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.
Religion is cancer.
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
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, _________
Religious orgs are cancer, they also steal tax dollars by avoiding taxes, corrupt organizations and their mansions
I really cant wrap my head that religion still exist in this age. Like we have mass destruction weapons, rockets that go beyond earth, have proof of how vast the universe is and then what we fight over is how some God has dictated our life to be.
Every time I think about the fact that the belief that a dead body came back to life, floated up into the sky, and is expected to float back down at the end of the world isn’t considered to be a psychotic delusion because it’s so commonplace as to be normative I feel like I’m on crazy pills.
How?
How the heck do we live in an age of measuring how long it takes for light to cross a hydrogen atom, of seeing the complete observable universe, of building our own virtual universes - and yet intelligent people who are aware of or even involved in such efforts genuinely think magic is real?
I get that there’s a lot of people who just don’t have a good grasp on reality and think lizards running world governments is somehow a probable explanation for the state of things, but the part that destroys a bit of my soul is seeing people who clearly should know better but don’t.
How are we supposed to collectively solve real problems when so many are unwilling to come face to face with what is actually real?
Yup. Like how we tell kids there are no ghosts, we should tell me there is no God.
Well, at very least “there’s no objective evidence for either ghosts or God.”
100%.
I have that same problem with meat eaters too. How is it possible that we know we are brutally mass breeding and killing animals for food we don’t need, is fucking up the planet and isn’t all that healthy either, while at the same time also pretending to be civilized human beings that care about animals and the climare. And every time I raise the issue people make the dumbest excuses I have heard a thousand times…
People, once brainwashed into a way of thinking and behaving, can just be really hard to change even if you have all the arguments on your side.
It’s so dumb and pretentious. Like nobody knows why we’re here, if there is a creator or not, what happens when we die, etc. Religious people act like they really have the answers to these when they are so comically wrong and fooled by people pulling stuff out of their ass.
Then, on top of that, to deny all of the things we have actually figured out about our universe and our place in it, the things we have actually observed. It’s a plague on humanity, stifling our progress.
The only purpose religion serves is copium for people who can't face reality/don't want to think, and exploitation of power. If God existed and gave a shit, it would be clear, but it's so obviously man-made to anyone who wasn't brainwashed to be religious.
Yes. Exactly 💯.
If the god was so powerful, where was he during CoVID? Why didnt the holy water treat COVID?
“GoD aCtS iN mIsTiRiOuS wAyS”
aka: Sky daddy doesn’t exist.
It’s about time. I have been fed up with religion since 1978.
Religion gave my family and the closed groups I was forced to be raised around excuses for all their abuse and desire to judge others. Religion is a core part of all my childhood abuse and trauma and my own adult issues. I have zero interaction with any of them anymore, and I cannot respect anyone who proselytizes in the slightest about anything.
In my lifetime, those who followed organized religion of many types are always those who are the meanest, most ruthless, judgmental critical assholes I have ever dealt with. They sure put on a good show, but I’ve seen who they truly are enough to spot it anymore. All bullshit. Excuses for liars to hide behind.
I have zeroninteraction with any of them anymore, and I cannot respect anyone who proselytizes in the slightest about anything.
Agreed, and this is coming from a religious person. I think people who proselytize are extremely misguided. I understand wanting other people to be a part of something that is such an important part of your life, but that’s not the way to do it at all.
I was raised agnostic and became religious later. I couldn’t have the relationship with my religion I do now if I was solicited by someone else to do it. You can’t give someone that experience if they don’t want it. All you can do is be nice to them and help them if they are genuinely interested.
The time for organized religion to clean house and save themselves from being taken over by fascist child rapists is long past. Sucks to suck. Would be a silver lining in a sea of shit if I saw religion at least in America wither away and die in my lifetime.
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.Reject nonreligious communities, join the religious non-communities. Choose your flavour between anarcho-catholics, Sikhs of the woods, or feral Zoroastrians
Even religious groups hate organized religion. They just make an exception for the one they happen to be part of.
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
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.”
Early Christians were accused of being atheists by the Romans, since they didn’t believe in most gods.
Christians were atheist before it was cool
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.
I know what he would think. “What the fuck??”
Nah, probably not something in Enlgish
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!
I think the only thing we lose is community – I’m jealous that religious people automatically have that.
The solution of course is trying to return to having neighborhood communities.
Join a bowling league.
Do anything every week with the same group and you’ll establish that same community…but without the grifting and shaming.
Love the idea here, but I wonder if there could be an alternative to religion/churches that still allows us to congregate and deliberate about meaningful, philosophical affairs that religion poked and prodded at.
I know The Satanic Temple seeks to do this in a way, but I wonder if our universities and colleges held more opportunities to engage with the general public on meta/physics, epistemology, ethics, etc., topics also challenged by religion, we might fill the rational void people might be seeking.
Instructions unclear, now stuck in MLM organization with grifting and shaming. :D
You’re outta your element Donnie!
10/10 can confirm though it was Friday Magic Night for me.
Exactly I started playing pool at a local hall right by my house. Great way of meeting new people.
Getting out and doing stuff in public is a great way of communicating.
Sounds great, but the local bowling alley in my rural redneck town was just sold and converted to a community church. 🫤
Go bowl down the isle of that church.
Not like they need it on any day except Sundays.
Actually, I quite like the idea of secretly setting up some pins and rolling the ball down the aisle on a Sunday.
But I’m introverted and my hobbies are video games :c
I’m telling you from experience that their “community” is fake. The people are fake. Under the fake stuff that looks nice on the outside is a deep culture of judgment and shame and fear. It’s not any community I would ever want. Like family get together for family’s that hate each other but they fake it.
To those who will try to tell me “well not ME or MY church.” I don’t care and I don’t believe you. I have been harmed too much too consistently by these groups.
Under the fake stuff that looks nice on the outside is a deep culture of judgment and shame and fear.
Funny, that’s what Christianity seems to be mostly about anyway.
Not really. Only God has a right to judge us.
Yeah I guess there’s an inherent danger with a community where going against groupthink is a sin
Like posting an unpopular opinion on Reddit or Lemmy. You’ll get down voted to hell if your opinion differs from the majority in that sub.
There are for sure exceptions to this. But by and large this is absolutely spot on in my experience. It feels like getting together with paid actors that are hired to be your friend or sell you sometime in the end sometimes.
They really don’t. I grew up Evangelical, trust me, community was the last thing on those people’s minds. Granted, I understand where you’re coming from; there should be more communal spaces that don’t have religion as a requirement.
The solution could be more rooted in philosophy too, but it’s been a long time, at least since the time of the Greeks or Romans, since we’ve had Schools dedicated to the deliberation of meta/physics, ethics, epistemology, etc.
And I’m not talking about modern education here, the education that’s meant to bring up the youth and develop them into functioning adults. The Greek/Roman Schools to me seemed like places of conversation, debate, etc. that anyone could join (I know that philosophy was mostly restricted to the aristocracy in ancient times, but that would be the goal today).
Maybe the answer is modern schools today, but with an effort to host local communities for thought discourse. Maybe it would look like wrapping together TED Talks with the minds of debates you see in New York that are like full blown events.
And maybe universities do deliver this kind of activity for their community that I nor you have access to because they’re not near us. Dunno.
I think another aspect to consider is that after the pandemic, multigenerational homes have become more common. There could be a really great sense of community in having a bunch of large families raise their children as a village.
Try Humanism. Find your local chapter. Its the community of “church” without the need for god(s)
When your congregation are loud bigots, racists, and assholes, or when your clergy fuck kids and cover it up, or when the religion as a whole surpresses or hates certain genders or sexualities… This is not a surprising trend at all to anyone reasonable.
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.
The older I get the more angry the concept of God makes me. It’s hit the point where I hope I’m wrong, so when I die I can spit in his face and call Him a useless God
