Other What's ruining your life right now?

That's just crazy talk, everyone knows that religion is the only thing keeping us on the straight and narrow, and that without it we'd all be terrible people.

 

If religion went away over night, I'm certain the world would find something else to fight about.

 

Religion is a waste of humanity's time, I'm quite sure, but yeah.. There's no point taking it away. Humans are, collectively, garbage and will fight over two different rocks based on shape if there's nothing else to argue about I'm equally sure.

 

The only point of religion was to keep the populous under control and religious leaders rich but, many people do derive support and comfort from religion. I however, am atheist through and through, there is no god.

We're not the only animals that will do that but, we think we are better than them, when we are not.

 

Yep, there are a lot of 'so-called' Christians around. Like to tell you they are, but don't act in a Christian manner.

Take my M in Law's neighbours this week. M in Law is 87, extremely vulnerable with COPD and osteoporosis but independent.
Mrs and her sister couldn't get Mum on the phone, engaged most of the day, so rang the (loudly proclaiming Christian) neighbours to ask if they could look in on her.

Mr C went round and found she was OK, one phone handset was off the hook. Good deed done.

The next evening, Mrs C rang to tell M in Law how inconvenient it was for her husband to be asked to go next door, having to get off his comfortable sofa and put on a coat and shoes to check on his neighbour.... What A F'ing cheek!

He was happy to go out in the cold last week when he needed to park his car in her drive overnight as they had some rubbish in their drive.

I'm sure that JC has something to say about neighbours....?

That said, we have some lovely Christian neighbours in our road who have been really good at making sure the old and vulnerable have been looked after this year. The 2020 Whatsapp group set up for our road has all been good and supportive stuff, no unpleasantness or grief.
One small upside...

 

We have a Jehovah's Witness close by. She is always helpful and, never, ever tries to push her religious views. If you didn't know, you would never guess she was a Jovo. If only they were all like that, good and bad in all religions. Our dog knows to bark at the usual jovo's!

 

Since everyone's talking about religion...

There's a phrase by someone I admire: 'I behave as if God exists'. I like that. Beyond that, I'll find out when I'm dead. Though, there's a part of me hoping that the pearly gates are indeed real, just to see the looks on the more arrogant atheists' faces.

 

There's part of me hoping for an option of New Game+ and that there's a patch for all the bugs

 

They already did, just look on social media. A bunch of people forming cliques of self reinforcing ideological believes who filter out conflicting and changeling view points just like religion.

Makes me think of Rowan's Atkinson's brilliant skit.

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I don't need a believe system based on blind faith in a random higher being (or a multitude of higher beings) to behave nicely around and with humans. It's called being a decent person.

 

Heh, that reminds me of the in laws in the USA. My MIL was a "devout Christian" apparently, yet all she seemed to use the church for was her dating.

It's quite amazing what crap people get up to, yet excuse it because they go to church etc.

 

An intriguing concept, you must tell me how it's done.

 

Nailed it. And RA is awesome.

Unfortunately a sizeable portion of any population needs guidance in this area. Just look at how many people leave their shopping trolleys out in the car park . Luckily it's a minority.

 

In my more...ponderous moments, I think about the fact that the greatest problem a human faces is that there are no second chances. This leads me on to the thought that a logical step would be to take newborns, strap them into an accelerated VR life simulator that takes 5 years to process a full human life. After this, they're let into the real world, with a realisation that they've had a practice life and have the ability to live their life again, this time with all the lessons learnt. Perhaps we're all in one RIGHT NOW!

This would lead to an ethical discussion about what to do with the budding Hitlers, Stalins, purchasers of BMWs with personalised numbers plates etc, though.

 

What tickles me about this point of discussion with religious, or religious affiliated people, is that the response is almost universally "It's more about the community" IME.

What I can never get a straight answer to is why any particular god is the right god. There have been a lot of things worshipped as gods over the course of this human plague, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that any of them are more right than the others. Even the basics like sun worship. Rises and sets every day whether we all get on our knees or not.

Can't believe I'm about to quote a William Shatner "song";

I can't get behind the Gods, who are more vengeful, angry, and dangerous if you don't believe in them

 

I feel like Bit-Tech has grown up a lot, looking at this conversation. Ten years ago this would've been like a Grimsby Town away game train carriage. I complained a while ago that Bit-Tech has gone from being the lad forum to the dad forum, but on reflection maybe that's not a bad thing.

This is all getting very positive and off-topic, so what's ruining my life this week is alcoholism. I got back on the beer and it's absolutely insidious. Sleep routine's buggered, work productivity is buggered. Need to take another break from it. Great timing for the Christmas break, that.

 

I'm not religious, but back in the long long ago when you could leave the house used to enjoy going to church once a month (when they did the newspaper, coffee and cakes morning), and it was absolutely about the community. I would suspect the majority of people there weren't overwhelmingly (or at all) religious either. It was just a nice place to be, with nice people that we like. Some of whom we knew anyway, and others who we had met there.

Similarly my daughter goes to a CofE school, there are religious studies as part of that of course (of a variety of religions and "gods"), but at no point do I believe that anything was slated as "right" or "wrong" because the bible says so, it's just another historical book with stories, some of which convey important lessons. And the ones that don't are either omitted or explained as a case that it was written a long time ago and things aren't like that any more.

I don't think religion itself is a bad thing, it's just a belief like any other that can be a good or bad influence over people. I hesitate to call myself an atheist, because I simply don't feel strongly enough about it to care to give it a label and tbh I find "loud and proud" atheists more tiresome than any of the Jehovahs Witnesses we've had at the door.

 

I am a loud and proud atheist, and TBH I think that label is just as much of a stereotype as stereotypes about Christians.

 

When I was about 14 I read all the big religious books in exactly the same way I would read any other book: start with page 1, read to the end, reflect on what has been told. They're all more or less well-written books about how to be a good person and filled with anecdotes and stories about random people who did random stuff that gets linked to whatever religion the book is trying to make look good. If I wanted to be an arse and trigger people I'd even go so far as to suggest that all the big religions are the same on a big picture level.

From my experience the stuff we all heard at school was never about what's the best religion. That specific part is being taught in the houses of the respective Gods (be it official houses like churches or mosques or be it unofficial ones like the shack in the back of a Southern US hate preacher). My parents couldn't get married in my father's hometown, because the priest denied my mother entrance to the church because she was of the wrong religion. Literally his reason. My father was catholic, my mother was protestant. Make of that what you will.

I don't believe in any kind of God, but if there is I'd be delighted to sit down with him and have a chat over a cup of coffee with him/her/it. And while I do understand the reasoning of many people to go to church for the company/community, I feel like that is about as close to religion as walking your dog.

Fighting because of any religion is stupid. I'm sure you've all heard the one about exactly this before, but "Religious wars are just people fighting over who has the best imaginary friend.". It's true and yet we'll have many more wars being fought for that exact reason.

Behaving like a decent human being is the only thing we can all do, no matter where we're from, how poor or rich we are, what colour our skin is, whatever we dream of/hope for/believe in, ... to make the world a better place. Let's all try to do that. And please, for the love of whatever you see as holy, don't just do it "because it's Christmas".

 

My point is: I don't care. Whether you believe in a god. Whether you are overtly anti-religion, whether you have lucky underpants, what your favourite colour is, whether you're a tea or coffee drinker (even though coffee is obviously the superior beverage)