The anger article where I got into a discussion with my brother, I noticed a common theme: Religious people doesn't acknowledge that what I'm saying might be legitimate for my own personal experience.
Questions in general within the church: there is another common theme, although not everyone will experience the same degree of pushback: hard questions are avoided and ignored. REALLY hard questions. I think when leadership delineates questions into categories of 'hard' and 'not hard,' we can see what they consider hard questions if we look at official responses to what they choose to address, then label it a hard topic.
There is also the idea that the organized church "hid" things from the general population that they didn't want to address or they didn't think it was 'uplifting' or 'essential' for salvation. People get really angry over this. I was conflicted for a long time, as I could see both sides to this. I started reading into every topic on my own, and I used non-internet sources to do it. They ARE out there.
When people can sit down at a computer, type a specific chain of words together in Google, click on the right site and read for 5 minutes the gist of a 'hidden' topic after years of going to church faithfully and not hearing a peep about it, their anger is justified. Just because they hadn't heard of it before, yet the information was available doesn't mean they don't have a right to be mad.
The church frames topics and conversations and lessons in such a way as to focus on the curriculum. At the end of the lesson, there is a spiritual takeaway. Sometimes the spiritual lesson that we can apply to our own lives is a bit of a stretch from the story they use. If the correlation committee can't stretch a story to extract a moral lesson, then it will be discarded, or not used. They simply don't care about alerting us to all the questionable things that have transpired. Of course, we view the essays published on the official website today as a reactionary response to this very issue.
It is hard to understand this dynamic, especially when you are introduced to this information and your spiritual and emotional baseline just got a boulder dropped in it and the ripples aren't going to calm down for awhile. The last thing on your mind is, 'let's look at the natural progression of how the church has correlated lessons, and how the church tries to focus on spiritual takeaways.'
Changing gears. I have mentioned how damaging religious rhetoric is. It ultimately hurts family units. The most popular feedback I get for being anti-theist is why I can't leave religion alone. It isn't something they can grasp. If I didn't believe that religion poisons everything, then I could leave it alone. The fact is, I want it eradicated. It isn't only religion, it is anything the believing brain comes up with and holds on to and makes it a huge focus in their lives. Conspiracy theories is a good example outside of religion. Our brains want to find patterns in things, then connect it with a higher power or in a power that explains things that are out of our control. Because I can't leave it alone, I must be filled with hate. This is the furthest thing from the truth I can imagine. Nothing is above criticism. If a belief system can't handle criticism, what is the point of that system, or how strong can your faith in it truly be?
Another example of how rhetoric damages relationships. Religion teaches its adherents that non-believers have no morals. Morals come from their higher power, so how could non-believers have morals? This is a huge fallacy that can easily be proven by looking at criminals. Bad people will do bad things regardless of what they believe in. Horrific things are done in the name of religion arguably moreso than under any other banner, besides maybe statism. Statism is intrinsically religious to itself, not necessarily to a Godless system. They have replaced God with itself. The argument that religion has a monopoly on morals is ridiculous and baseless.
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