Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.
Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.
“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.
I don’t mind organized religion. What I do hate is that religion pushing their beliefs onto everyone they meet, pushing their religion beliefs throughout school systems, etc. If religious can keep to themselves, I see it like yoga or CrossFit.
A crossfit trainer, an ex-marine, and a born-again christian all walk into a bar.
We know that, because they won’t stop telling everyone.
I’m surprised this comment has lasted 6 hours without anyone saying “there’s no such thing as an ex-marine”
I, too, am disappointed by the lack of offended ex-marine comments.
why ?
Because SEMPER FI !!! OOORAH!!
Clearly, you haven’t met crossfitters
Clearly you don’t own an airfryer
Or an instapot!
No, but my wife wants us to :(
Don’t give in. Just get a good oven for everything and it’s the same
Obviously you’re not a golfer
Or a bidet
IDK about equalizing religion and yoga. At minimum, the yoga exercises seem pretty useful for getting a flexible and healthy body, and (judeo-christian) religous ceremonies are mostly just a reason for people to get together, which many other activities can do as well.
The positives that people get from religion are mostly about the feeling of being part of a community, with their own lore, rules, codex and ceremonies. Just like DnD groups, with the major difference that some members actually belief all of that stuff, which is spooky and dangerous, because that opens these people to all sorts of other crazy ideas.
I mind the normalization of magical thinking. It’s the same reason I bristle at astrology and tarot and luck charms.
And that has a whole bunch of negative consequences, because these people won’t listen to reason if it inconveniences them
Unfortunately you can’t have religion without people trying to evangelize. It’s part of the problem.
But… you can. It already exists
That’s not correct. Where I live, religion is intertwined with daily life and yet nobody ever tried to talk me into anything
Agreed
Atheism and science are also a type of religious belief. Ultimately, as long as someone isn’t hurting anyone else or trying to force their beliefs on others, I don’t care what they believe.
lmao
Atheism? Sure some New Atheist branches practice it like a faith
Science? It’s a tool for measuring things… it is about as much of a religion as a ruler
It’s not, it’s a system that seeks to understand our world at a deeper level and predict future events.
It’s funny you mention that, though, because it brings up one of the difficulties in science. Measurements we base our scientific theories on rely on instruments, most of which themselves rely on other theories for reliable operation and interpretation of data.
One philosopher of science famously brought up the analogy of a surveyor who doesn’t understand magnetism. He attempts to use a compass as a surveying tool near some hidden source of magnetic field. Without understanding of the underlying principles of magnetism and local magnetic field, he would assume the compass unfailingly points north and the resulting measurements of the local geography would be wrong. Those flawed measurements might then be used by geologists, leading to the development of theories supported by flawed data.
There is always a degree of uncertainty in the instruments we use to develop and test our hypotheses because there is no such thing as certain knowledge in science. However, at some point we simply put faith in the scientific method and presume that our underlying theories are sufficiently accurate for our purposes and proceed accordingly.
Your surveyor story sounds like something a christian apologist would say, or someone who doesn’t know the difference between science and religion.
Even stone age people knew the difference between East and West. If a surveyor incorrectly used a compass his work could still be verified by looking at a goddamn sunrise. If the surveyor ignored the conflicting data and, as you say “put his faith in his instruments”, it ceases to be the scientific method and becomes dogmatic fanaticism.
Do you not understand what a thought experiment is? It’s an exaggerated example to better illustrate a concept, in this case the concept that reliable calibration and use of instruments is itself based on some underlying theory of operation.
If it helps you understand the concept, imagine that the source of error is very weak, only disturbing the compass by a few degrees at any given location.
Doubt
Could you expand your thoughts on this?
I’m always curious when this is said as to what is meant when Atheism and science are called religious.
Sure. To be clear, I’m an engineer and an atheist so I don’t mean it to attack either Athiesm or science by any means.
To start with, we cannot get true knowledge of the world outside ourselves by sensory perception alone. Rather, the way we interpret our sensory inputs is by applying it to some metaphysical framework of how we believe the outside world works.
As a small example, Descartes famously brought up analogy of a melting candle. A totally naive person being born into existence would see melted wax and hardened wax as two different substances. Sensory perception alone would lie to this person. Only by interpreting it through this metaphysical framework do we come to the conclusion that melted wax and hardened wax are the same thing at different temperatures.
This extends to deeper concepts that we can’t directly explain by our experience alone. At some point we stop using our own direct experience and expand our metaphysical framework using something else.
The thing that springs from that “something else” is religion, and in many instances it doesn’t necessarily encompass a concept of divinity or worship. In abrahamic religions it is the Judeo-Christian god. In Daoism it’s the belief in the Dao, an unexplainable force tied to the events of the natural world. In science it’s belief in the scientific method’s ability to produce objective truth with sufficient cooperation and experimentation. They’re all models of the outside world that stem from something beyond a single individuals sensory perception.