Pretending to be Religious

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Religion is way more complicated than people give it credit for. For most it's easier to just call it stupid and write it off.

I don't pretend to be anything, really. My religious status is pretty much ambivalent because I never talk about it. Secretly I believe in something but Christianity is bullshit.

>>38698350
Eventually you will come to understand the power of our Lord God and Christ our Savior.

>>38698400
It isn't though.
>hallucinate
"Well I guess I believe in God now"
>watch man perform illusion
"Well I guess magic is real"
>some vague prediction comes true
"Well you must be a clairvoyant"

It's all just your brain playing tricks, your dumb monkey brain tries to fill gaps in knowledge with supernatural bullshit, but then as time goes on and you actually gain knowledge those gaps shrink, and so does god, religion, and everything associated with it.

There is absolutely nothing that has ever happened that does not have a material cause.

>>38698400
That meme is just one guy jerking off his own ideas by pairing it with more and more ascended being/thinking

Everything from the third box down is debatable.

>>38698497
"Christianity is required to maintain western civilization"
>not debatable

>>38698452
I did once, but really I just dug too deep, I thought I had no reason to fear the truth, I did as Christ said and sought the truth, but the truth itself is what killed my faith. Nietzsche was 100% right about Christianity's respect of the truth being the catalyst to its own demise.

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>>38698519
It is, though. Christianity has been more of a blight on us than anything. Not as much as Islam has been elsewhere, but it itself has not contributed to any of the positive values our civilization has.

You are just a faggot if you want to pretend your ideas on this are the end all be all.

>>38698486
You have no idea what you're talking about. Theology is thousands of years of compiled argument. Read the actual arguments and stop your strawman

>>38698528
That just means you haven't dug deep enough. The bleakness of ennui comes before the true light that is faith.

Not really. I do avoid telling my mom I'm an atheist though because it would devastate her.

>>38698556
OP here, I think you're taking a lot for granted when it comes to Christianity. I have no doubt that western civilization will crumble without the values inherited from Christianity, as western civilization at this point has been so critically influenced by it for countless generations.

You remove Christianity and you remove civilization as we know it, I'm not saying the societies of the pre-Christian Greeks for example were not western, but they are very distant from our modern conception of western society, and our society has become too far removed and too influenced by Christianity to survive if it is ever removed, we will not default to pre-Christian society, rather we will all simply die or suffer horribly is what is likely.

Not that western civilization or ourselves in our current age even deserve to live, I often just want to see it all fall to ruin.

>>38698400
>worshipping a false god that had to let humans kill him to "defeat sin"

Devil worship makes more sense than christianity

>>38698519
Christianity seeks the importation of poop skins with the pope calling for more rapefugees and kissing their nasty feet and evangelicas sponsoring Africans and spics and bringing them to the US. It needs to be snuffed out.

>>38698350
Jesus was a relatively amazing person for his time, there is truly no doubt about this

I'm not a supernatural person, I'm not religious - I'm not "spiritual" in the traditional sense. But I consider myself a bit of a hippy deep down inside if I managed to muster up the effort required to enact it in my day to day life

Jesus was a good guy. I like Jesus a lot. He was so ahead of his time that it's pretty breathtaking

Now make note of this as well - even if "Jesus" didn't exist, there's still someone out there who wrote down the stuff Jesus supposedly said, and in my book they are "Jesus" in reality and they deserve this praise

Anyway

Anyone else not religious at all but think religion is actually great and wish religious people could actually follow the good rules of their religion?

>>38698400
I also have taken up the idea that religion is useful as a tool. Religious experiences often have a severe emotional importance to people

I won't drone on but basically what I'm intending to say here at the end of my speech is that...

Maybe religion is useful as a personally enacted brainwashing agent to force yourself to be a good, productive person who betters humanity, even if you don't actually believe it?

>>38698668
>someone doesn't exist, makes up some imaginary person and their feats
>this means that author is that person and is real

By your logic Lovecraft was Cthulhu and deserves our praise.

>>38698586
Most of it is argument in favour of x religion in opposition to y religion, few historical theological arguments actually tackle total non-faith, because faith is what religion utterly hinges upon, but faith itself is belief without evidence by definition, and so I reject it. Any argument which hinges upon faith hinges upon non-evidence, it hinges upon nothing, it's illogical nonsense.

I've been through this before, I've been in your shoes before arguing against people like me before, I've seen both sides already. I used to believe, now I don't.

>>38698727
You're a fucking fedora autist aren't you? You realize that your "science" is based on axioms that we can't actually prove right? We take it on faith that that's actually how things work and don't question it because it gets us through the day.

>>38698755
I take scientific axioms over religious faiths, the former are actually useful.

>>38698755
Except it makes some sense to have faith in sciences since they've actually been proven to bring real changes to the world. Nothing religious has ever been factually proven ever, it's all people believing shit that makes them feel good. God has never done shit for anyone ever in history, because it's bullshit.

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>>38698638
>OP here, I think you're taking a lot for granted when it comes to Christianity. I have no doubt that western civilization will crumble without the values inherited from Christianity, as western civilization at this point has been so critically influenced by it for countless generations.

I think you are giving Christianity too much credit, and humans too little. The teachings of Christ are all good, but I don't think those specific values were only developed in our culture because of Christianity. They are things that people who want to be good, respectful people will already hold as values, and it hasn't been shown to me that removing Christ from the equation results in a morally bankrupt society. Plenty of European countries already have a very high atheism rate, and they are no worse off than Western civilization; hell, they're usually better off in a lot of ways.
>You remove Christianity and you remove civilization as we know it
That is only if you consider Christianity to be the foundation of western civilization, and I certainly don't, and it is explicitly not what the U.S. was founded on.
> our society has become too far removed and too influenced by Christianity to survive if it is ever removed, we will not default to pre-Christian society, rather we will all simply die or suffer horribly is what is likely.
That makes no sense. If you believe Christian values have become ingrained in us over the generations, you have no reason to think people losing faith in the actual religion will make those values disappear. You act like atheists have a lesser moral compass.

And, really? We'll just die if we stop believing in god? I feel like I'm strawmanning you but you're outright saying you think we'll die if we stop believing in God.
>Not that western civilization or ourselves in our current age even deserve to live
I agree with this.

>>38698350
That's how I started out, but I ended up actually believing in it

>>38698350
I'd do it but my family is mormon so I would have to go on one of their missions to pretend like I'm one of them

>>38698813
>You act like atheists have a lesser moral compass.
Well they do have lesser moral compasses, they don't have any moral compasses, unless they're deluded. Actually nothing really bothers me more than an atheist that claims to have morals, as if such a thing even exists, it is just an atheist too afraid to actually fully rid themselves of comfortable faith, that "good" exists.

>>38698727
The sum theoligea tackles this and it's multiple volumes long

>>38698826
My faith was lukewarm, then it intensified, and then it died, and now I've made this thread.

I think it just takes a while to fully understand just how totally devoid of worth faith is, and I don't believe you can truly understand just how worthless it is before you go "all the way" with it, you try to embrace it, and realize you're embracing nothing.

>>38698727
>I've been through this before, I've been in your shoes before arguing against people like me before, I've seen both sides already. I used to believe, now I don't.

And I was an atheist for 10 years before I believed you fedora. Mentally jerking yourself off isn't an argument.

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>>38698867
If your position is just that you believe atheists are incapable of having or a moral compass or that you can't have one without religion, I can't argue with you, you're just a retard.

Objective morality is also objectively retarded.

>>38698927
I'm not the one dropping ad-homs here.

>>38698905
Already read it.

>>38698952
A moral compass is an abstraction, morality itself has no basis in reality, there is no objective or subjective or any morality at all.

>>38698961
>a fedora read all volumes of the suma theoligea

Gee wonder how I know you're lying

>>38699025
Back when I wasn't a fedora.

>>38699030
You've already claimed it's just religion x vs religion Y when the suma theoligea is sentient god vs no god so you've already exposed you self as full of shit.

>>38699051
What I said was
>Most of it is argument in favour of x religion in opposition to y religion
"Most" does not mean "all", and this was before anyone even mentioned the Summa

>>38699079
Alright, so what we have is multiple volumes and compiled theological argument of sentient god vs no god which is philosophically sound (which you haven't provided a counter argument for) and the follow up question would be which religion over another then which there is also virtually endless arguments on. Sounds pretty well thought out to me.

Much more in depth then the "le stupid religious fags just hallucinate and don't into science" argument that I was respond to

>>38698826

Same here.

I decided to take the "just find a religious social group" advice. As I got into it, I had to research more and more into prayer to keep up the facade.

When God started answering my prayers, I had no choice but to believe.

>>38698350
all the way up until college. started questioning religion around middle school. slowly lost my faith bc of unanswered questions. curiousity became doubt, which became skepticism, then agnosticism. went through all the motions at that time - pretended to pray at the dinner table, stayed silent during sunday worship. still tried to hang out with church friends (which was like 90% of my friends at the time), but nothing was the same. never opened up to them, so they treated me the same. still felt like an alien. eventually went into isolation then depression. life lacked a purpose - started rationalizing suicide. college came around, was able to start from scratch. slowly getting my life together. sometimes wonder if i would still be alive if high school lasted another year.

>>38698350
If you're going to pretend to be religious, why not pick a more interesting religion?

The pagan religions have much better lore, and the dharmic faiths have meditation and yoga.

Why bother with the Abrahamic faith's?

>>38700127
Christianity is arguably the most successful and the sheer amount of content dwarfs paganism. Paganism is long dead and mostly speculation. Eastern religions are great if it's part of your culture otherwise you kind of look like the religious version of a weeb poser

When Jesus came back, he got pretty fucked up

>>38700127

There is no religion more interesting than Christianity.
And I'm not talking about the boring, lifeless, guitars in church "sola scriptura" brand of Christianity. But real Christianity, as it has existed for millenia.

The Church has produced the richest tradition of music, art, culture and history, more than any other institution on the planet. Meditiation and contemplation has been written about exhaustively by the colourful array of Church Fathers, doctors and mystics.

Name one thing appealing about any world religion, and I can bet you Christianity has it and then some.

>>38700319
The speculation part is great though, since you get to make up your own shit to suit your needs. If you're going to make up your own belief, like the OP is doing, I don't see why that's a bad thing.

Also more content doesn't equal more interesting.

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Nah. I was raised Catholic and a lot of my friends were Christian growing up. Still can't get me to believe.

Tbh, most, if not all of my friends are Christian now (I'm in college) and I don't know if this is a general college thing or what, but they are filled with so much self hatred. They're good people, and I love them, but it hurts me to listen to them talk about how much pain they're going through and how they keep praying and asking for help.

>We are filled with so much sin
>I sinned again last night
>Satan's presence is strong, I can feel him tempting me

I dunno man. If God made us, he made some very sick creatures.

I want to help them, but my point of view on things is quite different from theirs.

Half assing it, just avoiding the subject and such. Might not bother at all after grandma dies.

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Living in a mayority catholic country, I was really into atheism through my teens so I ended up knowing more about the bible than most christians. It's fun making people realize that they believe just because of tradition or because they never really questioned anything about it since they learned it in their childhood.
I also really like cathedrals.

>Does anybody else do this?
Literally every person you see on imageboards claiming to be religious, some with more success at pretending

The universe could be the result of intelligent design. Whether all of this is a simulation or something else it is possible. That power, however, is beyond our comprehension. We will most likely never know the full story of how the universe came to be or what was truly before it.
Regardless, even if there was a creator that doesn't mean any of the religions on earth have it right or even if this universe was made with us in mind. There may very well be no afterlife even with a creator. We will never know.