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Jordan7hm posted:That’s what I said, but she disagreed and we turned it off. Tell her its like listening to David Comes to Life and stopping at Queen of Hearts
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Feb 14, 2020 14:45
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| # ? May 23, 2024 13:47 |
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 happy valentines you wonderful oddballs
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Feb 14, 2020 15:11
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For my fellow non-faith goons - what was it that pushed you to dropping your religion, if you ever in fact followed one? And for my goons of faith - what is it that helps you keep that faith For me it was a long process - not much unlike how I finally admitted I was bi. It started with me believing less and less with the things in the bible I didn't like - for example a good person would go to hell forever if they didn't believe in Jesus. I remember asking my teacher when I was a kid did that mean Ghandi was in hell and being really bummed out about it. More and more kept falling away until I stopped calling myself a Catholic and called myself a Christian. Then one day on my way to class in college a random thought popped in my head - if you don't believe all of the bible - why should you believe in the bible at all? Because it says it's the truth. But what if that's also not true. AND THEN BAM. Stopped dead in my tracks. The most clear epiphany in my life. If I don't believe it's true then I'm not a Christian. I skipped class that day and sorted out all my thoughts. After that it was a progression from Christianity to Deism to Atheism/Humanism.
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Feb 14, 2020 16:14
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hosed up readings of the Bible made me realize I could also pick and choose my own values so I did and now I fuckin rule.
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Feb 14, 2020 16:35
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I kept my faith I just choose not to be a dick about it.
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Feb 14, 2020 16:39
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There's not an exact moment for me as I just never believed the stories to begin with, but I remember the first time I was ready admit it. I distinctly remember a conversation with some friends when I was 9 where the subject came up and there was almost a harmonic gasp among my group of friends as I said that our bible is bullshit, it seemed weird to them to doubt what we learned in bible class but to just accept as truth what the learned in other classes. "But aren't you Jewish?" they said, and when I asked them what they think that means they didn't really know what to say and we went to play soccer. At worst, religions only exist to keep certain people in power. At best, religions only exist because humans are loving poo poo by default and if you don't threaten them with the wrath of god they won't behave well. I don't know how you can look at this world and think that people are good or that there's a god watching over people, it doesn't even make a little bit of sense to me.
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Feb 14, 2020 16:43
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Spikegal posted:For my fellow non-faith goons - what was it that pushed you to dropping your religion, if you ever in fact followed one? I got scared watching an infomercial about the rapture when I was like 8
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Feb 14, 2020 16:48
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yea ok posted:i have them all tracked down, just have to be in the correct mood and headspace for one of these suckers. did you see 'afternoon' got uhhh, trackdownable recently? Yeah I hear that. Stray Dogs had me shook for days afterwards. I don't remember another fiction film that affected me that way. Docs like Up The Yangtze and The Act Of Killing, sure, but not a fictional story. Thanks for the tip on Afternoon!
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Feb 14, 2020 16:54
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Went to a super fundie church, had gay friends in school, felt a bit bi myself, something had to give
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Feb 14, 2020 17:02
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My first single Valentine's Day since uhh... 2006? And I work tonight and dgaf
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Feb 14, 2020 17:09
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gently caress Valentine’s Day. Stupid over-commercialized garbage for idiots. I highly recommend everyone follows the example of Finland and has a great ystävänpäivä instead. It means Friends’ Day and on this day you think about how loving sweet as hell it that you’re friends with nice people who you love.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:14
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look I gotta figure out how to turn $20 into some rear end and valentine's day is the key ingredient to this incantation
coconono fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Feb 14, 2020 |
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Feb 14, 2020 17:15
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I keep my faith because it gives me something to help center and calm myself on. For me, the habit of going to mass every saturday or sunday gives me a chance to just calm down and re-focus myself. I know full well the Catholic church has its issues and definitely earn their criticisms, but there are still good lessons in there, for me anyway. E: basically this: coconono posted:I kept my faith I just choose not to be a dick about it.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:18
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Spikegal posted:And for my goons of faith - what is it that helps you keep that faith I was raised by a Pentecostal mother. To quote my best friend, my Mom had a religious epiphany and decided I needed to have one too. She's mellowed in her old age, although my attempt at a second career in smut writing has led to some issues between us. To answer your question... 1 - I believe this all came from somewhere. The Big Bang was a bunch of stuff exploding into a bunch of other stuff...where did the stuff come from? A higher being/power/force works into my paradigm. 2 - I see the Bible as a philosophical document full of parables and metaphors, not an accurate recount of history. 2 - Putting all the other stuff from the Bible aside, Jesus said "love thy neighbor" and "treat others as you would want to be treated." That's my core religious belief, and if anything my core life belief. Jesus said, "love thy neighbor." Bill and Ted said, "be excellent to each other." Cobi says "dude, don't be a prick."
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Feb 14, 2020 17:22
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I like Valentine's Day. I love my partner.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:25
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NienNunb posted:I like Valentine's Day. I love my partner. Same friend
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Feb 14, 2020 17:48
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NienNunb posted:I like Valentine's Day. I love my partner.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:53
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My faith was only ever held aloft by it never being challenged. Once it was, it fell apart. I'd like to thank the Jehovah's Witnesses for that one. When I was a kid I didn't know much about the diversity of religion, even within a singular faith. I knew other religion existed, but it only existed as an abstract, I didn't 'get' it because only existed in my life as trivia. I knew my aunt was a Jehovah's Witness but I didn't really stop to think about it too much. Then I made a friend who was a Jehovah's witness and his mom was let's say crazy into it. It was through her I learned about what I would eventually come to understand as the Calvinistic school of though. Exclusive salvation. My first crush was on a Jehovah's Witness. Friend down the street, so to speak. Cute as a button. Buuuuut she was a witness, which meant she couldn't date me because what happens when she goes to paradise on Earth and I rot in the ground? This vexed me? Why would our loving God save some and exclude others? Why drive these wedges between us? What makes us so different? (I did not realize at the time that she just had no interest in me like that and her life would jump the rails very soon after I moved away, but I digress). So I learned more. I learned of all the various denominations of Christianity and widened my worldview to contain a basic understanding of Christianity's place in the global theater. And as I learned, I started to question. The first one way "Ok, which of these religions is the right one?" I operated under the view that every religion was Calvinistic in nature (I was not correct about this but I feel my point remains valid) so I assume there could only be one right one. I realized nobody added anything substantial to their argument, they just expected to be believed without question. Which I wholeheartedly rejected. Why not reject it? Not like I had any idea who to believe anyway. And then I would learn about the role of organized religion in shaping world history and I became aghast. Religion became a dirty, hollow thing to me. Over the years I would desperately try to maintain some scrap of spirituality in my heart so that I would not be flayed bare but the cold, harsh darkness of a mechanistic universe. I failed. I failed at just about the only thing I truly cared about; maintaining the immortality of my core self (I don't want to live forever but I definitely don't want to die forever). And when I lost the feeling that I could ever experience anything other than the ugly reality we live in, I lost all sense of hope. ChrisBTY fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Feb 14, 2020 |
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Feb 14, 2020 18:35
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I was raised Southern Baptist and, like most Southern Baptists, I am no longer Southern Baptist because of the Southern Baptists. I didn't like all the picking and choosing of commands to follow, of who to tolerate and who to embrace, of who was a greater or worse sinner. None of that is consistent. I like the basic message of most religions: Acceptance; Forgiveness; Compassion; Honesty. I think those are things humans need. I think it's why you find them in the writings of every religion. I think religion is the bureaucracy of spirituality. Some people really like that bureaucracy; it is comforting that there is a method. I don't need it, but I still need acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, and honesty. I pray a lot to a god I don't understand and don't know, but virtually every time I do, I feel better for it. I'm really practical about the whole thing. When I had no spirituality, I was a miserable mess of a human being that would gently caress up your life, like a loving human-sized top full of poo poo just running in your living room. Now, I try to elevate the people I'm around and make a living by teaching--and most of the work I do is just being a good person to teenagers; whatever knowledge they get is secondary to how an adult in authority treated them and modeled apology, fairness, honesty, and compassion. still gonna make them write essays though I have good days, and holeeeey poo poo have I had some bad days, especially recently. But having those things as principles, and having practiced them in every thing I do, makes it easier not to fall into self-pity or despair because those just loving feel worse. That's the biggest advertisement I can give for working on spirituality: it just makes your life feel nicer.
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Feb 14, 2020 18:39
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humans would not know a god if said god wriggled up and bit them. I know that by not knowing I know a helluva lot more than those that say they know.
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Feb 14, 2020 18:41
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ChrisBTY posted:My faith was only ever held aloft by it never being challenged. Once it was, it fell apart. I love diverse points of view because it's always interesting where points of view diverge. For me my mortality, my existence at all, has been very freeing after I got past the existential crisis in my 20s. The chances of me existing at all, let alone exactly as I do now are so astronomical it may as well be 0. And in all the history of the universe there will only be one me. And when I'm gone that's ok - I got to experience so much. And I believe life/reality will always find a way to continue onwards otherwise how did we come to be to begin with. Now this also leads me towards my humanism - because I know enough about the world that mere existence is not enough for way too many people. For many people life is neverending misery from beginning to end. And we should all strive towards making it so a person's life is not that.
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Feb 14, 2020 18:53
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was mad at organized religion from as far back as i can remember since my mom fell into catholic stuff hard and dragged her children through it. when i couldn't be forced to go to church any more it cooled off and idc about any of that stuff. pretty much respect beliefs unless they are harmful
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Feb 14, 2020 18:54
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I didn't believe in anything for a long time. Then one day I pieced together that over all the years I'd shown animist tendencies and beliefs, analyzed it, and then shed my old atheism (which i had become increasingly uncomfortable with due to the rise of New Atheism™) to embrace it. I still have no clue what exactly it all means, but I know it's what speaks truth in my heart.
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Feb 14, 2020 18:55
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TTBF posted:I didn't believe in anything for a long time. Then one day I pieced together that over all the years I'd shown animist tendencies and beliefs, analyzed it, and then shed my old atheism (which i had become increasingly uncomfortable with due to the rise of New Atheism™) to embrace it. I still have no clue what exactly it all means, but I know it's what speaks truth in my heart. This is super interesting. What is old Atheism vs new Atheism and what is animist?
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Feb 14, 2020 19:01
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Spikegal posted:This is super interesting. What is old Atheism vs new Atheism and what is animist? New Atheism is like if you made atheism fascist
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Feb 14, 2020 19:04
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Big Huski Boi posted:New Atheism is like if you made atheism fascist Gross
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Feb 14, 2020 19:08
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I broke with a lot of atheism stuff because its a bunch of lilly white dungeon master lookin dudes trying to describe stuff they have no loving clue about. not my fault you based your islamaphobia on Jack Chick tracts, lizard dude.
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Feb 14, 2020 19:11
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i was always raised to have a healthy distrust of anything denominational religious thanks to being indigenous and having family that went through the residential school system. never saw the need or want to have faith or religion in my life. i don't know that i'd call myself atheist given the fashy tendencies of most people that proudly call themselves that these days, but i trust people to believe in what they want as long as its not shoved in my face.
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Feb 14, 2020 19:17
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When I die I hope my skellington jumps out and leads a long happy second life
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Feb 14, 2020 19:19
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I went to a catholic school and I quite vividly recall being upset about having to confess my sins when I was in grade 1. Any faith I may have had pretty rapidly deteriorated once I went to university. Anyway, happy VD. https://twitter.com/paprbckparadise/status/1189965347606024192
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Feb 14, 2020 19:25
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Spikegal posted:
I kinda went in the exact opposite order you did, Spike, Atheist to Deist to Christian. Raised Unitarian, so vaguely Christian but about as much Atheist or Agnostic as a church could be. I was never happy with the idea of this being all there was, and then the more I studied physics in college, the more things just seemed just ever so "off" thinking of this as all there was. Then there was a truly bizarre, nonsensical sequence of events that lead to me meeting my wife, the both of us just having weird feelings out of nowhere and spontaneous trips putting us in the same place at the same time hundreds of miles away from where either of us were both living at the time. No possible rational explanation existed in my head for how the hell we met. Nothing in normal, rational space could explain it to me. I think the final breakthrough moment for me was when I was re-reading Edwin Abott's Flatland (we were assigned it in college) and one night it all just kind of fell into place, a Eureka moment. How can God exist with us just in this three-dimensions-of-space-and-one-dimension-of-linear-time universe? Well, the simplest way possible: He/She/It doesn't, at least not in just these dimensions, in just this linear time. Then everything just kinda came to me out of that. Admittedly calling myself an active Christian is kind of a... conceit? At least not the way most people in this country who claim to be Christian. I am fairly certain something else exists outside of all of this, so there are three possibilities to it: 1) God doesn't care, so worship is a waste of time. 2) God hates us, in which case worship is insane. 3) God cares about us, so worship is appropriate to one degree or another. I remain hopeful that #3 is the case, and that the extradimensional entity/force/power some call "God" would be wise enough to learn and revise plans: send down explicit plans directly, those don't work, then send messengers with a list of Commandments, and then realize that all of the messages from others aren't enough, it was time to go be the message. That's why I claim specifically Christian faith if anything, not anything humanity built up around the idea of Christ or the church, but the core idea that God would act in this subset of reality to be born as the message, live as the message, and yes, die as the message as well. Everything about the message may be flawed and imperfect the second it starts interacting with human failings, but at least the idea of it is something there. As I said, it's all kind of a conceit, I admit that freely. I may be a terrible Christian in the eyes of many for not big-B BELIEVING and only "believing", but I do remain eternally hopeful that my beliefs are correct. I could be wrong, though. Way too much of a scientist to not live with that possibility in my heart and mind at all times. TL;DR - I remain hopeful that God exists outside of linear space and time, and that He/She/It cares.
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Feb 14, 2020 19:49
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cut your flesh and worship satan
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Feb 14, 2020 19:51
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I wanna believe in something because being an atheist has been mostly just a bummer.
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Feb 14, 2020 19:54
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most organized religions are an excuse for people to get together and shoot the poo poo. Its when people try to make it into something more than that things go south. Like I know Solomon floated the idea of religion as state but history tends to ignore that the whole thing immediately imploded on his death so maybe it wasn't such a great idea? Maybe we should just accept that the divine permeates all things mundane and great and get on with living our best lives.
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Feb 14, 2020 20:06
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I was christened at birth and was a member of the church. Nearly everyone is in Finland, but the amount of people who actually go to church (not to mention who actually believe in something) keeps dropping year to year. The Nordics are one of the most secular parts of the world. My parents aren’t religious in the least but I’m gonna guess this was basically so that my very religious grandparents on my mom’s side wouldn’t get mad. I left the church when I was able to when I was 18. I have never been religious at all and don’t really understand the experience. I just have never felt anything that would require me to believe in anything supernatural. What I believe in is basically humans being capable of incredible things, of feeling emotions, love, compassion for each others. Don’t really care about what you believe unless you’re hurting others mentally or physically. The one thing I absolutely can’t stand is kids being indoctrinated into a religion from birth, though a cyborg mug fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Feb 15, 2020 |
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Feb 14, 2020 20:07
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WatermelonGun posted:cut your flesh and worship satan This leads me to another thing I used to always wonder: if I'm in hell for being anti-God - let's say I think it's not cool that the world has as much bad in it so I don't believe in a good and loving God because they should be able to do more to fix things. So I end up in Hell. Why would Satan want to torture me in ironic fashion? Like dude I'm on your side. Let's work together. Also give the Devil this - a lot more proactive than any God I've seen in reality or fiction.
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Feb 14, 2020 20:08
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Yeah there's a whole section of literature devoted to reasoning out the mechanics of adversarial Christendom and its all loving exhausting. Malleus Maleficarum is probably the best read and the guy that wrote it was a loving weirdo panty sniffer.
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Feb 14, 2020 20:13
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On the other hand, I always want people to remember that the moment atheists sniffed the slightest taste of the heady scent of power, they were tying priests to boats and then sinking those boats. People being dicks to each other is a people thing.
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Feb 14, 2020 20:18
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To be more positive, here is a Squirrel going all gently caress the police on our anti-Squirrel bird feeder
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Feb 14, 2020 20:24
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| # ? May 23, 2024 13:47 |
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coconono posted:most organized religions are an excuse for people to get together and shoot the poo poo. Us Methodists consider church to be pre-gaming for cookouts.
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Feb 14, 2020 20:26
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