Burgers?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Just out of interest (not going anywhere with this, just genuinely curious) How much of your belief is based on your own particular ideas and thoughts on what a deity might be and how much comes out the bible? Like on a scale of "there seems to be intent behind all this" and "Jesus reanimated the corpse of Lazarus" where are you?

My religious beliefs at their baseline can only be described as pantheistic. I've already chucked out the afterlife, at least as I previously understood it, even though I'm still open to the idea and hope I can be proven wrong. My religious experiment for the time being is just completely terminated, and that's fine. I didn't even celebrate Passover. But, with my religious hat, I can only view the seeming miraculous events that happen in the Bible as some sort of allegory. I accept the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth, I think he had some interesting and poignant things to say, and I think some of the things he did were subject to exaggeration. That ultimately has nothing to do with God. I'm supposed to be Jewish right now, so that means he's a bloody heretic. Really what I think is that he was just some dude with some good ideas that were extrapolated from a system that had some good and some bad.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

The other end of this relative spectrum would be say, Twid, who again, I can again largely agree with (and am interested in the various explorations of belief structures). There's probably more in common than not between P3nt and Twid but their experience of religious systems and the actors involved have clearly varied substantially.

What surprises me about Pent in these conversations, recently, is that Pent seems to be willing to entertain the idea of God and the afterlife, where his iconoclasm originally struck me as pure antitheism. Indeed, Pent offered me a couple of examples of how surviving death could work when I started to doubt the afterlife. Obviously, I'm struggling with spiritual significance to being human at the present time and just have to put religious framework aside for the time being until I can kinda regain my spirituality, one way or another before I pick the experiment up again. So, I probably do have a bit in common with him in this regard, and he is older and probably has it worked out a bit more.

I can't say that I had any truly bad experiences growing up Catholic, other than the occasional and inevitable sense of guilt. I can't say that I had any bad experiences as a Pagan. And other than starting my Judaism on Yom Kippur, I can't say I've otherwise had any bad experiences with that. My dad was going to be a priest, and while there has been as certain, expectation, for lack of a better word, I've never been harmed for aberrant religious expression. Shit, I left an altar up in my room when I was a teenager for some kind of useless spell, dad came in to wake me up for school, I was already awake. He took a minute to see what was up with that and said, "Kevin, time to get up for school" walked out and nothing more was said of it. He even nervously accepted the possibility that I might be gay. It was a challenge on my part, and he felt backed in a corner, but he wasn't going to boot me out if I said I wasn't straight (I merely said I wasn't gay at the end of it. Heh.) So, yeah quite probably, my experiences with religion would be entirely alien to Pent.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Something that happened in the bible will still be used as a reason for dumb laws. Any time you hear the words "playing god" in an argument against something, have a think about how much bullshit I'm talking here.

These are two points I can get entirely behind. In a secular society, as any society ought to be in order to guarantee the maximum amount of freedom, religion should never be used as a basis of legislation. And of course, I'm a pantheist studying biology. Why shouldn't we play God, on a cautious level? We already have, and have reaped benefit from it. We have split the atom, walked on the moon, hell, even domesticating animals and brewing beer is playing God. And on the pantheist bit, we ARE God by definition, within that context.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

I think we should allow people to believe whatever they want. But I also think we should educate the FUCK out of them first, and then let them decide what nonsense to cling to.

Critical thinking skills and free, high-quality education should be part of any civilized society, absolutely. But you might be surprised to find that these don't act as a vaccine against religion. They do, however, tend to foster gentler, more open, less dogmatic forms of religion, though, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians.

I wouldn't be surprised at all, since I'm not a rabid dogmatic atheist. I would view trying to eradicate religion as a fool's errand, and probably a bit of a dick move.

However, I would be curious to see the effect on religion if science was stressed from an early age in a society's free high-quality education with an emphasis on critical thinking. I don't know enough about the educational systems of other countries to know if such a society exists currently.

I'm getting enough of a high quality education in the sciences that MIT reps are coming in to say that just because we're at community college doesn't mean that they won't let our credits transfer, and quite the opposite. Our science courses are apparently, in their own words, rigorous enough that we might want to reconsider going onto a 4 year state college. I won't for financial reasons. But my point here is that I'm going into a field that traditionally evaporates a person's belief in a higher power (physics and biology specialists tend to be more atheistic than chemists and engineers), and while it has helped to evaporate my understanding of immortality, it has paradoxically only served to reinforce my belief in some sort of higher power. From a rational perspective, I suspect that that is just how my brain is wired. But biology, while for some is a faith-killer, has been a reinforcing agent that merely kills specific doctrines about God.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

I think we should allow people to believe whatever they want. But I also think we should educate the FUCK out of them first, and then let them decide what nonsense to cling to.

Critical thinking skills and free, high-quality education should be part of any civilized society, absolutely. But you might be surprised to find that these don't act as a vaccine against religion. They do, however, tend to foster gentler, more open, less dogmatic forms of religion, though, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians.

This appears to be true in Twid and my case, at any rate.

God's not a psycho.  If he is and I'm believing in the wrong god, I'm okay with that, too.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

My religious beliefs at their baseline can only be described as pantheistic. I've already chucked out the afterlife, at least as I previously understood it, even though I'm still open to the idea and hope I can be proven wrong.

I choose to believe in an afterlife, because I refuse to believe the universe could allow something as cool and awesome as myself to cease existing.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

My religious beliefs at their baseline can only be described as pantheistic. I've already chucked out the afterlife, at least as I previously understood it, even though I'm still open to the idea and hope I can be proven wrong.

I choose to believe in an afterlife, because I refuse to believe the universe could allow something as cool and awesome as myself to cease existing.

I like this idea. I'll have to let it sink in.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

I think we should allow people to believe whatever they want. But I also think we should educate the FUCK out of them first, and then let them decide what nonsense to cling to.

Critical thinking skills and free, high-quality education should be part of any civilized society, absolutely. But you might be surprised to find that these don't act as a vaccine against religion. They do, however, tend to foster gentler, more open, less dogmatic forms of religion, though, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians.

This appears to be true in Twid and my case, at any rate.

God's not a psycho.  If he is and I'm believing in the wrong god, I'm okay with that, too.

Most of the other, non-Discordian theists I know are also like Roger and I. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be friends with them. And most of the people I know are theists. That's just how American society works out, demographically.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And I'm not sure I buy into the argument that we as a society should be obligated to allow people to continue to wallow in their own ignorance and to hand it down generationally.

I am more comfortable with that than with deciding what we allow people to believe.

I think we should allow people to believe whatever they want. But I also think we should educate the FUCK out of them first, and then let them decide what nonsense to cling to.

Critical thinking skills and free, high-quality education should be part of any civilized society, absolutely. But you might be surprised to find that these don't act as a vaccine against religion. They do, however, tend to foster gentler, more open, less dogmatic forms of religion, though, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians.

This appears to be true in Twid and my case, at any rate.

God's not a psycho.  If he is and I'm believing in the wrong god, I'm okay with that, too.

Most of the other, non-Discordian theists I know are also like Roger and I. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be friends with them. And most of the people I know are theists. That's just how American society works out, demographically.

It's because you live in an Eastern state, where people aren't by definition bugshit.

Out here, religion is usually poisonous.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Defensiveness? I can get how I come across as emotional, it's kind of part and parcel of the comedic rant medium. Even the trauma thing, yeah I have a bona fide real world experience which I generally portray from the "abused child/bible camp survivor" perspective so one might logically assume I was traumatised by this experience. Trust me - it was not traumatic. A bunch of born again space cadets tried to brainwash me at summer camp. At 12 or 13 years old I was already way to smart for that shit. A bit shocked that brainwashing bible camps were actually a real thing but that was surprise and disgust, not trauma.

But defensive? Shot out of leftfield, I'm shooting for a mix of aggressive/passive aggressive how did I miss the target by such a wide margin?

Problem is, when you try to shoehorn a comedic rant into a conversation that people are taking seriously, they might just take you seriously too, especially when part of your "comedic rant" is calling them names or denigrating them for what they believe in. It's sort of like how telling nigger jokes rarely goes over well unless you're telling them at a Klan rally.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Thing is, I think theism in heavily populated areas (East coast, etc) tends to be milder because people are by necessity more socialized.

It comes back to that "rugged individualist" shit.  It makes more sense to have a cruel god with that mindset.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Thing is, I think theism in heavily populated areas (East coast, etc) tends to be milder because people are by necessity more socialized.

It comes back to that "rugged individualist" shit.  It makes more sense to have a cruel god with that mindset.

The East Coast is heavily urban, and Boston in particular is a melting pot (America is not a melting pot. Parts of it are, other parts are purification factories). Boston gets an influx of new blood constantly. Geographically about as close as you can get to the Old World, top notch colleges, best hospitals in North America, etc.... So people come here from everywhere. That's why only one of my parents is American in the first place. That shit wouldn't have happened in Wyoming. It makes utter sense that Boston would be both fairly religious, but within reason. We have a shit load of Catholics, because we have a lot of Italians and Irish and Polish. Liberal Catholics because we don't only have Italians and Irish and Polish, but rather a shitload else of a variety bag. And all of this, from a city that was a Puritan colony. That right there is brilliant. A Protestant theocracy becomes the cradle of American pluralism with an emphasis on open minded non-Anglo Catholicism. It's a crazy fluke. And I think that's part of why I love it here so much.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

The other end of this relative spectrum would be say, Twid, who again, I can again largely agree with (and am interested in the various explorations of belief structures). There's probably more in common than not between P3nt and Twid but their experience of religious systems and the actors involved have clearly varied substantially.

What surprises me about Pent in these conversations, recently, is that Pent seems to be willing to entertain the idea of God and the afterlife, where his iconoclasm originally struck me as pure antitheism. Indeed, Pent offered me a couple of examples of how surviving death could work when I started to doubt the afterlife. Obviously, I'm struggling with spiritual significance to being human at the present time and just have to put religious framework aside for the time being until I can kinda regain my spirituality, one way or another before I pick the experiment up again. So, I probably do have a bit in common with him in this regard, and he is older and probably has it worked out a bit more.

I can't say that I had any truly bad experiences growing up Catholic, other than the occasional and inevitable sense of guilt. I can't say that I had any bad experiences as a Pagan. And other than starting my Judaism on Yom Kippur, I can't say I've otherwise had any bad experiences with that. My dad was going to be a priest, and while there has been as certain, expectation, for lack of a better word, I've never been harmed for aberrant religious expression. Shit, I left an altar up in my room when I was a teenager for some kind of useless spell, dad came in to wake me up for school, I was already awake. He took a minute to see what was up with that and said, "Kevin, time to get up for school" walked out and nothing more was said of it. He even nervously accepted the possibility that I might be gay. It was a challenge on my part, and he felt backed in a corner, but he wasn't going to boot me out if I said I wasn't straight (I merely said I wasn't gay at the end of it. Heh.) So, yeah quite probably, my experiences with religion would be entirely alien to Pent.

It's important to me for me to remember these two anecdotes about my dad, so I'll comment on it further. He's a religious nut. He is. And firmly in the Catholic camp in that regard. But goddamn it, is he pretty cool about it otherwise. He is reluctantly accepting of homosexuality. I know this because I was hanging out with these two girls in high school a lot and he asked me about that and I mentioned they were fooling around with each other (I was fooling around with them too but I didn't let him in on that) and he was like, "I like it that you can be open minded enough to be friends with (who he assumed were) gay people." And I know he accepts science because he referred to the Twelve Bens (a range of sort of mountains in his part of Ireland) as being millions of years old. I like seeing that side of him. Hell, when he first heard my band was called Anarchangel he got this mischievous smirk on his face and then changed the subject. But the smirk was there.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Actually that smirk was an awesome moment. It was a smug and bemused smirk. You could tell he liked the name.

[hooplala]

It's a boss name.