Living without religion

[Angrboda]

[Dragonetti]

I masturbate during the times required to be in church.

[Zen Badger]

So it's just the same as pretty much normal life...?

---

Either way?

Normal life??

What do you mean by that?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

It means doing good things because they're the right thing to do, not becuase I'm told they're the right thing to do by someone preaching an invisible person's supposed wishes.

When I help someone down the stairs to catch a train, I don't have to look up to the sky and say "look! I did something good", I just carry on like it was nothing.

That's what it means to be a compassionate human being, not a religious automaton.

[The Grand Nudger]

-Indeed, and I'll add...because -it is- nothing. Helping people on trains, just generally helping each other is thoroughly and commonly human. There's nothing remarkable about it - and perhaps this is what really irritates me the most about religions that attempt to convince a person that they are broken. The notion that we're a lot of ravenous degenerates doesn't hold water, and it takes an unfortunately fucked with individual to see something divine or some divine purpose in everyday human kindness - or the perception that the same sort of everyday human-humanaity - is a break from the norm.

As far as religious automatons go, I'd say that a person who paints any of this religion bullshit over their many acts of kindness both minor and major is -precisely- the kind of motherfucker we should have cameras pointed at. No telling what they'll do if they have a crisis of faith.

Similarly, imagining a god, if someone were to look up after such a common act (a category that comprises the vast majority of good things that one might do)and say "look, good deeds" I can only see a god saying "you and everybody else- now get your tongue out of my asshole".

[Fidel_Castronaut]

-Indeed, and I'll add...because -it is- nothing. Helping people on trains, just generally helping each other is thoroughly and commonly human. There's nothing remarkable about it - and perhaps this is what really irritates me the most about religions that attempt to convince a person that they are broken. The notion that we're a lot of ravenous degenerates doesn't hold water, and it takes an unfortunately fucked with individual to see something divine or some divine purpose in everyday human kindness - or the perception that the same sort of everyday human-humanaity - is a break from the norm.

As far as religious automatons go, I'd say that a person who paints any of this religion bullshit over their many acts of kindness both minor and major is -precisely- the kind of motherfucker we should have cameras pointed at. No telling what they'll do if they have a crisis of faith.

Similarly, imagining a god, if someone were to look up after such a common act (a category that comprises the vast majority of good things that one might do)and say "look, good deeds" I can only see a god saying "you and everybody else- now get your tongue out of my asshole".

Amen.

[Raven]

Well, for me it was sooooo bloody liberating to leave all that claptrap behind me. It was finally OK to just BE. I'd guess that it is like that for many who get brought up in a religion. (I have a sister who runs her parish's Sunday school. The other joined a convent at 14.) Now it's a long time later and it still feels liberating. But actually my life is not any different beyond it is more free than it was. I'm just the same person, do the same things on a daily basis. Wish I knew why your true believer types make such a big deal out of it. Maybe they see it as a kind of threat?

[Dawud]

I reckon they probably do Raven!