thats why schizophrenics fall into it, and right wing looneys who had braind damage from strokes: sorbo, cavazial, dean cain, maybe cameron.
This is what I imagine it’s like for the rest:
“Religion invents a problem—namely sin—throws a poison into you, and then offers you the cure.” - Hitchens
Yes and no. Sin is particular to Christianity. Not all religions conceive of sin as the main problem, nor salvation as the way to solve it.
Good book on this is ‘God is Not One’ by Stephen Prothero.
For instance, you could say Buddhism’s problem is suffering. But that’s not something it imposes on you; that’s something inherent to the human condition, more or less. It offers a solution to that, but you can’t exactly compare apples to oranges.
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.
The problem precedes this point. If the social safety net is failing you and you’re going to a church for relief, or your family and friends have abandoned you and you’re going to a cult for communion, or you’re a college kid away from home and the only social organ with open arms is a religious one - we’ve got a lot more problems on the table than the existence of religious folks.
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.
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 people “find god” when they’re children, they’re going to church with their family/friends, they’re participating in social activities under the auspices of the church, and they’re nibbling away at the propaganda of the institution. Conversions are the exception, not the rule, and are far more commonly a consequence of interfaith marriage than some personal trauma.
I would argue that people “lose god” when they’re unhappy more often than they find one. Discovering that you’re not the ideal religious worshiper - you’re selfish, you’re angry, you’re horny, you’re heretical, you’re not merely satisfied to exist as a little disposable worker bee in the business hive that keeps the church coffers well-funded - is alienating and disorienting. Discovering that church officials don’t have satisfying answers to life’s harder questions is frustrating and tense.
Big institutional churches feed on normalcy and prosperity. They do best when their congregants are looking for a certain baseline validation in their own virtue, not when they’re defeated or transitioning or questioning their social norms. Downturns don’t send people to the pews, unless the pews offer something that newly impoverished people need.
There are church missions that fill this role in some instances. But - by and large - the church exists as an amenity for the wealthy and privileged, not the poor and disempowered.
When people are at their lowest, they seek something to fill the void
When I was at my lowest, I went to my church looking for relief and I got back empty platitudes and a mysticism that didn’t hold up under the slightest pressure. I became significantly less religious and more agnostic, as I started looking outside the church for better answers.
Things might have been different if I’d been in a more Evangelical Church with a savvier group of ministers. Or if I’d been in a family that was more well-connected with the church’s philanthropic organs. But the depression, the fear, and the indignation I felt at my lowest propelled me away from a church full of pleasant-seeming do-nothing gospel singers.
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.
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.
🎶We found god in a hopeless place🎶
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!
How many of y’all became atheists through happiness?
I became atheist through pondering, hope that helps.
If you mean I became happier once I stopped the religious based self loathing, then I count.
If you mean it was happy times so I switched to atheism, I guess one of the main things that helped me realize some bullshit was watching Futurama, one of my favorite shows, so that could probably be considered happy too?
Which episode of Futurama was it? Godfellas?
It was A Clockwork Origin. Despite being religious at the time I was always into science, but I stuck more to space, physics, chemical stuff and bought into some of the claims that used how supposedly little chance Earth could be so perfect for life. Like an uncomfortable subject, I kinda avoided evolution, but I did know one of the apologetics the religion used was the missing link argument.
Seeing the mockery of the moving goalposts kinda hit me like the first guy in https://youtu.be/Esl_wOQDUeE
We really be doing that?
One of the scriptures that was a big influence on me at the time was “Always be ready to defend the faith” but this was one of the first bricks that I could no longer defend, and more came after.
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.
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…
Don’t know if religion is the best predator but it sure does have a lot of them.
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