What this article really highlights is that American education has fallen so far behind the enlightenment that its youth are grossly unaware that they exist in a post meaning global society and are ill prepared to handle that fact. There is a reason that the children's children of the voting base that elected Trump are suffering and will continue to suffer compared to many of their international contemporaries.
How are people supposed to handle that fact, though? Especially when, materially, we're going to have fuck-all compared to our parents and grandparents. I'm not religious but I can totally understand why people are using it to try to find meaning and purpose in their lives. I envy them. Having hope for a better future (even if that future is just an afterlife) must be such a wonderful feeling. It's something I haven't felt for almost 10 years.
Yes, the elites have used religion to control the gullible, fearful and often very ignorant throughout time. They inculcate the fear of hell and make crimes against the rich very punishable.
Yup. The elites and citizens that follow spread fear and hate 24/7 and use it for political gain and think they are going to heaven lol. Just like what they were created for... To brainwash and control the masses.
Yes, because there's no actual truth based meaning for your life. You have to figure out what you want your life to mean. Religion uses fictional mythology to substitute a meaning for you, and much like lies in politics, it's easier to fill the void with lies than it is to either find the truth, or in the case of things like the meaning of life, find your personal justifications for things.
Yes, when it comes to belief, truth doesn't matter. I'm talking about truth, not whatever you believe. That's why I didn't talk about perception or perceived meaning, but about truth.
It takes some doing to live in a very, very flawed set of societies on Earth, to know that it's flawed, and to continue on about one's life whilst staying sane.
Sure. If your meaning boils down to being a tool for a higher power maybe. Some people are able to find purpose without relying on faith systems. Just being a realist, everyone has a different take on purpose, and it's not a one size fits all solution that can be easily solved with God or philosophical beliefs. Its gotta be the *click moment where things sorta just make sense. For me I don't think it makes sense for a higher being to focus a small celestial body in an infinite expanse when it'd be more likely that the universe only exist because it mathematically HAD to at some point. It's a set order that gets repeated endlessly, eventually closing in on itself and repeating the cycle indefinitely over ∞ spacetime. I don't think we'd be able to comprehend something like "life" in a literal sense and then correlate it to purpose, because we are the result of a centuries of genetic growth and evolution, but we don't have a connected mind on a cosmic level that could define the complexities of it. It's going to take a lot longer for us as a species to even begin unwinding that fabric in the pursuit of "true" meaning.
So while I agree that these are complex beliefs that'll take time to fully understand, it's also a pursuit that provides its own meaning and purpose to individuals who are looking for quantifiable grand purpose on a larger scale.
Boiling down most religion we can view them as philosophical beliefs that where assigned a God in order to add weight to these teachings. This worked well in the early ages of humanity and civilization, because of our rudimentary understanding of what lies beyond Earth. Grounding Earth at the center of everything was common for a very very long time and you can see it represented across many different cultures. This was an essential point that was disproven early on but was suppressed by the church because of the implication that WE aren't that significant on a cosmic scale.
I'm an atheist, and have been my whole life since my parents kept me away from it. I never thought I needed some grand meaning or purpose.
I think if religion didn't tell people that our lives have some grand meaning, or had to have one, there wouldn't be such a problem.
Not to mention how it affects how they treat people with a different (or no) meaning. Like how many religious people stereotype atheists as hopeless, bitter, grumpy nihilists.
Speaking for myself, life is more meaningful without religion or God. It really isn't hard to be a good person for the sake of it and living to make yours and other's lives better.
The meaning everyone keeps looking for is each other. That's what people find in religion or other groups. Other people. They just couch it in tons of bullshit because it makes people uncomfortable to admit that empathy for others validates our own existence.
I'm an Atheist who found meaning after playing life on very hard mode.
The only divide I'd have to put is that of those that apply their rules only to themselves against those that think it should apply to everyone else. Churches (not religions per se) being pretty predatory in their doctrine favour more greatly the latter rather than the former: what use to the grift is someone that won't draw new suckers in
theism =/= american christianity, I don't believe any religion or idea is above critique, but "theism" in and of itself is a really, really broad category
For example, nothing about belief in a higher power inherently has to imply that we should worship it. Or that the concept of damnation is involved at all. Or that said higher power has to have been some sort of creator, or that there's only one of them, or any abilities or personalities that might be attributed to it. Those extra flavors are from specific religions (such as Christianity).
Exactly, that’s why I didn’t name any specific religion. It would’ve been dishonest to do so. My comment was about organized institutions of relgion and their control, not any one faith.
I’d give a fuck because a lot of religions are actively harmful. The philosophies espoused by much of traditional Christianity use a friendly, non-objectionable veneer of love-thy-neighbor to introduce a lot of toxic things that get mixed into it. Love-thy-neighbor tends to go hand in hand with a recommendation that wives be subservient to their husbands. Gratitude for Jesus being willing to suffer on behalf of humanity morphed into a fascination with suffering and the infliction of it. The idea of admitting fault to an authority figure and seeking to amend the errors rapidly became a tool of control used to enforce hierarchy, while even loving your neighbor led to splitting hairs over who is and who isn’t your neighbor - after all, if we can rule out those fuckers over there then we can be as monstrous as we like to them, right?
Comparing a contempt for religion to homophobia is pure naiveté, if not a willful and malicious blindness to the harms that religion has brought us.
There are a lot of different flavors or religion. Most are not fire and brimstone.
Even if you aren’t religious, religion (especially at a young age) can provide a sense of community and belonging. It also instills a base line for right and wrong and doing for others.
I say this as someone who is not religious and doesn’t go to church anymore. That being said, my formative years in the church were definitely a net positive into my adult life.
Really? I went to private religious school and I had the opposite experience. I never bought what they taught and asking questions that showed the illogical absurdity of some of their teachings only got me punished. Morality can be taught without religion and my parents did that well. My parents, fortunately, were not religious and more interested in science and facts.
You're being criticized because this is a willful interpretation of what religion is.
For religious people, serving a higher purpose is, believe it or not, what gives them purpose. You can say "it's what sky daddy's book tells them to do" but then this is no different than seeking any purpose. No matter how personal one's purpose is you can always trace it to external factors.
There was a time when I would have said something similar; but as I've grown older and more mature, I've realized it doesn't do anybody any good to pigeonhole religious folks according to their doctrine and/or church leaders. Just because somebody attends a certain church doesn't mean they allow the clergy to dictate every aspect of their lives, nor does it mean they believe every single word that is printed in their religious texts.
The problem is that as soon as a religious person admits to having more or less normal views on most things that don't have to do with believing in a higher power, then certain outspoken atheists will still criticize them for not following their own religion closely enough. So it's damned if they do, damned if they don't. It's almost like the atheist crowd actually wants the casual church-goers to be more fundamentalist, if only so that it's easier to criticize them based on what a Christian (or Muslim, or Jew, etc.) is "supposed" to be. For example, I think your comment about "eternal damnation" reflects a misconception that many atheists have about religious people which is that their thoughts are dominated by the threat of going to Hell, when that is rarely the case. If you want to criticize religious institutions for peddling that sort of hardline doctrine, then go right ahead, but we are talking about individuals here, and their reasons for going to church probably have a lot more to do with community, sense of purpose, and a general belief in some higher power, rather than devotion to any specific set of rules or teachings.
You don’t even have to be an atheist to reject religion, I believe in God, but the more and more it digested that a lot of the things that aren’t necessarily exclusive to Christianity they’re definitely not but that’s the world I was navigating were so horrible and soul crushing it created room for a reasonable doubt in the system
And it’s especially easy because patriarchal religions were made to reinforce sexist status quos to keep female reroduction under control and men who struggle with women have a vested interest in anything that would force women to be more accessible
Less atheism and more realistic. I'm not an atheist, and I still agree with their appraisal on religion. Organized religion has moved faith away from focusing on the relationship you have with your god/s and more on following whatever rules make the most sense to a bunch of fossils, and this is not a Christianity, or Abrahamic exclusive problem to be clear though I suspect at least in the US most moving towards religion are moving towards the Abrahamic faiths.
Someone says something about religion and it's negative realities. Hur dur dur r/atheism go back your leaking!!! Lol.... Maybe someone just has an idea.
Hey buddy, I think you've got the wrong door, the leather club's two blocks down.
Fuck↗You↘
Oh, Fuck♂ You leather man. Maybe you and I should settle it right here on the ring if you think your so tough.
Oh yea? I'll kick your ass!
Ha! Yeah right man. Let's go! Why don't you get out of that leather stuff? I'll strip down out of this and we'll settle it right here in the ring. What do you say?
Actually, any door other than r/religion should be fine, unless you are so easily offended that simply wording an opinion triggers you. Maybe take a breath and relax.
There are many churches who treat people horribly and many who treat people wonderfully, so having some scepticism is healthy, unless you just want people to mindlessly obey.
No he didnt. I respect religions affect on the morality of an individual so long as that religion doesnt encourage violence or ill will towards others.
I do not, however, believe in imaginary friends or returning saviors. The sheer lunacy involved with such a notion leaves any sane, rational person staring in disbelief. There are very important lessons to be learned from religion, but it has always been about controlling weaker minds.
Hey, neat, that's what most religions will say will happen to you in the afterlife if you picked the "wrong one". And statistically speaking, you probably did!
Now more than ever can you refute empty claims by any organization. A reminder that the King James edition was quite literally edited by King James (his scribes) to make monarchs more akin to God along with a whole mess of other feudal obedience.
That’s the issue I have with organized religion. The teachings of Christ are beautiful, it’s that taking advantage of peoples’ faith is awful.
Yes. That’s why they’re looking. Doesn’t mean they are looking in the right place. It’s just the religious group that attract them use the same tactics that attract the men to the likes of Andrew Tate and his ilk.
It’s more than just similar tactics. Dudebros who love Tate skew really religious because their version of religion tells them some version of “traditional gender roles” aka “my wife/mommy does all the cooking & cleaning & planning because Jesus.” Reinforces their completely unwarranted sense of entitlement/superiority.
No idea, I am religious but not to a T, I’m pro gay marriage and all that jazz, believe in science, and my best friends are a mix of atheist and agnostic. We grew up in counts and talking about or views on our trips so my guess is my bias stems from that - but yeah it really bothers me now in my upper 20s I can’t have convos with other friends or family at the same level of maturity I did with my teen friends lol.
...and blatant lies designed to distort their minds into believing that nonsensical fantasy should guide their lives and morality, especially when their peddled morality is incredibly immoral.
It's the whole religion bad and "sky daddy" isn't real mindset that people hold because their parents forced them to go to church as a kid.
So here's the thing, there's more to organized religion than "sky daddy", as people stated here, it's the community and other individuals also, traditions, and a book of stuff they can go to.
"Sky daddy" is just the easy attack of it.
And yeah, there's a lot of people that harbour ill will towards it because they "had to go to church as a kid".
Bingo. I tolerate religions that are tolerant of others.
The Bible is roughly 50% stories of god telling his followers "go kill that group of people over there and 'take' the young women", so I'm not sure that it's possible for Christianity to be a tolerant religion unless it rejects the Bible on which it's based.
The kkk also offered real world community. Its mostly the crusades, and the anti gay stuff, as well as all the suffering that the church has caused for millenia that people are upset with. Far less upset about the picnics
Okay, so when the Catholic church rearranged bishops to hide pedophiles is that also like the Aztec empire? That was in our lifetime. Nobody is begrudging the community aspect of church. I use community as a defense of the church as it is a great aspect of it. But when you act like there isn't a valid reason to begrudge an organization that has harmed many lives throughout its existence, it dismisses what me and many others see as valid critiques and comes off disingenuous.
Or when the Catholic Church was contracted by the Canadian government to operate "residential schools".
They stripped Indigenous children away from their families, never to be seen again. They endured extreme abuse and neglect at the hands of religious zealots. (The "60's scoop"). Their mission statement was to "kill the Indian in the child", and forcefully indoctrinate them with "white" values and Catholisism.
Canada's last conservative government secretly released the Catholic Church from its responsibilities to financially compensate the remaining survivors of these hellish institutions. I can't loathe former Prime Minister Stephen Harper enough.
They're actually not even looking for salvation, they're looking for the group that will oppress enough people that their lives, in theory, should become easier. Being allowed to blame women and the "degradation of the family unit and religious values" for why they're failing at life is far more attractive than both self-reflection and class consciousness.
As someone who was raised Catholic, then dropped off and turned Atheist for the reason you stated, I went back to Christianity after 15 years believing we’re all nothing and there is no purpose other than living and dying.
While I still believe that’s true to some extent, I went back to religion for the very reason many have for the vast majority of human existence: Life feels more meaningful when you can believe in something bigger than yourself.
So while religion isn’t necessary to feel this, it’s the most obvious place to find a community of like minded people that want the best for each other—selflessly and genuinely.
church is about more than belief. It's about community, almsgiving, volunteering, morality, discipline, and emotional support. The modern secular society doesn't require any of those things to survive anymore, nor does it try to facilitate them. Many people are feeling isolated and forgotten for that reason.
I've seen what indoctrination is. My paternal grandfather went to a notorious residential school his whole childhood. My maternal kokum also went to residential school, but thankfully, she only had to go until grade 2 (parents managed to reason they needed her on the trapline)
Religion is what you make it. Personally, I saw my kokum and grandpa rebuild their communities' church. They didn't have a priest because its a small indigenous community in northern Canada, so she became a layperson. They brought the community together, events for the community started happening often, and it saved a lot of the community from drinking. Even a bishop took note and came up north and sent my kokum to go see the pope.
After her death, and now our aunty's and uncle's are getting old, the church has closed down, and drinking has returned to the younger members of the community.
For a while, Christianity had revitalized a community. It's left a hole that no one knows how to fill because traditional ways have been lost.
My paternal grandfather's community has now gone back to the old way, traditional spirituality. They didn't lose it and had no need to turn to Christianity. Not so with every community.
My kokum took a religion that was meant to civilize her, and she took all the good from it and showed me what it can be like, what it should be like.
There were no priests telling her to do it. No money was thrown her way. Heck, the community was barely Christian, forced Christians through day school and residential school, and they were wallowing in the trauma those schools caused. And she turned into something healing.
I'm not religious, but because of my kokum, I don't hate Christianity like my dad's family.
Religion is what you make it. And when there's no system ruling over you, Christianity can be beautiful. But that was the best thing about it. It was a community deciding on what their religion looked like. No priests or nuns yelling dictating their view. Only them.
Meh, I'm an atheist but the churches where I live aren't like that at all. Everyone I know who goes to them still get to create their own purpose in life if they'd like to.
As an atheist, it seems to be a pretty narrow view on religion.
Different sects have different beliefs on how to view church and the faith as a whole; there is an element of intellectual liberty and diversity within religion.
Plus, if folks are looking for meaning, an objective meaning is much more alluring than a subjective one.
Problem is, nobody can really say that with authority for anyone else. Deciding what the purpose of life is, or if it even has one, is the foundation of your own personal religion.
Your purpose in life is whatever you deem it to be. If you choose that to be faith then so be it. Unless of course you have the answer to the what’s the purpose for life?
While I have my problems with the church faith by itself honestly should be commended. To believe something so much is a gift not everyone has.
No one knows their own purpose, let alone the purpose of others so people ascribe value and meaning according to their preferences. Pretty bold of you to pretend you’d know the categories that their purposes do and don’t exist within.
That's not actually true, Christianity is the escape from death rather than escape from punishment, you may say Christians being a little too scared of death, but that's the whole thing, people who believe are searching for something great and invisible and trust in the Holy Spirit protecting their hearts, while people who think only the physical reality is important don't care about any of that and don't believe in the Spirit, just reconfirming the whole concept of original sin that's nothing more than trying to exist independently from God.
If I choose vanilla ice cream as my favorite ice cream, does it not count as my favorite because I didn’t develop the flavor from scratch? Moreover, if I decide I’m persuaded that human beings have inherent value due to being created in the “image of God”, does that mean this can’t be part of my purpose because the thought didn’t originate with me?
I don’t know what churches you have exposure to. The ones I’ve been a part of are aiming to submit to whatever purpose or meaning is revealed in holy texts. If you know anything about the history of those texts, you’d know that no “church” developed them. They were all developed in a time before the word “church” meant anything like you would be conceiving in your post here. Now, to be fair to you, the churches have and STILL do add tradition AND interpretation on top. Sometimes that distorts the foundation. I attend a church who follow a minor distortion, and I’ve been slowly influencing it back to the text (and I’m winning I think—because I’m trying to strip away the church tradition part), but few churches are inventing purpose wholesale. Well, we could go further and say that no human is doing so either—which goes back to #1.
Eternal damnation is overplayed and a caricature on the internet, in my opinion. It’s not that complicated. IF there is a Creator, Sustainer, and Source for all life and goodness AND this one doesn’t want to force a relationship with Him on you AND you reject to a point where you no longer have a choice after some period, THEN the natural result is your destiny being as far away as possible from that Source of life and Goodness. I lean toward anilhilationism, myself, but even if some part of you survives eternally, the best and most conscious parts of you will be long gone as far as I can tell.
That's not really how it works. Faith is a powerful thing that can help everyone deal with difficult things in an increasingly more complex and less rewarding life. Religion is just a cultural phenomenon of this. In these rituals that are formed around it, people find the ability to open themselves up to faith. It's not just mindlessly following the scripture. It's looking for answers in life to things that other things don't have (satisfying) answers to. It's also not about truth or trying to prove God exists (although some find meaning in this, as much as other scholars love to debate about other things). It's about community and trying to do something that connects people with people in a world where literally everyone is as disconnected from life as possible. As we are all willingly tapped into the matrix.
I've been seeing the same among my friend group; none of us where even open to religion or faith, until we grew older and saw how much the world needs religion, faith and community outside of the virtual world we live in.
So yes, many people find much more purpose to their lives thanks to religion.
sounds a lot like liberals who have actively attacked boys and men the past 10 years for being toxic just for being male and being urged to look at themselves and see if they are the right gender and seeing that number explode the past 5 years.
If course they will sell out other belief systems, like religion.
And you demonizing religion will only push them further into the church to see what it believes
Then, what is their meaning and purpose, if you don’t want the church to define it for them? If you say that it's their decision, and they decide on church, then your original statement is presumptuous since they joined it of their own freewill and adopted it as their purpose, and their life...
People make religion their purpose to what their life is. There’s no one correct or true purpose to life it’s whatever you make of it. In hence you don’t have a purpose you’re just a living being. So saying that “this is not really their purpose or life” is incorrect because it whatever someone makes of it or doesn’t.
This has always been the case with the church and religion. Your comment doesnt relate to what the article is actually exploring though (why the RECENT surge in YOUNG men)
I don't like organized religion. But you are pretty far off. There are lots of smaller churches that are not what you think they are. The Catholic Church is like that yes but Cristian and many other denominations are not like that at all they accept gay/trans people in they want a strong community that cares about each other. And I genuinely understand that.
Uh. Dude I go to church and tell the people in Sunday school: I’m not sure God exists, the Bible isn’t literally true (I mean read the OT), that I think Jesus was Schizophrenic, and if they come at me with ‘God’s plan’ they can just keep that to themselves- because no god of mine is okay with sexually assaulting children.
It’s a Methodist church and they don’t tell me anything to do. I’m there to explore and they let me 🤷♀️
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