#post theism

[driftglazz]

The quote that everyone in the comments seems to like is:

"Anything humans have historically been willing to commit genocide over, should be a thing we should learn quickly... If we care about not committing future genocides we need to be teaching people how to study religion critically at the youngest age they can."

But my two favorites are:

“When religion becomes humorless, run.”

and

"I sometimes say I'm religious without being spiritual which makes some people upset. You know, most people are like spiritual without being religious? Like, no, I'm religious without being spiritual. I don't believe in spirits or gods or demons but I believe in the religion. I believe in the religio and I believe that that is a thing that contributes meaning, power, symbolism, community, comfort. It provides those things in a way that I see nothing else being able to do. And if you see something doing that and you want to toss it out but you don't have anything to replace it with I think you're going to create a social crisis. I think modernity is born out of that social crisis. We were really good at knocking it over, but we didn't replace it with anything. And when we did try to replace it with things, I think of the big political ideologies, they were many of them murderous. Like religion was murderous in many ways. And I think that we need to start having a conversation that goes beyond this question of 'Is mythology useful or not?' We need to agree that it is, and we need to agree there's no getting rid of it. It's probably baked into our brains. So the question is 'If it's there and it's going to be there forever, how do we become self-conscious of that fact and how do we do that responsibly?'"

[amorfatiguy]

And in the end, we have to kill God with our newly-sharpened machetes. We cut God's head off the body, and put his head on the tip of a spear.

We will parade in the city, and bring his head to biggest square in the city, then we display it there, to show all people of the city. Finally, we will dearly announce that God is dead in our hands.

For every blood shed on our hands due to the killing of God should be seen as an act of benevolence, to free our souls from any control.

As for the idea of God can't be used anymore as a mean to control us by those with authorities; corrupt governments, blackmailing parents, or fraudulent religious leaders. To justify their actions, to prevent us to do what they don't want us to do, to force us to do they want us to do, to make us communal herds.

And now, we can freely choose what we want to be, as God is dead, nothing greater can be used to control us. We would have no more predefined purpose of our existence, to follow those in control.

We could be new Gods if we want to, but that is not necessary. What important is that we have destroyed the control tool they have for a long time.

The future is ours now. We decide, we together, as different individuals. And we have to build our own new pillars, that could be different in each individual. As now we are free from pseudo universal pillars that root in the idea of God.

We human beings should be free to define our own ideals. And no ideals should not be seen as bad. As ethics is universal already, we shall leave it be.

Now, no single soul would be condemned in the name of God anymore.

[dreemurkin]

I feel as though belief alone cannot save man. I have found in the baptist culture surrounding me, there is the statement of "once saved, always saved" a statement I'm fond of for in a way it's a mighty compassionate one but also holds a great weight of apathy. In a lot of ways the surrounding culture is sinful in that, while it is simple to just be kind, it is not a thing that I believe is propped up enough as an actual virtue. I believe many value their indepedence, their individuality, and freedom over compassion and love. I find that many Baptist Christians have been rude, judgemental, prideful, consistently intoxicated, and so on. But for some reason it is dismissed and brushed off due to the actual conviction and belief that they hold instead of their own social character. I think now people struggle with belief, and their lack of belief prevents them not necessarily from being good people, but not being able to find the value in being a good person outside of feeling like it. I believe that many, particularly protestant, sermons push statements where believers are only that - they simply see the events as described in the bible as true and as an event that happened that they see value in, but not much of anything else. Whereas, while this isn't universal of course, in my experience the sermons I got the best feeling out of were ones in which we need to be patient, we need to be humble, we need to be more loving and give grace to those who anger us, and so on. I think many Christians would be upset for this sense of simplicity, but many of those same people are that of unkind, lacking compassion, and consistently bashing other people. I think I'm a post-theist.

[sofiaflorina2021]

Remember that above us only sky.

[ahundredhundredheartbeats]

Hi Carla. I hope you are well. I got a question: What do you think of process theology and post-theism as they relate to Christianity?

I’m sorry I never check my inbox; this message is so old I’m sorry for not answering! I actually don’t know anything about either of these ideas :/