I’m Not Into Organized Religion
Jesus Christ i’ve heard people make this statement so many times.
The problem with saying this is that religion, by its definition and motives, requires organization.
Religion is an organized set of beliefs, texts, rituals and responsibilities for it’s members to follow.
Cherrypicking sanitized (and usually contextless) portions of religious thought or principles from different religions doesn’t make you “unorganizedly religious”. That just means you read books and can form opinions and likes; Congrats.
If doing that constituted a personal religion, which it doesn’t because it’s unorganized and arbitrary, then doing or believing pretty much anything could constitute a religion if we were to use that criteria. Are you seeing where i’m going with this? Of course you aren’t.
Even the Bible, if you like to read parts of it and quote it to organized religioners to point out their hypocrisy, is organized into chapters, (they call them books, which I disagree with for reasons of clarity) verses and wouldn’t you know it that those tightass organized religion folks also put this book into order by pages (using the 1,2,3,4 etc system, of course).
I agree that a stack of torn out pages from 5 different religious books flopped into a wicker basket willy nilly is a better way to keep it less strict and religiously evil but try explaining that to them.
I also think that the way organized religion meets at certain times and days is total bullshit and probably only helped them meet at certain times when they were doing untold evil during the Inquisition and this one time I saw them in front of Target asking for toys for poor people at Christmas.
To be against organized religion is just one more fence for wimps to sit on, smugly.
Oh well i’m religious but I don’t follow any organized religion.
This is like saying that you drive an automobile that is made from leaves and sticks and bric-a-brac, but doesn’t actually have wheels or provide locomotion and now that you think about it, looks more like a wash basin than an automobile but you’d like to call it a automobile because you don’t really know what an automobile is.
Let’s keep our definitions tight so that we can communicate at a high level please.
Let’s review:
Religion is organized.
If you do not follow a religion, you are “not religious”.
They have a few other words for being not religious (agnostic, atheist, etc) but I don’t know the nuances of them and I think they’re for dickheads. Stop making up words for things that mean that you don’t do something. I don’t do a lot of things.
Imagine if there was a word for every possible thing that you could possibly not do.
If you don’t do something, then keep on trucking and shut the fuck up about it.
Oh yeah, you can also say you’re “spiritual” if that goes well with that hemp bag you hold your glass weed pipe in.
I have a beaver that looks like Dorothy's slippers
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Tagged with atheists, language, organized religion, stupid
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Dude, I don’t even know which sentence to quote here. Love.
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Agree with Amy. Good to see you back in action.
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You are About as catholic as I am Hindu. What’s ur stance on “convenient” Christians such as yourself? Aren’t u fence sitting as well?
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More befuddling to me is people who are into organized atheism.
Consider the logic: There is no God. There is no afterlife. So, I plan to spend my incredibly limited time in the universe arguing with and trying to convince those that disagree that their belief system is a fairy tale.
Regardless of who turns out to be right on the issue. At least the religious people are proportionately spending a smaller proportion of their perceived existence trying to convert others and.
Further, if the atheists are right and the religious folks win the debate, no harm no foul. It’s all for naught anyway. To the contrary, if the religious people are right then at least a few converted non-believers will be spared the consequences of, at worst, scalding pain for eternity, and at best an eternity of “I told you so” smugness in the afterlife.
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If people are idiotic enougth to believe in fairytales then as long as they are happy, let them bathe in ignorance. If I am wrong I’d like to think that me and god could debate his principals and inaction in his childrens time of need. If he does not act then is it not correct to say that his benevolance is wasted. Men have acted out the greatest evils in the name of god and if this is his effect on man then, personally, I want nothing to do with him. I require physical proof to believe in something. If not physical proof then maybe I could settle for a sign. I hate how people turn to god only in their hour of need. That is truely sad and highlights the worst parts of what it is to be human.
It is also funny how the church destroyed the document which stated that god need not be worshipped in a church or under steeple but can be worshipped anywhere. The church also sickens me with its treatment of its warrior order, the Knights templar, who gave their lives to defend the greedy, self serving interests of the church in the holy land.
I don’t know if it is just ignorance but if one is fully aware of the history of the church then how can one possibly live by its word.
centuries have passed and nothing has changed.
eternal damnation, fire and brimstone and one hell of a tan. No sitting on the fence for me.
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“I require physical proof to believe in something. If not physical proof then maybe I could settle for a sign.”
There is no scientific, material proof for any semiotic concept such as God, freedom, love, truth, etc. Stating that God doesn’t physically exist is tautologically correct in scientific terms, but doesn’t disprove existence in experiential terms.
Professing that religion is fairy tale is itself a solipsistic belief system (i.e., a “fairy tale”), yet but that remains ungrounded in centuries of human history and experience.
The New Atheism fad (Dawkins, Hitchens, etc) seems to driven more by animus against Eurasian religious ethnicities than a genuine debate about the existence of souls or divinity (when’s the last time you read an atheist rant against Buddhism or Jainism). It applies modern standards of decency and human rights to atrocities that occurred in pre-modern time, but then fails to give credit to the reforms and permanent improvements that religions have made over the millennia. New Atheism seems to be nothing more than a cult for ornery people to act out anti-social behaviors with judgmental and often mean words.
Like disbelief in climate change, organized atheism incurs an asymmetric risk. As a scientist might ask—what is the expected outcome of an event that involves and immeasurably infinite loss? Infinite loss. What is the total expected loss of belief? The mild inconvenience of a pious and just life (with our neighbors and with the Earth).
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Did you ever think that when people say this, they mean they are religious, but don’t like to get themselves involved with particular organized religions (christianity, cathlicism, etc.)? That they want to believe things outside of that one particular religion, and don’t feel that their beliefs belong to one?
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Interestingly enough, Liz, that’s more or less what this article addresses. How convenient.
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haha, thanks Divi. Perfect response. Did she even read the fucking article?
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For people who way they only beleive what they can scientificaly prove and see:
Think of the flatland scenario used in physiscs. In a 2-d world you can not comprehend 3-D. This thus proves that there are relms beyond our comprehension. So scientific theory proves the existance of things we can not prove (since we are limited to our 3 dimensions)
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How can you know what you could or could not comprehend on a 2-D world if we don’t live on one. Therefore your 3-D mind comprehended a 2-D world, which proves we can comprehend that which we cannot see, since the only 2-D that we see is made by us.
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Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.
Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.
God preaches,—a noted clergyman,—
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I ’m going all along!
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Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.
Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.
God preaches, -a noted clergyman,-
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I’m going all along!
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I’m not religious.
great post.
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This really puts religion into perspective for me:
‘Science flies you to the moon, Religion flies you into buildings’
Religion is not and can never be progressive.
It’s never the answer.
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Science gave us airplanes, guns, TNT and the atom bomb.
What is the ratio of persons killed by atheistic/non-theistic institutions than by theistic ones?
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Well, no sweat, that is the work of man and not any singular belief system. Some of the scientists in these projects were religious men.
We are hard wired to kill our fellow man. We just made it more efficient. I hope, personally, that these creations of man kill us all.
Fire and brimstone, nuclear or otherwise. We’re all going to burn.
Live for the moment.
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Eh, you’re a sick asshole. “we are hard wired to kill our fellow man.”
I’m guessing you have never read up on evolution in terms of empathy and how the greater good for a whole entire group trumps the individual agenda of any one member of the group.
Whether you read regularly or not, a penchant for murder or violence is not an evolved stance, and is not beneficial.
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Just to clarify for the author, something which the author could have done with a simple google search, when people refer to organised religion they are referring to the organisational structures, stigma, habits and protocols which humans have attached to religious texts.
i.e. The Bible does not mention anything about silly hats, but the pope and his cardinals wear them.
The texts in the Bible were not responsible for the Inquisition, man’s innate desire for wealth and dominion caused that and they used the biblical texts to justify those acts.
Hence when I say I am not into organised religion I mean that I do not need a formal “Church” structure in order to read and live in the manner suggested by those texts. This is applicable to all religions.
And by the way, seeing as I am not a scientist, everything scientific that I believe to be true is taken purely on faith.
Fuck Dawkins, believing in science takes just as much faith as believing in God.
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I was very amused to see someone point out that the phrase “organized religion” is a bit of an oxymoron. I have been abusing the phrase for years and I think it is really clever to see someone spot it for the contradiction that it is. However I think that you take it a little to literally. the english language isnt perfect, certain notions cant be portrayed perfectly and remain simple. When one thinks of an organized religion they think of belonging to a specific doctrine and following very specific dogma, so when one says that they are not into organized religion i think it would be safe to presume that they are into personalized religion. I guess it suprised me to see someones panties quite that twisted over it. as far as i am concerned, religion is a man made thing that serves as a very large defense mechanism, so i dont take a lot of it too seriously. and as a side comment, thank you previous poster for saying what i have thought for years. science and god are both faith based, espetially for the people who couldn’t do the most basic of scientific experimants. we believe what we want to believe or what we are programmed to believe, regardless of whether or not it has been proven.
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[...] drink or use drugs? My friend Keith does, i’ll pass this to him. You don’t believe in organized religion? Cool. I don’t believe in playing racquetball, find me a racquetball playing dickhead right [...]
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Laugh. What do you mean, “there are no words to describe what people don’t do”?
Atheist, teetotaler, virgin, prude, vegetarian, etc. There are tons of words that describe what people don’t do. Get a fluckin dictionary, for goodness’ sake.
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