicated community. This is a different topic. Communities are generally a good thing, but hierarchy lead to abuses. This true in every organization, religions include

    • Not sure if I'm taking the bait but here goes.

      Science is a set of processes where you take belief out of the equation. You can start with something akin, which when you have informed belief you have an hypothesis which you set out to prove. You don't hold that as truth and anything not falsifiable is not a valid hypothesis.

      Science is not a religion, it's just a thing. Plenty of people need to belief to function and end up having (even a blind) faith in science, using it as a religion.

      On your second point I'm with you on the last part though I think you are calling religions and believes things that are organized religion and religion.

    • Contemporary philosophy and sciences are different from religion in some aspects. One important aspect is that these academic fields rely on rational arguments, while religion today mostly relies on traditional beliefs and faith.

      Let's say a philosopher is pondering the idea that direct experience is not necessary for knowledge. The only way to go and declare this publicly is to elaborate why, how, in a rational and rigorous manner. Most scientists work with objects that admit replicated experimentation, so they must do that, let's say in their case, to demonstrate that a rain frog only comes out with heavy rain, but not with light rain. In contrast to these two, a religious or spiritual person might give "arguments", but this argumentation is never to see if their belief resists examination, it is only to convince others of this belief that has been established as truth before everything else. In other words, philosophy and sciences examine their thesis (hypothesis, theory, etc.) and never assume they have the ultimate truth; on the contrary, they keep searching and exploring possibilities. Talking here about the disciplines and not the individuals who can be different from this from time to time (e.g., a dogmatic professor). Meanwhile, religion and spirituality do not have thesis or any beliefs that are susceptible to drastic change. They establish core beliefs or dogmas, and only later might try to prove them or not, depending if they find this exercise important.

      Are they all ultimately unprovable statements? I guess so, but we should care how these statements come to be and how we justify them. To me, it makes an enormous difference.
      I rather believe in climate change in which human action is definitely affecting the Earth (source: sciences) and the importance of stopping it as we seem to have a responsibility to others and to ourselves (source: ethics, a branch of philosophy), than to believe that there is a conspiracy to make us believe about climate change (source: perhaps imagination) and that we shouldn't do anything anyway because there is no reason to (source: ignorance or dogmatism, honestly).

      I try to remain critical of rational disciplines too, but that's ironically done with more rationality. And here I do not mean "cold" and rigid pseudo logical analysis, but something that admits different approaches as long as they are solidly justified.

      I guess it comes down to who we are. I simply cannot be convinced without this I explained. I cannot believe in religion or spiritual beliefs. I sometimes get short videos about people telling many different stories, about ghosts, ayahuasca trips where they talked to superior entities, gods and the way they know they're real, etc. How can I believe what they perceive is real? Mere "leap of faith"? And why choose one over the other? Just because I like a particular system or because it benefits me in some way? Sorry, too arbitrary even for me that I sometimes act impulsively and capriciously. As I said, I guess the way we are allows us to accept or to deny different ways to approach existence. This is me.

      Thank you for reading my stupidly long comment.

163 comments