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.
Proud to be in the statistic! Jesus freak to agnostic and very anti organized religion. Glad I got away from religion, I didn’t realize what a drain on my life it was until I got out. I’m upset at the years I wasted, but live and learn I guess!
I’m with you. It was scary at first but quite liberating.
I feel you. Escaping a fatih is one hell of an experience, but so liberating when you can finally see if for what it is.
Growing up in a super religious family and watching all the nonsense up close is why I’m an atheist today. SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE MOTHERFUCKERS
Hail Satan and donate to your local Satanic temple
Also grew up in a super religious family (homeschooled pk) and joined TST 4 years ago.
IMO brainwashing children from the time they’re born into a religion that spreads hate is wrong.
Didn’t Satanic Temple have people in leadership who liked Richard Spencer?
So there is The Satanic Temple which advocates for reproductive rights and separation of church and state and the Church of Satan which seems like some edgelord nihilistic thing.
But! I’m doing some googling and it seems that TSTs founder may be a Nazi. Like, an actual in love with Hitler Nazi. Reddit thread here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rabm/comments/ujw6w2/whats_everyones_take_on_the_tsts_lucien_greaves/
Yeah, I’m not talking about the Church of Satan. Greaves and other members who are higher ups in TST definitely rub me the wrong way politically. I would definitely like to see some of the stuff to verify that that post is taking about
Ya, I looked at several articles and Greaves seems very sketchy. Some of their chapters have broken off and a few of the top activists have distanced themselves from him. Sucks, I thought they were cool but the fact that their finances are closed and they try to host orgies for “real satanists”(wut) puts me off a lot.
Not that I could find with a quick search. I did find a “satanic forum” that seemed to be so populated by nazis that they were saying he wasn’t enough of a nazi for them.
I don’t know, maybe I am remembering wrong
When your congregation are loud bigots, racists, and assholes, or when your clergy fuck kids and cover it up, or when the religion as a whole surpresses or hates certain genders or sexualities… This is not a surprising trend at all to anyone reasonable.
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.
The sun would be a good place, plenty of space.
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
Would they have came here if the pilgrims didn’t first?
Like, not just “would they have wanted to” but would the Native population have repopulated the shoreline by then and repelled any settlers like they did the vikings?
The pilgrims were successful at gaining a foothold because they showed up in a place and time the local population had mostly just died off from sickness and the survivors initially helped the pilgrims.
50 years later, even 20 or 10 years later and it would be a different story.
The Pilgrims didn’t come here first (of the Europeans). They were beaten by multiple different European groups.
Like, not just “would they have wanted to” but would the Native population have repopulated the shoreline by then and repelled any settlers like they did the vikings?
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the French traders that came before or the Spanish pushing upwards from the entire continent they had control over?
The pilgrims were successful at gaining a foothold because they showed up in a place and time the local population had mostly just died off from sickness and the survivors initially helped the pilgrims.
Not relevant to your argument. Also I am fairly confident you are mixing up the Pilgrims and the Purtains. But hey facts don’t matter anymore so believe whatever you want.
When you make comments like that, people stop trying to help you…
Although I’ve noticed a trend where people like you assume they “win” when the other person gives up helping you. Just a heads up that’s not what it means.
Oh that is what you call it. “Helping”. Cute.
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
I think you’re a dumb removed that made a completely worthless point about your family not being pilgrims. How bout that
Nope but D for trying.
They need to start paying taxes too. Church is a business of graft.
“Staying in your lane” is the exact opposite of what Christians and Muslims are explicitly ordered to do. Convert acquisition is the primary objective of both faiths.
Exactly this.
Dont forget the part about having as many children as possible and convert them too.
There is no religion telling their servants to love their children even if they are not religious.
The Bible says if a family member considers another religion (or you just suspect they are) it’s your duty to God to kill them before it spreads to other people in your family.
It’s why ill never trust the people who claim they have to follow the bible literally. Either they don’t know what it says, or they’re absolute psychos.
Edit:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy 13:6-10&version=KJV
6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
7 Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage
Quote from the Bible?
Well, I heard somewhere that it is written in the bible that those who scorn the bible will be visited by apocalypse, fire, earthquake, and flood which will obliterate your cities, but for those who believe in the bible will save themselves and find true redemption.
And I also heard somewhere it may have also stated in the Bible that the power and the greatness of God cannot be denied. Those who reject the Path to enlightenment must be destroyed.
The Bible does not say that. What.
Huh, til
It talks to Jews in ancient Israel about gods of nations that surrounded them.
Oh…
So some of it is outdated and we shouldn’t follow the bible literally?
I already don’t, you better go tell the Christians to shut the fuck up about LGBTQ…
Good job on discovering dispensationalism. About LGBT, there isn’t a single place in Bible, old or new testament where isn’t put in a positive light
About LGBT, there isn’t a single place in Bible, old or new testament where isn’t put in a positive light
That’s just simple not true.
In the old testament it says that all homosexuals must be killed, and in the new testament that homosexuals cannot go to heaven.
How is that a positive light?
About LGBT, there isn’t a single place in Bible, old or new testament where isn’t put in a positive light
It’s hard to tell what you were trying to say, but any attempt to clarify that is going to make it really easy to point out how wrong you are.
So I don’t expect you to even try
Btw:
For anyone wondering what “dispensationalism” means, it’s a thing Christians invented so they can ignore the parts of the bible that they don’t agree with. While saying the parts they do believe in are the literal words of God and have to be followed.
It’s a shitty cop out
The thing is the whole purpose of religion is to force beliefs into others to attract them into the religion and make them pay money. THAT’S LITERALLY WHY RELIGIONS WERE INVENTED.
There is no “Im religious but I let other live their lifes.” They are constantly being told to invite friends and family to convert them and to have 10 children, so the children can be converted too.
I wouldn’t say I mind it but like seeing someone passed out from drug use I would rather they didn’t do that.
Honestly while I get that the whole “you do you” mantra is the politically appropriate line these days…
No, I’m fucking not ok with people practicing their religions.
I’m really not ok with people telling their children that it’s not only possible for dead bodies to get back up and float up into the sky, but that it 100% happened and is the only reason they aren’t going to suffer eternally.
I’ll not ok with getting together to talk about how men are inherently better than women and that it was fine that an old dude raped a 9 year old because she was mature for her age.
I’m not ok with passing along the instructions that who your parents were defines an appropriate social caste for the rest of your life based on the supposed mechanics of resurrection.
These are not appropriate things for a modern society, and honestly I’m tired of pretending that it is fine.
Yes, I think the right to have the government not interfere in religion is important, but that’s a separate issue from whether or not I’m ‘fine’ with the superstitions from an age when people peed on their hands to clean them continuing to be given a social pass purely out of respect for ancestral tradition.
Even religious groups hate organized religion. They just make an exception for the one they happen to be part of.
The one thing most religions agree on is that all other religions should be eradicated from the world until only the true one remains. Turns out they are ALL right!
How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one
- Richard Dawkins
Sometimes I wonder what Abraham would think knowing literal billions of people worldwide worship the god he made up.
And what he thinks about how all the different sects all hate each other so much.
I know what he would think. “What the fuck??”
Nah, probably not something in Enlgish
Ricky Gervais said something super interesting to Stephen Colbert, who is a Catholic. It was something like “We actually agree on a lot more than you think. You think that thousands of other religions aren’t true. I think the same thing, plus one more.”
Early Christians were accused of being atheists by the Romans, since they didn’t believe in most gods.
Christians were atheist before it was cool
I just sorta invented my own idea of what makes sense spiritually and only bothered to share it in a setting where shit was already deep and spiritual/philosophical.
I kinda like just inventing random mythology too every so often, my favorite recent one is that whenever someone says “I love you” for the first time, a Unicorn is born, and because of that a huge chunk of unicorns are in fact born as one of a set of twins, because the first time one person says that is often followed up by the first time the person they’re saying it to says it back to them.
Don’t believe in any of it as a “this is how the world really works!” kinda thing, I just like telling stories that I feel like would fit in a kid’s book.
What happens when someone says " I hate you"?
There is a reason unicorns don’t exist my friend, do you really want to know?
Honey Badgers.
This tracks closely with my own personal mythology that sheep when seen from a distance on a hillside are actually unicorns.
Nerevar, there you are. I have just started reading this Lemmy Post about Religion. What an intoxicating and grand waste of my time. Nerevar the only People that are happy without Religion are the Argonians, and you know as well as I, Dagot Ur(the god) how miserable these creatures are.
Not a single Dunmer in all of Morrowind would try to claim that they do not believe in god.
Yes Nerevar, i would kill them but that isn’t the point.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.
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.
The solution could be more rooted in philosophy too, but it’s been a long time, at least since the time of the Greeks or Romans, since we’ve had Schools dedicated to the deliberation of meta/physics, ethics, epistemology, etc.
And I’m not talking about modern education here, the education that’s meant to bring up the youth and develop them into functioning adults. The Greek/Roman Schools to me seemed like places of conversation, debate, etc. that anyone could join (I know that philosophy was mostly restricted to the aristocracy in ancient times, but that would be the goal today).
Maybe the answer is modern schools today, but with an effort to host local communities for thought discourse. Maybe it would look like wrapping together TED Talks with the minds of debates you see in New York that are like full blown events.
And maybe universities do deliver this kind of activity for their community that I nor you have access to because they’re not near us. Dunno.
I think another aspect to consider is that after the pandemic, multigenerational homes have become more common. There could be a really great sense of community in having a bunch of large families raise their children as a village.
Ah yes, that sense of ‘community’ that only manifests when they all sit in their church, and vanishes the moment they all get back home.
I get more of a sense of community out of my model railway forums and my live steam club.
They really don’t. I grew up Evangelical, trust me, community was the last thing on those people’s minds. Granted, I understand where you’re coming from; there should be more communal spaces that don’t have religion as a requirement.
Join a bowling league.
Do anything every week with the same group and you’ll establish that same community…but without the grifting and shaming.
But I’m introverted and my hobbies are video games :c
Love the idea here, but I wonder if there could be an alternative to religion/churches that still allows us to congregate and deliberate about meaningful, philosophical affairs that religion poked and prodded at.
I know The Satanic Temple seeks to do this in a way, but I wonder if our universities and colleges held more opportunities to engage with the general public on meta/physics, epistemology, ethics, etc., topics also challenged by religion, we might fill the rational void people might be seeking.
Instructions unclear, now stuck in MLM organization with grifting and shaming. :D
You’re outta your element Donnie!
10/10 can confirm though it was Friday Magic Night for me.
Sounds great, but the local bowling alley in my rural redneck town was just sold and converted to a community church. 🫤
Go bowl down the isle of that church.
Not like they need it on any day except Sundays.
Actually, I quite like the idea of secretly setting up some pins and rolling the ball down the aisle on a Sunday.
Exactly I started playing pool at a local hall right by my house. Great way of meeting new people.
Getting out and doing stuff in public is a great way of communicating.
Try Humanism. Find your local chapter. Its the community of “church” without the need for god(s)
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.
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.
Not really. Only God has a right to judge us.
There are for sure exceptions to this. But by and large this is absolutely spot on in my experience. It feels like getting together with paid actors that are hired to be your friend or sell you sometime in the end sometimes.
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.
That’s just unpopular opinions, and I’ve made plenty of those before. It’s very different from doing something that my community thinks is a cosmic sin that will send me to hell.
I’m struggling to see how it’s different. Could you iterate a bit more? I’m a bit slow but I like learning :(
Of course. It’s the nature of the disagreement. And unpopular opinion about random topics is just an unpopular opinion. People will see me as an idiot, ignorant, or stupid. They may think I have questionable morals or priorities. But that’s it. I’m just another stupid person on the Internet. I can have some of these disagreements with friends where I have an unpopular opinion, but depending on the severity it’s inconsequential.
With a sin though, I’ve done something that goes against God’s word and rules. If I don’t ask for forgiveness, I will be eternally punished for it. Disagreements here are disagreements on what God says, which is heresy.
Does that make more sense?
raised in a southern baptist leaning midwestern area. grew to resent being lied to. recall one pastor who got caught cheating on wife. last straw when I found a big-wheel in mom&dad’s closet a month before xmas. more lies
we are no different than the bug that just splattered on the windshield. one second your brain is screaming “pull up!”. The next next second, _________
This is what a depressed society looks like.
I really cant wrap my head that religion still exist in this age. Like we have mass destruction weapons, rockets that go beyond earth, have proof of how vast the universe is and then what we fight over is how some God has dictated our life to be.
I have the same problem with monarchy. The only thing that disturbs me more than the existence of royals with their archaic rituals and inbred lines of succession is the fact that there are so many people who love that shit.
Monarchies are also deeply intertwined with religion, which makes it extra problematic.
It’s so dumb and pretentious. Like nobody knows why we’re here, if there is a creator or not, what happens when we die, etc. Religious people act like they really have the answers to these when they are so comically wrong and fooled by people pulling stuff out of their ass.
Then, on top of that, to deny all of the things we have actually figured out about our universe and our place in it, the things we have actually observed. It’s a plague on humanity, stifling our progress.
The only purpose religion serves is copium for people who can't face reality/don't want to think, and exploitation of power. If God existed and gave a shit, it would be clear, but it's so obviously man-made to anyone who wasn't brainwashed to be religious.
Yes. Exactly 💯.
If the god was so powerful, where was he during CoVID? Why didnt the holy water treat COVID?
“GoD aCtS iN mIsTiRiOuS wAyS”
aka: Sky daddy doesn’t exist.
Every time I think about the fact that the belief that a dead body came back to life, floated up into the sky, and is expected to float back down at the end of the world isn’t considered to be a psychotic delusion because it’s so commonplace as to be normative I feel like I’m on crazy pills.
How?
How the heck do we live in an age of measuring how long it takes for light to cross a hydrogen atom, of seeing the complete observable universe, of building our own virtual universes - and yet intelligent people who are aware of or even involved in such efforts genuinely think magic is real?
I get that there’s a lot of people who just don’t have a good grasp on reality and think lizards running world governments is somehow a probable explanation for the state of things, but the part that destroys a bit of my soul is seeing people who clearly should know better but don’t.
How are we supposed to collectively solve real problems when so many are unwilling to come face to face with what is actually real?
100%.
I have that same problem with meat eaters too. How is it possible that we know we are brutally mass breeding and killing animals for food we don’t need, is fucking up the planet and isn’t all that healthy either, while at the same time also pretending to be civilized human beings that care about animals and the climare. And every time I raise the issue people make the dumbest excuses I have heard a thousand times…
People, once brainwashed into a way of thinking and behaving, can just be really hard to change even if you have all the arguments on your side.
Yup. Like how we tell kids there are no ghosts, we should tell me there is no God.
Well, at very least “there’s no objective evidence for either ghosts or God.”
I probably wouldn’t have lost my faith if I was t constantly called a commie socialist for espousing ‘christian’ values and wanting to help the less fortunate by the very people who instilled those very values into my moral code.
Anymore I’m just a non-denominational pagan because at least pagans aren’t such raging goddamned hypocrites.
Supply side jesus is always one of the funniest figures to exist.
Check some social gospel, those folks are basically what happened when the socialists in America decided to start their own church with blackjack and hookers
I prefer to call myself a heretic whenever in the presence of someone who really cares, it’s fun seeing the reactions.
Im not religous but am spiritual, I prefer to come to my own conclusions about certain things.
