I'm not sure how to express this, but one thing has bugged me for awhile

[Saint Agustin]

I noticed a lot of "adults" want to squash the notion about magic and spirituality from kids. Some faggots go as far as to denounce Santa Claus as not real in the presence of Children or Jesus as something made up.

Children need imagination to develop their minds and ways for them to explain daily stuff without going into a long and boring diatribe about science and history.

Spoiler: TMI

Small TMI but I have a little sister that I try to convice that bigfoot is real, vampires are real, sea monsters are real and stuff like that just so she can object and ask questions about it... When talking about religion I say I believe there is a God (I follow Tao) in everything and Jesus was probably real altough they taken some licence with the character,

Most people don't care about kids and have so much nihilism and existential dread (due to lack of challenges in irl and the possibility to share their thoughts and opinion freely on social media) that they want to explain everything in a "logical and orderly" manner.

 

[The Ugly One]

If the universe is a simulation, what is it a simulation of?
A real universe? Being simulated in an even realer universe?

Verdict: A psyop to make you feel stupid.

The aliens in the real universe wanted to see what a universe was like if the people everything were gay, retarded sociopaths.

 

[skykiii]

Of all religions to turn to for "muh traditional values" why do seemingly most people here choose Christianity? Is it just because most people here are from the West, and that's just what you're familiar with?
Honest question, not trying to be snarky.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, and honestly being from the west and thus Christianity being familiar is a part of the story indeed.

But there's another aspect... that is, basically, Christianity's take on God/Godlike figures.

I used to be into Buddhism and Taoism, which basically don't have gods (well, they do, but you're not really supposed to pray to them) and are honestly kinda depressing as they're all about just learning to live with shit. Then from what I know, old-school paganism tends to see gods as just something to be placated so they don't smash your village. And a lot of Asian religions like to do that thing where the afterlife is basically just the regular life they always knew, just the horse-shit you had to clean up was in the clouds and shit (see the Monkey King legend).

Basically, every other religion (in my experience, and I may well be misunderstanding, misremembering, or missing since January) just adds to the misery.

Christianity though? God is your friend. Yeah in the old testament Yahweh could be temperamental but usually there was some kind of moral justification to his acts, and usually the almighty's actions ultimately were beneficial even if they seemed destructive at the time. Christianity is also one of the few religions that tells us that there is ultimately meaning to it all and that there's something better. It's also one of the few religions that actually inspires positive change.

Basically, Judeo-Christian religions are positive where other religions are defeatist and negative. Christ inspires hope where others inspire fear and misery.

Yeah, its been misused over the years, like anything that had a good base. But that base survives and usually people come back to it.

 

[std::string]

I used to be into Buddhism and Taoism, which basically don't have gods (well, they do, but you're not really supposed to pray to them) and are honestly kinda depressing as they're all about just learning to live with shit.

When Buddhism was introduced to the west it got very secularized for some reason. Most likely because Zen took off in the 60s and was seen as some transgressive atheist religion without dogma.

Pure Land is the most popular form of Buddhism in Asia by a long shot and, well, it's definitely not what I'd call secular or learning to live with shit.

 

[skykiii]

When Buddhism was introduced to the west it got very secularized for some reason. Most likely because Zen took off in the 60s and was seen as some transgressive atheist religion without dogma.

Pure Land is the most popular form of Buddhism in Asia by a long shot and, well, it's definitely not what I'd call secular or learning to live with shit.

When I said Christianity gives hope though, I meant more than just "good people go to heaven" stuff. Christianity makes you feel like the planet we live on right now could, itself, one day be redeemed, like we might not even need to die to go to heaven.

Christianity also makes you feel like things like magic might be real after all. It's a weird double-edged sword. I mean, inherent in the fact that old religious communities seriously feared witches is that they seriously thought witches existed, so its kind of paradoxically interesting and hopeful.

Part of why I don't like techno-centric viewpoints is because, whoever owns the technology, controls it. As Dune said, "man thought by having machines they were liberated, but instead they were just enslaved by other men with machines." And those "other men" are often petty, delusional children who beneath all their nice suits are little more than roosters looking for hens.

Real mysticism tells you "there is, in fact, more to life than eating, shitting, and fucking. You are not just some dumb delusional animal and your beliefs are not just something you made up." Science on the other hand very much leans into that, especially nowadays.

 

[Otterly]

Of all religions to turn to for "muh traditional values" why do seemingly most people here choose Christianity? Is it just because most people here are from the West, and that's just what you're familiar with?
Honest question, not trying to be snarky.

I’m a scientist and I’ve found over the years that truth has a certain feeling to it. A mathematical proof has this sense of beauty, a solved equation does as well. The same sense you get from looking at life and seeing how incredible it is. Watch a fish embryo develop down a microscope for a few days, you’ll see what I mean. When you see someone speak and they’re lying you get the opposite feeling. When you do something you know is wrong, or hurt someone you do as well.
Christianity for me has the same ‘ring of truth’ to it. I don’t doubt that a lot of the message has been muddied over the years, that odd stuff has crept in over millennia and that there’s a degree of Chinese whispers. . Yet, There is something in there about Jesus particularly that hits the same button for me as seeing something profoundly beautiful and truthful.
I’ve read a fair amount of the literature of other religions and never felt that in more than fleeting amounts from passages that express the kind of universal truths.
Humans are hard wired to believe in something. If it’s not God, we start to worship science, or social justice, or degeneracy itself.

 

[Maniacal Foreigner]

I’m a scientist and I’ve found over the years that truth has a certain feeling to it. A mathematical proof has this sense of beauty, a solved equation does as well. The same sense you get from looking at life and seeing how incredible it is. Watch a fish embryo develop down a microscope for a few days, you’ll see what I mean. When you see someone speak and they’re lying you get the opposite feeling. When you do something you know is wrong, or hurt someone you do as well.
Christianity for me has the same ‘ring of truth’ to it. I don’t doubt that a lot of the message has been muddied over the years, that odd stuff has crept in over millennia and that there’s a degree of Chinese whispers. . Yet, There is something in there about Jesus particularly that hits the same button for me as seeing something profoundly beautiful and truthful.
I’ve read a fair amount of the literature of other religions and never felt that in more than fleeting amounts from passages that express the kind of universal truths.
Humans are hard wired to believe in something. If it’s not God, we start to worship science, or social justice, or degeneracy itself.

Oh, don't get me wrong - I really like a lot of the things Jesus had to say. It's the fanbase that sometimes gets on my nerves. There's been a lot of misinterpretation (deliberate or otherwise) over the centuries, as you've alluded to.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Two parts:
One, if you peddle some theory then making it sound scientific appeals more to the common man.
Second, if you use divine ideas then the question is why would something be true when we supposedly have all the solutions via the bible?

 

[Table Country]

I'll do my best to put forth what I think coherently and without sounding like I'm wearing a tower of fedoras.

A lot of people might attribute this sort of mindset to a lack of religion in our society and while I agree, I don't necessarily believe that people have an innate need for worship or spirituality. I feel that a lot of people who have difficulty self-governing tend to gravitate toward religion—which isn't to say that all religious people are mindless drones or whatever, in fact I find a lot of them to be the philosophical type.

I digress though, what I'm getting at is that the combination of widespread education, a lack of spirituality and the incredible amount of information at our fingertips creates a unique situation where a bunch of dunning-kruger people can believe themselves to be sophisticated enough to not "fall for" religion. Because they're "smarter" their whacky bullshit beliefs have to be sciencey instead of magicky, otherwise they'll look like those dumb old-fashioned religious types. But they aren't actually that smart and so their understanding of "science" is cultish and peppered with woo.
Take Roko's Basilisk; it's just Pascal's Wager independently reinvented by a bunch of up-their-own-ass "intellectuals" with an AI fetish.

Alternatively, all of what I said is retarded and schizophrenia is a lot more common than we like to admit.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

When Buddhism was introduced to the west it got very secularized for some reason. Most likely because Zen took off in the 60s and was seen as some transgressive atheist religion without dogma.

Pure Land is the most popular form of Buddhism in Asia by a long shot and, well, it's definitely not what I'd call secular or learning to live with shit.

the most popular form of consumption of eastern religion in the west is in new age, where its washed down, put in a blender and mixed with whatever else makes it more marketeable.

Christianity for me has the same ‘ring of truth’ to it.

Christianity is whatever one wants it to be, unless you are really catholic or orthodox traditionalist who have a rigid dogma but its more common to see christian people just project whatever they already agree with into the figure of Jesus and in the Bible. there are endless splinters and right wing death squad christians, hippie christians, christians who are socialists, lolbertarian christians, current year woke christians, etc. Is a huge aisle to pick and choose.

 

[Smug]

It is a funny thought in a way because to accept the possibility that you're living in a simulation  is believing that magic can happen. If it's a simulation, then by its very nature it's possible that there are glitches, or even someone looking over the simulation and altering details as they see fit.

 

[std::string]

the most popular form of consumption of eastern religion in the west is in new age, where its washed down, put in a blender and mixed with whatever else makes it more marketeable.

Meanwhile Tibetan Buddhism is like

Everyone in your life has been your mother. Meditate on your mother in this life being raped and killed in front of you. Don't you want to save her? Now, take this feeling and extend it to all sentient beings. This is how you cultivate bodhicitta.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

Meanwhile Tibetan Buddhism is like

Everyone in your life has been your mother. Meditate on your mother in this life being raped and killed in front of you. Don't you want to save her? Now, take this feeling and extend it to all sentient beings. This is how you cultivate bodhicitta.

Western buddhist be more like "11 Zen tips to nail that job interview"

 

[skykiii]

So what I'm hearing is we need to get a monk to go on a pilgrimage to get the true buddhist scriptures. Possibly with the help of a monkey, a pig, a sea creature and a dragon.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

the most popular form of consumption of eastern religion in the west is in new age, where its washed down, put in a blender and mixed with whatever else makes it more marketeable.

Usually strawberry daiquiri mix or dog semen or other things white bitches like to drink

 

[Maniacal Foreigner]

Christianity is whatever one wants it to be, unless you are really catholic or orthodox traditionalist who have a rigid dogma but its more common to see christian people just project whatever they already agree with into the figure of Jesus and in the Bible. there are endless splinters and right wing death squad christians, hippie christians, christians who are socialists, lolbertarian christians, current year woke christians, etc. Is a huge aisle to pick and choose.

The organized religion of Christianity is a big ol' melting pot of traditions and rituals taken from every region to which it spread. A spiritual smorgasbord. Find all the eggs the Easter Bunny hid around the backyard, because Jesus or something.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

Children need imagination to develop their minds and ways for them to explain daily stuff without going into a long and boring diatribe about science and history.

So do adults.

I just had one tell me yesterday about how important science is and then go straight from that to chinese body meridians, how our bodies need water element support during winter and how water in our body remembers trauma.

For as ridiculous those kind of conversations get, I enjoy those conversations more than discussing studies about what type of intermittent fasting has better proven results.

 

[Aunt Carol]

I was helping transcribe some diaries a few years back. Nobody famous, just a local guy who liked to write in his diary, although he was interested in Spiritualism.

He described a couple of weird, half-remembered nighttime experiences that sounded a whole lot like people's alien abductee narratives sound, except he framed them as a visitation by the spirits, because that was his frame of reference. I've heard (but I haven't personally seen) that earlier people would use faerie abduction for the same kind of experience.

So you could explain that as "there's something out there abducting people and it takes the form a culture can understand," or you could explain it as "an unshakable feeling of a presence is a common neuropsychological blip, and people interpret it in a way that makes sense to their culture." Which are about the same thing: something happens and it's the blind men and the elephant, and right now the zeitgeist isn't much worried about the sidhe.

 

[Isaac]

I say I believe there is a God (I follow Tao) in everything and Jesus was probably real altough they taken some licence with the character

This is just Methodism

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I was helping transcribe some diaries a few years back. Nobody famous, just a local guy who liked to write in his diary, although he was interested in Spiritualism.

He described a couple of weird, half-remembered nighttime experiences that sounded a whole lot like people's alien abductee narratives sound, except he framed them as a visitation by the spirits, because that was his frame of reference. I've heard (but I haven't personally seen) that earlier people would use faerie abduction for the same kind of experience.

So you could explain that as "there's something out there abducting people and it takes the form a culture can understand," or you could explain it as "an unshakable feeling of a presence is a common neuropsychological blip, and people interpret it in a way that makes sense to their culture." Which are about the same thing: something happens and it's the blind men and the elephant, and right now the zeitgeist isn't much worried about the sidhe.

Its the Jacques Valle hyphotesis that spiriting away and alien abductions are one of the same phenomenom. Before that Jung had already written about aliens in a similar fashion, that its the scientific age interpretation of visions with new fears and symbols added in.

Its an interesting concept, there's a few ways to look at it. I like to think that if aliens do exist they might be interdimensional or something paranormal than just grey men in spaceships but i tend to see it as more psicological though. I think a lot of people are absolutely not lying about what they went through and are being genuine about seeing what they saw but it might not be a tangible phenomenom, maybe more like a mystical extasis or a dream state thats absolutely visceral. Christian mysticism is actually one of the most interesting parts of christianity, or mystics in general, some i think were legit, they may have reached something profound that can't be put into words, the contemporary take is they were just schizos or having psicotic breaks, i think that doesn't account for everything and not everyone with a story to tell is mentally ill.