People are Leaving their Churches in Droves Today

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VaughanJB said:
The Founding fathers were human, fail-able, flawed. Some of them were slave owners, for example. The Constitution itself has been amended over time, and follows on from documents such as the Magna Carta that was written in 1215. As such, they were perhaps christian, but they didn't live a christian life, imo.

Believing in a God and after life is very tempting. Who doesn't want to go to heaven after this long journey and meet our loved ones? However, the idea falls apart the more you think about it. I don't believe in the supernatural, so that's a real problem. And what kind of father would send their son down to be tortured and killed - was there really no other way to make his point?

Saying that, part of life is accepting that there are things we simply can't know. Was there a Big Bang? What was before the Big Bang? If there's a God, it stands to reason he had to come from somewhere, he had to have a start. But apparently no, he's simply always been. Children suffer, disease, and honestly when you think about it, our very bodies aren't designed all that well. One orifice for drinking, eating, and breathing? It's asking for trouble!

What's vital, is tomorrow. That you treat everyone you meet with respect. That you help those that you can. That you do no harm to others. That you spread love and kindness. Tomorrow could be my last day on Earth (we're all oldies here) and I want to leave it with a good conscious. If I'm lucky, I'll have another 20 years on this planet. Then I become one with it. Every day we wake is to be celebrated.

ps: Some religious music is very very nice!
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That’s a lovely post. 💕
Really nicely written.
 

"If a person torturing and killing people is evil, why are gods who torture and kill people called good?…[C]ultures define their gods when they’re young and primitive, when their main concern is survival. They endow their gods with survival characteristics like omnipotence and authoritarianism, belligerence and suspicion, and that’s what goes into all their myths or scriptures. Then, if they survive long enough, they begin to develop morality. They examine their own history, and they learn that authoritarianism doesn’t accord with free will, that belligerence and suspicion are unhealthful, but this newly moral culture is stuck with its bigoted, interfering gods, plus it’s stuck with people who prefer the old bloody gods and use them as their justification for doing all kinds of awful things."

~~from The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper
 
well there are numerous accounts of the newly founded monoethistic religion of Judaism sacking whole villages and towns and putting all to death including children - so the beginnings of eventually christianity started that way for sure - just check out the OT for gory details - and who can ever forget the turning to pillars of salt - good title for a film heh in fact I think there is a film already??
 
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Dubee said:
No longer a believer
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The older I get the sillier everyone's religion seems to me, especially since the world has shrunk a lot so there are all sorts of previously exotic-seeming religions represented among people I know. I watched a lecture once that was about how children believe what adults tell them so they believe the religion their family raises them in. That seemed pretty accurate and makes it so random and interchangeable, if we were born someplace else we'd believe just as strongly in a different religion.

There also doesn't seem to be any reason to believe. I try to imagine what it would be like to not know what the moon is, or the stars, comets, rainbows, thunderstorms, weather-changes, health problems and illnesses, etc. And that makes it understandable how scary the world might have been to people in the past, and the religious stories would be an explanation to hang onto.

And when so many little children died in the past, it would be nicer to be able to tell them with a straight face that they are going someplace wonderful and grandma or somebody is there waiting for them and you will come join them later. The attraction of that is pretty strong. Much harder to tell your family member (or yourself) that you are sorry that they won't exist anymore.

I think it is a biological thing for any form of life to want to stay alive, and since we developed brains that could make up imaginary stories, it is rather logical to decide to tell oneself a story that we will continue to live no matter what happens to our bodies. And if we can get a bunch of other people to agree, then we can use that as if it was proof that we must be right.

So although I was religious when I was young, now I think religions are support systems for comfortable delusions.

I believe when my brain stops being alive then I won't exist anymore.
 
JustDave said:
As an atheist, one who spent most of his life searching for proof of a god, whether Jesus was the son of God or not, is irrelevant to me.
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I think there is plenty evidence of a God, a superior intelligence who created everything, atoms and all. One simple example is the humble little bumble bee. It’s an amazing creation of nature. One tiny little bee gathers pollen on its body, and pollinates the food that feeds the world. Who would ever think of designing such a creature except for a supreme intelligence?
 
davey said:
well good old Abraham was a polyistic worshipper heh and then came a bolt from the sky and he became brainwashed and monotheistic - meaning I'm the only one that's got it right!~ - then I discovered he wasn't sireeing children so his wife said go and sleep with the maid - not sure if she put it stronger than that but to avoid fainting ladies we'll stick to this virgin sorry meant version!! oops! so then he had a son by another women then he continued with his wife and lo and behold just as God had told him in the first place she became pregnant too and so there was two - babies! - one was the precursor to Judiasm and the other Islamism - and the fighting started then and has continued ever since. Bet ya didn't k now that was all in the bible heh??
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Everybody knows that is in the Bible.
 
seadoug said:
I went to church all through childhood and even attended a Southern Baptist high school. Everything was a sin... dancing, rock music, girls wearing pants, men with long hair. I couldn't wait to graduate. We had Chapel every Wednesday and there would be an Invitation in which they would play sad music and the visiting pastor would plead for all the sinners to come up front and be "saved". It was usually me and one other person that never went to the front. I found the whole thing manipulative and an insult to my intelligence. The Pastor's son was always suspended for using drugs. When I went to college, I ran into the Principal who used to discipline kids for touching or kissing at a gay bar.

My parents had long since stopped going to church because their pastor had had an affair. I hung in there much longer than they did. I know my experience is probably very different from others here, but I no longer have any interest in organized religion. So many that I've encountered in the Faith are hypocrites. Maybe some would say we are Godless society lately, but I think many have just become more enlightened. I still think there is a higher power overseeing my life. I'm just not sure what it is.

My mother believed in religion and the Afterlife until she passed away at 89. I supported her because in her case it gave her hope.
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Thanks for sharing, Seadog. I think your story is very similar to many others. We stayed in the church to support our parents belief system. It was what we did for our parents.
 
PeppermintPatty said:
Even the monks seemed evasive?
Doesn’t that come with the territory though?
Priests, monks etc have an illusive and elusive lifestyle.

It appears that many people become interested in Buddhism but then get bored or read so much about it that they get confused. Then again there are always those who go to the extremes with any religion where they become total hypocrites. We’ve all met the extreme Bible thumper.

Sorry if any of my words offend anyone. It’s certainly not meant to
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It’s the truth though.
 
HoneyNut said:
I believe when my brain stops being alive then I won't exist anymore.
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Nice post.

From my life experiences I believe that once my body dies, my eternal consciousness will live on forever. If we are all atoms of molecular energy at a quantum level, that energy can’t die, it transforms. Scientifically speaking, energy can’t die. It turns to something else. Even a rock under a high powered microscope are atoms moving around. Our minds see it as a solid.

Our minds project outward that we are all separate but on a molecular level we aren’t. Without the use of our minds there would be no separation. Consciousness can’t be destroyed and I believe that’s what most religions teach is our soul. We physically die but our souls live on forever.

There’s nothing that would ever change my mind about this.
 
HoneyNut said:
The older I get the sillier everyone's religion seems to me, especially since the world has shrunk a lot so there are all sorts of previously exotic-seeming religions represented among people I know. I watched a lecture once that was about how children believe what adults tell them so they believe the religion their family raises them in. That seemed pretty accurate and makes it so random and interchangeable, if we were born someplace else we'd believe just as strongly in a different religion.

There also doesn't seem to be any reason to believe. I try to imagine what it would be like to not know what the moon is, or the stars, comets, rainbows, thunderstorms, weather-changes, health problems and illnesses, etc. And that makes it understandable how scary the world might have been to people in the past, and the religious stories would be an explanation to hang onto.

And when so many little children died in the past, it would be nicer to be able to tell them with a straight face that they are going someplace wonderful and grandma or somebody is there waiting for them and you will come join them later. The attraction of that is pretty strong. Much harder to tell your family member (or yourself) that you are sorry that they won't exist anymore.

I think it is a biological thing for any form of life to want to stay alive, and since we developed brains that could make up imaginary stories, it is rather logical to decide to tell oneself a story that we will continue to live no matter what happens to our bodies. And if we can get a bunch of other people to agree, then we can use that as if it was proof that we must be right.

So although I was religious when I was young, now I think religions are support systems for comfortable delusions.

I believe when my brain stops being alive then I won't exist anymore.
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Well said, HoneyNut. I agree with everything you said. May I quote you in my book?
 
PeppermintPatty said:
Nice post.

From my life experiences I believe that once my body dies, my eternal consciousness will live on forever. If we are all atoms of molecular energy at a quantum level, that energy can’t die, it transforms. Scientifically speaking, energy can’t die. It turns to something else. Even a rock under a high powered microscope are atoms moving around. Our minds see it as a solid.

Our minds project outward that we are all separate but on a molecular level we aren’t. Without the use of our minds there would be no separation. Consciousness can’t be destroyed and I believe that’s what most religions teach is our soul. We physically die but our souls live on forever.

There’s nothing that would ever change my mind about this.
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That’s a good question. What is a soul?
 
davey said:
well there are numerous accounts of the newly founded monoethistic religion of Judaism sacking whole villages and towns and putting all to death including children - so the beginnings of eventually christianity started that way for sure - just check out the OT for gory details - and who can ever forget the turning to pillars of salt - good title for a film heh in fact I think there is a film already??
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And then for five centuries the Roman Church commandeered the Crusades to kill and pillage villages to convert peasants to Catholism. The history of religion and Christianity is a mind boggling history. It’s hard to understand why modern civilization still buys into its theologies and dogmas.
 
Dubee said:
That’s a good question. What is a soul?
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Your guess is as good as mine?🤷‍♀️
I ‘think’ my soul is my eternal consciousness. My mind accepts the fact that it will die along with the rest of my body but my soul knows it lives on.

These are just my thoughts and beliefs based on my life experiences which I realize are different than that of most others.
 
I don’t wish to have any of what I’ve posted put into a book. Until now I didn’t realize the information might be published. It was about the same time I noticed that I took the subject way off track as usual. I know nothing about religion so probably shouldn’t even be participating in this thread. Sorry for taking your thread off track Dubee.
 
PeppermintPatty said:
From my life experiences I believe that once my body dies, my eternal consciousness will live on forever.
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That is interesting because I’ve come to doubt that consciousness is something that brains produce. It seems as likely that consciousness may be co-basic with matter as that either consciousness gave rise to matter or matter to consciousness. If one looks at the cosmos as a mechanism and imagines it can be figured out given only our human capacities, I think someone has drunk the kool aid. We’re just not in any position to reach a final determination about all that. So I don’t think your hunch is anymore ‘out there’ than anyone else’s.
 
MarkD said:
That is interesting because I’ve come to doubt that consciousness is something that brains produce. It seems as likely that consciousness may be co-basic with matter as that either consciousness gave rise to matter or matter to consciousness. If one looks at the cosmos as a mechanism and imagines it can be figured out given only our human capacities, I think someone has drunk the kool aid. We’re just not in any position to reach a final determination about all that. So I don’t think your hunch is anymore ‘out there’ than anyone else’s.
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I can only speak what’s relevant from my experiences and mine most certainly will be different to yours. I don’t expect anyone to have the same experiences as mine and believe the same things. Koolaid or no Koolaid. 🤷‍♀️Lol
 
Dubee said:
That’s a good question. What is a soul?
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(I only care to reference The Word)

The breath of life

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Gensis 2

Once you die, you no longer have that



Ecclesiastes9:5
For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing

 
MarkD said:
That is interesting because I’ve come to doubt that consciousness is something that brains produce. It seems as likely that consciousness may be co-basic with matter as that either consciousness gave rise to matter or matter to consciousness. If one looks at the cosmos as a mechanism and imagines it can be figured out given only our human capacities, I think someone has drunk the kool aid. We’re just not in any position to reach a final determination about all that. So I don’t think your hunch is anymore ‘out there’ than anyone else’s.
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It is interesting to wonder which came first ; consciousness or black matter and even more interesting to ponder the idea that they co-existed together from the start ….

I don’t really think my idea is any more out there than the others. I’d just suddenly realized how off track I’d gotten when bringing all this stuff up when I re-read the first post and it’s title.

I think honey nut wrapped up nicely why religion began. I think the reason why religion is dying might be due to modern technology. We can now get just about any info at the tip of our fingers. We get to learn the truth about what happened to small children when they went to boarding schools, child molesters posing as Sunday school teachers, and all the nitty gritty details. The blinders came off for many of us and there’s no way we’re drinking the Koolaid.

Years ago churches were a big part of a community and it probably helped keep people in line. We don’t want Aunt Betsy knowing we got drunk and drove around town looking for prostitutes. At one time personal integrity was important to have in a community but now we have the internet where we can talk to anyone in the world and be whoever we pretend to be. This makes people less accountable for their actions. It takes the guilt away cause that’s what most others are doing.

We couldn’t learn about other countries and cultures like we can now. We would have to travel to that part of the world to find such things. Aren’t we all just far too close for comfort now due to instant access to anything we can possibly think of? If we have no reason to build a strong community, why would we even try ?

That’s why I think religion isn’t as important as it once was. Let’s not forget that religion IS a business after all and now more churches and religions are completing with each other.

People are finding their own resources and creating their own spiritual practices. Since Covid, church members have discovered they could attend services right at home in their pyjamas if the wanted. No more dressing up respectfully for a once a week church visit.

Covid brought about a recession and that 10% expected might seem excessively generous. Cathedrals and Castle like lavish churches might now seem overly frivolous. There are lots of reasons

People are waking up and smelling the coffee.
 

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