Principia Discordia

(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/77/187367183_0057e9677e.jpg?v=0)

One thing I think most of us have in common is a distaste for organized religions. (surprise!) Many of us were raised in a religious environment, or at the very least were exposed to religion, but aren't "religious" anymore. Why? What happened?

I'm curious to hear about other people's experiences with Organized Religion. What made you decide it was for spags?

Cramulus asked me to repost this story here after I told it to him in IRC.

I'm too lazy to type it all out, so I'm going to copy and paste the majority of the story as I was telling it in IRC.

Quote
<Mourning_Star> when the church gave me the boot when I was 9
<Mourning_Star> my mother stopped going
<verbatim> that's awesome
<Cram> the church gave you the boot at age 9??
<Mourning_Star> became completely disillusioned with the church
<Mourning_Star> yeah
<Mourning_Star> I was kicked out of church school 2 weeks earlier too.
<Mourning_Star> I kept asking questions that the nuns couldn't answer
<Mourning_Star> and when they gave the generic "Because that's how god made it" or whatever.
<Mourning_Star> that wasn't good enough for me
<Mourning_Star> I was starting to make the other children question their "faith" (read: brainwashing)
<Cram> ah, I see -- they kicked you out for being a snarky little know-it-all :-P
<Mourning_Star> so they decided i had to go.
<Mourning_Star> ;)
<Mourning_Star> If you want.
<Mourning_Star> I was honestly curious tho
<Cram> heheheh
<Mourning_Star> i wasn't being snarky
<Mourning_Star> I wanted to know WHY things were like they were saying it was.
<Mourning_Star> I honestly believed at that point.
<Mourning_Star> But I needed to know more.
<Mourning_Star> believing just because they said so didn't make sense to me, even as a kid.
<Mourning_Star> anyway, after mass one morning, the children who were being prepped for first communion were asked to stay after mass to meet with our priest
<Mourning_Star> some pompous assbag who's name I cannot remember.
<Mourning_Star> The priest asked questions such as "How do you feel about sin?"
<Mourning_Star> most kids gave the usual braindead answers he wanted to hear "Sin is bad!" or "Jesus doesn't like sin."
<Mourning_Star> I actually thought about it, and said "There's no such thing as sin."
<Cram> uhhuh
<Cram> then what happened?
<Mourning_Star> When he asked me to explain, I told him "God made us, exactly as we are.  How can god get mad at us for doing something, if he LET us choose?"
<Mourning_Star> or something to that effect
<Cram> heheheh
<Mourning_Star> basically arguing that if god made us
<Mourning_Star> and god gave us free will
<Mourning_Star> how can any action be sinful, so long as we used the gifts he gave us to make that choice.
<Mourning_Star> this is rational thought
<Mourning_Star> logical
<Mourning_Star> and apparently
<Mourning_Star> to the ears of a catholic priest in Lisbon, NY
<Mourning_Star> BLASPHEMY!
<Mourning_Star> He told my parents never to bring "That blasphemous little monster" to "his" church, ever again.
<Cram> lol
<Cram> but how can you blaspheme if God made you to blaspheme? :-P
<Mourning_Star> exactly
<Mourning_Star> So my father was happy that he got to stay home on sundays and watch TV
<Mourning_Star> my mother became very disillusioned.
<Mourning_Star> she's still a believer
<Mourning_Star> but her opinion of the church is basically "fuck them"
* Cram nods
<Mourning_Star> and me?  For a time I felt like god had abandoned me.
<Mourning_Star> Which turned into a rebellious hatred for god and all things religion during my teen years
<Cram> I think this would probably be a pretty good forum topic. I bet most of us have some interesting early experience with organized religion.
<Cram> uhhuh
<Cram> word.
<Mourning_Star> and eventually I came to where I am now.
<Mourning_Star> An understanding of WHAT religion is, and what it's used for.

I would like to add in, that there was a 3 year stint where I turned to Judaism, and eventually found my way back to atheism, and discovered in Discordia, ideas I'd had all my life finally put into words that made sense.

So yeah, that's my story.  At least the best I can tell it right now.

I was raised Baptist.

It was when I was 13 I started to question my religion.  And it was the death of my Grandmother that started the questioning.  She actually had just been baptised shortly before her death.  In the Baptist sect of Christianity you don't get baptised until you are "ready", whatever that means.  They take it pretty seriously.  If you doubt your faith you don't get baptised.  Same thing with communion, that was only for Really Real Baptists.  Anyway, she went in to have some heart surgery to repair a hole in one of her valves.  She died shortly after the surgery, on the morning My father, my brother, and myself were supposed to go visit her.  So I though, what kind of fucking asshole deity takes my awesome, funny as hell Grandmother away from me on what was supposed to be a fairly routine procedure AND on the same day we were supposed to see her.  

Then of course, as I became more and more educated, I asked more and more questions.  I started thinking, so why does MY religion have all of the right answers?  Why is MY religion right, but say, the Muslim religion wrong?  There's all of these religions, why is MINE beyond reproach?  

So eventually I made the transition from a god-fearing, praying Baptist Christian to a questioning skeptical Monkey.  

I was a very inquisitive child. I'm told when I had just learned to talk, I mostly just asked "why?" all the time.
I remember, rather vividly, a conversation with my mother, in the car, on the way home. I must have been no older than 6, possibly younger.
"If god made everything, who made god?"
"Well, he made himself."
then I had some crazy fantasy about how he had a diamond remote-control that he pressed and it made him exist. I was into diamonds and general shiny as a child.
My parents and siblings are generally reform jews. Very laid back about the whole thing, but my parents wanted me to go to a reform kindergarten and school "so that I at least come in contact with the religion". Kindergarten was cool, I liked the songs (some of the tunes the reform movement uses are really powerful) and basically didn't have much opinion about the fact that I was being pumped full of a weird hippie interpretation of an ancient monotheistic religion. Some time early in grade school that changed. I remember being asked some time in second grade if I believe in god, thinking about it for a second, and saying no. It just went downhill from there. We were supposed to pray every day in that school (again, in singing, with pretty neat tunes). I remember refusing to in the firth grade. For some reason this really insulted everybody, and the teacher and students (!) insisted I should at least make believe, and stand up in the part where you're supposed to stand up. I would, sometimes, but sometimes I think I just outright refused.
The schools I went to after that didn't force anything on me. After the seventh grade I had a Bar-Mitzvah because I wanted the presents and didn't want to upset my grandma. Then I progressively become more anti-religious and slowly got very serious about atheism and secularism. It was basically at the height of this (when I was 17 or so) when I found out about Discordianism, at which point I progressively stopped giving a damn. Let them have their rituals for all I care.

I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, and while I didn't grow up in snake-handling churches like y'all may think, I got the full-force Baptist treatment.  In these Baptist churches, it doesn't matter if you were baptised in the christian church, you are going to hell if you were not baptised in that particular church.  But all the churches in that area were hellfire and damnation--except the catholic church my wife went to.

(http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll106/rev_voodoo/Sarah_Snake.jpg)

I can remember being in bible school, probably age 6ish, and not believing anything they were selling me.  It was hard as a kid not to call bullshit on virgin births, walking on water, and raising the dead.  (Sounds like witchcraft to me.)  So while I had those bad experiences, I don't think they changed my opinions, but just reinforced my previously held beliefs.

My mother was a cancer nurse in that region for 20+ years.  She had lots of stories about how her patient's families would them since the only reason they were sick is because their "faith wasn't strong enough."  That's when I became militantly anti-christian.

It wasn't until I was in college and learned about Zen Buddhism that I realized other people thought the same way I did (sorta).  But it is really the basic Hindu cosmology that I dig.  (And fyi, the only part of buddhism I buy is the 4 Noble Truths: the rest is gloss.) 

I think like most of us, I became a student of world religion--probably to try and figure out where they went wrong.  (Spoiler: it is the concept of God.)

As I've said other places, I was raised Unitarian Universalist. The main thing that is "organized" about UU is the committees. Oh, gods, the fucking committees. There is a committee for everything. I was "Youth Group" (IE, high-school-aged people section of the religious ed program) representative for a year, mostly because someone had to do it and I didn't care enough to say no.

When you've had 2 hours of a 3-hour planning meeting taken up by a discussion of "how" to organize the meeting before you get to the stuff you were supposed to be spending 3 hours on, you get a little disillusioned with the process. When that happens for the fourth month in a row, you get fed up with things completely.

I happen to like all of the positions/ethics/philosophy I got out of my UU RE program throughout my childhood. I just disliked all the pointless committee structure that passed for "hierarchy". Hell, I still consider myself UU in addition to all the other random religious stuff I've since tacked on to things. I just have no desire to deal with the organized part of things.

I'm a gnostic agnostic - I believe it's impossible to determine whether or not "god" exists, but if "god" does exist, then I don't think there's any particular reason there needs to be an interpreter/middleman between me and "god". I saw nothing in the UU structure (probably one of the least "organized" of any even slightly major religion) to make me think differently. Thus, I tend to shy away from "structured" religion of any kind on the basis that it exists merely to impose a middleman between me and "god".

I will say, however, that it was not the committee thing that brought me to this opinion/philosophy. I figured out what I believed on my own (as encouraged by the UU RE program throughout the years) and the organization part just never fit, so I abandoned it when I was done with the UU RE thing.

I was raised in a home environment that was almost religion-free.

My mother went to Catholic school (not her idea) and it was as every bit as horrifying and traumatic as you would imagine 1950's English Catholicism to be. My father was nominally Church Of England and I don't think he particularly cared about it that much.

By the time the 70's rolled around and they had kids, my parents pretty much had bailed on Churches of any kind. I was baptised in a Catholic church largely because my parents' friends and work colleagues were Catholic. It was simply a social convenience. In fact, I didn't even know under which denomination I had been baptized until I was in my mid 20s. As you can see, it couldn't have been much of a concern for either me or my parents - they couldn't be bothered to tell me and I couldn't be bothered to ask.

I don't remember many church visits when we lived in Canada. The only one I can recall was because my mother made my brother and me wear godawful suits and I had my 'Ben' Obi-Wan Kenobi figure with me. There's no memory of God, Jesus, religion etc...just Star Wars.

When we moved to the UK in 1982, I went to Church Of England schools for no other reason than that's what was around and the schools were good. I think you'd even have been hard pressed to find a bible in our house. We certainly never discussed any of it at all.

At age 12, I was interested in martial arts and all things Eastern: Buddhism, Taoism, Oriental Medicine etc. I experiemented with Buddhism for a while, especially 1992-94 when I was reading a lot about the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition. But it didn't 'take'. I found that it was easier to be Buddhist by not labelling oneself as one. There was plenty about it that I liked and absorbed and whatever didn't appeal just fell out of my head. Back in the day I was filled with a lot of rage and would rant at the drop of a hat, thus earning the moniker from my college friends: BWA (Buddhist With Attitude).

By 1996 I didn't consider myself to be of any religious persuasion. In fact, I found atheism to be extremely refreshing and liberating. For some people, this is a shocking, crisis of faith. To me it was a great relief. "Well, thank fuck that is over!"

Inspite of my secular upbringing, I realized that simply living in the Western World meant that you absorbed Judeo-Christian concepts via osmosis. I became very interested in the historical origins of Christianity once it had been removed from the agenda of the various churches. This lead to topics of archaeology, ancient history and a whole mess of Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Occultism, Qabalah, Gnosticism etc etc etc. So I set about purging the left over Xtian memes from my mind, replacing them with my own research and then delving into all the Western Mystery Tradition stuff they didn't want me to know about.

As far as religion goes, I've been left to my own devices pretty much my whole life and am very very grateful for that.

As a toddler, I never REALLY believed that there was an old beardo in the sky, watching us;
Back then I couldn't read, but I could watch television; there were two cartoon series, and one of them I enjoyed, and he other I watched because it was animated, but I was not really into it.
I distinctly remember thinking "Hmm...I don't think there really IS a god...but, well, I guess I'll just pray, perhaps he's going to make the TV show my preferred cartoon."   
I was a really sciency-kid, with a experiment-kit and loads of books on various subjects and so on, and angels and JHVH just seemed implausible to me.

Then came the whole catholic confirmation thing, and for a while I was drawn into it, I really enjoyed it (partially because there was an altar girl I really liked)...but for me, it was never the whole GOD-thing, but the New Testament-stuff, peace and compassion and sympathy and so on. My parents were quite indifferent about it, and, after the whole Sell-Your-Soul-To-God-For-Eternal-Life event was over, I kind of dropped out.
It was just too much droning on and on about the SAME subjects every sunday, and the congregation mumbling through the happy-go-lucky God-songs. I was not really opposed to the church, but it couldn't give me anything worthwhile anymore. After that, I got an Education, became an atheist because that was the hip, intellectual thing to do back then, and proceeded to detest everything catholic.

I guess I have to thank my parents for that, because back then they identified themselves with Christian values but refused to go to church, and that kind of half-assed-ness grew on me.

I was pretty much born and raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. From as early as I can recall, that was my life. Meetings on Sunday, Tuesday night and Thursday night. Hours of knocking on doors on Saturday and Sunday, sometimes during the week if we had summer break. Every night was studying something, a bible passage or a publication from the Watchtower Society. The congregation I grew up in was old (for that particular religion). There were people living there that remembered when "Brother Russell", founder of the religion came through with lectures. The place was full of people that had spent their entire lives focused on the Bible, and the JW interpretation in ways that I have never seen from other Christians. It was not uncommon to go visit a friend, only to find them deep in research on some topic or other. I loved it. They called it understanding "the Deeper Things" and anyone that could handle a discussion of these 'Deeper Things' was bound to do well. I studied a lot and started giving lectures in the Theocratic Ministry School at the age of 6.  I got baptized at 13 and according to the elders who interviewed me, I showed a shocking depth of knowledge for my age. My love of reading (to the exclusion of most everything else) made it easy to grok all of the beliefs of the religion... or so I thought.

One of the biggest "Deeper Things" that was taught was about the Gentile Times. In short, they had all of these numbers and math which proved that God's Kingdom left earth in 607 BC with the fall of the last King of Judah. It would be held down for a period of "times" based on a couple prophecies and dreams. According to the JW's this "Gentile Times" would end when Jesus took the throne and cast Satan out of Heaven for Good. They predicted October, 1914 as the date. They saw WW I as proof that Satan had been cast down and "Woe to the Earth" had begun. Next they concluded that since Jesus told his apostles "This generation will not pass away..." that the people who were alive in 1914 would see Armageddon. They taught this, made us learn it and teach it to others. I could spout off the whole thing, the dates, they interpretations, which scriptures had to be used to figure out which other scriptures etc. All of it drastically pointed to the end of this system happening before I graduated High School.

-----------

In the mid 90's the Watchtower carried an article, which talked about this prophecy and it said "Some people thought that "generation" meant the people living at the time of 1914, but really, generation is simply a generalization of the attitude of people." Within a couple months, no one said anything about the end coming before all of the people alive in 1914 died. By the next year, the only time you saw a reference to it was in a "Well, some brothers were so silly, they actually believed..." rather than admitting that they had screwed up. That sent me into more research. If they wiped that off so quickly, what else had been tweaked? Once I began researching, I found out that they had predicted the end of the world many times, they had mistranslated, misinterpreted and just flat out screwed up a lot of things, then buried them when it became obvious and told all of the faithful that they shouldn't go exploring the "Apostate" literature which is basically what anything anti-JW is considered as, including a discussion of their history. That led me to serious questions, which I couldn't answer. About that time some other life changing events happened and I found it easy to disengage from the religion for a moment and step back. It was about that time that I ran into the SCA, Pagans and eventually, the Principia Discordia.

It was a bad trip.

I was raised without organized religion. When I was 18 I joined a fundamentalist Christian cult to see what it was like, but by the time I was 19 I was over it. 

i went to a christian elementary school (ages 5-11, or thereabouts). the stories never seemed really real to me, and they were kind of relaxed about most things. i never picked up cursing ("goddamnit") though, until i went to a secular high school (12-18).

two things i remember that pissed me off. when i was 7, we had a teacher that was a littlebit more strict, and he didn't allow kids to say "jee" or "jemig", which translates basically to "djeez", cause it was based off of "jesus". i thought that was really stupid because the word had become an ingrained part of my language idiom, and until he drew my attention to it, i never considered what it may have been based on. also, when I said it, I hadnt based it on the word "jesus", so where's the big deal? (remember i was a kid)

the other thing was in the last grade, when i was 11, the teacher told us that Sinterklaas (like Santa Claus, except you get presents at december 5th) didn't exist, assuming we all had already figured that out by now. which was indeed the case, except for me, i had never really considered it as anything but another story, just like the bible stuff. (the reason why he told us btw was because we were going to make presents for our classmates, not out of any sort of sadistic urge to spoil childhood mystery). the thing that pissed me off, later on, was that he did say Sinterklaas didn't exist, he might as well have told us that Jesus wasn't really real, right?

[leaving aside any details about Sinterklaas being the bishop of Myra, or something, which is not really the point here]

I was generally raised with only minimal religion. We went to church on (some) Sundays, and the only church I can remember attending is a UCC (the one that was advertising how much they like gay people) church in Ann Arbor. My dad pretty much never went to church with us, his defense being that he had been to a parochial school and had a minor in philosophy, making his religious education complete.

Around the time I was 10, I got curious and decided to read through some of my dad's old philosophy books. After reading some, I came to the simple conclusion that God was bullshit and obviously not real. (and one year previous had come to the conclusion that Santa still wasn't real, but was a metaphor that people held deeply and has some positive impact, making him about as real as anything needs to be. It's still kind of funny to me how I had a more nuanced opinion of Santa than God at first.)

Admittedly, I never really cared about God. It was pretty obvious that it didn't make sense, but I spent most of my time learning/thinking about science and more abstract sorta scientific philosophical concepts (I remember being 7 and trying desperately to figure out what the hell time was. My final conclusion was that the universe is constantly being destroyed and reformed, but so fast we couldn't perceive it, and time is our way of connecting the constant changes in the universe in a way that makes sense to us.)

Quote from: Mangrove on July 14, 2008, 09:22:35 PM
When we moved to the UK in 1982, I went to Church Of England schools for no other reason than that's what was around and the schools were good.

I was raised in an atheist family but told to make my own mind up. Went to a Catholic Church of England primary school and it was actually alright (apart from the hymns they made us mumble every fucking day (of which we covertly corrupted anyway)). They taught us a fucktonne of Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythology. I think I filtered all of the dull Christian Wango stuff out of my memory. Once, we also learnt about how changes in perception alter the way we experience the world. I think the CCE fucked up with our school.

srlsy i just read the bible and thought even at a young age it was bullshit
I was raised by my grandparents who, being french canadiens, were roman catholic, but they were a little disappointed that me or my dad didnt believe any of it but didnt really push anything on us
that and i dont think i ever really thought too much about spirituality
just never crosses my mind
which i guess is a bit wierd, but...
plus i tend to put everything in historical contexts so that makes it heard to take any text on faith
wish there was a better answer

I was raised in a protestant school. Once a week some prick in a dog collar would lecture us on jesus and love and peace and shit like that. Meanwhile the older kids kids were teaching me to hate catholics and where the best places were to go kick the shit out of them.

I kinda preferred the shit-kicking to the stories about jesus.

Years later I went on summer camp which turned out to be 'scripture union' organised (I was 13 - I didn't know what the fuck SU was!) The next thing a bunch of hippies were trying to brainwash me whilst I was busy trying to get drunk and lose my virginity.

I kinda preferred the drunken sex to the stories about jesus.

I was raised Catholic.  I sometimes think I'm the only ex-Catholic who doesn't have any bitterness over it.  Except maybe the Bishop, he was a spag, but I'd already left the church by the time i heard him speak.  When I was little I believed the things I was told, about God and Jesus and the creation.   (Can't remember ever believing in Santa though I pretended for a long time, because I thought they'd stop giving the presents if I admitted it).  I didn't really believe in the faith sense though, and had a lot of questions, like "How do you know God is the good guy and Satan the bad, except because God told you?"  I also learned to keep my mouth fucking shut about said questions, and replaced ideas I had been told while young, or read in the bible, with more modern knowledge as it came along.

I never liked the idea of Atheism, a product of always being exposed to atheist characters in religious fiction who were just as irrational as the bible thumpers (who, in my blissful youth, I was convinced were a dying breed), but I jumped to deism, and later to agnosticism, as soon as I heard of the ideas.  Eventually I fell in with an mostly atheist crowd online, learned that I hate Dawkins, and then joined the Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic, because for some reason, I liked the idea of a semi organized group.  In fact I liked it enough that I decided to get ordained.  There's not much in the way of criteria for this, you just have to write the head of the church and convince him that you have good reasons for wanting it, so I set about creating my own process, part of which was going to be to write a paper depending the standpoint.  A lot had already been done on this, and I decided to focus on a viewpoint that I hadn't seen discussed before, namely Gnosticism (Sethian/Valentinian sects), I didn't know anything about it going in, I had just heard that Gnostics believed in an evil God (which is sortof correct but way way off overall), as I studied it more, I found I could not find a way to dismiss it as irrelevant, and worse than that, it was actually quite plausible.  So I fell in with the Ecclesia Gnostica, found I was too lazy to really be involved, and had way too many doubts to really throw myself at it besides, and eventually ended up here instead.

PS That One Guy, Could I get you to explain what you mean by Gnostic at all, there's about 50,000 different ways people use the term.

PPS *Hurrays for more of Ratatosk's story

way too normal here...um my parents were agnostic---although not really outwardly ... they didn't go around telling about how agnostic they were...but at the same time they didn't mind going to church during the church days of the year.  the whole shebang seemed fake to me...  it wasn't until mushrooms that i really started questioning reality...and well i still don't know shit.

Quote from: burnstoupee pancakes on July 16, 2008, 08:29:03 AMit wasn't until mushrooms that i really started questioning reality...

I wonder how many times that sentence has been uttered  :lulz:

Long Story Short

Raised in a Catholic family.  12 years Catholic school.  Studied the writings of other religions.  Found myself to be basically a Deist?  Studied Psychology & Behavioral Sciences in College.  Decided I needed to understand more about the American Xian Right in order to understand current politics/history/myth/stories.  Went to a religious forum & learned more about this movement.  Became thoroughly nauseated.  Here I am.  Hi!  Bye!

Short Story Long

I was raised in a Catholic family.  My Mother's family, Italian Catholic (matriarchal brand of Catholicism), my Father's family, Irish Catholic (patriarchal style).  Italian/American people usually have a Catholic priest who is a friend of the family.  Someone who baptizes the babies, marries the people, performs the funerals, shows up for family dinners once in a while, etc.  We had one too.  My maternal grandfather (Pop-pops) met him playing ball in Flushing Meadow Park (home of the World's Fair in the 60's) when they were both young men.  The Catholic Priest guy was more theologian than parish priest.  He & I would speak about theology, philosophy, religion, politics, etc.  Most of the people in my family didn't like the Catholic Priest guy but tolerated him.  I think everyone in my family had arguments with him at 1 time or another .  He did get on a roll sometimes & would be pretty obnoxious, especially when drinking. 

I went to Catholic grammar school & high school.  In grammar school I learned about the Roman & Greek Gods & Goddesses in English Literature classes, the Christian God & Jesus in Religion classes, Biology & Chemistry in Science classes, etc.  For me it all seemed to be the same thing, like stories or myths to explain the world.  Sometimes there were teachers who would ignore questions they couldn't answer.  I, in my logical little head (like most children) was trying to make sense out of the World. I learned a lot.  I also learned if you wanted a good grade, you had to "spit" back what they had just told you. I learned how to do that & got good grades. However, honest questions went unanswered. I now understand they didn't have the answers but it would've been nice if they had explained that at the time. It took me a little while to get that one.

Then, right before I entered high school, my parents divorced.  This was probably inevitable.  My parent's marriage was "controversial" at the time (this is America in the late 1950's remember).  An Italian woman marrying an Irish man?  Even though their religions agreed, their cultures were quite different. That changed my family life quite drastically. At that time, I learned more about the Catholic religion. I was the only one in my immediate family who continued to attend mass.  I found that I was welcome although my parents no longer were.  Unless of course they received some kind of (expensive) religious/legalistic document (an annulment it is called) which, in effect, said that their marriage should never have taken place.  Quite puzzling to a teenager. I questioned many things at that time including me own existence.  I stopped going after a while & studied the sacred writings of many other religions.  (My favorite writings were/are from the Tao Te Ching, Tibetan Buddhism, Native American & Bokononism.) 

Growing up in NY, religion & culture are intertwined. Your neighbors are typically from all over the world, sharing cultures, languages, foods, music, art, etc. Religion is mostly a matter of personal choice & largely dependent on the family background. NYers typically socialize in their homes, restaurants, bars, clubs, where hobbies intersect, out in nature, etc. Most Nyers are not in the habit of inviting you to their places of worship.  It is, I guess, in most cases, beside the point.  Having said that, I have been to many different religious ceremonies, that is, on special occasions, like baptisms, marriages, "coming of age rites," funerals, etc.  These rituals include Catholic, Jewish, Sikh, Islamic, Protestant, Hindi, more & marriages between people of sometimes the same & sometimes different faiths. 

When I lived in the South (Nashville, TN) I was invited to visit places of worship on a regular basis.  This was new to me. I wasn't used to it at first.  I went to various different places, mostly Protestant sects I had never heard of.  I lived there for maybe 2 years & then moved back to NY in early 1990's.  I've lived in NY since then except for a pretty short & disastrous move to South FL. 

Sorry about all the long background information but I think it might be necessary to explain that part before getting to this part (it's also like psychotherapy – you can bill me)  Now this is the part where I decide that I need to learn a little more about this Xian fundamental stuff.  After September 11th, & after my disastrous move, & after getting settled back in NY, I find I need to learn more about this political/religious concept & how it relates to the kooky world of the Xian right in US.  I start reading some, getting a little nauseous, looking at that idiotic president, more nauseous, seeing these kooky Xian people, a little more nauseous, etc.

The thing was tho, in my real life, I didn't know any Xian fundy people.  (Wasn't sure I really wanted to either.)  I started going to this religious forum & was exposed to their thought processes.  Yikes!  This part is a long story too & I won't bore you with details but I learned things there that just about floored me.  The obsession with the Bible, the lunacy & seemingly inhumane nature of their God, the apologists, the sophistry, the hypocrisy, the total lack of humor.  & the Atheists that showed up there were hardly a breath of fresh air either.  Well, I did get a tad entangled there.  It did help me to clarify my own thoughts tho.  For example, I had never even heard of some of their notions, for example the whole rapture thing.  (1 of the Atheists on that forum was shocked that I didn't really understand this bizarre belief about the rapture, having had a Catholic upbringing.  But it was not taught & from what I understand, it is a strange American Xian Right fundamentalist thing & not shared by most Xians worldwide.)  That religious forum was truly an eye-opener for me.  I guess I had been very naïve about these things.  I did have some fun there tho when I started to go a little crazy myself in order to cope.  There's an expression, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."  Along with being "baffled by their bullshit" I probably baffled them at times as well with my particular brand of bullshit too.

& now I'm here.  I guess tho I was always here.  I find (this place) to be very interesting & somehow freeing too.  I really enjoyed reading about how people got here.  Thanks.  Respect.

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 16, 2008, 10:17:37 AM

Quote from: burnstoupee pancakes on July 16, 2008, 08:29:03 AMit wasn't until mushrooms that i really started questioning reality...

I wonder how many times that sentence has been uttered  :lulz:

:lulz:

Raised by a physicist and a cook.

Dabbled in mysticism as a way of rebelling against my dad, but soon figured out they were all spags.

Quote from: LMNO on July 16, 2008, 05:13:19 PM
Raised by a physicist and a cook.

Dabbled in mysticism as a way of rebelling against my dad, but soon figured out they were all spags.

physicists? cooks? kooks? mysticists? rebels? dads? figures?

Eventually, yes.



But it started out just with mystics.  I figured out that they were all trying to describe the same thing, but falling short, and then codifying their failed attempts in some sort of structure that didn't hold up to scrutiny.  Then they get pissed when you point out the stupid stuff they hold as True.

I went to a Church of England primary school.

However, I didn't really care about it then, and I still don't now.  It was just a thing, you know?  We'd do hymns and go to Church on occasion and that was it.  Big whoop.  It was dull, but hardly terrible.

Apart from that, no personal experience with organized religion.  My parents are not religious and hell, even the school I went to was not religious until a fair few years after I joined.  I just noticed a high correlation between douchebaggery and organized religion.  I also dislike hypocritical moralizing, which most religions are essentially based around.

I was raised being told to choose whatever religion I wanted, as my parents didn't think it was right to force their beliefs onto the children.

As such, I went from each organized religion, trying each one out. I soon found out that each one was basically the same, and it was a moot point to try to argue about the tiny details that made the religions just a little different.

One day, I just said, "Fuck it," became a nihilist for awhile, found that a bore, then found Eris. And that's why I'm the fuckup I am today. And I couldn't be happier.

(o hai im new)

I was brought up Mormon, and for a long time I completely believed it. My mom's family had converted when she was about twelve, and my dad (nominally) converted a little while after he married my mom (i.e. they weren't married in the temple, but I think we were all "sealed" there when I was about one).

We were not an "active" family. I think we actually went to church about one week out of every... two to five? It depended on the phase my parents were in-- how exhausted my mom was, given that she often worked two jobs, and how much of a douchebag my dad was being at the time. I think our ward saw us as that half-charity case-- the lost lambs on the bridge of falling off the cliff. The adults I encountered in the church were very nice to me, probably in large part because I was a fairly smart kid and usually tried to follow along in the lessons and ask questions. I quite liked most of the other kids, and had several friends among the other girls who I loved to run around and goof off with.

Most of these friends have since either a) gotten married and started popping out babies, or b) dropped out of the church, dropped out of school, and started popping out babies. The others I've lost contact with; I'm assuming at least some of them escaped.

I was always a pretty gullible kid, and believed wholeheartedly in the church doctrines. After all, my parents, grandparents, and teachers all loved me; they had no reason to lie to me, so obviously they were telling the truth. Since I spent a hefty portion of my time trying to reconcile reason with faith (i.e. "Why do I have a brain like this if my main job is to pop out babies?", or "If it's wrong to like other girls, why haven't I met any Mormon boys I can stand?") I assumed that in their age and experience they'd already put all these questions to rest, and that I'd find out all the answers when I became wise enough and righteous enough. My teachers weren't idiots; my favorite ones were all reasonably well-educated and fairly intelligent, and all of them tried their best to answer my questions.

Unfortunately, a great many of the answers ended in "We don't know, but don't worry-- we'll find out after we die."

It's not a bad philosophy, and I relied on it until I was eighteen. I graduated from early morning high school seminary, and stayed at least halfway "active" my first year in college. My new friends-- none of whom were Church members-- referred to me affectionately as "their Mormon. I went to weekly Institute classes, and at least occasionally hopped into the van on Sundays for the 45-minute drive to the nearest Mormon church. The following summer, I spent a few weeks with my aunt in Salt Lake City.

I guess that was the culmination of my religious education, because immediately after that I lost my faith.

It wasn't any kind of a dramatic event-- nothing like "The Lord has betrayed me and lo I turn my back on him." I was just sitting in the car one day with my mom, waiting in a parking lot for my little brother to finish his piano lesson. It was still summer, and I was watching a tree full of tiny, flittering birds, letting my mind wander. It suddenly, spontaneously occurred to me to wonder what would happen if the church turned out not to be true. In eighteen years, I'd never fully allowed myself to ask that question.

The answer: "If it turns out that the Church is not true, then I will have spent my one shot at human existence being completely miserable, having done nothing I really want to do and a number of things I don't." The second conclusion: "If the Church is true, then God is infiinitely forgiving. [This is one of the most positive tenets of the Mormon faith, I think.] Therefore, if I were to spend my life doing my own thing, then he would understand completely-- being my own, loving father, who knows me better than I know myself-- and forgive me for it before I've even asked him to."

With that safety net in mind, I started questioning my own faith, and came to the disturbing realization that it had been based entirely on a long and thorough process of childhood brainwashing. The most infuriating evidence was in text of the children's hymns I'd always devoured (Singing Time was always my favorite part of the otherwise boring Primary classes):

"I'm so glad when Daddy comes home, glad as I can be..." (I was, in fact, only rarely glad when my father came home.)

The worst one: "Follow the Prophet, Follow the Prophet, Follow the Prophet, Don't go astray, Follow the Prophet, Follow the Prophet, Follow the Prophet, He knows the way."

It struck me as very dishonest-- if it's really true, you shouldn't have to embed shit like this into the minds of impressionable children from the age of two onwards. It should stand for itself. I got more and more angry at the Church leaders, who had suddenly been revealed as a conspiracy of manipulative bastards, and by the end of the evening I was a bitter ex-Mormon agnostic. Have spent the intervening six years in an on-again-off-again dalliance with various (non-Wiccan) forms of paganism (all too serious and ridiculous for me). A couple of weeks ago, I started looking seriously into Discordianism, read parts of the PD and all of the BIP, and realized that this was what I should have been doing all my life. So thanks for being awesome, I guess.    :fnord:

So that's my ridiculously long and detailed story. And also hello. I bugged a Mormon missionary last night. Was going to post about it, but felt too guilty-- it's such an easy faith to question, I almost felt like I was emotionally abusing a child. Hmm.

Hello Calendula! Welcome! Your story is almost just like that of my friend Pete... so much so that my mental image of you was as a diminutive and adorable but ass-kicking lesbian by your second paragraph, I hope you don't mind!

Aww, that's super-sweet, and you're welcome to keep it.  :mrgreen: I'd love to be a diminutive and ass-kicking lesbian! Thanks for the welcome. ^_^

I am half Mormon, but my mom escaped so the only parts I was really raised with are connected to family reunions and major holidays, ie. food. Also a neurotic desire to make preserves.

Are the rumors about the horrifying things Mormons do to jello true?

For a while I was nominally Christian.  I believed in God and Jesus, but didn't really care or know much about Christianity.  One day I got it into my head to open up a Bible and start reading (I've always been a bookworm, still am).  I could not get through all of Genesis before I was thoroughly disgusted.  I didn't care whether or not it was true, I refused to worship that monster.  I have since looked for more evidence for Bible-god (I found nothing), read apologetics (riddled with fallacies), and read secular sites (hey, these guys care about evidence).  I've also looked a bit into some other religions, but it's all just magic and fairytales.  Christianity was only somewhat real to me because I was told from a young age that it was correct.  As for Discordianism, it's just a big joke to me.  And a joke that makes more sense than any religion.

Besides, who else but a crazy woman would make such a fucked up universe?

Quote from: Requiem on July 20, 2008, 01:21:34 AM
Are the rumors about the horrifying things Mormons do to jello true?

Elohim approves this message.
(http://googlegirls.files.wordpress.com/2006/02/mormon.jpg)

Quote from: Requiem on July 20, 2008, 01:21:34 AM
Are the rumors about the horrifying things Mormons do to jello true?

One word:

celery.

My family was never very devout, though I went to a Baptist church when I was a kid, and a Methodist church after we moved. I liked the youth group and the youth minister at the Methodist church, and it wasn't any experience with them that turned me off towards Christianity. I just didn't like the whole "Be Christian or go to Hell" part of the religion, and became deist after a while. After that, I found the Goddess during a time when I was becoming more interested in philosophy in general, and she followed me home, and I made the mistake of feeding her, so she never left.

I think the jello thing might actually have more to do with Mormon culture being so very middle-American at heart, because we've got some very scary jello-based recipes in our family cookbook that long predate my mom's family's conversion.

Jello: it's what's for dinner.

Raised Catholic in Ireland which basically boils down to Baptism 6 months after birth,First Communion,Confirmation and repeat for your kids. Can't remember exactly what it was that I it was all bullshit, But tbh we were hardly devout. It was mass every Sunday(not a big deal to miss it if parents were hungover) and on the holidays. Sit there for 30minutes,listen to the stories bemoan the sermons etc.

I think it was when my local church got this Northern Irish priest(live in the South West of the Republic so far removed from that bullshit up north) who was the hammer and thongs of the Catholic church that started me seeing religion as the parse it is rather then a weekly inconvenience it was. Just he absolute crap he would come up with for a sermon made me hate him and it just spread to everything he stood for.

Following my renouncing of my faith my mum has held out hope that as I got older I'd see the error of my ways and such and I just turned 21 and with that I got the line
"Now that your twenty one,and matured a bit,you'll have to start going to mass again"

My reply had to be "Exactly,I'm a little old to be believing in imaginary friends"

Quote from: Calendula! on July 25, 2008, 12:33:20 AM
I think the jello thing might actually have more to do with Mormon culture being so very middle-American at heart, because we've got some very scary jello-based recipes in our family cookbook that long predate my mom's family's conversion.

Jello: it's what's for dinner.

That makes total sense, it's just the uniform level of saturation of horrifying (and yet often delicious) recipes among Mormons everywhere, yes, even right here in Portland, Oregon, that is remarkable.

Also, hi Voodoo Chile. Nice name!

Raised Jewish, which basically boils down to getting bits cut off a week after birth...
Polish/Russian/German Jewish mother, family fled Nazis, etc. Irish/English/Italian Catholic-raised Father.
Mother is, well, mostly Jewish, with some disillusionment about the whole thing. Father is Christian, in the sense of actually being nice and trying to follow Jesus's teachings. No church or anything, and doesn't call himself religious normally, but tries not to be an asshat. Ignores everything Paul said, that sort of thing. Neither one believes in god in the normal way, they're more deistic than theistic if anything. Can't speak for them though.

So I went to temple, got Bar-mitzvahed, The rabbis always encouraged questioning religion, and I did. Perhaps a bit more than they thought, but they were always encouraging.  No one got angry or upset when I converted to Discordianism, they just said, well, you're a Jewish Discordian, and laughed. (Old joke reference: A man goes to his rabbi, and says, "Rabbi, I want to be an atheist." "Ok," the rabbi says, "but remember, you're a Jewish Atheist.")

Why did I convert? I don't like the Jewish God. So I went looking for another legion. Discordianism fit. I believe that the "goddess" Eris is the inherent chaos in the universe as shown to exist by quantum mechanics. In many ways I'm an atheist, as I don't think it's anything more than that. Then again, I'm not sure where consciousness comes from, it could be that, and if so, would tat make Eris conscious instead of just probability? The Eris I "worship" is the colliective idea of Eris, IE Eris as a meme.

I was raised Catholic, but never really bought into it. My parents, on the other hand, were pretty devout.

One summer they sent me, along with all the other Catholic kids in the area, to a big sleep-over/rally at the diocese of the region. I was about 13 at the time. I remember we got there a bit late, and the 'fun' (cough cough) was already in full swing. Everybody was singing songs and such, clapping away. I sat down next to this gomer who was completely into the singing and clapping. Big fuckin' smile on his ol' face. He looks over at me.

"Why aren't you clapping?" he asked me.

I replied "Well, I hurt my wrist the other day playing basketball."

His smile fades, and becomes an icy death stare "You know, most people sprain their ankles playing basketball, not their wrists...."

I start slapping the back of my arm.

Later that night, we had a dance. They had one rule... "We like to see Blue, we like seeing Pink, we do not like seeing Purple" This was how they explained that they didn't want the boys and the girls dancing to close to each other, you know, in case they got pregnant (I am not making this shit up). I had met this girl there, and we hit it off really well, so we started dancing. WE REALLY weren't all that close to each other, but every once and a while they would come by and shove a ruler between us. They literally had a goddamn stick that they shoved in between kids that were too close for their comfort.

Next morning, I skip the hymns and the singing and the breakfast, and headed out to the back where these young prep cooks were having a smoke. I bummed a smoke off of them, at sat down on a stool.

"So, are with this religion thing that's going on?" they asked.

"Not anymore".

My parents were completely baffled that a weekend with a whole slew of Catholics turned me into a heathen that took up smoking cigarettes. I told them they should be lucky it's not heroin.

I was raised as a catholic, went to mass weekly, was really hardcore catholic in my early teens. My mother was catholic but fell out of it years ago, disgusted with the church. Her mother and sisters believe in reincarnation, one of them is sorta newagey,and her father is a famous physicist that is more like a deist than anything. I think she doesn't want to support something that doesn't accept her child either, the whole homosexuality/bisexuality is a sin stuff. My dad was raised Lutheran but hes read so much about eastern religions I don't know if he even believes religious stuff anymore. At some point I fell out of Christianity because it felt like bunk and clashed with my scientific leanings. I got into Taoism after reading the Tao Te Ching, fell out of that into Buddhism, and then two summers ago I wrote my own personal manifesto which finally made sense to me. During this whole time I was getting to know Discordianism through this forum, and I guess I stick around here for the discussion and the people more than any sense of a religion. The whole "think for yourself schmuck" philosophy always jived with me. I enjoy writing fiery rants about stupid religious folks and the reception they get here.

Its a bit more complex than that but I'd rather keep the rest to myself.

I was born a Dinosaur Shaman
and I'll die a Dinosaur Shaman

Quote from: Pterodactyl Handler on August 05, 2008, 12:38:20 AM
I was born a Dinosaur Shaman
and I'll die a Dinosaur Shaman

But, pterodactyls aren't dinosaurs.  You're a Pterosaur Shaman.  At best a Dinosaur Shaman heretic.

Quote from: Vene on August 05, 2008, 02:08:45 AM

Quote from: Pterodactyl Handler on August 05, 2008, 12:38:20 AM
I was born a Dinosaur Shaman
and I'll die a Dinosaur Shaman

But, pterodactyls aren't dinosaurs.  You're a Pterosaur Shaman.  At best a Dinosaur Shaman heretic.

Maybe Pterodactyl Handler  converted to Pt. Shamanism from Dinosaur Shamanism after realizing how oppressive the latter faith was-- but s/he's still a little scared about the "Pit of Fire" that's supposed to await the heretic after death (I think in this faith it's something to do with volcanoes???) and is planning to make a hasty deathbed conversion back to D. Sham. before going to meet his/her Cold-Blooded Maker???

"God" sees what you're trying to do there, PH. It's a risky game you're playing.  :gheyforum:

He was clearly born a dinosaur shaman.

And besides, so what if he's a Pterosaur?  Next you'll be saying you have to be born a Jew to be considered a Jew.  You racist.

what's the word for people who discriminate on the basis of religion?

and don't say American or Republican or...

Human?

"Primate"

"sectarianist"

That's the religion I was brought up with, btw.

Dirty fenian bastards  :argh!:

I can't wait until Scotland secedes from the Union, and takes Northern Ireland with it.

It will be like having our own little Lebanon, only with shitty weather and incomprehensible accents.

Quote from: Cain on August 05, 2008, 11:40:06 PM
I can't wait until Scotland secedes from the Union, and takes Northern Ireland with it.

It will be like having our own little Lebanon, only with shitty weather and incomprehensible accents.

:lulz:

Meanwhile, back at the Original Topic of this thread:

In a general context, I dislike organized religion because it is a drop-in replacement for personality and character. It presents a set of rules that cover, in theory, every single situation you might ever be faced with. It doesn't even try to hide the fact that its purpose is to program you and remove your responsibility and desire to think for yourself. It's also easy to abuse, easy to hijack, and easily gets out of control. It approaches life with a formula, when life is anything but formulaic or predictable. It drives a wedge between you, and anything and anyone you don't already know, effectively castrating your ability to expand your personal horizons. It rewards ignorance and bigotry. It reinforces the Us-vs-Them paradigm in every activity and every situation.

Specifically, the reason that is all bad as far as I'm concerned is because I have watched organized religion become the root cause of a lot of unnecessary suffering in the people surrounding me throughout my life. It robbed my cousin of his sense of humor, leaving instead an impenetrable cloud of self-loathing and guilt. It infected my father with a chronic lack of ambition and motivation. It has put strain on relationships that have no business being strained. Worst of all, it drove me to literally kill my grandmother, the closest friend I had until I met my wife.

Organized religion has no place in a modern society if that society wants to outgrow the tribalism and separatism that continues to define the Human race long after we have any real evolutionary need for such views.

while I mitten you and agree with every single one of your points,

I'm kind of glad that the motivating force, the background noise in the forebrain of most of this country
says "Be a Good Person".



suckers.  :p

:mittens: to Vex and :agreement: to Cram

Interesting that you would say "program", Vex.  It turns out that organized, hierarchical religion came about with the advent of cities (ie the Sumerian city of Eridu).  Cities are the first living situation in which not everybody knows everybody, so the previous social controls of shame and peer pressure no longer work.  Thus, organized religion, to set out a systemized rule of behavior in the framework of morals and ethics.  In Sumerian culture the government and the religious hierarchy were the same thing.

Interesting thoughts on organized religion ('specially Vex & RBOG)  Organized religion remains because it continues to be one of the most effective ways of controlling people.  Patriotism or nationalism is a type of religion too I think.  Combining the two systems has been used throughout history & continues to be used to control people. 

I dislike organized religion for all the reasons that have been stated.  Organized religion continues to haunt us because organizations tend to be self-perpetuating & have no natural life span.  The one thing you can say about anything that exists in the world (as opposed to the many things that don't) is that whatever exists somehow works, has some sort of function maybe? 

Organizations often continue way on past their usefulness.  Most organizations are self-preserving.  The organization wants to continue to exist even after their mission or goal has been fulfilled.  Organized religions continue to exist because they seem to serve some sort of purpose (as a control? or so maybe people don't have to think for themselves? (schmucks))

The art of medicine grows with knowledge.  The art of science advances with discovery.  Improved technologies replace the old.  Products become better with improved design.  Empires, countries, entire civilizations go through periods of renaissance & decay & sometimes even vanish completely.  Organized religions multiply & mutate & continue to exist in various forms.  The new forms are not necessarily an improvement on the old forms (as is truer in science, technology, products, etc.) but they continue to serve some sort of purpose even if it's only to control people.

Organized religions seem to borrow from various older myths & sacred stories.  They have a way of mutating, splintering off & multiplying.  They're like viruses.   

Human beings are still human beings even though we continue to evolve.  We're still here until we are no longer still here.   

Organized religion may have no place in modern society but unfortunately cannot be ignored.  The predominant religion of a country seems to have a hangover effect on its people.  Even when you are not schooled in that religion, you are subtly & sometimes not so subtly effected.  The main tenets of the religion become engrained in the country's culture.  In the USA, religionists are currently conflating atheism with secularism.  They began to do this zealously in the 1950's with the communist scare & continue to advance their crazy ass notions today.  The theocons, neocons, & whatever else kind of cons have been working diligently to introduce an American style theocrazy.  They added the word god to the pledge of allegiance, added in god we trust to the money & get this, there are still 6 states, (Texas, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee) that require state office-holders to have particular religious beliefs.  The required beliefs include belief in a Supreme Being, and belief in a future state of rewards and punishments.  Theocracy, American style.  The xian right in the USA continues to push this agenda. 

QuoteThe term Christian right is used by people from a wide range of political and religious viewpoints, for self identification and outside commentary. Some 15% of the electorate in the United States tell pollsters they align themselves with the Christian right, which serves as an important voting bloc within the U.S. Republican Party. In recent years, Christian right groups have appeared in other countries than the United States. However, the Christian right remains a idiosyncratic phenomenon most commonly associated with the United States.

...

"Most Americans still do not realize how extraordinary their brand of conservatism is. While the American Left - unions, academics, public-sector workers - have their equivalents overseas, Dustin [Hastert], Maura, Focus on the Family, the angry taxpayers and the militant gun owners are distinctly American."  While the Christian Right is a stronger movement in the United States, other western nations have their own Christian right movements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right

I dunno how accurate the above quote is but 15% of the electorate in a country where so many people are disillusioned enough not to even bother to vote? 

was watching God's Warriors on CNN, saw a segment on Teen Mania (thought that was a porn site).  It is everything we have talked about that is wrong with Organized Religion.  They have an entire reprogramming program.  Scary stuff.

http://www.teenmania.com/corporate/index.cfm

Am looking for a phone number/forum for us to troll.

Forum: http://www.teenmania.com/discussion/
This came up when I tried to enter it:  http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=Firefox&hl=en-US&site=http://www.teenmania.com/discussion/

Quote from: Nigel on August 11, 2008, 08:06:19 PM
Forum: http://www.teenmania.com/discussion/
This came up when I tried to enter it:  http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=Firefox&hl=en-US&site=http://www.teenmania.com/discussion/

Weird

I was pretty much an atheist before encountering Discordianism/Illuminatus. We practically never even discussed religion in my family, except for my grandmothers, but they were really pretty harmless. I didn't really know anyone who was very religious either, at least nobody who would discuss it at length. So I can't say I grew up with any strong feelings about any kind of religion. Later I entered the "scientific/materialistic" world view and I guess atheism came with the deal, or so I thought anyway. I was probably even an asshole about it at times. You've got to love fundamentalist atheists...

Now I've become much more of an agnostic. The discordian world view just seems fundamentally sane to me.

:mittens: to Vex.

Quote from: Mourning Star on August 11, 2008, 09:28:39 PM

Quote from: Nigel on August 11, 2008, 08:06:19 PM
Forum: http://www.teenmania.com/discussion/
This came up when I tried to enter it:  http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=Firefox&hl=en-US&site=http://www.teenmania.com/discussion/

Weird

I bet they were hacked