Not saying I disagree, but as someone who was once religious I'd say that in their minds it is exactly the point to serve the desperate and broken hearted. "It is the sick who need a doctor, not the well." They genuinely believe they are helping by doing this, not trying to be deceptive.
Probably depends on location and culture as well. Where I live there's a decent amount of moderate people. And well, they probably internalized the negative aspects. But it's not like they'll go out and molest other people with their religious stuff. So I'd say as long as they're accepting of dissent, gay people, facts... Which many of them are... They're more part of something that's deceptive from grounds up, rather than (deliberately) being deceptive themselves. And they don't follow the rules literally (same with the moderates amongst the Muslim people here). Leading me to believe they have some grasp of what's right and what's wrong beyond what's written in an old book.
Of course none of this applies to the fundamentalists, or the nasty evangelical people prevalent in some other countries. And religion always has deceit baked in, that's a fact 🤗 We'd call it science or ethics or history if it was based on something else.
Yes, but not all ways are equally healthy. If you need to believe in falsehoods to be happy in life, that’s objectively a less productive coping skill than one that doesn’t involve that. Personally, as a society, I strongly feel we should be setting the bar higher. It should be an embarrassment to have such beliefs.
Mind you, I would never an am not advocating anything like legislature to enforce anything. Cultural change can’t be legislated. I just firmly believe in such change.
I mean, if falsehoods are the only way you can cope with the shit world we live in and be happy and you're not pushing it on anyone else go for it. I'm not religious but it's not like I've found an alternative. Best I can do is drink to shut off the part of my brain that's constantly ruminating on shit. That's not particularly productive either.
The main problem I have is that it normalizes lazy, magical thinking. And this leads to shit like anti-science, anti-vax, anti-intellectual shit and people suffer and die because of it
The entire problem there is that we all keep trying to shut it off instead of joining together with others who are also suffering to change society for the better because we have become so isolated from our communities.
Churches and religion offer this community but instead of making it better they just manipulate you into thinking the suffering is divinely ordained.
The problem precedes this point. If the social safety net is failing you and you're going to a church for relief, or your family and friends have abandoned you and you're going to a cult for communion, or you're a college kid away from home and the only social organ with open arms is a religious one - we've got a lot more problems on the table than the existence of religious folks.
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.
I mean... yes, but this is kinda true for everything. Most people don't change their worldview/religion/political ideology etc. when they're happy and everything goes well. Most people also don't start their own business, move countries or leave their spouse if they're entirely happy with how things have been going.
To put it in system dynamics terms, in order for a system to settle on a new attractor state, there first needs to be enough instability to spur change. So the mechanism you're describing isn't unique to religion.
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.
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.
Desperate people go looking for god after they've fucked up their lives so badly they need something--ANYTHING--before they end up dead.
"Well, fuck it, mom said I should try religion, so..."
Then they get back to something resembling normal, and attribute it to "GOD IS GREAT!", and suddenly, they're yakking at you like they're a linux user vegan on crossfit. Or, a born-again Christian.
Many of us never fucked our lives up to begin with, so don't have any use for religion. For those whom it has worked, great. Good for you. But, don't assume everyone needs it.
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.
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...
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
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.
If you mean I became happier once I stopped the religious based self loathing, then I count.
If you mean it was happy times so I switched to atheism, I guess one of the main things that helped me realize some bullshit was watching Futurama, one of my favorite shows, so that could probably be considered happy too?
It was A Clockwork Origin. Despite being religious at the time I was always into science, but I stuck more to space, physics, chemical stuff and bought into some of the claims that used how supposedly little chance Earth could be so perfect for life. Like an uncomfortable subject, I kinda avoided evolution, but I did know one of the apologetics the religion used was the missing link argument.
One of the scriptures that was a big influence on me at the time was "Always be ready to defend the faith" but this was one of the first bricks that I could no longer defend, and more came after.
Meme has multiple meanings, but in the sense most commonly used in the internet it is "funny piece of media that spreads from place to place in a way that is hard/impossible to track the spread"
This ain't funny. It's just a statement.
Yes I'm aware of the other meanings. This ain't what this community is used for though
For once, it would be interesting to see an atheistic opinion include theism instead of just the usual bullshit from the twelve tribes of Judah.
There's many religions and philosophies that discuss their misuse, being only when in times of struggle. There are many religions that dgaf if you follow them or not and are definitely not predatory.
But as usual, the online atheist only knows of one theism when talking about "all religion"; Christianity.
No, they are not. To be an atheist, you must have first heard about and understood the concept of gods, thus being then able to form the ism (idea) that you are without them.
No ism can be born into as they are not states of being, they are ideas, concepts, opinions, etc. States of being end with -ic.
Yeah, and that's correct for you. However a newborn doesn't know what gods are, so they're unable to adhere to a belief, opinion, idea, concept, etc (Isms) in whether gods exist or not. It is not that they don't believe gods exist, it's that they are unable to believe or disbelieve, since they don't know what gods are yet.
Do you often find it useful to talk about "people who do not believe in gods but are aware of the concept" while explicitly excluding "people who do not believe in gods and are not aware of the concept"? That seems like such a rare distinction to need to make.
Not saying I disagree, but as someone who was once religious I'd say that in their minds it is exactly the point to serve the desperate and broken hearted. "It is the sick who need a doctor, not the well." They genuinely believe they are helping by doing this, not trying to be deceptive.
I think you’re wrong about that last part. They are absolutely deceptive.
That doesn't change that most of them actually believe they're helping. They've been pretty well groomed to believe that.
That’s fair.
Probably depends on location and culture as well. Where I live there's a decent amount of moderate people. And well, they probably internalized the negative aspects. But it's not like they'll go out and molest other people with their religious stuff. So I'd say as long as they're accepting of dissent, gay people, facts... Which many of them are... They're more part of something that's deceptive from grounds up, rather than (deliberately) being deceptive themselves. And they don't follow the rules literally (same with the moderates amongst the Muslim people here). Leading me to believe they have some grasp of what's right and what's wrong beyond what's written in an old book.
Of course none of this applies to the fundamentalists, or the nasty evangelical people prevalent in some other countries. And religion always has deceit baked in, that's a fact 🤗 We'd call it science or ethics or history if it was based on something else.
It's probably a mix of both
In fairness, in the prominent religions "everyone* is sick and needs the doctor
Nah it's you'll all burn in hell if you don't accept Odin, so everyone is "sick" in your metaphor.
Odin? I meant Ganesha. Or was it Zeus?
I'm a devout atheist, but Ganesh I'd smoke a joint with.
Not all religions have a concept of hell, nor eternal punishment for sins. That's a very Judeo-Christian-Islamic view.
They're all made up so they have that in common.
If you found happiness through religion, good for you. Everyone has their own ways.
The problem starts when you think happiness can only come from religion.
The problem starts when you think that other people need your religion so you can be happy.
Yes, but not all ways are equally healthy. If you need to believe in falsehoods to be happy in life, that’s objectively a less productive coping skill than one that doesn’t involve that. Personally, as a society, I strongly feel we should be setting the bar higher. It should be an embarrassment to have such beliefs.
Mind you, I would never an am not advocating anything like legislature to enforce anything. Cultural change can’t be legislated. I just firmly believe in such change.
I mean, if falsehoods are the only way you can cope with the shit world we live in and be happy and you're not pushing it on anyone else go for it. I'm not religious but it's not like I've found an alternative. Best I can do is drink to shut off the part of my brain that's constantly ruminating on shit. That's not particularly productive either.
The main problem I have is that it normalizes lazy, magical thinking. And this leads to shit like anti-science, anti-vax, anti-intellectual shit and people suffer and die because of it
The entire problem there is that we all keep trying to shut it off instead of joining together with others who are also suffering to change society for the better because we have become so isolated from our communities.
Churches and religion offer this community but instead of making it better they just manipulate you into thinking the suffering is divinely ordained.
The problem precedes this point. If the social safety net is failing you and you're going to a church for relief, or your family and friends have abandoned you and you're going to a cult for communion, or you're a college kid away from home and the only social organ with open arms is a religious one - we've got a lot more problems on the table than the existence of religious folks.
The problem actually starts when magical thinking becomes acceptable, and people start suffering on large scale because of it.
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.
Fun fact: The exact same tactics were used by Hitler. The result is even similar, too.
You will not be surprised that Gabriele D'Annunzio, one of the forgotten masterminds of fascism, described fascism as a "secular religion".
And social media too!
How many came to Lemmy just because they were dissatisfied with reddit or such.
Yeah, it can be used deliberately in a predatory way. It also happens quite organically
To be honest I didn't feel particularly vulnerable. "Reddit Is Fun" stopped working and I didn't like the official app.
Chaos is a ladda!
I mean... yes, but this is kinda true for everything. Most people don't change their worldview/religion/political ideology etc. when they're happy and everything goes well. Most people also don't start their own business, move countries or leave their spouse if they're entirely happy with how things have been going.
To put it in system dynamics terms, in order for a system to settle on a new attractor state, there first needs to be enough instability to spur change. So the mechanism you're describing isn't unique to religion.
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.
“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.
Desperate people go looking for god after they've fucked up their lives so badly they need something--ANYTHING--before they end up dead.
"Well, fuck it, mom said I should try religion, so..."
Then they get back to something resembling normal, and attribute it to "GOD IS GREAT!", and suddenly, they're yakking at you like they're a linux user vegan on crossfit. Or, a born-again Christian.
Many of us never fucked our lives up to begin with, so don't have any use for religion. For those whom it has worked, great. Good for you. But, don't assume everyone needs it.
Don't know if religion is the best predator but it sure does have a lot of them.
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 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.
thats why schizophrenics fall into it, and right wing looneys who had braind damage from strokes: sorbo, cavazial, dean cain, maybe cameron.
Kirk or James?
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🎶
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
Maybe God really does exist, he's just a person that likes to pray on the emotionally vulnerable.
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.
Amen to that
Huh? Why not?
There's so many memes of basketball players thanking god for their good shots and such
Those people didn't become religious while they were already thriving, it's always either childhood indoctrination or rock-bottom conversion
They aren't finding god.
{in bursts Russell Brand}
The privileged have everything, while the destitute only have "god".
It seems like a strange thing to lose or find.
Facts. But also:
I lost God finally when my aunt died. It was my last bit of faith. I had one last conversation with god before I finally understood.
In a few days the comments section here is gonna be huge.
How many of y'all became atheists through happiness?
I became atheist through pondering, hope that helps.
If you mean I became happier once I stopped the religious based self loathing, then I count.
If you mean it was happy times so I switched to atheism, I guess one of the main things that helped me realize some bullshit was watching Futurama, one of my favorite shows, so that could probably be considered happy too?
Which episode of Futurama was it? Godfellas?
It was A Clockwork Origin. Despite being religious at the time I was always into science, but I stuck more to space, physics, chemical stuff and bought into some of the claims that used how supposedly little chance Earth could be so perfect for life. Like an uncomfortable subject, I kinda avoided evolution, but I did know one of the apologetics the religion used was the missing link argument.
Seeing the mockery of the moving goalposts kinda hit me like the first guy in https://youtu.be/Esl_wOQDUeE
We really be doing that?
One of the scriptures that was a big influence on me at the time was "Always be ready to defend the faith" but this was one of the first bricks that I could no longer defend, and more came after.
On AtheistMemes - shows a pic that's not a meme, it's just a person saying something...
Typical
Not our fault you don't know what a meme is.
Meme has multiple meanings, but in the sense most commonly used in the internet it is "funny piece of media that spreads from place to place in a way that is hard/impossible to track the spread"
This ain't funny. It's just a statement.
Yes I'm aware of the other meanings. This ain't what this community is used for though
Funny, the sidebar seems to disagree with you.
It doesn't?
Yeah, like how medical professionals enrich themselves from the ill. Vermin!
Amazes me what counts as profound comments here.
For once, it would be interesting to see an atheistic opinion include theism instead of just the usual bullshit from the twelve tribes of Judah.
There's many religions and philosophies that discuss their misuse, being only when in times of struggle. There are many religions that dgaf if you follow them or not and are definitely not predatory.
But as usual, the online atheist only knows of one theism when talking about "all religion"; Christianity.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Unless you just want people not to talk about what they're most familiar with for aome reason.
Oh, for sure. But as an atheist, I don't tarnish the idea by being narrow-minded and exclusively anti-Abrahamic.
I'm of the opinion that you can't be atheistic without first knowing theism. Knowing just one of them is a start.
Wild. I don't think there is a pre-requisite knowledge to be an atheist. All babies are born atheists. Religion is learned later.
No, they are not. To be an atheist, you must have first heard about and understood the concept of gods, thus being then able to form the ism (idea) that you are without them.
No ism can be born into as they are not states of being, they are ideas, concepts, opinions, etc. States of being end with -ic.
I don't see the point of this distinction. When I say "an atheist" i mean only and exactly a person who does not believe any gods exist.
Yeah, and that's correct for you. However a newborn doesn't know what gods are, so they're unable to adhere to a belief, opinion, idea, concept, etc (Isms) in whether gods exist or not. It is not that they don't believe gods exist, it's that they are unable to believe or disbelieve, since they don't know what gods are yet.
Do you often find it useful to talk about "people who do not believe in gods but are aware of the concept" while explicitly excluding "people who do not believe in gods and are not aware of the concept"? That seems like such a rare distinction to need to make.