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.
Keep it to yourself and don’t hurt others. So long as that’s the case, what someone else believes is generally not my business.
I was raised in various evangelical protestant denominations of Christianity, went through a Neopagan period, and landed in atheist-leaning agnostic.
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.
I hate the ignorance that edgy kids have about religion, having exposure only to a very very very narrow sample and extrapolating to infinity. Not every religious practice opposes truth, or oppresses and exploits its practitioners. No more than every political practice does. Religious practice is an expression of our innate humanity. You cannot just get rid of it, any more than you can get rid of any fundamental human need. What is important is finding safe, healthy, ethical and helpful means of expressing it.
My uncle is a pastor. So when his kid came out as trans, he and his wife did the ‘good moral Christian’ thing and shamed her and harassed her until she committed suicide.
Then deadnamed her at the funeral, and wrote and published a book about how ‘his betrayal’ and ‘his unfortunate death’ were just tests from God to test their faith.
This is not a rare or unique story; many people all over the world have stories like this. Is it any wonder those who pay attention find religion distasteful? It may be a part of humanity, but many unpleasant things are, and there is nothing ‘edgy’ about rejecting them.
Yes, there are ‘good’ churches in my town that feed and clothe the poor; a far cry from my uncle’s church. But they are part of the same religion, and the fact that religion accepts both, morals be damned, means I have no interest in it.
Their point is that there’s more than 1 widely-practiced religion, and there are plenty of sects that are tolerant to different forms of self-expression. Saying food is bad because you don’t like bananas isn’t sound logic, and applying that same logic to religion doesn’t work either.
I can’t speak for any Christians, but many of the religious people I know are some of the most tolerant people I know because their religious schools focused on doing things with good intent.
Could you name them for me? Not beliefs, just religions
Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism are some, but Asia has many more religions/ideologies.
Not beliefs, just religions
All of these are philosophy not monotheism
Sikhism is a staunchly monotheistic religion.
(Wiki says otherwise, though they do conflate religion with philosophy)[Sikhism (/ˈsɪkɪzəm/ SIK-iz-əm), also known as Sikhi (Punjabi: ਸਿੱਖੀ Sikkhī, [ˈsɪk.kʰiː] ⓘ, from Punjabi: ਸਿੱਖ, romanized: Sikh, lit. ‘disciple’), is a monotheistic Indian religion and philosophy]
All the examples I provided are religions.
Philosophy is not religion, your answer speaks volumes
At what age does one stop being an “edgy kid” in your eyes?
50% grow out of it by mid thirties.
The Internet atheism movement of the late 90s was extremely liberating and enlightening to many people. But, it has gradually become hateful and I think it has long since run out its useful lifetime. We can’t just stop there, we need to collectively develop a more informed, nuanced and compassionate view. Today’s threat isn’t baptist fundamentalism, it’s fucking fascism. You can’t hate yourself out of that, you only sink deeper.
Serious question, do you still believe in the Easter bunny and Santa Claus?
Edit: these examples are heavily promoted as Christian
“Serious question,” asks ridiculous question. You don’t need me here for the rest of this conversation, say what you are going to say. As long as you are not about to extrapolate from some abusive sect of Christianity that you are familiar with to the entire concept of religion generally. You know, like I just said.
We can’t just stop there, we need to collectively develop a more informed, nuanced and compassionate view
Like supporting
trans, gay or poc rights or free food for childrengun rightsIs it your poorly stated, smug, so-ironic-no-one-knows-what-you-are-talking-about point that all religions promote oppression based on sexuality and gender, of the poor, and of children? Because that sounds an awful lot like American conservatism, not religion. But since you won’t come right out and state your points clearly in a way that can be directly refuted, how about you just fuck off.
Shit in one hand and pray in the other stupid motherfucker
You are being hateful towards religion. That is very different than rationally opposing religious oppression and persecution, which obviously is a thing that does exist and needs to be opposed, but which does not define religion. You can’t make things better with hate. Figure your shit out.
Shove your religion up your ass
WHAT religion? I was one of those edgy young mid 90s atheists.
Look, I’m sorry. I can see that you have trauma. But please don’t take it out on other people.
I respect the fact that people believe. They even can form their own clubs as far as I’m concerned. Forcing those beliefs onto other people is something I do have an issue with.
I’m atheist. My mom is a devout catholic (and raised me that way) and my dad is an atheist Jew. I never truly believed and mostly think religion is dumb, but I’m fine with everyone believing or not as they see fit. I’m not fine when others’ religion is forced on anyone else - e.g., abortion restrictions, the 10 commandments being displayed in Louisiana classrooms.
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.
In any demonstration, you have to make some unproven statement, taken as true. It could be “1+1 = 2” or “God exists”. So sciences are methodologies based on believes. Lot of religions use logic and reasons, based on science and philosophy, to deduce things from their core believes. This is theology.
So if both science and religions are based on believes, and could have the same methods, how to distinguish one of the other ? We could argue that science try to reduce believes as possible. Personally I’m not good enough in sciences to argue with religious people, and demonstrate that point. In trying to challenge my believes in scientific models, I have to stay tolerant with religious people (I’m not sure I would otherwise); which is a most productive approach. Furthermore, it helps to have a critical point on view on science (as you’ve said, and to taking it as a blind faith)
God exists and God is all powerful are a blanket check to solve everything, because it just does whatever you want it to and you don’t even try to prove it. 1+1 = 2 is a semantic axiom, not really equivalent to wilder assumptions you can do where those wouldn’t be comparable to there’s an all powerful something in existent in our reality that affects it at will.
It’s like believing there’s a multiverse, it’s not a useful axiom as it’s not measurable and specially not falsifiable.
It’s useful to keep an open mind and not discard people based on irrational beliefs, but God is something you can only accept in the scientific method if you bend or break the method.
Imo, That’s not even looking at the fact that any type of religious organization ends up being someone taking advantage of the faithful. It irks me to no end, and it’s rare to find faithful in a vacuum.
If you need unproven statements to prove something, then it isn’t science.
You do have start somewhere. Complex numbers have an impossible assumption at its core. But it needs to be falsifiable. You need to be able to prove it isn’t true and fail at it.
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.
I don’t mind them doing their thing at home, but I could do without them shoving their lifestyle in everybody’s face in public.
I don’t tell non-straight people they can’t have their pride parade, I don’t tell people they shouldn’t kiss or hold hands in public, I don’t tell religious people they can’t have public displays, either. What I object to is if any of those groups insist I join them, or insist I don’t.
I hope my sarcasm was clear
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 used to be fence sitter agnostic but Qanon has made me deep on the athiest side. I don’t care what ones religion is but I don’t want to hear about it. Its fine to mention it but if someone is always talking about it then I will avoid them.
I consider myself an anti-theist. Religion is used to control unintelligent/mentally challenged people and shouldn’t exist in any form.
I don’t hate the people unless they are forcing it down my throat.
Ramen
I am agnostic, and if a god exists, I hate them.
I don’t really care if they believe in something.
I would never try to convince them to stop or anything like that.
I think the type of people that frequent Reddit and Lemmy and constantly complain and mock religious people are the worst.
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
personally, i don’t get, like, at all. i don’t care what nonsense folk put their faith in, so long as they don’t use it to justify being a dick, or try to justify others being a dick. maybe they get some pity/sympathy from me, to a point, cause they probably got brainwashed when they were a child, or otherwise in a vulnerable state, and maybe some amusement depending on how ‘out there’ their counterfactual beliefs are.
i generally get on well enough with my religious friends, but it’s not a topic that comes up much in real life.
i don’t usually care for organized religion, but that has more to do with my anarchism than my atheism.
this all goes equally whether we’re talking about conventional religions, modern conspiracy theories, new-age mumbo jumbo, or what-have-you.
