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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.
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Dec 31, 2022 02:04
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i didnt but lots of my friends did. i guess when you drop it you have a choice of what do with that whatever spiritualism is left over. i just got drunk a bunch and that cured it but my friends all picked up bits and pieces of witch stuff
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Dec 31, 2022 02:06
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I grew up gay, praying I wasn't for ten years in a church that said this made me some variety of evil. gently caress that. What's frustrating is that I do think the church *could* do a lot of good, but the last 2000 years suggests that they uh... Don't
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Dec 31, 2022 02:07
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I used to be an atheist when I was a teenager but then I learned that the fabric of reality is absolutely terrifyingly strange and incomprehensible and now I'm just a regular agnostic
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Dec 31, 2022 02:09
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my parents bootstrapped themselves out of catholocism in their 20s, so by the time I came around they were like hey you can do a religion if you want but none of them make sense if you think about it for 5 seconds, so, yknow. My grandmother (moms side) tried to lure me back to the church every time I saw her. didn’t work out.
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Dec 31, 2022 02:13
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Just didn’t make sense to my 14 yo self that god would make people be born in Islam or Hinduism or Wicca just to send them to hell. Who does that? Even catholic babies go straight to hell if not baptized, drat Then my church had a guest pastor who had a specifically anti gay message. My fairly religious uncle died from aids in the mid 80s. Seeing my grandma agree with the homophobic message put the nail in that coffin. My dad grew up catholic and hated religion as far as I knew. Never went to lutheran church with us. When he was dying this summer he suddenly did the “I was always a Catholic” thing, confessed to a priest, got last rights, all of it. At the funeral (at my aunt’s church she has been going to every Sunday for 40 years) the priest said dad believing at the end wasn’t enough and it was a mistake he didn’t go to church so we all needed to pray real hard for him to get into heaven. No poo poo. I’d be mad if it wasn’t so ridiculous.
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Dec 31, 2022 02:26
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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. My wife grew up in a large catholic family, clergy grandfather and uncles, and went to catholic school her whole life. Now she is gettin kinda witchy and I’m like hell yeah girl cast a spell. Get it.
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Dec 31, 2022 02:31
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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 getting into it now HungryMedusa posted:At the funeral (at my aunt’s church she has been going to every Sunday for 40 years) the priest said dad believing at the end wasn’t enough holy poo poo what lol. thats literally the opposite of what in the bible
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Dec 31, 2022 02:57
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GABA ghoul posted:I used to be an atheist when I was a teenager but then I learned that the fabric of reality is absolutely terrifyingly strange and incomprehensible and now I'm just a regular agnostic I turn into a real bitch when people don’t declare a specific religion so I can tell them how they are not in the path of a god they chose, and then indoctrinate them with TechnoDicklickkk.
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Dec 31, 2022 03:07
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I think a lot of people’s main strategy for combatting the language of religion is just to make themselves too stupid to understand language and just interrupt people with gutteral grunts while they’re speaking. Words can’t hurt you if you’re too stupid to hear them, and then you permanently wear the face of the child you’re using.
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Dec 31, 2022 03:16
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Space Kablooey posted:im getting into it now Yeah my very catholic mother in law who taught in catholic school for 40 years said it was the second worst funeral she has ever been to. This is a ultra conservative church apparently. Like I said, I would be mad but my dad signed up for it as he became increasingly right wing and tried to slide into heaven at the last second. MILs worst funeral was a nun who no one liked. I guess the speech at that one was even more mean. About a person who gave their whole life to the church. Way to prove your religion is the one. lol
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Dec 31, 2022 03:17
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Never was really religious, seemed like a cult even if it was part of the more or less normal aspects of culture. When my older siblings challenged religious authoritarianism I thought about it and had to agree. Still, inner spiritualism is good for tough times, not that I know anything about difficulties, it's an easy life.
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Dec 31, 2022 03:20
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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. The temptation to go full satanic is still kinda there ngl. I did some witchy stuff but never fully went with anything because I learned I just like the ritualism of it more than any sort of serious consideration. -- My story is that my dad (the one that raised me, anyway) abused me and was a pastor for most of his life. Teacher before that.  Not hard to just go "gently caress that" at the whole idea, though I still do consider myself agnostic vs atheist.
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Dec 31, 2022 03:23
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Anyways op Judaism is a race AND a religion you anti-Semitic piece of poo poo.
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Dec 31, 2022 03:38
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HungryMedusa posted:Just didn’t make sense to my 14 yo self that god would make people be born in Islam or Hinduism or Wicca just to send them to hell. Who does that? Even catholic babies go straight to hell if not baptized, drat You're thinking of limbo, which while lovely wasn't hell, it's just not heaven. Incidentally the church pivoted on this teaching about a decade ago. Now if your baby dies before baptism you're free to assume it's in heaven.
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Dec 31, 2022 03:55
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Rockman Reserve posted:it's weird that as I get older and have been an atheist, or at least irreligious for longer, I actually like and appreciate Jesus a hell of a lot more This works but only if you ignore the parts where he says "I bring you not peace, but a sword" and promises to "turn sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers", give no thought for the morrow (because he claimed the ends times were basically about to happen in the lifetime of the apostles) and then also claims that the only way to be saved is to basically kneel down before him and the imaginary space grandpa
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Dec 31, 2022 04:00
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Toxic Mental posted:This works but only if you ignore the parts where he says "I bring you not peace, but a sword" and promises to "turn sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers", give no thought for the morrow (because he claimed the ends times were basically about to happen in the lifetime of the apostles) and then also claims that the only way to be saved is to basically kneel down before him and the imaginary space grandpa Star Trek has better quotes than some of the contributors to the New Testament. 
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Dec 31, 2022 04:12
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When I was like 10, our Catechism class put up a big display of the descendents of Adam and Eve that included notes about how all of them lived to like 800 years old. This was kind of a liberal Catholic church, so instead of the teacher telling us to believe blindly or burn in hell, he gave us some bullshit about how the Earth revolved around the earth super fast after it formed and I was insulted that anybody would try to sell us on that. I'm really glad I came up in that church and not a more conservative one because when I was a young kid I was pretty neurotic and angry in a way that would have clicked very strongly with fundamentalism.
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Dec 31, 2022 04:46
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Catholic here. Did catechism in 3rd-4th grade, confirmation in 10th. Parents were heavy into it when I was younger, but then by the time highschool ended they became submarine Catholics that only surfaced into church for holidays. I’d say I was pretty bought into it for my early-mid teenage years because I got diagnosed with depression at that time and it was the only thing giving me the will to live. My fall from grace with the church probably began much earlier before I even realized it. Nuns in catechism told us that going to hell was this ever-present danger and just one moral sin could send you there. Mortal sins went from jerking off to murder and for a teenager like myself who was realizing he might not be into girls exclusively, it became this very stressful environment. Lot of guilt, fear, obsession about trying not to end up in an eternity of torture. It’s a lot to put on a child, especially when that child has poorly managed anxiety and OCD tendencies. You can make a pretty convincing argument that this planted the seeds of my appallingly poor mental health in highschool like I mentioned above. Eventually part of me became burned out from the constant threat of hell. And then when I’d go to funerals for people, it was assumed they’d be in heaven, when they for sure committed some mortal sins like lying or something else regular humans do. Then by end of highschool, Obama had been elected and my political awareness was starting to grow and I had began noticing that traditional churches were for the welfare of specific people and not exactly this separate entity from politics. In college I studied human evolution and anthropology because the topics fascinated me. The cultural anthropology courses I took resulted in a sort of personal reconciliation between me and organized religion because I saw that religion had a lot of value for cultures worldwide and not all of them were as cutthroat as my experience. This has left me feeling two separate ways. On one hand, I don’t blame my parents for doing what they thought was best. I don’t regret how I was raised and still have good memories of being at the church and the events during catechism and confirmation. And the church did good for my family when my grandma had her funeral there last year. The ceremony gave my mom a lot of closure that none of us could provide as powerfully, which makes me glad they were there. On the other hand, the relationship between me and the Catholic Church as a child and teenager felt downright abusive. Tell some anxious impressionable child that they must do XYZ or spend eternity in hell from your position of authority and see how a therapist would react. I still get some less than great feelings seeing kids going to/coming from church because I’m hoping they’re not experiencing the same thing I did. I’ve never been the militant fedora wearing type, but this whole experience makes me wish for a world where kids could opt into religion/belief system that represents them best, instead of being born into one that may label them as second class members. In conclusion, the Eucharist is a land of weird tasting contrasts. I can still remember the taste. buglord fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 05:01
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Also lol at all the other Catholics here. We survived, everyone.
buglord fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 05:04
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I was born into a far right evangelical household. When I was about 13 and realized that I was attracted to other boys and I started having panic attacks every night fearing that I was going to hell. After realizing the incompatibility, I deconverted.
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Dec 31, 2022 05:13
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In the Presbyterian church I grew up in the pastor was dull but competent, and during a teen class I remember asking how other denominations & religions worked and was surprised when brightened up and gave informative answers, as it hinted he was capable of smart engaging sermons but preferred to phone it in. We had a super nice Filipino youth pastor who was beloved and fun to be around and always doing tons of volunteer work in and out of the church, kind of guy you want around to show how positive parts of Christianity are supposed to work. Then he went on a mission trip and his replacement preferred to lean back in a chair and make kids feel stupid for asking basic questions, it’s like dude c’mon at least pretend you want to be here.
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Dec 31, 2022 05:14
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buglord posted:Also lol at all the other Catholics here. We survived, everyone. The way christianity interacts with OCD sounds like a special kind of torture from what I've heard from like half a dozen accounts by now.
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Dec 31, 2022 05:17
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PiratePrentice posted:The way christianity interacts with OCD sounds like a special kind of torture from what I've heard from like half a dozen accounts by now. lol yep. It’s always cathartic talking to someone else who has an anxiety order and is raised catholic.
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Dec 31, 2022 05:32
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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.
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Dec 31, 2022 05:38
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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. It’s easy when the church officials and the mafia are very interconnected and just looking for ways to make money.
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Dec 31, 2022 05:38
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Look if mega church cash vacuums can do it the mob should have found it to be a piece of cake.
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Dec 31, 2022 06:12
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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. Church goes broke if people don’t sin. Self-defeating business model. 
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Dec 31, 2022 06:46
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My mother converted to Mormonism in the late 70's after having an encounter with a demon that sat on her chest and paralyzed her until she prayed that Jesus would take it away. (i.e. an episode of sleep paralysis with the notorious "night hag"). After that she popped out me and three more siblings as some form of "covenant" with god, naming us all after old testament characters. After my youngest sister was born, she packed us and moved us from Upstate New York to Utah County, Utah. Utah county is the real heart of the Mormon Church. It's not just Mormon religiously, it is Mormon culturally. Everything revolved around the church. Your neighbors aren't Mr. and Mrs. Smith, they're "Brother and Sister" Smith. Your friends are the people in your "Ward" (essentially like a parish). Youth activities are entirely subsumed within the church, cub scouts, boy scouts, it all took place at the church, it was only people in your ward, and your leader was probably your Sunday school teacher. Girls had a "young women's" group, but nothing anywhere close to girl scouts. Everything was insular layer upon insular layer. If you weren't Mormon, or the right mindset of Mormon, other kids parents might prohibit you from playing or even socializing. Obviously, this was a huge change from moving from a more diverse "1/4 right of center" east coast community to a lily white "Reagan was a hippy" sort of community. The first year of school we got a fall break that coincided with the start of deer hint, leading me to think that deer were some kind of local deity.... But I was a kid, and church is fine as a kid. It's happy stories where good is good and bad is bad. The songs are about popcorn popping on the apricot tree and Jesus wanting me to be a sunbeam. It's fine, people are nice and you're learning to be nice. But as I got to get older and really started to see things, I just got more and more confused and irked. One thing that Mormons have is "fast and testimony" meetings every first Sunday of the month. You're suposed to fast for one or two meals and pay what you might have spent to the church. Then you're supposed to bear your testimony. It always goes the same way, "I want to bear my testimony, I know this church is true. I know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet of god." And then you give your little speech about how you know. It becomes meaningless after a while as half the meetings are taken up by "arent they just so precious" three year olds repeating what their mothers or older siblings are whispering for them to say. I never had a testimony to share because all the platitudes were meaningless and hollow. My family was poor and dysfunctional, but I still came to church, so what did it really offer me? But then I hit adolescence and things, just got weird. First it was the sexual aspects creeping in. I was a late bloomer, but you're supposed to have annual meetings with your bishop (the lay leader of a ward). But these could get creepy fast as they ask very personal questions like "do you have impure thoughts? Do you touch yourself? Have you ever seen pornography?" (this was early 90's so internet porn wasn't a thing). Then we started getting into the issue of dating. I remember during one "youth conference" the Stake President (a stake is essentially like a diocese) was discussing the troubles of dating across race lines and that we shouldn't do it so as to not "confuse" the children. The racism was rife throughout the structure as well. I remember one time an elderly neighbor returned from a trip to China and stood up at one of the fast and testimony meetings to simply spout about how dirty China was and how proud and blessed she was to be American. I was maybe 9 and was disgusted because I had seen Big Bird in China and it looked fine, just different. In Utah we have a type of flower that is reminiscent of a black eyed susan with a center that looks like a black strawberry. These were introduced to me as "n*****r toes" without irony or shame. As I was entering adulthood, I really started to notice the sheer hypocrisy of so many involved. I started to see these elders as not just fallible, but wholly corrupt. The next door neighbor, who had been a scout leader, was revealed to be a pedophile who was abusing a disadvantaged boy his family had taken in. His wife knew, but didn't leave divorce him until she "prayed" about it so the holy spirit could tell her what to do. The guy behind us, who also was a scout master, and was known for stupid displays of his distaste for "devil music" (like taking a bat to a record player), surprise surprise liked to beat his wife. But then there's the whole expectation that being good in church washes away your sins. It's an expectation for all good Mormon men to serve a mission for two years at age 19. This usually requires some sort of spiritual cleansing, like asking for forgiveness from those you've wronged. Being a somewhat liberal weirdo who didn't associate much with peers, I was tormented relentlessly by idiots, including the bishops son. So as soon as they started nearing 19 they started showing up at my door to apologize.... But that's a lovely age to be a Mormon in Utah County. A common anecdote is that one of the church founders said "If you're not married by 25 you're a burden on society." As such, courtships are fast and poorly thought out. Once high school graduation hit, half of my female classmates and friends were suddenly attending a "singles" ward (essentially a ward made up entirely of single people) and getting engaged to a 25 year old guy they had known for literally two weeks. It was particularly troublesome when a close friend of mine decided to do so afrter dating a guy for two months and wasn't sure if she loved him, but knew it was the right thing to do. So, I had never really felt a strong connection to the church or its teachings. It was just something I was raised in. I tried to pay respects, I tried to join in while I was in the military, but it was all window dressing and meaningless. What really forced me to look at it all and reject it happened years later after my mom died. My mom was fairly devout. She was generally the primary earner, so didn't always attend services, but was very fervent that I did. She listened to Christian radio etc., even though I pointed out that they tended to condemn Mormons. There was one bishop that she really liked, who helped to counsel her through a divorce and remarriage to my father and helped our family through some tough times in our lives. After she passed suddenly, we asked if he would come to the memorial and maybe say a few words. While he and his family stopped by at my parents' house to offer condolences, it was only to say they couldn't come due to a family engagement. After that, I realized that it was all empty. There was no "love one another", there was no duty to a neighbor, it was just "keep your own". Up until that point, there were people I might have respected for their flaws, but ultimately they would never have any loyalty or sense of duty to others outside of their immediate care. So yeah, rejecting the faith of my birth was a complicated thing. During my youth there was a desire to belong, but in adulthood learning I never could.
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Dec 31, 2022 06:55
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The body of christ is the worst potato chip i've ever eaten. I don't go anymore
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Dec 31, 2022 07:40
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buglord posted:someone else who has an anxiety order that’s putting a positive spin on it!
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Dec 31, 2022 07:45
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I never really believed but I always had a little tickle in the back of my brain that maybe religion was legit. Then I watched my mother in law, who was the most devout, pure of heart, kind, generous and wonderful person die a horrible and painful slow death and that put a stake in that poo poo forever for me. Meanwhile, her daughter, my wife’s sister, continues to be a zealot, talking about how everything is god’s way and poo poo. Ok fine, but don’t you realize that means he straight up murdered your mom?
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Dec 31, 2022 08:45
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As kids who were about to be voting age we got told who to vote for and also to join the military. Didn't question it until my friends died for no good reason and it was celebrated by the church but it was like a switch got flipped
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Dec 31, 2022 09:51
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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. Virtually every religious person is ignoring some parts of the dogma they supposedly believe because it's annoying or inconvenient or they just don't like it. Props to the mafia guys for really going for it, I guess.
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Dec 31, 2022 16:50
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The Moon Monster posted:Virtually every religious person is ignoring some parts of the dogma they supposedly believe because it's annoying or inconvenient or they just don't like it. Props to the mafia guys for really going for it, I guess. Yeah a big one in mega churches is Jesus was direct about how rich people don’t go to heaven, and that the rich man who asked what he needed to do to become a follower was told to give away all his money to the poor. Very clear, hard to misinterpret. But of course big churches need wealthy donors and their pastors are likely trying to become rich themselves, so on the infrequent occasions they mention what Jesus said, it turns out he was making a joke about camels! It’s silly a camel would be able to pass through the eye of a needle, or maybe this references a part of Jerusalem known as the eye of a needle, anyway we of course aren’t going to kick out rich members during this expansion campaign.
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Dec 31, 2022 17:10
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It's harder for me to identify a time where I believed. I went to mass every Sunday, but I definitely remember getting in trouble for, prior to my first confession, asking whether it was a confessible sin to not believe in God. I saw on this paper that they gave is us that doubting God was a major sin, and that wasn't what I thought at the time. I wish I could reconstruct how I got to the point, where I cared what was considered a sin, but didn't think God was real.
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Dec 31, 2022 17:31
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Yeah a big one in mega churches is Jesus was direct about how rich people don’t go to heaven, and that the rich man who asked what he needed to do to become a follower was told to give away all his money to the poor. Very clear, hard to misinterpret. Jesus could have somehow said in a third book of the Bible, in perfectly clear modern English, that “you’re going to hell if you’re rich when you die lol”, and they’d still use mental gymnastics to explain how that’s not what he really meant
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Dec 31, 2022 18:03
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I was out the moment I realized they were never going to switch out those bland-rear end wafer coins for Ferrero Rochers or pistachio macarons.
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Dec 31, 2022 18:29
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Yeah a big one in mega churches is Jesus was direct about how rich people don’t go to heaven, and that the rich man who asked what he needed to do to become a follower was told to give away all his money to the poor. Very clear, hard to misinterpret. 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.
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Dec 31, 2022 19:03
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Regalingualius posted:Jesus could have somehow said in a third book of the Bible, in perfectly clear modern English, that “you’re going to hell if you’re rich when you die lol”, and they’d still use mental gymnastics to explain how that’s not what he really meant He just really hated all Richards, don't be caught dead when Rich
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Dec 31, 2022 19:18
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