However once I realized that, on a very fundamental level, the core of what they where claiming as true wasn't in fact true, I felt I had no choice to walk away.
My experience was seeing huge amounts of falsehood and hypocrisy as religious people followed and repeated all the rituals of the mass but in the day to day life they just did not care about others and pretty much ignored what their religion taught them.
Thank God after those 12 years I saw everything I needed from religion to get as far away from it as I can.
That is THE King Edwards Tolkien's Alma mater and is normaly first or second ranked in the UK.
When I went for HS, literally the only elective was Art, and for any student in honors courses, it wasn't an elective: you didn't take art because all of your time was in academic courses except for gym once a week. Don't get me wrong, I think electives are valuable and wish I'd had the opportunity: I'm just describing the educational priorities of that type of school. However they also need revenue, so the ones that remain these days are generally a little more friendly in allowing for an individual's interests.
In my opinion, Catholicism (for all it's good qualities) is too theoretical and abstract. It's easy to walk out of church without any real takaways that you might apply to your ordinary life.
It hit home as a teenager during Easter Sunday mass. A priest enters the church, wearing his extra religious garb, a crucifix is carried behind him. The procession take several steps, the worshippers then kneel down and immediately stand back up. Several more steps, then kneeling and standing. Then several more steps, then kneeling and standing.
The third time I stood up I felt like it was outside my body looking at myself. Following the crowd with absolutely no idea why or the meaning behind it. To me, I looked like an idiot. My father was religious his entire life, so afterwards I asked him what the ceremony represented, he had no idea. I went to church less and less after that.
Earlier this year I attended a 90 minute "walkthrough" of the mass where my priest explained the structure and meaning of a normal everyday mass. At the end of it he had still only scratched the surface, but it was probably more explanation than most (ex-)Catholics ever receive on the topic.
A key thing for me (I'm still not religious, though I'm religion-adjacent in some ways) was seeing that religion - despite what some would tell you - is at its best when it's not made to be about material truths at all. Its truths, really, are truths about the human condition and how best to live it out.
In this sense, even as someone who doesn't believe in metaphysical spirits, the heart of what they're claiming (if you really dig down deep past many of the surface-level particulars) contains a lot of truth.
That teaching is probably wrong and causes so much damage to so many people.
Mortal/grave sins must be confessed per catholic doctrine, but to say that the mere acts were final is to misunderstand the whole concept of the new covenant.
[1] https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s...
Can you truly perform confession for a sin that you are unrepentant about? Like if someone is continuously having gay sex with no regrets or desire to change can they really "confess" about that? Don't you need to at least "admit" that you have sinned in order to confess?
I agree with you that a couple of instances of gay sex doesn't send a person to hell, but a lifestyle where you accept gay sex as a fundamental part of yourself that you don't even try to change does send you hell if I understand the doctrine correctly.
My disagreement is in the idea of permanently accepting a lifestyle oriented around gay sex while also trying to remain a Christian. That lifestyle is clearly contrary to the church teachings, so maintaining such a stance over a lifetime requires spiritual stagnation such that you don't have to face the dissonance involved. That assumes a foundation of belief; without belief, church is like any other social function; with it, the idea of rejecting teachings shouldn't seem like a viable path. There are plenty of churches where such dissonance is the norm and a welcome contributor to doctrine, but if you aren't taking the teachings as foundational, then you're sort of just using Jesus as a figurehead of a pretty nice guy, which the Catholic church reliably objects to.
Having said all that, there are plenty of problems with implementation. I don't think you'd have to look far to find a Catholic church where many or most people agree to quietly disagree about contraception.They shouldn't be allowed to do so,but it's a much easier thing to hide. And you could argue that it's a much less visible, and thus less subversive, transgression (not clear that that's true.)
In both of those cases, though, the last thing the church should be doing is casting believers out. If they do that, they're abdicating their very clear responsibility to help those people. Whether you agree with those changes being "help", from the perspective of doctrinally sound preachers/congregants/parishes, directing others to lives ordered toward church teachings is the most important and morally obligatory thing.
I guess you would say that the action that sends a person to hell is the refusal to follow church doctrine, but when the church doctrine is "don't have gay sex" ...
However, even with that out of the way, it's not that gay sex accumulates some overwhelming terrible immoral inertia in a person that eventually cannot be stopped. But it drives a person away from God continually. To really understate the idea by a weak analogy, it's like how eating a diet of constant sugar will not necessarily kill you, but is likely to lead to diabetes and metabolic disorders that people rarely come back from, even though we recognize that coming back from these is entirely possible. And not just that, but watching this from the sideline, you can't comprehend how the people suffering from these problems would sooner die than just curb sugar intake. How people walk into the general surgery practices day after day, not even acting surprised when you tell them you'll be cutting their right foot off because the loss of circulation from diabetes has caused it to become gangrenous.
Now apply that to something more important than your foot or your mortal life. The church's perspective is that unrepentant gay sex is to living a life ordered toward God, as excessive sugar intake is to proper metabolic functioning.
The particular urgency in this sin is that I am likely able to drink too much and disrespect my wife and watch porn, but then repent. All those things will weaken my relationship with God, but my acceptance that they're wrong allows me to be guided rightly. Living a committed homosexual life is inconsistent with living a life of God; being committed to both means that sooner or later, the incoherence will cause one or the other link to break completely. "If your left eye causes you to sin, better to cut it out..."
Funny how the Hebrew and Greek words for fear have so many other meanings, and yet the church has taught but one for so long when considering the "fear of God".
Seems to contradict "perfect love casts out all fear". Perhaps we would all be better off if we understood "wisdom begins with the awe of God" as the preferred intention.
Because fear based things really suck.
To my mind, most of the planet's population have got to the 'right place' (show love and compassion to those you meet) - and how we all got to this same place is immaterial.
I'm without a doubt an atheist to my core - but doesn't stop me admiring those with faith who use it to lead a good life.
But every Christian that doesn’t reject the first Commandment implicitly believes the same thing. Some of them picket and scream terrible things at their outgroupers. Most are reasonably neutral and nice.
Giving too much oxygen or mind share to the few vocal outliers only lowers your quality of life. Also, there are enough atheists/agnostics/nones that it’s basically useless to talk about them as a monolithic group.
I am far more concerned about the asymmetry of media/discussion about the obnoxious few with bad ideas over the quiet plurality of pleasant people who don’t force their toxic ideas on others.
Now it makes me cringe. Like you, still Atheist to the core. But I can really appreciate many of my childhood church’s teachings: God is love, God forgives us, God accepts all of us. I can listen in awe at the sermons of Dr. King Jr. And while I cannot imagine ever believing the supernatural aspects of it all, I will always deeply appreciate and agree with the concern and caring for The Least of These, and our shared responsibility to one another.
(I’m not saying it isn’t. I think all belief in science requires an act of faith, e.g., the universe obeys laws of physics. I just haven’t heard this argued before.)
That points to why belief in free will is an act of faith. It is, by definition, not possible to know (because you could always argue your conclusions were not made by your will). It also lies outside the usual ‘god of the gaps’ straw-man debate, because it is more like an endless chasm. :)
I’ve encountered this claim more often than I’ve encountered actual fundamentalist churches I think are making any sort of strong claim about the world.
So I’m curious to hear what people think is wrong.
not OP, but I would presume "the claim" is that (a) there is a God, (b) the church knows which one, and (c) they know what he wants.
For comparison, I (atheist) normally state my position as "There is insufficient evidence to conclude there is a God," so any statement about there being any god, or about what influence they should/do have on our lives I treat as a "claim," which requires supporting evidence.
While the whole atheist-agnostic thing is more of a continuum than not, I think the line is whether you believe there is no God or whether you don’t believe there is one. It might seem pedantic but I do think it’s an important distinction.
I used to identify as agnostic for a while--the definition I quoted is one adapted from The Atheist Experience podcast. I'd personally describe someone who actively believes there is no god, i.e. possesses enough evidence to claim "There cannot be any god" an "anti-theist", in my personal lexicon.
Generally this is why I bother to give the specific definition by claim--too often I've encountered religious folk who take "atheist" to mean "one who hates god", or "one who actively has evidence against a god", or similar--which may be true for other folk who use the label atheist, but doesn't match my personal definition.
As you said, "the whole atheist-agnostic thing is more of a continuum than not," so I like to give the definition to clear up any mis-assumptions people may make about me for using said label :)
I also agree that the difference does matter--I also think it's more intellectually honest of me to allow for the possibility that I am wrong, however unlikely--even then, there is an important distinction between acknowledging the existence of a god, and choosing to worship said god if they even existed (which is usually the follow-on question from religious folk I talk to.
We know there is a God AND the Bible is some sort of authoritative (most would claim the most authoritative) description of who/how God is and how he wants us to behave towards him.
Often there is also a third correlating claim that our interpretation of the Bible is the most correct interpretation.
I have issues with 1) "God told me to tell you" (any human claiming to represent God to their fellow humans. They surely would be devoid of ulterior motives, right?)
2) This collection of hitherto uncompiled writings (including a wholesale incorporation of Judaism) that were uncontestedly written by humans, some of which we know the names of, has now become a singular "book" and it's the world of God, shut up or else, etc.
I smell humans, not divinity.
Oh, and YES you nailed it on the last point. Witness the smug way some Evangelicals dismissively tell a Catholic "but I am CHRISTIAN"...
What are the downsides to suspending scientific accuracy for the purposes of doing Aikido?
I had a similar experience — in Kung fu and Buddhism.
Beliefs are a model of the world: just because a model isn’t phrased in terms of my core beliefs doesn’t mean it has nothing to teach me.
In the case of Kung fu and Buddhism, I don’t believe I would understand things as well as I do (physics, physiology, neurology) without having taken the time to understand what those other models were trying to express about the world.
To use an analogy: just because I have an irresolvable dependency conflict with a new piece of software doesn’t mean it has nothing to teach me about software and programming.
I can’t — so I found it necessary to dig into the old program and port the concepts.
I would argue that more people should do that, even when they don’t immediately understand the old model well enough to port.
Both in software and martial arts.
My solution to encountering outdated beliefs with great utility was to try and update them — to retell Kung fu (and Buddhism) in that new world view. Buddhism has a maxim to keep what’s useful and discard the rest.
What does “ki” mean in physics?
I think it’s more than esoteric luggage, but a class of physics equations which are nasty to write down because they’re complex differential equations — and the numerics don’t matter to the practice, just the behavior of the system.
So you give a name to that behavior and model it experimentally, describe it euphemistically, etc.
I get spending the time to learn multiple models and translate between them isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, though. Those people reasonably make different choices than I did.