Broadly speaking, you probably agree with the large majority of the views commonly attributed to whichever group you identify with - what are the exceptions? Something that if you mention without a caveat immediately makes people jump to conclusions or even attack you?
Religion and spirituality, broadly considered, are not inherently evil. That organized religion can justify great evils is a function of human weakness, nothing more.
Then again, this is coupled with a ‘there is no god but that we create ourselves/god has no material existence, but is no less powerful for that’’ POV, which is admittedly a weird one that I’ve been pulling at for a bit. Nothing to do with the nature of our reality or first causes, everything to do with our relationship to reality.
Came here to comment on the religion part. Humans are biologically programmed to be in a tribe and we need an “other” and we need a bad guy. On its own religion could be a neutral or a good thing, but it fits that need for tribalism and a common enemy and feeling superior. It’s the same mindset as nationalism or racism or when fans of sports teams riot and beat the shit out of each other for no reason. If religion never existed humanity would have just discovered some other way to segregate ourselves, feel superior, order each other around with arbitrary rules even the in group can’t agree on, and isolate and kill those who don’t comply. Add in manipulative people who are all too eager to hop into leadership roles and use them for their own power and selfish gain and you have pure evil, but it’s the system, not the religion, that’s a distraction.
I can’t say that I disagree with anything here. What bugs me about it is that at an idea at the core of many religions is that all us humans are of one kind, some particular expression of the universe (however that’s conceptualized), and can/should act in that fashion, towards each other and the world around us.
But it’s almost always turned into a footnote among a bunch of other bullshit that perpetuates tribalism, subjugation and violence. Going to use words that are easily poked apart, but I hope the idea comes across: we all contain something of the divine. It’s a miracle we exist at all, and maybe it’s possible we can all act like it and set aside meaningless divisions. One ‘tribe’, the world over, created by mutual recognition and respect rather than force and othering.
Literally all the bones are there, you just have to cast out the outdated divisive bullshit. But doing so also involves actively rejecting some ugly facts about humans as a group, which is, well, hard - to put it mildly.
Idk - this is all why I don’t talk about my beliefs (such as they are) too much, and just try my best to act with the good stuff above in mind as much as possible.
I’m not at all religious now, but I was raised Christian. There’s some awful, awful shit in the Bible, but Jesus was such a chill dude. If everyone acted like Jesus, the world would be an awesome place. He was just a hippie who drank wine and hung out with his bros and made friends with prostitutes and outcasts and condemned the church leaders who abused their positions. According to legend he was the legit son of God and yet when he was asked to judge sinners he was like yo dudes that’s not my place only my dad can do that I’m not worthy and neither are any of you, maybe instead of worrying about what other people are doing you should deal with your own issues, ok? Can you imagine if people actually lived like that? I’m not as familiar with other religions, but from what I know other major prophets were pretty chill, cool dudes too. If people actually followed the prophets of their religions instead of being assholes, religion would be great. Instead we have poor people being exploited, women and children being abused, and the entire system is fucked and corrupted because of human nature run amok.
Truth of the matter is people who aren’t religious always have a proxy for religion in their lives, which they irrationally worship.
And they are often prepared to justify evil towards others in defense of that proxy and use it to justify their social and moral superiority to those that don’t hold to it the way they believe they do.
It’s just how human beings are. But a lot of them are in rampant denial of it if you confront them over it.