I'm sorry none of you see the value of religion.
I'm not sure this is entirely fair. I think it's mainly pushback against the notion that you must need religion in order to do [whatever] or feel [whatever] and so on. For example, in that comic he laments that he was able to help people as a Christian but no longer knows how to. But that makes no sense, as he himself concedes you can operate through religious organizations without being part of that religion so there's nothing stopping him from continuing. There's nothing stopping him from finding non-religious avenues to do the same things. The supposed necessity of religion isn't one, it's an excuse.
I was raised effectively irreligious. My mother believes in God and the Bible and such but I couldn't tell you what denomination or anything but I did have a like young adult version (came in pack along with other classics) to read as a kid that I read, my father is actually a mystery to me as it's never come up though even his 92 year old mother is not particularly religious. I've never been to a Church service that I remember. Other than weddings or using their basketball courts I never set foot in them, not on purpose though. The only religious people I talk to in real life about religion are the Jehovah's Witnesses and that's because I found that it gets you blacklisted so they stop coming.
Sure, I bet if you go back and somehow can pull up old long dead forums through the Wayback Machine I had some posts like in the 8th grade where I bashed Christians and God and crap if only because there's a stage of me fisking people. But at some point it swung around to where my irreligious status combined with my libertarian nature to lead another forum to believe I was a fundamentalist Christian because I had no issue with them protesting some movie as blasphemous or homeschooling their children with creationist textbooks. Also I argued with a bunch of neckbeard atheist types that the Bible is probably not intended to be literal but allegorical so people were talking past one another.
Now me, I personally don't care about people telling me how to live my life since I expect it and know I can always ask the unanswerable question of "but, why?" But Queen, come on, you have to see that it can be just as insulting to those who don't follow your religion to denigrate their beliefs and make all these assumptions and accusations as you feel they are doing to you. Saying "I wish you could see the value of religion" is a shot across the bow as much as "I wish you could see how useless religion is" would be from your perspective.
As another personal note, I always find the kind of religious/non-religious line drawing to be unhelpful as I consider it all philosophical and ideological as all belief systems and thus fair game. What differentiates some of what you're saying from The Golden Rule or the NAP, I mean other than all the supernatural stuff, I don't know, does it matter?
But then I'm rambling and I haven't really read this discussion much more than here and there. It just seems a bit insulting to assume that without religion, as you define it, people are missing something in their lives.
I didn't mean that statement like that. I have no problem with atheists (although I pray for them). I do have a problem with anti-theism. There's a difference between the two groups. I respect being not religious but at the very least understanding religion. I don't agree with it, but I respect it. I used to be in that camp. My problem stems from extremes. I'm not trying to convert anyone. But it feels like every non-religious person here is trying to convince me that I'm a moron for being religious even though it took me vast amount of literature for me to be able to believe in earnest again.
Be non-religious, that's fine. But when you try to convince people that they're better off without religion that's not cool. By the same token, be religious - that's fine. But don't say you need religion to live a good life. Both are extremes. I have no inherent problem with atheists but the "religion poisons all things" Hitchensian edge lord stuff is what I don't like. And to be fair, I don't know everyone's background. I don't blame Ronito, Wrath, or 21337, or even PD for their views. They grew up in extremely religious communities. I don't blame them one bit and I truly empathize, but that doesn't mean I gotta like it.
Hitchens isn't an edgelord. Religion by its nature cultivates a system of thinking based upon things
you have to lie to yourself, ignore facts, and bend bibles to believe. Or "Faith." When a stodgy intellectual with no patience for blatant ignorance gets involved it gets a bit more blunt than that, sure. Religion we know can be dangerous in a few ways. It goads people into being easily misled. It activates whateverthefuck in people that make them do things typically moral people wouldn't.
Now, historically it makes sense for such systems to exist but today, in modern countries? No, outside of it being a tool used to get people off drugs, alcoholism, or whatever is needed to guilt them enough into believing they must do good now to reap rewards after they're dead. Anti-theism is a pushback. I wish it was around when I was younger and one day realized that sunday school and CCD in my roman catholic church was just a bunch of adults playing pretend.
Does this make me a neckbeard? Also, hey don't ban me I've been on here for five minutes.
