I don’t have any personal experience with Catholicism but from what I’ve gathered talking to catholic friends of mine, it’s two sides of the same shit coin. My Dads a “born again” as a result of he and my moms divorce and he forced us into church from around age 10 until I left for college. Seems like both denominations thrive on shame and guilt-trips. To this day I feel guilty for being alive half the time.
Indoctrination at a very young age is my guess. I'm assuming most of the posters who go to more open and less judgmental churches itt also don't believe the Bible is literal in every way and that a man walked the earth 2022 years ago and performed literal miracles, died on a cross, then his body vanished from a cave because he was resurrected.
I poorly worded that. I meant due to Covid we weren't comfortable going to Mass in person the previous two Easters but we went on Sunday. It was nice to be able to go to church on Easter.
My son is in kindergarten at a Catholic School so he goes to Mass every week at school. My wife and I are trying to balance not over doing it and going every single Sunday because we don't want him to not like going or hating it. I didn't grow up going to church like my wife did so I am taking her lead on this so hopefully he likes church when he is older like her and her brother still do even though they went to Catholic school from K-8.
Probably sounds stupid, but I’m jealous of people who have strong faith and belief and also practice positive things they preach. Wish it was that simple and easy for me. I’m positive and a good person, but the 100% belief of something like Jesus perplexes me. Like I said it’s probably weird , but it seems nice to have faith and believe something. The world can suck and humans suck, so being able to escape or justify it blindly may make life easier.
My grandmother is like that. She is 94 and has had a lot of hardships but her faith has kept her positive and she is forgiving of everyone and the sweetest person I've ever met. She's a tough example to live up too.
i have an active disdain for all the abrahamic religions, western protestant christianity in particular. tbh, i’m more likely to burn a church than attend a service Spoiler
Hymn To Lucifer Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act? Without its climax, death, what savour hath Life? an impeccable machine, exact He paces an inane and pointless path To glut brute appetites, his sole content How tedious were he fit to comprehend Himself! More, this our noble element Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end. His body a bloody-ruby radiant With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant On Eden's imbecile perimeter. He blessed nonentity with every curse And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense, Breathed life into the sterile universe, With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence The Key of Joy is disobedience.
My grandmother and great grandmother were both like that. Both had husbands die early and raised kids alone and were sweet and generous and devout despite hardships. And pro union FDR dems. My grandmother fucking despised Trump and everything he stood for before she died and was woke as fuck for a 90+ y/o religious gal. When people ask who my hero is I always pick one of them.
Not very hard to become atheist at a very young age when you deal with some pretty horrendous things like I did in early childhood. Fairly easy at a young age to sit and wonder how a god could let something happen to you when you’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve grown other reasons throughout the years, but a lot of people privileged enough not to deal with shit when they were younger will never truly get that part. Especially the happy go luck dumb fucks that try to tell you it’s god’s plan. Been very cynical and jaded most of my life.
the girl i've been hooking up with recently has a different 666 tattoo on each ass cheek. that's my type
I enjoyed the time my family was able to stay at home. I get along really well with my wife and daughters so it was great. obviously, that wasn’t the case for many but for me and mine the pandemic making us stay home was great. That said I was mostly joking about Grundles wording in that post. It read like he was thanking Covid for being able to go back to in person church when what meant was they Covid caused him to miss the last 2 years.
I know you knew, it fits your personality. If we’re all in the trust tree right now I’ve been trying to be more grateful and it helps to keep me framed and in that mindset when I share.
I get rather peeved thinking about the enormous sums of money my dead relatives left The Catholic Church. Paying the legal fees for attorneys whose job it is to buy the silence of sexual abuse survivors on the cheap is incredibly noble and saintly.
Every now and then you get a like from an old thread and you immediately think "Fuck what in the world bullshit came out of my mouth (keyboard)." And then it's like this and it's like, hey, good job, you decided not to be an asshole.
Read this Opinion on NYT today and thought of this thread. I have recently found myself questioning my faith, specifically how I will handle things with my young children. I've enjoyed reading this thread. Spoiler How to Pray to a God You Don’t Believe In By Scott Hershovitz Mr. Hershovitz is a philosophy professor who has written a new book about children and philosophy. The world is awful at the moment. Millions have died of Covid-19. Authoritarianism is on the rise, abroad and at home. And now there’s war, with all the death, destruction and dislocation that entails. In dark times, many people seek refuge in religion. They hold fast to their faith. But darkness also drives many people away from God. My older son, Rex, is one of them. He’s studying for his bar mitzvah, but he doesn’t believe in God. He told me that one day, when we were taking a walk. “Why not?” I asked. “If God was real, he wouldn’t let all those people die.” He was talking about the pandemic, but he could have been talking about Shitty AMC Show of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha or any number of other atrocities he’s been exposed to in his short life. “Why do you say that?” “God is supposed to care about us,” Rex said. “That doesn’t seem like something you’d let happen if you cared — and could stop it.” This is the “problem of evil.” It’s an old philosophical question. Rex had never heard of it, but it’s not uncommon for kids to rediscover ancient arguments on their own. They’re thinking the world through. And if you think about God (who’s supposed to be all-powerful and endlessly empathetic), the existence of evil poses a serious puzzle: Why does God let us suffer? People have proposed many answers, but most are poorly reasoned. For instance, some say that good requires evil — that it can’t exist without it. It’s not clear why that would be true. But the bigger problem is that if you take that view, you call into question God’s omnipotence. It turns out there’s something God can’t do: create good without evil. But also: If good requires evil, maybe just a little bit would do. Is absolutely every evil in the world essential? Why can’t we have a world that’s just like this one — except without that twinge of pain I felt last Tuesday? What kind of God can’t soothe my sciatica? My physical therapist, Tony, makes my back feel better, and he doesn’t even claim to be a deity. He is a hero, though (at least to me). And some say that’s why God allows evil in the world. He doesn’t care about pleasure and pain. He cares about what pleasure and pain make possible — compassion, redemption and heroic acts, like Tony mending my back. To get those goods, though, God has to give us free will. And once we have it, some of us abuse it. This is, historically, the most influential answer to Rex’s question. But I don’t buy it. Why can’t God create only those people who would use their free will well? Why can’t he wave Paul Farmer through and keep Vladimir Putin out? He knows in advance how each of them will act — if he’s really omniscient. Some believers feel the force of these arguments, but maintain their faith nonetheless. Marilyn McCord Adams, a philosopher and Episcopal priest, doubted that we could explain the existence of evil. But that didn’t bother her. A 2-year-old child, she explained, might not understand why his mother would permit him to have painful surgery. Nevertheless, he could be convinced of his mother’s love by her “intimate care and presence” through the painful experience. For those who feel the presence of God or have faith that they will feel it later, I think Ms. Adams’s attitude makes some sense. But if I’m honest, it sounds too optimistic to me. I’m with Rex. I think the problem of evil poses a serious barrier to religious belief. Still, Rex continues to study for his bar mitzvah. Why? Before Rex came along, I struggled to account for my own religious practice. I don’t believe in God, so why do I fast on Yom Kippur and observe Passover? It’s just what we Jews do, I might have said; it keeps me connected to a community that I value. I’d still say that, I suppose. But when Rex was 4, he reframed my view of religion. One night, I was cooking dinner, and he asked, “Is God real?” “What do you think?” I asked. “I think that for real God is pretend and for pretend God is real,” Rex announced. I was stunned. That’s a big thought for a 4-year-old. It’s a big thought for a 40-year-old. I asked Rex to explain what he meant. “God isn’t real,” he said. “But when we pretend, he is.” Philosophers have a name for this sort of view. They call it “fictionalism.” Suppose I say, “Dumbledore teaches at Hogwarts.” If that was a claim about this world, it would be false. Hogwarts doesn’t exist here, and neither does Dumbledore, so he can hardly teach there. But they do exist in a different world — the fictional world that Harry Potter lives in. The sentence “Dumbledore teaches at Hogwarts” is true in that fiction. Some philosophers are fictionalists about morality; they think rights aren’t real except in stories that we tell. Others are fictionalists about numbers; they think that math is made up. I think both views are mistaken; I believe in morality and math. But I think Rex was right — and onto something important: For real, God is pretend, and for pretend, God is real. I am a fictionalist about God. Our family recently switched synagogues. At the old one, the service was mostly in Hebrew, and I don’t speak much Hebrew. I know how to say all the prayers; I just don’t know what most of them mean. So at synagogue, I would sing along and let the words wash over me. I liked that. At the new synagogue, we sing a lot of the same songs and say a lot of the same prayers. But we say many more of them in English. And I find that almost intolerable. It turns out, I like my religion inscrutable. I just don’t believe the stories that we tell. And hearing them in English forces me to confront that, over and over again. Still, I pretend. And I don’t plan to stop. Because pretending makes the world a better place. I learned that from my kids too — Rex and his younger brother, Hank. Pretending blurs the boundaries between this world and the ones we imagine. It breathes life into stories, letting them shape the world we live in. Just think of the delight kids take in Santa Claus, even those who know, deep down, that he’s not real. Or the way they lose themselves in play. Pretending makes the world more magical and meaningful. And it’s not just for kids. When it feels like the world is falling apart, I seek refuge in religious rituals — but not because I believe my prayers will be answered. The prayers we say in synagogue remind me that evil has always been with us but that people persevere, survive and even thrive. I take my kids so that they feel connected to that tradition, so that they know the world has been falling apart from the start — and that there’s beauty in trying to put it back together. Soon, Rex will stand before our congregation and pray to a God he can’t quite believe in. It will be a magical morning, and for that moment, at least, we’ll transcend the troubles of the world.
I chose Sunday football over mass. Grew up in a small town where 75% of the people used church to talk shit and from an early age I wasn’t about it. Just be a good person, it ain’t hard
The expression ‘god given talent’ annoys me so much so god decided to give someone the ability to run a 4.3 40 at 230 pounds and next he was tired so he botched the other one and forgot to give him one leg? If that’s the case then god doesn’t sound like such a great guy like some try to make him out to be.
I played college sports, I thought god gave me talent. Then he also gave me type 1 diabetes at 28 years old because
Yeah, that’s just shitty luck my gf got diagnosed with type 1 like 2 years ago at 39 years old. It sucks, but she is doing alright. I hope you are doing fine also. It’s really a lot of shit to manage.
It was hard at first, but just some changes you need to make overall to make it a lot easier on yourself. My biggest issue is weight, i weigh less than my JH/HS self and it’s lowkey depressing.
yeah, my gf actually lost a lot of weight before being diagnosed and she was wondering why. That was it, her pancreas was barely working. She now looks way healthier to me but she thinks she looked better when she was skinny as fuck and always a bad intake away from falling on the floor unconscious.
I went from about 190lbs-200lbs down to 145lbs before being diagnosed as T1D. I’m hovering around 165lbs-175lbs… but that was me in like 8th grade. I lost all my muscle and the only thing that looks like normal me is the lower half.
yeah sucks, it’s tough to build back with the diet that you need to follow. For her the muscle part is not that important but we can’t ever have a kid. Too dangerous for her and the kid. Well we could try but we took that decision.
I had to drive back from Tennessee to Florida last Sunday and forgot how many billboard signs about “Hell is real” that are on the road from South GA to Ocala. I feel like I should put up at least one billboard to counteract that horseshit. Conservatives love to talk about kids bring groomed by teachers for nefarious issues but to me teaching a child about never ending torture if they don’t believe and/or behave in a certain manner is one of the most damaging things to a child’s brain.