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[scriver]

They were Samarite pigs maybe? Or.. I'm struggling to remember the names of the other Jewish peoples, so let's go with Phoenician, maybe? Or Roman estate pigs?

Maybe that's why it was fine that he just murdered an entire family's means of making a living. They were bad people for keeping pigs anyway. And also probably collaborators of the occupation!

[WealthyRadish]

Pigs are notorious collaborators; if they get one whiff of the resistance, they're bound to squeal.

[nenjin]

And they've got dirt on everyone; including themselves.

[Telgin]

this despite being supposedly almighty so he could have sent them basically anywhere rather than killing someone's livestock en masse

This is one of the big things that always bothered me about most Christian teachings, really, and did a lot to hurt my faith.  God can do anything, but generally seems to do things from a very human perspective and usually not in the best way possible even then.

More generally it reduces down to the problem of evil and I don't think anyone will ever be able to reconcile the thought of an all powerful, all loving and all just god without brushing it off in some way.  As an example, a store got robbed in my hometown last year and the cashier was shot.  She only suffered an injury to her hand, thankfully, but the praises flowed around church thanking god for it.  Meanwhile, I'm sitting there and wondering why god would allow her to be shot at all, you know?  Or the people who get cancer and then after extensive treatment go into remission, all thanks to god.

Also reminds me of the website or whatever it was about amputees that god must hate because he didn't regrow their lost limbs.  God only seems to be able to inconsistently heal things that could have healed themselves anyway... so Occam's Razor sounds fairly relevant here.

Interestingly that church doesn't really play up the loving aspects of god very much and has even proudly proclaimed that god will kill babies if he feels like it, usually followed up with an explanation that it's for the baby's own good because it was given to bad parents.  But, you know, why even go through the trouble if god knew that was going to happen?  He should have just kept the baby from being conceived.  Then we get to the whole problem of predestination and why even create people if he knows he's sending them to Hell forever one day...

Fundamentalism is the worst.

[Teneb]

this despite being supposedly almighty so he could have sent them basically anywhere rather than killing someone's livestock en masse

This is one of the big things that always bothered me about most Christian teachings, really, and did a lot to hurt my faith.  God can do anything, but generally seems to do things from a very human perspective and usually not in the best way possible even then.

More generally it reduces down to the problem of evil and I don't think anyone will ever be able to reconcile the thought of an all powerful, all loving and all just god without brushing it off in some way.  As an example, a store got robbed in my hometown last year and the cashier was shot.  She only suffered an injury to her hand, thankfully, but the praises flowed around church thanking god for it.  Meanwhile, I'm sitting there and wondering why god would allow her to be shot at all, you know?  Or the people who get cancer and then after extensive treatment go into remission, all thanks to god.

Also reminds me of the website or whatever it was about amputees that god must hate because he didn't regrow their lost limbs.  God only seems to be able to inconsistently heal things that could have healed themselves anyway... so Occam's Razor sounds fairly relevant here.

Interestingly that church doesn't really play up the loving aspects of god very much and has even proudly proclaimed that god will kill babies if he feels like it, usually followed up with an explanation that it's for the baby's own good because it was given to bad parents.  But, you know, why even go through the trouble if god knew that was going to happen?  He should have just kept the baby from being conceived.  Then we get to the whole problem of predestination and why even create people if he knows he's sending them to Hell forever one day...

Fundamentalism is the worst.

One of the things that really turned me off from Christianity was the concept of "god-fearing". If your god is loving and caring... why do you fear him? One of the times that this really hit me was during the wedding of one of my cousins, where a chorus kept chanting about how a god-fearing couple was a good couple... and then during the ceremony the priest kept going on about how cool his god is and how much he loves his followers. Those things are not compatible, my muchachos.

My gods can be dicks sometimes, but they are honest about it.

[itisnotlogical]

I dropped the whole Christian act as soon as I entered high school and realized that creationism is incompatible with any scientific understanding. Now however I think it's a pretty immature and un-nuanced viewpoint, as correct as it is.

What really gets me recently is how many people just say they're Christian without putting in any effort, just because everybody around them is. Mom hasn't been to a church, cracked a Bible or praised Him in my entire life. She's as judgmental, grudge-holding and not-cheek-turning as she's ever been. Even her talk radio shows don't talk about Christ that much. But whenever she buys a lottery ticket or somebody gets the sniffles, now out comes the praise God and the hail Mary.

Here's another thing that gets me. I've been reading the Bible lately, and almost every Bible has a section at the beginning with verses to refer to during times of crisis. To a one, they were very un-comforting "Don't worry, God will make everything okay" verses with zero substance to a non-Christian. Why not pick some verses from the story of Moses or Jacob, who overcame incredible circumstances by the strength of their character, application of Christian virtues, and some actual miracles? Why the shallow "dun worry, iz k" preaching?

[Iduno]

I've been reading the Bible lately, and almost every Bible has a section at the beginning with verses to refer to during times of crisis.

"Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."

[Egan_BW]

I've never been a christian*, but PTW.

*When I was very young I took the existence of monotheistic god for granted because everyone else did, though I was confused when I was told that said god was male. Probably absorbed some hippie goddess background noise as much as christian background noise.

[Cthulhu]

I became agnostic, then atheist in college.  I went to a Christian high school and while on some level I believed it on another semi-conscious level I enjoyed finding reasons it was wrong.  After a brief stint being a euphoric atheist I let my latent interest in occult shit bloom, especially chaos magic, which as a core element doesn't believe that magic needs to be "real" to be real, it just needs to work.  If you take a placebo and the problem you took it for goes away, then it worked, didn't it? 

Likewise Gods don't need to exist to be real.  Jesus Christ never existed but in 100 years his impact will still be felt in every element of western society while nobody will remember who you were, so who's really real here?  Gods were created by human cultures to embody various culturally desirable traits, and when you invoke them you're really invoking those traits.  Ritually hypnotizing yourself into an ecstatic mindset where you're filled with your god's holy attributes is going to have an effect on you, so the question of whether or not that god "exists" is immaterial.

You should try it some time.  Walk through one of those stupid graveyard of the gods shows your local college atheists put on some time and consider that each one of those gods had a bigger impact on the world than any of the people putting up his gravestone.  Pray to him when you need what he has.

In more concrete terms, the "spiritual/religious experience" is an altered state of consciousness.  I think it's probably similar to dreaming and schizophrenia, where the integrity of the "self" is diminished to a point that your own thoughts appear to be coming from outside the self.  Most religious and magical traditions seem to have semi-independently found ways to make this happen.  Pentecostals are an obvious example of it.  You can say they're crazy, but their methods clearly get results.

You can make it happen too, if you borrow those practices or develop your own.  There's plenty of value to be had in talking to an otherwise-inaccessible part of your own mind.  This may be getting outside "ex-christian" but it's what I got up to after I stopped being Christian.

[Bumber]

My family used to go to church whenever grandpa would visit us. It was boring and I never paid any attention to the sermon. We never went to church on our own, and by the time I would've been old enough to listen and ask questions, we started visiting grandpa instead. We didn't end up going to his church for whatever reason. All my knowledge of God came from family and pop culture. To this day I still haven't read the Bible, so most of the stuff that's in there didn't factor in my decision.

In my early teens I began wondering why bad stuff happens to good people. How natural disasters kill indiscriminately and have nothing to do with the nature of evil. About how contradictory omnibenevolence is when you get sent to hell for not believing in Him, when He answers no prayer, nor gives any evidence of His existence. I decided either God must forgive people of their sins, or He is a tyrant unworthy of worship.

I came to realize God was no more credible than the magical Santa Claus I'd already learned wasn't real. My science classes taught me rational explanations for the origin of life that didn't require an intelligent creator to build our flawed bodies. I decided life was too short to waste praying to a nonexistent entity. Also, now I don't need to worry that somebody's always watching me poop (hopefully.)

I later learned about how brain damage can drastically affect one's memory, personality, and awareness. If so much is determined by the brain, that doesn't leave much left for a soul. After a while I came to terms with the fact that we'll all cease to exist when we die, and nothing we do will matter by the heat death of the universe. I've resolved to just try to enjoy life and will probably have my body cryonically preserved in the off chance the "self" can survive a restart of the brain, so that I can continue to exist for a few more millennia.

Maybe some people need a god to give them morals or a reason to exist, but I've realized I don't have a spiritual side. Maybe some day it'll try peyote or something to "expand my consciousness" or whatever, but I'm not in any particular rush to go out and eat my mushrooms acquire some drugs.

[Teneb]

I became agnostic, then atheist in college.  I went to a Christian high school and while on some level I believed it on another semi-conscious level I enjoyed finding reasons it was wrong.  After a brief stint being a euphoric atheist I let my latent interest in occult shit bloom, especially chaos magic, which as a core element doesn't believe that magic needs to be "real" to be real, it just needs to work.  If you take a placebo and the problem you took it for goes away, then it worked, didn't it? 

Likewise Gods don't need to exist to be real.  Jesus Christ never existed but in 100 years his impact will still be felt in every element of western society while nobody will remember who you were, so who's really real here?  Gods were created by human cultures to embody various culturally desirable traits, and when you invoke them you're really invoking those traits.  Ritually hypnotizing yourself into an ecstatic mindset where you're filled with your god's holy attributes is going to have an effect on you, so the question of whether or not that god "exists" is immaterial.

You should try it some time.  Walk through one of those stupid graveyard of the gods shows your local college atheists put on some time and consider that each one of those gods had a bigger impact on the world than any of the people putting up his gravestone.  Pray to him when you need what he has.

In more concrete terms, the "spiritual/religious experience" is an altered state of consciousness.  I think it's probably similar to dreaming and schizophrenia, where the integrity of the "self" is diminished to a point that your own thoughts appear to be coming from outside the self.  Most religious and magical traditions seem to have semi-independently found ways to make this happen.  Pentecostals are an obvious example of it.  You can say they're crazy, but their methods clearly get results.

You can make it happen too, if you borrow those practices or develop your own.  There's plenty of value to be had in talking to an otherwise-inaccessible part of your own mind.  This may be getting outside "ex-christian" but it's what I got up to after I stopped being Christian.

Thank you for putting into words something I could not.

[Loud Whispers]

Am I technically ex-christian if I used to be in christian grade school?

That makes you a undergraduate in christology

I'm pretty sure Dwarf Fortress players go to the bad place by default no matter what

In Dante's Inferno Satan is frozen in ice, so it stands to reason there's some pump operators down there draining the caverns into hell, then opening a channel to the surface to expose satan's tile to the outside and hey presto, devil on ice


Also my contribution to this thread is that when I was 4 my Christian school held a play where everyone had to attend. They told everyone in my year to dress up as sheep, but I thought sheep were lame and insisted on showing up as a snake. Inevitably I did and on the Christmas play there were about 8 rows of sheep with a lone snake in the middle. It took me a good few years to later appreciate what I had accidentally done

[nenjin]

That's pretty amazing LW. I'm surprised they let you go on stage.

Although I suppose it works for the message.

I've never liked the concept of humbling yourself before God. Not because I resent giving yourself over to a higher power per se. More because in practical terms it means humbling yourself before his mortal instruments. And we all know how well that goes over many times.

[Magistrum]

I'm pretty sure Dwarf Fortress players go to the bad place by default no matter what

In Dante's Inferno Satan is frozen in ice, so it stands to reason there's some pump operators down there draining the caverns into hell, then opening a channel to the surface to expose satan's tile to the outside and hey presto, devil on ice

Damn, never thought of that. Gotta try it, I became complacent after the cave in checkerboard and never did anything new.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

After a while, I considered giving being euphoric a rest. Then I discovered Marxist critique of religion and ascended the power of my euphoria to new and glorious heights.