It's worth remembering that Christians, the most GOP-leaning religion, are split almost exactly evenly down the middle between Democrats and Republicans. Every other religious group votes overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Democrats are the party of religious freedom and expression. Republicans are the party of lonely single men and abusive men who are on their 3rd or 4th wife and don't pay child support.
Legislating women's rights is an expression of GOP authoritarianism and misogyny.
Young people generally do believe in a higher power. To their credit, they do not believe in hatred, greed, or hypocrisy. Those raised in hateful churches are looking for another way to connect with the divine.
Good for them for grasping what is most important for that journey: love for others. They may feel lost, but they are going in the right direction by leaving places that basically worship white cis het identity.
Pope Francis: World Nearing ‘Breaking Point’ from Climate Change
ROME, Italy — Climate change has brought the world to the “breaking point,” Pope Francis asserted in his introduction to a 3-day climate summit to be held in the Vatican in May
Nice chat with an older Jehovah's Witness couple at my door yesterday. Tried their hardest, even though I told them my history with religion and my current viewpoints. One thing they tried to convince me WITH: "interpretation of the scriptures isn't necessary, they interpret themselves". They left when my reaction to "his scripture gives us comfort" was that scriptures commanding genocide and forced circumcision of god's enemies made me discomforted.
@kevin 😂 that always helps, yeah. Come to think of it, I did frankly talk to these two women that walked up to my wife and I as I was parking in my driveway. They were like, do you believe in God, I'm like nah. Not really. And they go, WHY. And I'm like, why waste my time on that, or something. Or like, ask them why they DID believe in it. Or try to explain my agnosticism. None of which generally is a great use of my scant time here on Earth, yknow? But it's wild that people do that stuff. 😂😂
@kevin religion and sports are things I choose not to deal with, but then like, they come up in everyday life, and I'm like oh SHIT right, a lot of people are into in that shit! Luckily it's rarely in my circles 😂
I see. There's a good deal more going on here (& w/ religion in general). A key insight from RS is that “religion” has no singular non-reductive definition, only a family resemblance of features. So can only define religion for the purposes of a given discussion. You take value derived from myth as religion's core here.
What's the most helpful way to think about myths and values?
Myths are stories that fill the world with meaning and value. Humanism has its myths (answers to questions of meaning) too---and some are quite cosmological in scope.
“Values are ideas about what people ought to want.”
"While it may come as a surprise to many, most religious groups today favor the legality of abortion. In fact, there are only four (out of 16) religious groups in which a majority say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases: white evangelical Protestants, Hispanic Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Latter-Day Saints. Even combined, these four outlier groups only constitute one in five Americans."
"The truth is that we are not polarized on this issue of abortion—at least not if polarization is construed to mean an evenly divided country. Rather, what we have is a vocal and powerful minority attempting to enshrine their beliefs into law, over the objections of nearly twice as many Americans who disagree with them."
If I have to live without you
I don’t wanna live forever
In someone else's heaven
So let ’em close the gates
Oh, if they don’t like the way you’re made
Then they’re not any better
If paradise is pressure
Oh, we’ll go to hell together
@paninid Almost all religion is like that, innit? Someone will use it as a weapon eventually. I used to think “at least Buddhism has it right”. Then Rohingya genocide happened.
I don’t think I know anything about any religion anymore
I don't specifically care about the future or the well-being of the Methodist church, but I recognize that this is an important statement of a significant sector of Americans who are religious and who are interested in the way the church impacts culture in positive ways. #religion#USPolitics
After almost seven decades of living, all of them in the church and almost half of them as a minister, I have come to the conclusion that most religion is evil. Wars, pogroms against the "evils of society," and the proliferation of ignorance and abuse in the "name of some deity" are destroying our world. I will have none of it anymore. #religion#abuse#war#evil#sin
Some form of #religion could exist within a #communist society, but I would much rather religion have little to, preferably, no part of such a society simply due to the damage that any kind of faith-based beliefs or religious authority of any kind could bring.
“We are an immodest and excessively indulged people. We have grown so accustomed to our advantages—to our prosperity and our worldly position—that we feel entitled to them.”
If Wilson wants to live by his interpretation of some religious dogma, he's free to do that. What he not allowed to do is force his cruelty dressed up as 'morality' on others. His hateful agenda includes a ban on abortion care from the moment of conception & without exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. #culture#religion#freedom#democracy#fascism#politics#constitution
My daughter, T, rang to vent the other day. Her 5-year-old, C, had come home from public school pre-Easter and proceeded to tell T all about Jesus being persecuted and crucified, dying, and then being alive again.
Now, T takes after us; thoroughly atheist; to say that she was taken aback would be an understatement. In essence, C now believed in the resurrection and thought that anybody who died could come back to life. It took a weekq to convince her of the truth (dead is dead and the bible is a storybook), but as we know, that shit sticks.
The same afternoon as the revelation, before the steam had dissipated, T rang the school to enquire, mostly politely, 𝙒𝙏𝘼𝙁?? C had not been to any religion-based classes and should not have been exposed to this rubbish/nonsense/garbage. The school apologised and said they would look into it. Apparently, other parents had complained, too...
The teacher, in all innocence (apparently) had been telling the story of Easter from the Christian point of view without realising (apparently) that children are sponges, especially at that age and in a situation where they have been told repeatedly that 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩.
Now, to my mind, any teacher who doesn't understand that shouldn't be a teacher. Or it was quite deliberate, in which case they shouldn't be a teacher in a government school.
The teacher apologised and the school closed the case but T is still dealing with the fallout, with C occasionally coming out with comments about people dying and coming back to life. Like I said, this shit sticks, often for life.
We're all born atheist; the real indoctrination is religion.
This is a wonderful passage in Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD
An official of the Ming empire reported that the Buddhists in his province had shown great zeal for building bridges. This was a public venture of which any traditional Chinese gentleman was bound to approve.
The mandarin was shocked: “Mixing this up perversely, they care only for karmic reward and do good [public] works only for this…. This is all contrary to the spirit of good works!”
But the official learned that the Buddhists were building bridges for entirely the wrong reasons. They were acting on the belief that they would gain personal karmic merit in another existence by contributing to the building of such a bridge. A seemingly public-spirited action that was totally intelligible in terms of a long-established Chinese tradition of public benefaction was being driven by a private need for salvation.
What's an example of a work of art (literature, music, poetry, theater, painting, whatever) that you've had a spiritual experience with? (Take this how you'd like...at one with the universe, in touch with God, deeply aware of something larger than yourself; however you think of it is fine.)
Boosts appreciated, commentary appreciated but not necessary. :)
Heute startet das neue Semester in Bochum und damit auch wieder die regelmäßigen Treffen des @sfb1475. Wer mehr darüber erfahren will, warum wir „#Metaphern der #Religion“ erforschen und welche Rolle u.a. #DigitalHumanities und #Computerlinguistik dabei spielen, kann sich unseren Interview-Podcast „Die Übertragung“ anhören. Und jüngst habe ich erfahren, dass man dem Podcast sogar direkt hier im Fediverse folgen kann: @5893302
