Asklemmy
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
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 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
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.
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.
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 donβt 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.
Religious or not, I don't care. What matters is their personality. (except for jehova's witnesses, every time I've interacted with them it made me think they're some sort of cult rather than a religion, so not sure if this counts.)
I do have religious friends that I get well with.
As someone married to a JW and who is friends with several others, I will say this: like any group of people, they can be a mixed bag. Some are more closeted and "in the truth" whereas others are more outgoing and "worldly".
One the things that I actually admire about them (the individuals, mind you, not the Watchtower organization) is that they really seem to try and live by the teachings of the Bible and study it frequently. Much more so than, say, your average evangelical Protestant.
What is your general attitude towards those who believe in religion whether they are jewish, Muslim, Christian etc etc.
It's totally okay, just like when my nephew talks about dinosaurs.
I am Anti-theist, If anyone brings up religion around me I will not hesitate to tear it down. These people are playing make belief and if affects my life, I have to live in a world where people make decisions based on some imaginary sky friend.
I will not play nice for the sake of someone feeling good about their bullshit.
So you're an asshole, using religion as an excuse to berate and bully people, got it.
Flat-earther comes up to you and tells you the earth is flat. What do you do tell them to each there own? Or do you tell them no the earth is not flat and they should educate themselves?
I actually care a lot about people. I don't care much for ideas though.
How's it go? Love the person hate the imaginary "friends"?
One thing that's nice about being visibly queer is that luckily people don't try to con me into their religions.
Unfortunately, "these people" have to live in a world where you exist too and your conflicting attitude affect their lives.
Learn to live and let live, my friend. You cannot expect the world to accept you if you are not ready to accept them.
I accept people, I will never accept irrational/harmful beliefs. Luckily it looks like access to the internet's vast wealth of knowledge is killing religion in the next generations.