America's nonreligious are a growing, diverse phenomenon. They really don't like organized religion

Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.

Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.

“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.

abort_christian_babies,

Religion is a mass delusion.

Not a fan.

Mirror_I_rorrIMG,

Name checks out.

z500,
@z500@startrek.website avatar

Luckily there are no Christian babies to abort

snooggums,
snooggums avatar

Technically correct is the best kind of correct!

abort_christian_babies,

You are the only person (so far) that’s understood this distinction in my name.

It’s intended to be inflammatory but also to make the point you did.

tigeruppercut,

Isn’t there at least one sect out there that believes in “Christian while a fetus”? There are so many denominations it’s hard to tell. I just had a quick look at the wiki page on original sin and at least the LDS people believe there’s no need for children under 8 to be baptized, though I’m not sure if that means the kids are LDS while younger than that (or fetal). There was a bit about some Quakers rejecting original sin as well, but again I’m not too sure of the implications.

HuddaBudda,
HuddaBudda avatar

I am a Christian and am willing to throw myself into the ring.

I think we deserve all the hate we are receiving and more. I am a firm believer of the separation of church and state, because I actually have studied the history of that phrase, and I know Christians wrote it in blood.

Very little of that matters though, because the balance of power has been shifted too much into our area.

We were supposed to minister to people, wash people's feet, love their neighbor.

Christian's were supposed to be servants of our communities, and instead we became the rulers. Instead of showing compassion and understanding, we are tyrants with no passion, logic, or understanding for our fellow people.

Just the love of Money. "In God we Trust"

There will be a power shift back, and I don't think Christian's are ready for the blow-back. But I will say, we will deserve it, for we have become vile tyrants.

calypsopub,

Fellow Christian here, well said! I am so sickened by Christmas who want to use the government to force their beliefs on everyone else.

kromem, (edited )

I mean, you threw yourself in here, so I feel this is fair game…

Listen, while I certainly respect some of the concessions you are making here in acknowledging the issues with the broader issues of modern Christianity, at a very fundamental level the core beliefs are problematic for a modern society.

My guess is that you believe a dead body came back to life and floated up into the sky.

In part, I make this assumption because Paul effectively mandated this as a litmus test in 1 Cor 15 in response to Christians at the time who rejected that belief.

So you believe that things outside the scope of what is naturally possible has occurred.

This is then tied to a belief of inherent unworthiness such that without this event having occurred, you are somehow deserving of suffering and it is only through this event that you could have avoided such a fate.

You were most likely fed these beliefs as a child - beliefs people in the first generation after Jesus weren’t even all that keen on - and you will likely continue to pass them along generationally.

The entire time effectively ignoring that the version of Christianity which survived was simply the one that had successfully adapted beliefs in line with supporting authoritarianism of the Roman monarchy, of slavery, and of financing the organization out of the pockets of its members, etc - ideas that I’m skeptical you’d end up endorsing if they were positioned to you on their own, and are each beliefs that can be individually challenged on their connection to a historical Jesus in the first place.

So the social exchange of even a “good Christianity” minus the worst parts of today’s oversteps is still one in which children are raised to believe in magic, in their inherent unworthiness without the religion, of continuing on outdated and obsolete social norms and practices, and on preserving ideas that benefit authoritarianism.

Much as I think you’d probably agree it wouldn’t be good for people growing up in a world of science and technology to be indoctrinated with beliefs about Muhammad having been able to split the moon in half or a belief that the universe is in fact the dream of a giant turtle, beliefs that you yourself subscribe to happen to run counter to everything from an evidenced based approach to understanding the world and our place in it.

Christian certainty in their beliefs led to suppression of ideas ranging from the notion matter was made up of indivisible parts (atomism) to the idea life that existed around us was not from intelligent design but simply based on what survived to reproduce and what did not - both ideas present and broadly discussed in Jesus’s day.

With all due respect for the freedom to have faith in something, at a certain point faith should not be put on a pedestal over evidence backed evaluations and it is necessary to let go of the past in order to embrace the future.

Drivebyhaiku,

I personally hope Christians use the blowback as a way to reconnect to the core principles of their faith and reflect on the precepts of radical kindness at the core of Jesus’s teachings. I feel very fortunate that my family drifted wide from religion back in my Grandparents day. I grew up an outcast in my wider community but there was never any question we were loved.

A lot of people who joined our open family did so with a lot of baggage. Families that figured them as failures for not living up to expectations or who had some kind of isolating pain their religion told them they basically deserved. It made me feel rich in a way so many were poor just being cherished by my family for being unreservedly me. It becomes an armour that makes me very resilient.

Being queer I see a lot of the people I know deal with this broken part of them, this rejection that who they are is not loved by the people for whom our society posits their natural attachments should entitle them love… and am able to be there for them. A lot of those who flee from religion do so as true refugees. They have to build from nothing. The reason queer communities are tight knit is because they realize that people can’t exist without some kind of family and if you don’t have one you make one from scratch.

A lot of the people in this position don’t nessisarily hate the religion but they intimately know what it has taken from them. When your neighbours love you more than your family your neighbours become your family.

HuddaBudda,
HuddaBudda avatar

Being queer I see a lot of the people I know deal with this broken part of them

A lot of those who flee from religion do so as true refugees

This is what I fear most. But it happens every day. Most Christian's paths don't start until they leave the church and most never do.

The reason queer communities are tight knit is because they realize that people can’t exist without some kind of family and if you don’t have one you make one from scratch.

I am glad to read this. Communities are a big part of growth. I think the modern Christianity lost that bit somewhere along the way.

I personally hope Christians use the blowback as a way to reconnect to the core principles of their faith and reflect on the precepts of radical kindness at the core of Jesus’s teachings.

They will, the problem is it will take time. I just wish we didn't have to hurt everyone seeking that growth.

Drivebyhaiku,

In many ways queer culture is sort of a radically inclusive space informed by decades of response and radical fighting against the forces of trauma. Drag Queen’s have lineages of Mothers and Daughters, Drag Kings tend to form packs to perform. Queer events hold barbeques and brunches, create taverns and diners where queer culture is passed between generations as a way to keep old lessons alive and give people safe places to go to ask whatever they need. It is a community of outcasts who decided that the world needed less outcasts.

Here in Vancouver the last time I went to a drag event the Queens were advising everyone to keep more cash on them because homeless people often could not access free places to cool down to keep them safe in extreme heat events. Radical inclusion and the willingness to see flawed people as humans is one of the queer community’s strengths. It’s often paired with a lot of black humour and silliness but the core of the thing sometimes make me think that but for the lack of emphasis on spiritual belief there’s a lot of underlying philosophy that Jesus probably wouldn’t be too upset about.

DarkGamer,
DarkGamer avatar

Moore [a former Evangelical leader] told NPR in an interview released Tuesday that multiple pastors had told him they would quote the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the part that says to “turn the other cheek,” when preaching. Someone would come up after the service and ask, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”
“What was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak,’” Moore said. “When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”
Moore said he thinks a large part of the issue is how divisive U.S. politics are, which is now spilling over into the church. He pointed to how a lot of issues are “packaged in terms of existential threat,” leading to the belief among everyone, not just evangelical Christians, that “desperate times call for desperate measures.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/174950/christianity-today-editor-evangelicals-call-jesus-liberal-weak

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

saturnonice,

this is insane

Honytawk,

Best response would be to say they might just not be Christian enough

drolex,

Reject nonreligious communities, join the religious non-communities. Choose your flavour between anarcho-catholics, Sikhs of the woods, or feral Zoroastrians

Unaware7013,

I probably wouldn't have lost my faith if I was t constantly called a commie socialist for espousing 'christian' values and wanting to help the less fortunate by the very people who instilled those very values into my moral code.

Anymore I'm just a non-denominational pagan because at least pagans aren't such raging goddamned hypocrites.

dudewitbow,

Supply side jesus is always one of the funniest figures to exist.

PhlubbaDubba,

Check some social gospel, those folks are basically what happened when the socialists in America decided to start their own church with blackjack and hookers

neshura,

I prefer to call myself a heretic whenever in the presence of someone who really cares, it’s fun seeing the reactions.

Fisk400,

Even religious groups hate organized religion. They just make an exception for the one they happen to be part of.

negativenull,

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one

  • Richard Dawkins
givesomefucks,

Sometimes I wonder what Abraham would think knowing literal billions of people worldwide worship the god he made up.

And what he thinks about how all the different sects all hate each other so much.

Daft_ish,

I know what he would think. “What the fuck??”

Honytawk,

Nah, probably not something in Enlgish

jballs,
@jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

Ricky Gervais said something super interesting to Stephen Colbert, who is a Catholic. It was something like “We actually agree on a lot more than you think. You think that thousands of other religions aren’t true. I think the same thing, plus one more.”

negativenull, (edited )

Early Christians were accused of being atheists by the Romans, since they didn’t believe in most gods.

Daft_ish,

Christians were atheist before it was cool

andallthat,

The one thing most religions agree on is that all other religions should be eradicated from the world until only the true one remains. Turns out they are ALL right!

porkins,

We are all born atheists. Religion is the oddity.

FlowVoid,

We are all born as social animals predisposed to superstition. Religion is practically inevitable.

porkins,

I think the God of Spinoza view is a good one to convey to people that want to hold onto something. To say that the whole of existence is the nature of reality is redundant, but that is the answer. We exist because that’s the way things work, so the boundaries of the whole system don’t require a personal deity. The system in a sense is the deity and that waters it down to nothing supernatural. The one thing that I can still get behind is the possibility of simulation theory, which would totally fuck everything up. It is a theory though and not a steadfast belief.

PhlubbaDubba,

Ok so, here’s the funny thing, there might actually be a neural disorder to blame for the original polytheistic religions that morphed into modern religions.

There is the phenomenon that some people have an internal narration while others don’t, but there’s a hypothetical phenomenon within that phenomenon where someone has the internal narration, but doesn’t recognize the narrator as their own voice, but rather as an outside presence instructing them on what to do next.

First time I heard of this my mind immediately went to the evangelicals who swear up and down that they have a personal communicative relationship with God.

FlowVoid,

Ok, but followers of Judaism and Islam do not believe in a “personal relationship” with God. In those religions only the prophets got instructions directly from God, everyone else has to read their respective holy books.

porkins,

I had the narrator when I was a kid and even asked other people if they could hear the person talking, which creeped out my siblings occasionally. Fortunately grew out of that by presumably realizing that was myself talking to me.

PhlubbaDubba,

IIRC this is the idea behind avatar therapy for folks with vivid hallucinations

“Growing out of it” by slowly taking more and more control over how the hallucinations behave until they’re basically just a sensory extension of the internal monologue

kromem,

Not really.

Magical thinking and rationalizing randomness are very innate features of humanity (and most animals, I.e. Skinner’s box).

Overcoming this is both a noble and difficult pursuit, and it’s arguably more worthwhile to recognize this than to incorrectly assume that we’d fall into rationality by default.

We wouldn’t. We didn’t. And that’s exactly why religion exists in the first place and remains so successful.

We need to actively work hard to be better.

porkins,

I agree with your sentiment. The takeaway for me is that we are influenced by our environment. Our experience is one of learning through experimenting with our reality, so it does come down to what we are presented with. I was raised around a temple that my parents were very active in, but it was reform, so I could ask lots of questions. I was told the narrative, but was allowed to interrogate it a bit and pretty much had the rabbi provide the evidence against religion by asking the right questions and getting fair responses. Others don’t get this opportunity and are instead force-fed religion and told not to question it. I still remember the moment that it clicked for me that it was all a charade. I basically asked the rabbi that, if all life is lived now per Judaism and we don’t have the concept of heaven or hell, then why do we need to do these practices and he basically said to make us feel happier. I was pretty much like ok, I’d rather go to space camp then.

kromem,

Yeah, it’s like the Aristotle quote saying “give me a child until he’s seven and I’ll show you the man.” Not a lot of people have much chance to choose beliefs as opposed to have had them thrust on them.

As an aside, your rabbi’s answer was essentially the outlook of the Sadducees in antiquity. They believed that there was no afterlife and that God didn’t care what people did or didn’t do, and yet followed the religious laws because they saw the law itself as a gift from God.

But I’m inclined to agree, that space camp sounds much better, and perhaps if the Sadducees had space camp too they’d have taken a different stance on things.

Zombiepirate,
@Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

I read a really interesting book called How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion, and the author made some very interesting points.

It takes a seismic change in perspectives to change closely-held beliefs that are intertwined with our identities. I grew up as a devout Christian in an extremely conservative protestent young-earth-creationist denomination. I spent my Sundays and Wednesdays listening to the values preached from the pulpit: love, humility, repentance, understanding, protecting the vulnerable, meekness, charity, and unconditional love.

However, these same people when outside of church would spew tirades about “the gays”, how poor people are just lazy, and how prayer wasn’t allowed in school anymore. The love that was exalted above all other values on Sunday was just a platitude to give cover to hateful grievance.

And that was almost thirty years ago; they’ve only gotten worse. That’s why people are abandoning religion in droves. The values that they sell are not aligned with the actual values of their congregants. Like the old Jim Croce song, their philosophy is “Let him live in freedom - if he lives like me.”

Furthermore, losing one’s religion nowadays is not the social exile it once was. People have support structures outside of organized religion. It’s one of the reasons that Evangelical churches are so against a social safety net: it keeps the excommunicated from crawling back.

aesthelete,

People have support structures outside of organized religion.

I agree with you overall, but do not agree with this point. There are very few non-commercial support structures in America for adults outside of organized religion, and even some of them (e.g. AA) are somewhat religious in nature.

PhlubbaDubba,

I think they meant outside friends and family

agitatedpotato,

Organized religion is a poison masquerading as a cure. The opium of the people as it were. I will never cause trouble for a religious person who doesn’t cause trouble for others, but organized religion I can not abide.

clark,
@clark@midwest.social avatar

Now that I can’t abide.

Aceticon,

I always thought that the success of Religion boiled down to two things:

  • It provides an explanation for what for many would otherwise be a terrifyingly chaotic random World. When faced with great tragedy (especially personal), “it was the will of Deity” is emotionally more easy than the terror and meaninglessness of it something like the death of somebody close having happenned purelly by random chance.
  • It’s a social network and support group which brings all sorts of advantages, not just materially but even emotionally.
30mag,

Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.

This is not a uncommon sentiment even among people who are religious. Usually, it is something like, “I’d rather be fishing and thinking about God, than sitting in a church thinking about fishing.”

frozencat,

why

m3t00,
@m3t00@lemmy.world avatar

we are no different than the bug that just splattered on the windshield. one second your brain is screaming “pull up!”. The next next second, _________

m3t00,
@m3t00@lemmy.world avatar

raised in a southern baptist leaning midwestern area. grew to resent being lied to. recall one pastor who got caught cheating on wife. last straw when I found a big-wheel in mom&dad’s closet a month before xmas. more lies

bob_wiley,

deleted_by_author

    •
    m3t00, (edited )
    @m3t00@lemmy.world avatar

    One of the congregation ran over my first dog. ground was frozen so i kept a fire going for a few days to thaw it enough to dig a hole. was about 7. later worked on grandpa’s hog farm. didn’t see a whole lot of difference between humans and livestock. nightmares about nuclear death from the sky. delusions about heaven while tempting were just unbelievable. one of my favorite poems: en.wikipedia.org/…/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(sh…. hope: Imagine, John Lennon www.google.com/search?q=Imagine%2C+John+Lennonfurther reading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens

    DagothUr,

    Nerevar, there you are. I have just started reading this Lemmy Post about Religion. What an intoxicating and grand waste of my time. Nerevar the only People that are happy without Religion are the Argonians, and you know as well as I, Dagot Ur(the god) how miserable these creatures are.
    Not a single Dunmer in all of Morrowind would try to claim that they do not believe in god.
    Yes Nerevar, i would kill them but that isn’t the point.

    Smacks,
    @Smacks@lemmy.world avatar

    I don’t mind religion, it’s the crazies that use their religion to push hate that are the problem.

    shectabeni,

    Agreed. I even have found myself thinking over years that some people in my life would have been better off if they had found religion, though I am not myself religious.

    Zozano,

    It really depends on how you’re conditioned. If you consider an aliens perspective, anyone who believes in something so important without good enough evidence are crazy, whether they act like it or not.

    bob_wiley,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Smacks,
    @Smacks@lemmy.world avatar

    I think those types fit into the crazy category

    frozencat,

    based

    HawlSera,

    This is what a depressed society looks like.

    SatansMaggotyCumFart,

    Why would you call society moving away from religion being depressed?

    HawlSera,

    Because on average it’s shown that atheists tend to become depressed and nihilistic upon leaving religion

    I’d love to go back myself but I can’t convince myself there’s a God.

    SatansMaggotyCumFart,

    Why would you love to go back?

    Fraylor,

    Ignorance is bliss

    SatansMaggotyCumFart,

    Nothing to do with religion is bliss but I feel for the people who’s entire lives are intertwined with it and lose everything when they see the light.

    Fraylor,

    I mean that’s inherently not true. Do you understand why people join a church? Community, belonging, being part of something that can give someone meaning. Not everything about religion is crusades, beheading and lgbtq discrimination. If I were to prescribe to anything though it’d be Buddhist. Nevertheless, you can point to all of the bad things in religion you want. I’m not saying that there isn’t likely even more bad than good, but you can’t plug your ears and say “lalalala all religion bad 100%” and expect anyone to see your perspective seriously.

    SatansMaggotyCumFart,

    I know many more people who have left a church then joined one.

    Fraylor,

    Okay?

    Furbag,

    In a thousand years, I wonder if humanity will be at war with itself because they can’t agree if Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter is the true prophet in their version of creation mythology.

    Stonewyvvern,

    They are both wrong. The prophet is Paul Muad’dib Atreides…Long live Muad’dib. Bi lal kaifa!

    root,

    The federation will be the last one standing when everything has fallen. Live long and prosper. :p

    Bakersfield,

    Nanu nanu.

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