found online by Raymond
From Infidel753:
To many Americans in the future, Christianity will look the way Islam looks to most Americans today — a group with unfamiliar and bewildering beliefs and practices, largely represented in the popular mind by its extremist minority which holds intolerant, threatening, and frightening views. It’s hard to imagine them finding this appealing. Even today, the number of atheists who join a religion is tiny compared with the veritable stampede in the opposite direction. Whatever ground religion loses is, by the time the second generation arrives, lost to it forever.
Don’t forget:
Baptism – I was in my early teens when I did this. I had to put on some robes, stand in front of the congregation, and be dunked into some water by the pastor after promising something about loving Jesus. Infant baptisms in the Catholic church are much more ritualized and involve godparents.
Communion – My church passed around grape juice and oyster crackers rather than call people up for wine and bread and only did it once a month, but it was the same idea. My parents did not allow me to participate until they thought that I was old enough to understand the meaning of the ritual.
Saying “grace” before meals – This was expected before every dinner I had. 99% of the time, it involved reciting the same lines, giving thanks to God for the food and wishing for the family to be well. The ritualization robbed it of its meaning, as ritualization (i.e. habit, tradition) almost always does. I always thought it was strange to thank God for the food when it was my parents who worked to make the money to buy the food and prepared it, but they said that we would die if God didn’t make all of that possible in the first place. I wondered why we should be thankful that God provided the world (more accurately, parts of the world — and not all the time) with the resources necessary for survival, as the alternative would entail suffering and quick death for no good reason. I didn’t pursue the point with them; I’m sure that they, like many other Christians, think that there would be nothing wrong with God making us suffer, since God is good by definition and entitled to do whatever it wants to us because we are merely its creations.
I never did like rituals, even in non-religious settings like celebrations and patriotic displays in sports. Most of all, I dislike how tribal and passionate people become about rituals and symbols, how they conflate those things with what they represent or even value them more, and how they expect others to follow along and enjoy them.
Rituals offer tradition, comfort and a sense of belonging.
Humans have a tendency to be herd animals, finding a sense of safety and identity in clans, tribes, ethnicity and nationality. Unfortunately religion divides more than unites humanity.
Especially politicized religion. Look no further than, “Jesus sent Donald Trump to save America!”
If Jesus sent us Trump, Jesus hates America.
Now “Republican Jesus” and “Trump Christians” rejoice over tax cuts for the rich as they ignore defunding Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. They cheer the condemnation of Black athletes protesting injustice by law enforcement. They wrap their “righteous hate” in the flag and Bible. Religious and political movements give that sense of purpose. The danger is it frees us from having to think too much. As we know, mixing the two has never resulted in good outcomes for freedom or democracy.
Now we find ourselves in not a “post-Christian” America, but a Post-Truth America, draining us of basic human decency and compassion.
Religion offers safety in numbers and the comfort of a shared belief system. Humans also have a tendency towards authoritarianism, seeking or submitting to authoritarian leaders or dogma. Both are abundant in varying degrees in religious communities.
Face it. Most of us are not informed enough, or emotionally and intellectually equipped, to truly think for ourselves on metaphysical/spiritual levels. It’s easier to just accept beliefs, especially culturally approved and conditioned beliefs.
Most of us have lived in fear and ignorance somewhere along the way. We naturally fear death and uncertainty, as well as other cultures, in a confusing and complicated world. The more authoritarian nature we have, the more active is the amygdala, the primitive brain center of the “fight or flight” response.
Religion alleviates the sense of fear and confusion with an acceptable belief system. It may offer more than just words to nurture love for our fellow humans. This is good, but when religion fails to nurture decency and compassion, it fails us all.
The value of religion can only be measured by how much it reinforces decency and compassion. A tendency of fundamentalist authoritarian leadership largely fails at this.
So, yes, to the embarrassment of the devout, torture and the death penalty both have higher approval among the religious than with atheists. “Love thy neighbor”, not so much. All too often Christ is, by practice, removed from Christianity.
While many fundamentalists decry “secular humanism”, at least it openly embraces human decency and compassion. It is credit to our species that many of us can choose the path of decency and compassion, without having to fear devils, hell, and other mythological concepts.
Devils and Hell are human creations when decency and compassion are abandoned for the sake of politicized religion.
The only wall we need is the one between church and state.