Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Faith, or more specifically spirituality, does not need a "comeback". It exists on its own - universally - despite man's ways and man's foolishness. Thinking faith is only as good as people's current state is like saying God is only as good and strong as the people are at the moment.
A real issue is simply mental haziness and stupidity; not using one's God-given brain fully to sort of truth from fiction, healthiness vs. dysfunction, etc. We perpetuate and encourage things that work against us, and are blind to it. That affects every area of life, and is what we ought to be concerning ourselves with.
Faith and confidence in whatever (fill in the blank) is encouraged, and can grow, as people work together, wrongs are corrected, integrity and honesty are restored, hope is shared, and so forth. We have to get off this runaway train of grouping ourselves together in opposing camps, fighting with each other, glorifying division, etc. and get back to the more unified mindset to seeks out common ground and the common aspects that tie us all together.
Last edited by Thoreau424; 11-15-2017 at 09:42 AM..
Faith is what prevents people from getting angry, organizing, and demanding real change from political leaders.
...and it's what convinces frail old ladies to give their life savings to someone selling fake insurance policies.....and somehow, the theists think that 'faith' is something admirable, worthy of praise, something to be looked up to and, most laughable of all, something that should be respected.
...and it's what convinces frail old ladies to give their life savings to someone selling fake insurance policies.....and somehow, the theists think that 'faith' is something admirable, worthy of praise, something to be looked up to and, most laughable of all, something that should be respected.
Faith isn't what leads people to foolishly give money to crooks; it's simple foolishness and not paying attention. People give money away to idiots all the time, all around us. It isn't just frail old ladies to TV evangelists. The problem is much bigger than you'll probably admit to. Singling out one instance doesn't expose the widespread problem; that's just targeting and bashing a group you don't like. People usually attack what they don't understand and/or have never experienced.
Last edited by Thoreau424; 11-15-2017 at 11:12 AM..
Faith isn't what leads people to foolishly give money to crooks; it's simple foolishness and not paying attention. People give money away to idiots all the time, all around us. It isn't just frail old ladies to TV evangelists. The problem is much bigger than you'll probably admit to. Singling out one instance doesn't expose the widespread problem; that's just targeting and bashing a group you don't like. People usually attack what they don't understand and/or have never experienced.
Old people give away their money to fraudsters because they have 'faith' that the fraudsters are genuine. After all, if they knew they were fraudsters they wouldn't do it would they?
Faith isn't what leads people to foolishly give money to crooks; it's simple foolishness and not paying attention. People give money away to idiots all the time, all around us. It isn't just frail old ladies to TV evangelists. The problem is much bigger than you'll probably admit to. Singling out one instance doesn't expose the widespread problem; that's just targeting and bashing a group you don't like. People usually attack what they don't understand and/or have never experienced.
My mother is a frail old lady and she thinks people who fall for scams like the "We're from the IRS" phone calls are idiots. She was yelling at another woman in her church who was all in a frenzy because the IRS had called and wanted $5,000 or she was going to jail.
This can be very true. Obviously you know that there ARE people of faith who get angry, organize, and demand real change from political leaders, but too often "God will handle it" is an excuse to not get involved.
To tell the truth as I see it, the only time I ever see people of faith get angry, organize, and demand real change from politicians is when they want their faith to be a codified civil law that everyone must follow regardless of their actual belief system.
As per usual, Christianity, whether private or public, has utterly failed as an instrument of spreading love, compassion, understanding, empathy, and tolerance (certainly not acceptance). Just like religion has done for the past 2,000 years, faith is merely a vehicle to promote and justify hatred, bigotry, scapegoating the "other," dividing the people down lines of doctrinal and dogmatic differences, promoting ignorance, stifling free thought, and ushering in authoritarianism and fascistic policies into our political systems.
Back in the 1930s, for instance, the world was in love with Herr Hitler. Visiters to Germany were amazed at how organized, regimented, and seemingly prosperous Germany was under his leadership -- especially during the summer Olympic games held in Berlin. Many foreign journalists actually thought fascism would be the wave of the future!
What they didn't know at the time was that it was all a farce. German citizens had no civil rights -- no freedom of speech, no ability to openly criticize the Nazi regime. Foreign newspapers were banned; listening to foreign radio broadcasts could be punished with death. Jews were prohibited from using public parks, sitting on public benches, frequenting outdoor cafes, and a litany of other restrictions. The entire culture was built on a foundation of fear with Gestapo agents in plain clothes walking around listening for the slightest sign of resistance. Worse still, citizens informed on each other, ratted each other out to the Gestapo, so even your neighbor couldn't be trusted.
Even as the Olympic games were being held in Berlin, the first concentration camp was being built -- using slave labor -- just 17 miles outside of the city. Foreign newspapers were freely available. The signs prohibiting Jews from doing this or doing that had been taken down. Many of the bans on civil rights had been temporarily lifted. It made authoritarian dictatorships appear to be the best idea in government ever invented.
Except ... we all understand now the abject horror that was the Nazi state.
I bring this up because using faith -- which ultimately leads to religion -- is inherently authoritarian and fascistic. It limits choices, tramples on freedom, and uses every power available to it to prevent disobedience and to stop people from asking legitimate and pertinant questions. I wrote a post about the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s and early 90s that saw Christianity somehow managing to find Satan lurking everywhere -- from Rainbow Bright to corporate logos to rock band album covers. They did everything they could to censor music, art, television, movies, books, and everything else that MIGHT have some obscure reference to occultism, witchcraft, Satanism, and so-called evil.
And, of course, we had to put up with utter rubbish like "evilution" being a gigantic scientific conspiracy to draw people away from God -- and the standard promotion of ignorance and a worship of superstition and fear. Back then, you couldn't have seen the difference between an American church service in 1983 and a Nazi rally in Germany in 1935 given all the books, music, and art that was being burned en masse by religious zealots convinced that Satan was everywhere. I was only a baby in the late 1980s, but I knew people in my extended family who remembers being teens during this period, and they all have their horror stories.
There's an expression that I think is attributed to Einstein: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
The bottom line is that we've tried faith as an answer to our societal problems. In fact, every time various societies felt they were overwhelmed with too many problems, they went running to their faiths, their churches, and their gods for answers.
It has NEVER worked. In fact, the problems only got worse. Why not ask the Muslim world how "turning to faith" has worked out for them over the last 1,400 years? Each and every time a society sought faith-based solutions to real-life problems, they ended up with authoritarianism, theocratic fascism, a drastic reduction in freedom, women were quite often brought down to "second class citizens," fear and paranoia as well as xenophobia became the norm, and punishments for breaking God's laws became extremely severe and even downright cruel.
Even during the 50s and 60s in America when religious fervor was at an all-time high, things were oppressive for many Americans. Racism was openly practiced and segregation was rampant. Gays were not only prevented from marrying, even sex for them was a criminal offense. Interracial marriages were of the devil. Women were still relegated to kitchens and elementary school classrooms. And the list goes on.
So ... here's the deal:
MOST of the problems you mentioned in your post -- and then some -- are directly caused by the mentality of faith, especially those who have arbitrarily began to equate believing in the Biblegod with American patriotism.
For instance: Health care is expensive because we are the ONLY country in the world that still has a for-profit healh care system. Any industry that is for-profit put their profits as THE number one priority. In health care, the PATIENT should be the number one priority. Not so in the good ol' United States. And guess who fanatically opposes universal health care. Yeah, that's right. Conservative Christians.
We continue to have increasing amounts of mass shootings with ever higher body counts because -- wait for it, wait for it -- conservative Christians are adamantly opposed to ANY kind of responsible gun control legislation. In fact, Trump made the idiotic decision to reverse the law that prevented psychopaths, violent sociopaths, schizophrenics, and other extremely mentally ill people from simply waltzing into a gun shop and leaving with an assault rifle 10 minutes later.
(Both of which makes America the laughing stock of the educated world -- the fact that gun ownership is a right but health care is a privilege. It's a bit like saying you have the right to be shot with a weapon but you DON'T have the right to be treated for your injuries. Yeah, I would laugh too if I lived abroad.)
Like it or not, it is almost invariably the fundamentalists, the evangelicals, the non-denominationals, the southern Baptists, and others who have repeatedly, again and again and again, stood in the way of legislative progress. They're so obsessed with gays and abortion that they'd rather sacrifice access to health care for their sick children if that means gays are kept in their place and abortion is banned. (I've said before that damn near anyone who says they're pro-life are full of crap; they are pro-birth, not pro-life. These people don't give a DAMN what happens to those babies after they leave the womb.)
So ... this idea of grabbing on to faith in order to fix our problems is a bit like using a 50,000 year-old solution to solve modern problems. I would have thought that even Christians would have by now figured out that God isn't going to swoop in and save us from ourselves; no mass miracles will occur to stop gun violence or make health care accessible to everyone. God doesn't care -- assuming he's up there somewhere. In fact, God has NEVER cared what we do to each other. Every SINGLE time God has ever intervened in the affairs of we mortals to enact a punishment was because we mortals disobeyed God. NOT because we were cruel to each other. Your God has never been at all interested in Man's inhumanity towards Man. All he has ever cared about is being obeyed -- and don't you DARE tweak his ego by resisting or you'll be smote. That is the God of the Old Testament, and for most in this country, that is the same God into whom we should place our faith that everything will become hunky-dory.
What will happen -- assuming we ever solve these problems -- is that millions of people will blather useless prayers and platitudes to Yahweh, the Musterer of Armies (that's what his name means, after all) and then millions of people will go out and work their asses off to change things. And, when the problems are solved, or at least considerably lessened, everyone will blather even more useless and undeserved thanks to God -- who did NOTHING to help fix so much as a leaky faucett much less health care and gun violence.
Last edited by Shirina; 11-15-2017 at 12:06 PM..
Reason: I had to manually edit out typos. Simply having faith that God would fix them just *snaps fingers* didn't work.
^OK, Shirina, I don't argue with anything you said up there...but since you quoted my post...
I was merely pointing out the subset of liberal Christians who DO speak up against social injustice because of their beliefs.
How do you think gay people are getting married in churches in droves if the people in the churches themselves didn't speak up? The national Episcopal church gave up a million-dollar deposit on principle some years ago on their planned conference venue when it turned out the place practiced discrimination and racism against black people, both in employment and their clients. Other churches are giving sanctuary or providing legal services to illegal immigrants.
As mentioned already, there were Christians at Standing Rock because of their beliefs. There are ALWAYS Christians sending letters to Congress, calling representatives, sometimes marching, in support of "liberal" issues.
I get that we aren't the majority, but pretending we don't exist isn't OK, either. It's sad enough that the conservative Christians dislike us, but it seems hypocritical for non-theists to dismiss people who are of like mind regarding social issues just because they ARE theists.
...and it's what convinces frail old ladies to give their life savings to someone selling fake insurance policies.....and somehow, the theists think that 'faith' is something admirable, worthy of praise, something to be looked up to and, most laughable of all, something that should be respected.
Don't forget the faith (as defined here) of the observer in his conditions and instrumentation which render the lady, life savings, insurance as defined.
I've had some problems in my personal life the last few months. Nothing earthshattering, but enough to make me stop and reassess how I live my life, whether or not I'm making correct choices, etc. I'm finding a faith in a creator helpful during this process, especially since we have so little to cling to in civic society.
Well this is an aspect of religion that is actually of some value: refuge. The other, related value is community. Both of these are really socially mediated for the most part but there's an aspect that is also personal and private, which is how you tell yourself that things are okay / under control / not so bad.
My basic problem with religious faith is that it is not an effective epistemology (that is, it doesn't accurately explain or predict experienced reality in a way that's helpful to me). The reason for this is that it is the acceptance of asserted truth without a requirement of substantiation, and thus only works to the extent it happens to be tethered to reality -- sort of like how a stopped clock is right twice a day, in my experience.
For this reason I see religious faith on the decline. There are too many people like me who sought refuge in it, only for experienced reality to be anything but "safe".
For the lucky and/or masochistic and/or stubborn I suppose it can work. But I am none of those things when faced with cognitive dissonance.
What I do to console myself with the vicissitudes of life absent religious faith is:
1) The knowledge that my life is finite. This, too, shall pass, or if not, at least it has an endpoint.
2) It's not personal. I'm not picked on. Life is just stuff happening.
3) Most things (alas, not all, but most) are less awful than you think they're going to be.
4) You're stronger / more resilient than you realize.
5) Focus on what is actionable and what is positive.
I think that ultimately this above items are all that religious faith has to offer anyway, but with a lot of cruft and mumbo-jumbo layered over the top of it, and lots of extra effort to get to these basic truths. For example religious faith generally claims that your life is infinite (you're immortal) which displaces the fear of death and the need for closure into an imagined afterlife and yet people still live as if there were no such thing (given that they don't off themselves at once to bypass all this unsavory entertainment here on earth).
Religious faith also claims that (2) is false in that god is personally interested in you, but then has to explain why god allows you to suffer anyway, despite generally being presented as benevolent / kind and all powerful and all knowing. Ultimately if, say, you're unfortunate enough to be shot to death in the middle of worshipping and praising your lord and savior like those poor folks in Texas recently, then various rationalizations and circumlocutions are trotted out that put us right back at (2) anyway.
(3) through (5) are generally presented by religion but god or religious faith is not a necessary entity to enjoy the benefits of those realizations -- or to explain or justify them.
I’ll be impressed when I see religious people demanding real change on issues like inequality and corruption. So far, I haven’t seen it. If it exists somewhere, it certainly isn’t having an impact.
The most obvious example is a local UU congregation where many of the members are activists and some regularly chain themselves to the gates of a nearby gas storage company in protest of them filling underground caverns with gas and the environmental impacts and hazards thereof. Some have done jail time for that. So yes, it happens, just not in conservative theism so much. There, as you point out, it's more a "be subject to the authorities" mentality, as well as a more subtle "go along to get along, don't rock the boat" vibe.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
