Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.
Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.
“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.
“Never do business with a religious son-of-a-bitch. His word ain’t worth a shit – not with the Good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal.”
― William S. Burroughs
I don’t mind people going to Church and practicing their religion, as long as they stay in their lanes and they’re not trying to force their religious beliefs on everybody else. Trying to better yourself and your community is great, there’s a ton of really nice people out there who go to Church and are just all around good people. It’s all the assholes that think their belief trumps everyone else’s rights that need to eat shit.
Not minding your own business is pretty much why Europeans settled North America…
The Pilgrims love to say they escaped persecution, but really they were far right extremists who were all pissed off most of Europe wouldn’t follow their strict rules.
So they came to America and started pumping out as many kids as possible. With the goal to become the majority so they could force everyone to follow their rules.
We’re worse off because there’s no more “empty” land to send them all too. If we ever colonize another planet, it’s 100% going to be extremists overwhelmingly signing up to go first. Until then, we’re stuck with them.
None of my family were pilgrims. I don’t think you can just ignore the tens of millions of immigrants from Europe who weren’t pilgrims
I think their point is that the pilgrims set the cultural precedents for what would later become America, to which later immigrants would be beholden.
I don’t know how true that is, but I think “protestant work ethic” is at least one example of that sort of thing.
I think they can make their own point and there response was much different than what you just said
Except it wasn’t, your reading comprehension just sucks and you’re needlessly aggressive about it
Except it was but hey go ahead and make it about me.
my family
I don’t think
you made it about you, doofus
Non-Religion is cool if you get used to it. 91% of all Germans are “Not practising any religion”. On paper some 70% still are members of religious communities but otherwise we don’t give a fuck and instead going to church we meet for beer and bretzel breakfast on sunday. We stopped being religious after two World Wars as God was never on our side. Now we ain’t on his side either. Never been more happy.
Funny thing, officially Religion is part of school. But from what I remember it was more a history lesson. I remember every jewish and muslim holiday but not a single Christian Martyrer. Yes, around half of religious lessons at school was about other religions. Most likely because of selective memory - on holidays I could have beer and bretzel breakfast. Martyrers don’t feed me.
misread your comment and thought you said that most people only went to church on Sundays for beer and bretzel breakfast. Was like, shit, I could get behind that religion.
Go back 50 years and that was what we did: Go to church for 30 Minutes and sing, then feast with beer, sausages and bretzels for 60 minutes.
I’ve heard about the “rise of the nones” for fucking years now. I’m in my mid 30s. When the fuck will this trend translate into policy reform
Organising nones is like herding cats. The evangelicals do not get their power from their number. They vote uniformly and reliably, turning out for every primary, local, and federal election.
We are a diverse bunch with diverse opinions.
I’ve been a none for a bit now, and often find myself disagreeing with the opinions of others. I also tend to be more centrist in my political leanings, whereas a lot (obviously not all) of nones or atheists tend to lean left, or in some cases are extreme leftists. In my opinion, extreme leftists are as harmful to society as the extreme right, but that’s a pretty unpopular opinion online.
Long story short, I agree with you on this.
When the all 80+ year olds in congress
retiredie out
I don’t mind organized religion. What I do hate is that religion pushing their beliefs onto everyone they meet, pushing their religion beliefs throughout school systems, etc. If religious can keep to themselves, I see it like yoga or CrossFit.
Agreed
Atheism and science are also a type of religious belief. Ultimately, as long as someone isn’t hurting anyone else or trying to force their beliefs on others, I don’t care what they believe.
Could you expand your thoughts on this?
I’m always curious when this is said as to what is meant when Atheism and science are called religious.
Sure. To be clear, I’m an engineer and an atheist so I don’t mean it to attack either Athiesm or science by any means.
To start with, we cannot get true knowledge of the world outside ourselves by sensory perception alone. Rather, the way we interpret our sensory inputs is by applying it to some metaphysical framework of how we believe the outside world works.
As a small example, Descartes famously brought up analogy of a melting candle. A totally naive person being born into existence would see melted wax and hardened wax as two different substances. Sensory perception alone would lie to this person. Only by interpreting it through this metaphysical framework do we come to the conclusion that melted wax and hardened wax are the same thing at different temperatures.
This extends to deeper concepts that we can’t directly explain by our experience alone. At some point we stop using our own direct experience and expand our metaphysical framework using something else.
The thing that springs from that “something else” is religion, and in many instances it doesn’t necessarily encompass a concept of divinity or worship. In abrahamic religions it is the Judeo-Christian god. In Daoism it’s the belief in the Dao, an unexplainable force tied to the events of the natural world. In science it’s belief in the scientific method’s ability to produce objective truth with sufficient cooperation and experimentation. They’re all models of the outside world that stem from something beyond a single individuals sensory perception.
Religious orgs are cancer, they also steal tax dollars by avoiding taxes, corrupt organizations and their mansions
This is what a depressed society looks like.
Even religious groups hate organized religion. They just make an exception for the one they happen to be part of.
I’m curious what the overlap between the growing number of atheists and regular users of Lemmy, because I’m not sure if the comments on this article being so one sided towards atheism is a product of Lemmy users being primarily atheists or if religious people don’t feel comfortable sharing an opposing view. I’d love to hear a counter perspective, but as an atheist myself I’m not the person to start that conversation. I will say that society functions most properly when the majority of people hold similar views about most issues, when the Overton window is smaller, and religion historically has been a reliable tool for aligning people in that sense. It seems more challenging to me to be a kid these days, in the sense that kids are presented with so many choices for “good” that it seems harder to choose values. I’m not a fan of religion, but it’s worth calling out that moving away from organized religion en masse does come with some societal costs.
I’m Christian and usually stay out of these discussions because it’s a waste of time to try to change anybody’s mind here, and anything I say sounds like “not all Christians” anyway. I can do without the hate and contempt in my inbox.
Hey, if it makes you happy and you don’t swing it around in front of my face: you have my blessing.
Religion ruins everything.
Besides architecture. Cathedrals are dope. But everything else, yeah.
I don’t hate some older religious music.
Religion was at the center of everything 500 years ago. It’s gonna take credit for a lot of stuff because you could barely do anything art related without religious involvement.
Don’t forget about the part where the only way you could be somewhat literate was if you were indoctrinated into their little cult.
Gregorian chants are epic
That first Enigma record is a regular in my listening because of exactly that.
I do like the sense of harmony that comes from singing together, but yes you don’t need a church for that.
In a thousand years, I wonder if humanity will be at war with itself because they can’t agree if Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter is the true prophet in their version of creation mythology.
The older I get the more angry the concept of God makes me. It’s hit the point where I hope I’m wrong, so when I die I can spit in his face and call Him a useless God
The idea that their “love” god kills, maims, allows horrendous birth defects, molestation, etc of children is one of the multiple proofs that god doesn’t exist. Oh, and wasps and mosquitoes.
Wasps pollinate plants and mosquitoes are an important step in the food web. Nothing in this existence is here for no reason and “god” to is show man’s own arrogance.
Instead of having anti lgbt protests, or anti abortion protests, we should really start having anti religion protests. They are really a cancer to society.
It’s about time. I have been fed up with religion since 1978.
I think the only thing we lose is community – I’m jealous that religious people automatically have that.
The solution of course is trying to return to having neighborhood communities.
I’m telling you from experience that their “community” is fake. The people are fake. Under the fake stuff that looks nice on the outside is a deep culture of judgment and shame and fear. It’s not any community I would ever want. Like family get together for family’s that hate each other but they fake it.
To those who will try to tell me “well not ME or MY church.” I don’t care and I don’t believe you. I have been harmed too much too consistently by these groups.
Yeah I guess there’s an inherent danger with a community where going against groupthink is a sin
Like posting an unpopular opinion on Reddit or Lemmy. You’ll get down voted to hell if your opinion differs from the majority in that sub.
Under the fake stuff that looks nice on the outside is a deep culture of judgment and shame and fear.
Funny, that’s what Christianity seems to be mostly about anyway.
