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Regalingualius posted:I’m legitimately curious, how many of you picked up on occultism after you fell out of church? I never did myself, but I’ve heard the hosts and guests of some occult-adjacent podcasts I listen to casually mention that they had phases of getting into it as teens. im p sure nobody at least out here really believed they were communing with spirits or casting spells, but when you're a weirdo teenager in the sticks and you find out the awful hicks who're making your life hell really think you can the draw is absolutely irresistible. Unfortunate there's not as useful a spin to put on being gay or not a fuckin Republican but research continues apace A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 19:35
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The Moon Monster posted:I had it explained to me several times that "the eye of the needle" was the name of a gate in Jerusalem long before I knew why anyone would give a poo poo. Of course there's zero historical, archaeological, or theological evidence for that, some American preacher just made it up to attract more pay pigs. Yeah it’s especially ridiculous when taken in context of the religion being based on a homeless Jewish man who was murdered, with martyrdom being common among early church leaders. Definitely not intended to be a get rich quick scheme.
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Dec 31, 2022 19:56
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Play posted:Curious to know about how your father is a wannabe cult leader/more about this I won't be using names, because Dad's various misspellings make everyone too easy to google. Dad was raised Catholic, but converted to Rosicrucian when he was 9, after a couple years of dabbling in various things, including witchcraft. His family basically rolled their eyes and hoped he'd grow out of it, and kept sending him to church. Along the way, he also added a weirdly-spotty obsession with being Irish. Example quote: "All true cowboys are Irish, and all true Irishmen moved to [state we live in]." He also dresses in his idea of what a medieval Irishman wore, and made his kids dress that way. [Nasty note: Mom only ever put her foot down on two issues, the first being that she would not wear the horrible clothes and the second being that he wasn't going to move his mistress into her home.] When I was 6, the local Catholic church got a new priest, and, when we arrived late one day, he greeted us with something like "and here are some MORE sinners to join us". Dad considers himself to be a Holy Mantm, so this did not go over well. We stopped attending church, Dad filed the paperwork to found his own church (it was like $10/yr to register a church with the state, at the time). For some reason, Dad had the priest he didn't like anoint us kids, the "dedicating yourself to god" type, not the anointing-of-the-sick type. He had some certificates printed up, and awarded us each with a pretty one saying we were prelates of his new church "by right of birth." Because he was such a very holy Holy Mantm that only really good souls were allowed to be born as his children.* In place of church attendance, we now got weekly sermons from him. He hated the word "sermon," so we were supposed to call them "lectures," instead. I now twitch at the word lecture. Standard length of his lectures was an hour, with no breaks or singing or prayers. Just him, droning on and on, and occasionally getting mad cuz a kid looked bored instead of engrossed in his wisdom. When I was in highs school, he switched to two hours. His plan was that we would be his worshipful disciples, make lots of friends and convert our friends to his weird mash-up of Rosicrucianism, mutant Irishness, and hero-worship of his own father (who hadn't done anything particularly heroic, just demanded fearful obedience from his kids). As far as I can tell, Dad thinks he radiates holiness, and can't understand why no one acknowledges it. Everyone else in town just thought he was a weird form of hippy, and ignored him. Dad made exactly one convert, who was his mistress for 10 years, bore a child to him, and then decided she was a lesbian. We kids made exactly zero effort to convert our few friends, and tried to learn how to be normal. We attended public school, except for my youngest brother, who Dad decided to homeschool. Mom taught him for the first few years, then Dad took over. After 12 years of that, my brother found out that he would not be given a diploma under our state's education rules, and had to settle for a GED. He scored pretty well, given that Dad thinks "no, that's wrong, but you've got the general idea so lets go to the next chapter" is a good way to teach math. Letting us attend public school was probably Dad's biggest mistake. Instead of our holiness making everyone want to be like us, we were almost shunned. . . until Dad came to sit in on our classes, to make sure that we weren't being taught something he disagreed with. As soon as he left, the other kids practically swarmed us with whispered questions about why our dad was so weird and made us dress funny. Once they knew we weren't doing it of our own choice, we were able to make some friends and learn about normal families. His second mistake was thinking that kids naturally worship their fathers, like he and his siblings had been programmed to do. He didn't do the programming, and instead lectured us about how we were supposed to stand up for our beliefs (until he found out we disagreed with him because we'd been allowed into reality instead of kept in isolation like cults usually do). Okay, that's the most I've ever talked about this at one time. I need to quit for a while. *This lasted until the two oldest kids became teenager, and then became ". . .or souls that really needed his holiness to help them."
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Dec 31, 2022 20:14
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Your dad has schizotypal personality disorder.
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Dec 31, 2022 20:17
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GoodyTwoShoes posted:I won't be using names, because Dad's various misspellings make everyone too easy to google. Thanks for sharing even if it may not be easy to talk about. Was an interesting read and it sounds like you turned into a cool person regardless of all of that.
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Dec 31, 2022 20:32
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Cock mutilation
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Dec 31, 2022 20:43
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Not me personally, but my wife's father is a minister and she was basically raised in the church. What convinced her to leave it was actually rereading the bible as an adult and realizing that it's like 80% weird rules and record keeping and random stuff like specific curtain measurements. As she describes it, it's like an encyclopedia or almanac from 2000 years ago with some wacky mythology sprinkled in, and that it's also very misogynistic. That combined with the "mainstream" version of Christianity in the US being comprised of mostly psychotic fascists was enough for her to renounce it and become an atheist/humanist.
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Dec 31, 2022 20:57
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I grew up with my parents referring to religious people as deluded morons. They were pretty overtly anti-theist. They didn’t have any replacement belief system though, like left-wing politics or social justice or whatever, I just grew up with the understanding that there’s no god, no meaning to anything we do, no purpose for existing, you know, utter nihilism. The idea was that people should just go on living, having kids, working at your job, going through the motions, because that’s what people do, and maybe you can get some pleasure out of it while you’re at it. I don’t get it, I wish they had lied to me and told me there was a god because an impermanent life seems like a worthless one to me.
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Dec 31, 2022 21:00
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Irish catholic in Northern Ireland growing up in the Troubles. And it was the Troubles that was the starter I guess, killing each other for following the same God but not quite. Didn't take too long to realize it was bollocks. Went to a library one day went I was about 15/16, and read as much as about all religions, and hows its all bullshit in the end to control your tribe whatever that may be.
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Dec 31, 2022 21:01
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Nigmaetcetera posted:Your dad has schizotypal personality disorder. When he was 7, Dad was bucked off a horse, who managed to kick him in the head on his way down. He was unconscious for half an hour, while his older brother sat around dithering because he'd get in so much trouble if they told their father about it. Dad's sampling of religions began soon after that, although I don't know what he looked at besides witchcraft and Rosicrucianism. He didn't start dressing funny til he was out of his father's home. So, brain damage. Dad's older sister got bucked off frequently, and usually landed on her head. In her late 40s, she started having visions of the Virgin Mary, who told her she should only eat fruits cuz everything else was poison. More brain damage. As long as I avoid blows to the head, I should be okay. 
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Dec 31, 2022 21:02
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Mr.Acula posted:Cock mutilation Santería?
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Dec 31, 2022 21:03
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LuckyCat posted:Thanks for sharing even if it may not be easy to talk about. Was an interesting read and it sounds like you turned into a cool person regardless of all of that. Thank you.
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Dec 31, 2022 21:03
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GoodyTwoShoes posted:When he was 7, Dad was bucked off a horse, who managed to kick him in the head on his way down. He was unconscious for half an hour, while his older brother sat around dithering because he'd get in so much trouble if they told their father about it. Dad's sampling of religions began soon after that, although I don't know what he looked at besides witchcraft and Rosicrucianism. He didn't start dressing funny til he was out of his father's home. So, brain damage. drat it, I’ve been bucked off a horse and landed on my head at least twice! 
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Dec 31, 2022 21:03
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Nigmaetcetera posted:I grew up with my parents referring to religious people as deluded morons. They were pretty overtly anti-theist. They didn’t have any replacement belief system though, like left-wing politics or social justice or whatever, I just grew up with the understanding that there’s no god, no meaning to anything we do, no purpose for existing, you know, utter nihilism. The idea was that people should just go on living, having kids, working at your job, going through the motions, because that’s what people do, and maybe you can get some pleasure out of it while you’re at it. Hell same. If you wanna gently caress up your kids do that lol. You can't have humanity without magical thinking and some irrational beliefs, doesn't have to be an old hairy man in the sky though but anything is better than nothing.
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Dec 31, 2022 21:04
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I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home in Israel, and went to an Orthdox (not haredi/ultra orthodox) school. From around the age of nine or ten I already started rebelling a bit, against the limitations we had moreso than against the faith. I tested the water with various "indiscretions" and found that nothing bad happened. It started with more material stuff - not wearing my kippah or tizizit, sneaking off on Saturday to an irreligious friend's house to play videogames, skipping prayers. This was mostly due to just wanting these material things (not being able to use electricity over the weekend sucked), a healthy disrespect for authority and finding being religious to be a bit uncool (probably due to lack of representation in the media. Take that diversity!) and you were well marked as a religious jew. At 12 I transferred to a regular school, and aside from bar mitzva related affairs my parents were chill about it, not sure why. Probably because they had many other children to worry about, we never really talked about it. After transferring I began to have more irreligious friends, and seeing that they're not the immoral folk I once assumed. I also started taking an interest in science and evolution, and not to go all redditor here but poo poo like The Selfish Gene really helped me out and I ended up being a full atheist at about 15. Kept kosher until 16-17, out of respect to "tradition". At 18 my parents stopped forcing me to go to synagogue on holidays and I haven't been back since. kiminewt fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 21:18
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Nigmaetcetera posted:I don’t get it, I wish they had lied to me and told me there was a god because an impermanent life seems like a worthless one to me. Contextually it makes sense how your upbringing could lead to this conclusion—but, it seems like such a weird take to me. Shouldn’t impermanence make everyone’s lives more valuable? Which isn’t to say that view is necessarily less depressing or anything. It’s real loving bleak to think that people’s lives are that valuable in a world that treats them like they aren’t. Another point that’s interesting here is your parents’ lack of religion leading to the same conclusion that a lot of religious people have even if it’s viewed through a different paradigm. Is this life worthless because because the next life is the one that counts? No! This life is worthless because there’s nothing after it!
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Dec 31, 2022 21:29
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kiminewt posted:I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home in Israel, and went to an Orthdox (not haredi/ultra orthodox) school. Can I ask you something kind of irrelevant? How old were you when you first tried bacon or another pork product? What did you think of it? How would you rate it on a scale from 1 to 10? What meat that you had already eaten did you think it tasted the most like at the time? Did it feel wrong, eating the white meat, as they call pork Israel, I’ve been told? Thrilling? I’m sorry but Ari Shaffir hasn’t discussed this topic enough, I need more data. If any Amish people want to tell me about the first time they used a smartphone or a Jehovah’s Witness wants to talk about their first birthday party or a Shaker wants to tell me about the time they had sex, I am down to read all of that, and I’m pretty sure everybody else is too.
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Dec 31, 2022 21:29
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Nigmaetcetera posted:Can I ask you something kind of irrelevant? How old were you when you first tried bacon or another pork product? What did you think of it? How would you rate it on a scale from 1 to 10? What meat that you had already eaten did you think it tasted the most like at the time? Did it feel wrong, eating the white meat, as they call pork Israel, I’ve been told? Thrilling? I’m sorry but Ari Shaffir hasn’t discussed this topic enough, I need more data. That's totally relevant! Well, pork-wise I'm sorry to say I don't have a great story about it. I'm not sure if it was the first time, but when I went with (non religious) friends in highschool to Greece we got a pizza and I got like pepperoni and ham and everything I could get on it. It felt thrilling and it tasted good. I can't tell you more than that. There were also the first time I ever ate dairy immediately after eating meat - ice cream as dessert in a Catholic household in Ireland. The first time I ever ate on Yom Kippur - in middle school, went to a friend's house and he made me a toast with cheese and some sausage. In both I felt a bit bad, like I was doing something that was immoral but not in a "wrath of god" way. More like.. littering. It also felt freeing cuz afterwards I did it all I wanted. More etched into my memory is the first time I ever went online on a Saturday. It was just so mind blowing, kinda like the feeling you got when you stayed home sick from school and could watch TV.
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Dec 31, 2022 21:38
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My parents sent me to catholic school up until 5th grade. I'm embarrassed to admit that the fear of hell stuck with me well in to my late teens and so I believe in God to avoid that. I would pray at night to forgive me for masturbating or ask that god not let bullies push me around again tomorrow at school. I was never anti-gay, anti-drugs or anti-premarital sex and somehow squared all that with something like " the church says 'no' but I think you just need to be a good person". Eventually I realized religion is all fan fiction and everyone has their own head cannon just like me so it's clearly bulllshit . There's a reason they try to catch them young
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Dec 31, 2022 23:56
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I told my mom I was joining the Sea Org. She cried when I told her so I didn't go.
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Jan 1, 2023 00:17
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kiminewt posted:That's totally relevant! That’s interesting, thanks for sharing. It’s fascinating to learn about orthodox culture like what “Sabbath Mode” is on new refrigerators. Or that recent scandal in NYC that ultra-orthodox schools are getting a lot of government funding and that some graduates don’t learn to read English until their late 20s.
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Jan 1, 2023 00:21
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I was raised in an extremely Lutheran family (they all still are), and I can remember dozens of tiny incidents growing up that made me question it all. The main one that really bothered me was in 6th grade when I had a Jewish friend who liked to have me over to his house to play Mario Kart together. He and his family were really nice and I always enjoyed visiting them. To this day, I still chuckle when I remember he and I losing our poo poo laughing together at the diner scene in Spaceballs. Then one day in the car either on the way to his house or on the way back, my mom felt the need to say to me "Now, you should never forget that he will go to hell." gently caress that poo poo and gently caress her for saying that. Eventually all the little stuff added up and I realized that I both didn't believe any of it and that I actively hated all of it.
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Jan 1, 2023 00:24
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Hollismason posted:When I was ten years old I went to a prayer meeting and the pastor at the time said " If anyone in this room has the faith of a mustard seed then this boy will live" because the prayer meet was for praying for a sick kid at church. The next day that kid died. I figured it was all bullshit right then and there. My stepdad's mom was a devout Lutheran, and at her funeral, the pastor kept coming back to this "faith as small as a mustard seed" verse to highlight how much she loved Jesus, even though she was so short. Like, I get that doing eulogies must be one of the least fun parts of the job, especially in a congregation of a few hundred mostly older people where you're probably doing them pretty often, but the best he could come up with for her was how short she was??? I was never raised with any explicit Christian faith, but my brief brush with it as an adult through my mom's in-laws confirmed that I want nothing to do with it. Even though I guess the Lutheran liturgy is supposed to be closest to the Catholics, since they're the oldest Protestant denomination, it felt totally dead to me. Like a bunch of people just going through the motions, doing what they'd always done their whole lives. And the way stepdad was raised was clearly a reinforcement of abusive patriarchy; you can get away with treating other people like complete poo poo because you can always ask Jesus for forgiveness later. Will be interesting to see if the guy has a deathbed turn back towards religion.
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Jan 1, 2023 00:27
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Raised Methodist. We changed churches when we moved house, and I never meshed with the kids in my Sunday school class in the new church. They had all grown up together and never really accepted/invited me into the group. One Sunday when I was about 13, some of the kids were talking in class about how amazing it was when they accepted Jesus as their lord and savior, and to this day I distinctly remember how emotional one of the older kids got telling his story, saying that it was the greatest day of his life. Then I realized that I hadn't had that epiphany yet, and I wondered if that meant something was wrong with me. Anyway, mom quit making my brother and me to go to Sunday school/church not long after that (not because of that, because I never told them about it, but I guess because she figured that my brother and I were old enough to decide about religion for ourselves by then). She and my dad quit on the church too, but I've never asked them why they did. These days my religious beliefs, such as they are, align more closely with Judaism than Christianity, but at best I consider myself a deist. My brother's an atheist.
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Jan 1, 2023 01:12
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CommieGIR posted:Always made me wonder how the Italian mob guys handled both being proud Catholics and constantly violating the 10 commandments yet still thought they had an in with God. Never been a mob goon myself but as an descendant of Catholic Italians, I'm maybe qualified to answer this.  If we keep to the theory of the Church, I think it has to do with confession absolving you of all your sins, no matter how big or small it is. So you can rough up someone and their livelihood, but if you feel really bad about it, you can confess your sins at church and it goes away. IIRC during mass you have a direct line with God (as it were), so you don't even need a priest to confess then. Plus all the things about how doing it for the family is the bigger good, and so on.
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Jan 1, 2023 01:26
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Zamboni Rodeo posted:She and my dad quit on the church too, but I've never asked them why they did. If they're still alive, you should ask them this. It'd be an interesting thing to hear the reasons.
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Jan 1, 2023 01:46
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I realized church was nonsense when I was challenged to read the entire bible. A few of the church elders learned I was doing this and tried to slip me annotated bibles or reading guides or the like. I didn't take any of their advice and read the whole thing cover to cover. I came away from that with knowledge that led me to challenge some of the things we teens were being taught and why we call ourselves christians while denying a lot of christs very specific teachings. I still liked going to summer camp and such though, but I was usually bad at keeping my mouth shut when any church authority would tell us stuff that wasn't in the Bible or ran contrary to what I learned in my studies. When you are sheltered and have made most of your friends through church or church related activities it can be a difficult thing to part with. Especially since not going to church due to ideological differences was a fight that I didn't have the energy to keep up. I smiled and payed lip service til I figured out a plan. I used my dad's protestant work ethic against him: I got a job and requested to work Sundays and Wednesdays specifically. Always citing that those were the busy days and they really needed me there. That worked, but it turns out there's a lot of drugs and other bad decisions easily available in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant. Hedonism and temptation are a big threat to sheltered teens who have parted ways with the only community they have ever known. Consequently my 20s were full of struggles and, frankly, I'm lucky to not have been a casualty of the opioid epidemic. I came close a couple times. The arrival of my son and my desire to be a good dad helped me to shed a lot of my bad habits and for that I will be always grateful to him. Part of that gratefulness manifests as never filling his head with feel good lies, or using anything but his own understanding and love to navigate through life.
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Jan 1, 2023 02:39
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It was just so loving stuffy and boring and Republican and white. The music was terrible. I can't remember a single sermon I ever heard. The girls had been successfully brainwashed into saving it for marriage. Ugh. Despite my father being deeply religious, he introduced me to a lot of science fiction and standup comedy that just bluntly said, "You know religion is all bullshit to make money, right?" I think that was the major thing, the money. If they've got assistance from God, why do they need money like every other rear end in a top hat?
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Jan 1, 2023 02:59
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Space Kablooey posted:If we keep to the theory of the Church, I think it has to do with confession absolving you of all your sins, no matter how big or small it is. Except divorce!
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Jan 1, 2023 03:42
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my religion is pussy and i would never stray from it's light
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Jan 1, 2023 04:33
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I gave up my edgy atheism when I learned how bleak and lonely the world was.
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Jan 1, 2023 04:39
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Everyone hide
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Jan 1, 2023 04:41
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Hell Yeah posted:my religion is pussy and i would never stray from it's light preach
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Jan 1, 2023 05:11
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LuckyCat posted:Except divorce! Except divorce! I had completely forgotten about that.
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Jan 1, 2023 21:37
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Space Kablooey posted:im getting into it now The bible also says “just saying the words isn’t enough” It’s almost like it’s a book written by medieval peasants.
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Jan 2, 2023 08:08
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Hell Yeah posted:my religion is pussy and i would never stray from it's light How does it feel to be excommunicated?
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Jan 5, 2023 10:41
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I was 'raised' for three years with the 'fundamentalist' church of Christ... After much heartache and worrying about 'Hell', I escaped (even though I was never baptized; regarded as very essential for SALVAYSHIN, I gave it a good chance; so I spose one could say I was a coC 'Xshin'!  I then discovered mystical Christianity, and was baptized via 'psychic means' (the story isn't for this here)...into the Eastern Orthodox church! I knew one convert to Orthodoxy, whom I shan't name, who then left the faith because it seemed too foreign, and, I guess 'mystically dark 'eastern'... How is Orthodoxy in your view?
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Jan 5, 2023 11:03
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When I was 7 or 8 I was forced to go with my cousins and thought it was the dumbest most made up poo poo imaginable.
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Jan 5, 2023 11:19
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Hell Yeah posted:my religion is pussy and i would never stray from it's light Sorry friend but tread lightly because it contains naught but darkness.
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Jan 5, 2023 11:36
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ncumbered_by_idgits posted:Sorry friend but tread lightly because it contains naught but darkness. It also contains a rare Cherry...loamy Soil is especially good for sowing the poontang plant!
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Jan 5, 2023 12:56
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