Facts. But also:
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🎶We found god in a hopeless place🎶
Huh? Why not?
There’s so many memes of basketball players thanking god for their good shots and such
Those people didn’t become religious while they were already thriving, it’s always either childhood indoctrination or rock-bottom conversion
Made me think of “there are no atheists in foxholes”. To which my response is, so religious people are only religous because they fear for thier life? That sounds healthy.
It sucks to be a widow or widower looking for support groups to help you cope with the death of your spouse, and the only available groups are at churches who then turn the group into a mini church sermon. These churches should not have tax free status when they won’t even offer the most basic help for communities without trying to convert vulnerable people to their cult.
Most of my life has been shit and never once did i think to believe in “God” and i am from a very religious family, my mother stopped with that bs years ago but my grandmothers were most of their lives in church praying and all that bs and yet they were abused, beaten and treated like trash by my grandfathers to their last day… not to mention all the crap people have done and still do in the name of one god or another and all this time all this god has done is finger it’s asshole and do fuck all and if we were created in it’s image then it just enjoys the misery we have and i could type more but i have already wasted enough time as it is…
If you found happiness through religion, good for you. Everyone has their own ways.
The problem starts when you think happiness can only come from religion.
The problem starts when you think that other people need your religion so you can be happy.
Everyone has their own ways.
Yes, but not all ways are equally healthy. If you need to believe in falsehoods to be happy in life, that’s objectively a less productive coping skill than one that doesn’t involve that. Personally, as a society, I strongly feel we should be setting the bar higher. It should be an embarrassment to have such beliefs.
Mind you, I would never an am not advocating anything like legislature to enforce anything. Cultural change can’t be legislated. I just firmly believe in such change.
I mean, if falsehoods are the only way you can cope with the shit world we live in and be happy and you’re not pushing it on anyone else go for it. I’m not religious but it’s not like I’ve found an alternative. Best I can do is drink to shut off the part of my brain that’s constantly ruminating on shit. That’s not particularly productive either.
Maybe God really does exist, he’s just a person that likes to pray on the emotionally vulnerable.
Don’t know if religion is the best predator but it sure does have a lot of them.
Not saying I disagree, but as someone who was once religious I’d say that in their minds it is exactly the point to serve the desperate and broken hearted. “It is the sick who need a doctor, not the well.” They genuinely believe they are helping by doing this, not trying to be deceptive.
I think you’re wrong about that last part. They are absolutely deceptive.
That doesn’t change that most of them actually believe they’re helping. They’ve been pretty well groomed to believe that.
That’s fair.
Probably depends on location and culture as well. Where I live there’s a decent amount of moderate people. And well, they probably internalized the negative aspects. But it’s not like they’ll go out and molest other people with their religious stuff. So I’d say as long as they’re accepting of dissent, gay people, facts… Which many of them are… They’re more part of something that’s deceptive from grounds up, rather than (deliberately) being deceptive themselves. And they don’t follow the rules literally (same with the moderates amongst the Muslim people here). Leading me to believe they have some grasp of what’s right and what’s wrong beyond what’s written in an old book.
Of course none of this applies to the fundamentalists, or the nasty evangelical people prevalent in some other countries. And religion always has deceit baked in, that’s a fact 🤗 We’d call it science or ethics or history if it was based on something else.
In fairness, in the prominent religions "everyone* is sick and needs the doctor
Nah it’s you’ll all burn in hell if you don’t accept Odin, so everyone is “sick” in your metaphor.
Odin? I meant Ganesha. Or was it Zeus?
I’m a devout atheist, but Ganesh I’d smoke a joint with.
Which is also why the religious right is more prominent than the religious left. The latter are individuals whose faith tells them to serve others, the former are organisations calculating how to gain more power.
{in bursts Russell Brand}
Fun fact: The exact same tactics were used by Hitler. The result is even similar, too.
You will not be surprised that Gabriele D’Annunzio, one of the forgotten masterminds of fascism, described fascism as a “secular religion”.
And social media too!
How many came to Lemmy just because they were dissatisfied with reddit or such.
Yeah, it can be used deliberately in a predatory way. It also happens quite organically
To be honest I didn’t feel particularly vulnerable. “Reddit Is Fun” stopped working and I didn’t like the official app.
Chaos is a ladda!
I mean… yes, but this is kinda true for everything. Most people don’t change their worldview/religion/political ideology etc. when they’re happy and everything goes well. Most people also don’t start their own business, move countries or leave their spouse if they’re entirely happy with how things have been going.
To put it in system dynamics terms, in order for a system to settle on a new attractor state, there first needs to be enough instability to spur change. So the mechanism you’re describing isn’t unique to religion.
