I was born in a very interesting family. Both sides of my family were from very opposing denominations of Christianity.
One of the Church of Christ (not Latter Day Saints), believing that dancing and musical instruments were a sin, took the lords supper (wine and bread) every Sunday and believed that if you were not baptized in their church that you were going to hell.
The other, Baptists, who would regularly invite bands to play at their church, rarely took the lords supper and would not batt an eye if you visited a friend’s church of a different denomination.
They both used the exact same version of the Bible (King James Version). Although, the baptists didn’t care if you used a newer translation to get a better understanding. This great divide in the interpretation of the word of a book drove me away from believing in the traditional Christian sense of a god.
Each denomination teaches their own interpretation. If the word is divine and should be read and understood in the same way everywhere, why should I believe one over the other?
Dude, we have people that think vaccines are giving people disabilities and that the moon landing was fake. There’s no shortage of morons out there. I’d go so far as to say many, if not most religious people are fairly rational, especially by comparison xD
For most religious people, religion is a way to be a better person and live a better life.
Let’s say you struggle with anger issues? How do you deal with it?
Religions have thousands of years of lessons about anger. Churches will have entire support groups built around helping with anger. You’ll often get sermons about anger. Ways to deal with it. Why it happens. Benefits of not giving into anger etc.
If you have a slip up with anger, religions have ways of handling it and helping you grow.
Probably the most visible thing is addiction. Churches have helped soooo many people deal with addiction who otherwise might be dead by now.
Religion is not for everyone, but there are certainly lots of people who feel they are better off because of it
I’m not sure if I agree with this explanation. Sure, religion is something some people turn to after having issues, but it’s also equally, if not probably more frequently, an excuse to cause issues.
I see it more often used as a coping mechanism, not a way to be a better person. It’s something to give hope of your problem just solving itself, and an excuse when it doesn’t work. It’s also used to excuse horrible behavior towards other people, not to be a nicer person towards them.
There’s both sides of all of this obviously, but I see it doing the inverse of what you said much more frequently.
The biggest boon I see from religion is that it creates community by default. In a time period so lacking in community, religion would be a good tool for this. I think it’d be better for people to form non-religious community, but there’s no force to push towards that.
This thread has plenty of anti-religious stances and oversimplified explanations that just mock those that are religious. Despite how exhausting it will be to think about the replies, I feel that some balance is needed for the sake of good content and discussion. I’m terrible at this shit, so take it with a grain of salt. Obligatory “I’m not religious” - I’m not defending those that have twisted religion to be used for personal gain, perversion, or for enacting upon hatred, but to say there’s zero benefit to religion and that it shouldn’t exist is naive; it is, however, in need of improvement.
Religion provides community, philosophy, and despite what everyone in the comments here are saying, education. You can deny a specific diety all you’d like, but it poses potential answers to questions science has yet to figure out. Did a diety create the universe via The Big Bang? When does life begin? What happens after death? What happens before we’re born? Etc.
Church provides support for those struggling. You can argue that praying to a diety may not do anything on its own, but to have a pastor say that someone in the church has been struggling with something and everyone includes that in their prayers - it helps a lot to cope with the passing of someone, addiction, debt, etc. Some churches will do events to help raise money for a cause. Some will pull you aside to help give direction to resolve the struggle in your life. Some host meetings for AA and other similar programs.
Einstein rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science.
Multiple strong atheists including my college Language Arts teacher throughout my life have said that The Bible is one of the greatest books ever written - not for the diety, but for the teaching of morals, the poetry, the individual pastorals, and the story overall. Is it the only source to learn morality? No. Additionally, any source where you learn morality from will also have immoral characteristics, so don’t let any strawman arguments prevent you from learning from it.
Nothing and no one is perfect, so use your own judgement to discern the morality from the immoral, and question it. For those interested in pro-religioua debate, books on Apologetics can be an interesting read.
I have a minor in religious studies because belief in things outside science seemed ridiculous.
Then, a couple years ago I was walking my dog with my wife talking about Huitzilopochtli & a hummingbird flew from the top of a giant redwood to about a foot from my face, flew in a perfect square 7 times, then back to the top.
Then I was under a sycamore tree at the Rosicrucian temple in San Jose meditating on Hathor & inadvertently copied a statue of Plato when I tried to clean a cobweb off it with a walking stick & a single leaf fell gently to the exact middle of my feet.
Then I was driving & thinking about getting a tattoo of Horus when a falcon began flying next to my head outside my driver’s side window for about 5 seconds, flew past my windshield, perched on a freeway sign & watched me drive off.
I could go on but the gist is I always said I couldn’t believe unless I had concrete proof & now I have concrete proof.
I believe in science and have had a lot of experiences that lead me to believe math is a language used to describe the metaphysical, and whether divine intervention, there are patterns and things that happen that seem to appear in nature when they statistically shouldn’t. Things that point to more than my day job and Netflix. Maybe it’s monkeys typing Shakespeare over an infinite time, yellow car syndrome, projection, but it’s just so narcissistic and small minded to think we know it all and this is it, and we’re not connected to anything more than the mundane, ants scurrying about a spinning rock consuming our environment until our cave collapses becoming another dead satellite spiraling toward a burning star. I’ve experienced love. Wonder. The unexplainable. Just because we have Western words to describe something, doesn’t make it less magical or spiritual.
It’s amazing. I want to say what it is about this exchange that makes me suggest it but I don’t want to spoil it. I think you would enjoy it from this tiny bit of Internet sharing through which I know you 🤷
Meh. I liked the star wars and national geographic stuff but that didn’t take long to burn through. Only have it for kids at this point. And when it’s just the same 2 shows over and over… Feels like a waste of $
As much as people rip on Netflix I watch a lot of stuff on there and use it way more than D+
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