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So what's the deal with the rise of tradcaths, eastern orthodox, gnostic, etc. converts on the internet? 10 years ago new atheist secular humanist egalitarianism was big, now it's widely mocked and now there's a significant amount of young edgy people who see themselves as Christian fundamentalists. What the hell happened to make this position suddenly become trendy?

dialectics

>>23747 >secular humanist egalitarianism was big Nah, big was/is social justice / third wave feminism filling the void atheism created. As the negative effects of those movements increased people now scorn both and thus went full circle "this soykaf is like kicking dead whales down the beach back to old stuff".

Its just losers who larp as christians that hate degenerates like transsexuals but are mysteriously absent when the weebs sexualize children.

>>23752 >real people self mutilating vs drawn images wow that was hard

>>23747 Government influence on the internet has never been this big.

It's the new edge to cut yourself on nowadays. Being an athiest is the mainstream and people want to stand out by going on the other extreme of the spectrum. You talk to these people about their faith experiences and you realize they are very spritually weak and not into these things out of legitimate faith, the ones online anyways. The churches are empty, and God is dead. Some people still parade the corpse around like the Emperor but it's ultimately a show. We're just in a waiting period for society sanctioning telekinetic cybergods.

Atheism stopped being the cool intellectual thing and turned into something you only espouse if you're a fedora-wearing neckbeard incel gamer blah blah blah. So the edgy kids decided they didn't want to look like that, so they became religious to spite them. And because of religion's (or at least Christianity's) association with conservatism, this helps swell the numbers of online right-wing groups that faux-left corporate and political entities need to validate their boogeyman.

>>23762 I seriously doubt that governments - apart from perhaps some muslim countries - are trying to convert ppl back to Abrahamic faiths. If you had wrote something along the lines of "political interest groups", I could've agreed with you. What it, in my lowly opinion, comes down to is basically this ( >>23748), this (>>23750 ) and a multitude of minor factors, such as a) Abrahamic faiths serve an emotional need; essentially God is a kind of "wish-maker" and Jesus the mystical X to which anyone can attribute anything they want b) modern complexity/irrationalism (read: "degeneracy") on the cultural field, which serves as a repulsive force; all the feminism talk, the pr0n, anime, the low effort dopamine rushes among other things are just too much (or, depending on the person, too little) to deal with for some people, so it makes people crave for substance, clear boundaries, simple belief systems, worldviews and outside imposed structures to make things neat and manageable c) the "new atheist secular humanist egalitarianism", as you put it, was essentially a critical force in nature, meant to critize or dismantle the former status quo, but because you can't really base your worldview on a tool meant to undo them, you're left with an inner void which doesn't go away with a nice little feeling of solidarity between humans and d) there was/ still is a large pool of "private christians" and cultural christians in the West, so making the jump from passive to active Christianity doesn't really take too much effort e) whatever is labeled as "trendy" is just another word for what isn't overtly popular right now, and for youngsters who didn't have a christian upbringing, to them it's the hottest scheisse ever, because some random guy on the Internet said so or because a meme told him so. I mean, hell. Even my ex-atheist buddy seems to have turned to some sort of pseudo-christian faith mixed with Hegel and gym, after he was exposed to Jordan Peterson via the interwebz. >>23750 >is like kicking dead whales down the beach please, no more! I yield! There's just too much kicking of dead whales down the beach on lainchan for me to take... the poor bastards. Leave 'em alone! :::(

A lot of us get raised to enjoy getting told what to do and how to live, sometimes the lack of direction just means you stick as close as you can to the important texts no matter how silly they are. In a less extreme degree, you see it from a lot of people asking if the void left by lack of religion can only be filled by.. religion.

What I don't understand is why it's almost ALWAYS either Russian Orthodox Christianity or zealous Catholic Integralism. The Orthodox sorts never go for Georgian, Greek, etc. Just Russian. Is it because it's most associated with the sad slav aesthetic? The Catholics never become the average Catholics most people in my country are, just fire and brimstone fundamentalists. Even the Chesterton quoting dyed-in-the-wool types who drive an hour to go to Latin mass find these people to be strange. I don't get why they don't go to one of the local protestant churches (most of these people are in north American and west Europe) if they just want to be a part of a community and feel like they're part of something bigger, given that it's less commitment while also giving you the chance to yell righteous fury at strangers on the internet if you want to. And I don't get why the metaphysical Evola reading transgressives don't go towards sufism, because that's the logical conclusion of that lifestyle.

>>23776 To add to this, even the protestants even go to the extreme, I blame it on the internet generally. I think the internet just make people extreme in their opinion and views, you rarely see mild views sometimes

>>23747 In the beginning people on internet were all religion=bad; atheism=good, but some came to appreciate the good points of religion. I don't care about religion itself but with time I came to appreciate the traditional family values. Some people take this yearn for traditional values to extremes.

>>23776 Converts make up the most rabid radicals. They got something to proof. >>23778 I think its just that originally, it was christians preaching about the dangers of video games & other things causing the most annoyance. Nowadays we have much bigger drama queens and the religious groups barely register. So focus on them dwindled accordingly.

>>23769 ``is like kicking dead whales down the beach'' is laincode for ``sucкs''. But you're right, everyone talking about how something is like kicking dead whales down the beach, is like kicking dead whales down the beach. >>23778 >In the beginning people on internet were all religion=bad; atheism=good, but some came to appreciate the good points of religion It's always been that many religious organizations are (almost) inherently connected to some very harmful acts. Atheism has no such inherent harms. One problem among atheists are antitheists against all about, despite their benefictves, religion.

It seemingly has ties to neo reactionaryism online it seems. Just a bunch of LARP.

>>24005 Isnt all religion larp? So whats the difference?

Looking on the internet you won't find a good representation of Christian converts, because the loudest are often the most conflicted... and the internet gets tiring quickly (especially the loudmouth convert circles). The main reason today that people become religious is a distaste with materialism (By materialism I mean the belief that only what can be observed in the physical world exists). This can take one of two extremes: 1. Gnosticism: Belief that the material world is evil. Makes sense at first brush... if materialism is evil, then so too must be the material world. However, this is a dark path, and does not offer any real escape from the nihilism that these converts are coming from. (If what you do in the material world, i.e. the body, does not matter, you might as well keep spending your days jacking off in front of a computer monitor...) 2. Christianity: Belief that the material world is united to the spiritual world in the person of Christ, by Whom all things were created and in Whom all things hold together. This is the only true alternative to materialism and nihilism, because it understands the soul and body to be united together. Because it believes that Christ God is present in every human being, it has the strongest sense of human dignity that I have found in any religious or philosophical system. Additionally, by understanding Christ's suffering, Christianity allows us to suffer rightly. Corporations would like you to believe that you can get rid of all your suffering in this world by purchasing products. But we know this is not true and in this life you will suffer more deeply than you can imagine. God allows this so that we can find within ourselves the very person of Christ and remove the illusions preventing us from knowing who we truly are. There are a number of people who convert for this reason and then a number of copycats who convert because it is interesting and novel, or because they think it will allow them to get angry at transsexuals on the internet. Unfortunately because these people do not have a deep understanding of the faith they often lose steam after a year or two and give up. Some of them do it without even once going to a church. But the young men and women who go to my Orthodox parish every week do not think of that stuff. What they are after is the Truth ... a better understanding of the world, their place in it, and our shared humanity.

>>23747 Normal people getting online is the reason why. They're sheep. Go figure.

>>24005 >larp You keep using this word... I'm not sure it means what you think it means...

>>24018 live action roleplay is a pretty accurate description of religious practice. One group meets up in the woods, the other in church, both put on wizard clothes and pretend its serious business.

>>24019 Role playing via text you see online is not dressing up in fake armor and going to a fair. It will never be that no matter how many children online think it will be just because the world larp sounds nicer in your head than typing out role play.

>>24023 people are doing paganism in meatspace. A lot is tourism course lvl where someone sells the experience and people sign up and pay for the course. Its not just brewing soykaf online.

>>23764 This is pretty absurd Anon, not only is your post incredibly edgy, but it is also wrong, the vast majority of humans are religious and our attitude towards religion hasn't exactly changed all that much in the last few hundred years or so, people aren't becoming more or less religious because of it being seen as cool or uncool, at least today it's that case. I also doubt that we will start believing in cybergods as long as we are still human.

>>24038 >the vast majority of humans are religious doubt it, majority is simply registered under the major religion of their country. Doesnt mean they actively belief / follow it. Its the same as with sports teams. If you dont care you will name whatever team is most likely to gain you favor among those asking.

>>23747 >be me >raised relig >church was a fuarrrk >hate the church >atheism ftw >have a few spiritual experiences >very relig now >try to go to church >church is still a fuarrrk >go to more fundamentalist church >is not so a fuarrrk i had my edgy teen years, but later in life I came to enjoy religion as something that should not be tainted by humans in the way most moderate religions have when I was going through some rough times, the church I went to to find some kind of spiritual comfort was more interested in their fundraisers and church group festivals than actually discussing religion. Churches are to be a place of meditation and introspection, not the Sunday morning hangout club imo. I somewhat agree with >>23764 that religion is the new edgy, and that makes me upset. Mainly that people follow a certain faith to be trendy. These people to me are the worst kind of human beings. I get along better with genuine atheists than religious fakers, because fakers are full of flashy "religion" that they follow blindly without any kind of intelligent thought. I am still in a strange place spiritually because I do not believe in the "sacrifice on earth = free gibs in heaven," but I enjoy the mental discipline and fortitude that religion provides (i.e. that through god you can endure great hardships). I also dislike those who claim orthodox views as a meme because of their "white pride and jebus" beliefs. Tolerance is a founding principle of most religions, tolerance for those who are not like you, despite their beliefs differing (and them being non-believers), and standing up for justice in an altruistic manner. Much in the same way that people polarized over politics, people polarize over religion, it is a simple matter of the fallacy that "rejection of that which i find obscene or wrong must certainly be right"

>>23747 Internet PR/propaganda firms happened, or more precisely, became much more professional and effective. This stuff existed in 00s but it was limited because the internet was much more fragmented and there wasn't as much money in the space. For example, if you wanted to start a forum or a website and needed users/content there were companies that could crowdsource that for you. You could start a forum for, I don't know, people who dislike cucumber, then buy some users/content and populate your forum with opinions tailored to your liking in hope of attracting genuine haters of cucumber and growing your forum. It works similarly now, except there's more money now, the firms are much more professional and nobody cares about forums so the operations moved to social media, reddit and 4chan as well. You can buy whatever content you want and get it published wherever you want to - promote a brand, a product, a person, political belief, religion and so on. Since the internet is truly mainstream and everybody uses it so naturally it attracts all sorts of people, wealthy American fundamentalists included. They used to spend their money sending missionaries to developing countries and dropping leaflets and bibles into Amazon jungle, now they pay for internet campaigns. It seems like a sudden development because it is - some wealthy individual or a foundation decided to spend some money on an internet campaign and apparently the PR firm is doing a good job because you believe that you're seeing a genuine movement. Entire tomes were written on how to spot and recognize astroturfing and it's fairly easy in case of generic advertising. It's harder in the context of ideological and religious campaigns but there are some things that you should look for. PR employees will use similar talking points and similar phrases and key words. It's because they're following a guide, a document outlining what sort of content they are supposed to deliver. Another thing is effort. Manufactured content tries too hard, it will often seem much more polished in comparison to the site's standard. So evaluate the content - how long would it take an ordinary person to create that piece of content? Could an ordinary person make a photo this good looking and well-composed? A text this well-written? Would an ordinary person put this much effort into making a social media post? If the answer is no you're likely dealing with propaganda.

We grew up

>>24038 States have never had an anti-religion policy until the french revolution, and only in the past century has religion been outright derezzed from countries. It's not delusional at all to say the purpose of god to postmodern society is unclear at best and drastically different at least. I forsee within 100 years we have machines that process ethics for us instead of humans like a grandmaster at chess runs their openings through an engine. Call it a god call it whatever you want but ai more competent than humans will fill the vacuum doctrines and priests give us now.

>>24089 Kingdoms had an anti "any other religion" policy because they derived legitimization from religion and relied thus on everyone following their flavor. We arguably have now a form of atheistic state religion since we have common values that are not to be questioned preached in school. As for ethics why would you need anyone smart ? It's ultimately based on benefits. You don't want to die so you say killing bad etc.

>>24090 When governments stop using a currency for taxation and no one believes in the intrinsic value of the currency it is seen as worthless. Same as when society stops being pious and the governments actively suppresses religious activities. They see god, his existence, and his institution as worthless.

>>23747 jews and that it's the new punk rock

>>23776 People who go towards religion today do so not just out of a desire for community, but also tradition and some counterbalance to the way society has gone, because they're seeing where the rationalist/materialist road is leading. Protestantism has little to offer there, especially nowadays it's dressed-up, sterile humanism for people who like to hang out together on Sundays, but that mostly marches in lockstep with the tendencies of the times. A large part of the appeal of Orthodoxy is probably Vatican II.

>>24004 >Atheism has no such inherent harms. i'm not going to try to convince you that this isn't true, but you should know that many of the reactionary christians that this thread seems to be referring to disagree. there's the classic jordan peterson argument that if you take away religion you are left with ideology, and to some extent that's what i see in the recent waves of youtube atheists. although many atheists are true skeptics that want evidence to support their beliefs, many seem to just use it as a tool to make room for other the other irrational belief systems they want to support.

I can say this has definitely been going on for at least ~6 years now. Not trying to be the "I knew about this before you" guy.. it comes down to who's in your social circles. Just noting that it didn't exactly come out of nowhere. If I had to pick an "origin" for it, I'd probably pin it to the neoreactionary movement (Mencious Moldbug et al). Moldbug's blog is worth reading if you aren't familiar with it. You probably won't agree with him on a lot of stuff (I don't, personally) but his rejection of liberalism and democracy is fairly unique if nothing else. I don't actually know his/his movement's stance on religion but it definitely laid a lot of the groundwork for reaction against "enlightened" liberal secularism. There's also Julius Evola, who is a more direct philosophical influence for neo-trad Christianity (or whatever you want to call it) and perennial right wing favorite. A big part of the trad catholic/orthodox thing you're talking about is a rejection of material empiricism. You can only hear smug assholes say "science says XYZ" so many times before you start asking "who's this 'science' guy and what does he know anyway". I definitely think the impulse is justified, even if I don't personally think Christianity is the best conclusion (I wish movements like this would go in a more occult direction, pic related). So many people appeal to "science" without understanding its limitations (commonly ignoring the fact that science can only test falsifiable hypotheses, except when they conflate "unfalsifiable" and "false"). They'll try to use science, or their flawed conception of it, to answer metaphysical questions like "is the universe fundamentally material?". I'm sure you're familiar with the classic Atheist Debate Champion trick of taking an unfalsifiable question, claiming the null hypothesis is whatever they want it to be, and then challenging anyone to falsify it. Anyway, the reason I'm spending so much time talking about these people is because they're who the people you're talking about are reacting against.

>>24139 >although many atheists are true skeptics that want evidence to support their beliefs, The problem with this is that it's incompatible with rationality. You can't support all of your beliefs with evidence because you need an axiomatic context to define what your evidence is actually evidence of. Empiricism can tell you how things will appear within your framework of first principles (i.e. your beliefs), but it cannot tell you which initial assumptions to make. Nowhere is this more apparent than particle physics. Theoretical physicists tacitly accept that the things they are studying are just abstractions. They know that a "quark" has no more (or less) ontological validity than "a mind" or "a soul". It's just something you assume exists so that you can anchor your empirical framework on something and map phenomenological experience to theoretical objects. It's really no different than how mathematicians will lay out a set of axioms and derive theorems from it. These axioms aren't true because they're dictated by god or justified by science, they're just assumed to be true... in other words they're taken "on faith". The is nothing intrinsically wrong with this. In fact, using unjustified belief to pin down first principles is how we got science in the first place, even if enlightenment-era scientists probably didn't know that this is what they were doing. However, for whatever reason "skeptics" really don't like to hear this. In their minds, "belief" is a dirty word. To them it is something that you do when you reject science, rather than a cognitive tool that humans need to provide a frame of reference for their raw unfiltered experience. The problem is dogmatism, not unjustified belief.

>>23752 You'd have to go a long way to bugger as many boys as the Roman Catholic Church.

>>24089 Kingdoms of the past have technically, the religions that most kingdoms didn't approve of were derezzed, and the ones that did allow for basically any religion were few and far between, and usually weren't long-lasting. In the modern-day, it isn't anti or pro-religion, most states just take a neutral position, they just don't have it involved in their governments. If it is unclear what role religion will have in the future, then I don't think that either of us can have a strong assertion as to how it will play a role in the future. Regardless, if we ever get the point where we use machines to determine morals and ethics, I don't think we will be very human.

>>24142 I'm only posting in this thread to criticize this. I'm not Catholic, nor do I admire its church, but this is a stupid position pushed by the media. It's obvious Muslims don't care about this and rabbis suck the remaining blood from an infant's penis after slicing part of it off, but it's Catholics that have the issue? This is just biased media reporting, and since Catholicism is the whitest of the three, it gets this treatment.

>>23747 While atheism rightfully died, I believe the recent influx of Christians of any sort is just old people preaching it and young people without proper intellectual and metaphysical knowledge latching onto the said dubious claims in a desperate attempt to have something tangible in their lives. Some will go down the road of bullshit, others will branch out into reading actual books ranging from Tao Te Ching to Evola's writing to old myths and this will save them.

>>23747 >new atheist secular humanist egalitarianism Hmm, how do I put it in a simple way. You need to be some sort of hollow husk of a person to genuinely be a new atheist secular humanist egalitarianist. Literally anything beats that. It's like naive nihilism with basic intuition-based ethics glued on. It has essentially no pull.

>>24142 Eh, teachers and social workers do it at about the same rates. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201808/separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction

>>24007 I think most converts to Gnosticism are drawn in by its esotericism and theological dualism rather than the rejection of materialism, even if the latter is important to most Gnostics.

>>24150 >>rightfully died No amount of sheep online makes this true.

>>23747 I think it has to do with purpose. Traditional Christian values are what our fathers have built modern society upon. Whether it takes a fundamentalist bent or not, I think approaching things such as religion brings back some order and purpose to people's lives. That's the big power of religion, it creates order. I'm not a Christian, but what are you supposed to look up to in this world once you discard God? Money? Hedonism, which is temporary and will makes you unhappy in the long term? I do not like religion and I can't accept it because I refuse to withhold logic to accommodate for its fantasies, but I recognize that atheism leaves a void that needs to be filled with a purpose just as high. It's very hard to replace religion, especially in times of chaos, and one particular obstacle is that everything but religion, being at least in part immersed in worldly affairs, has been corrupted by humanity's vices. Yes, the clergy is also corrupt, but giving money to the clergy is an act toward God, not towards the clergy. Even if the framework is worldly and corrupt, God can't be corrupted, and the realm of one's personal faith is always suspended above the grime. I think nothing in this world came up for no reason. Things are discarded all the time, religion always stayed because it fulfills a very deep purpose that the arguments used to defeat it cannot replace: science and reason are tools, they are not a purpose. When you are suicidal and you have lost hope, knowing that your brain has a chemical imbalance doesn't do soykaf, if anything it dehumanizes you, it takes away from your sense of agency. It's incredibly naive if not malicious to tell people to drop religion because religion is dumb, without offering them an alternative, especially while with one hand you remove all the values and order and purpose, with the other hand you act like an iron-fisted tyrant, throwing tantrums like a baby, sowing discord and half-assedly attempting suicide for attention because people didn't call you the right pronoun on the internet. Of course people will turn back to traditional extremism. Honestly I wish I could be religious.

>>24178 Sure, fair points. However, I don't think the question should be about having a god vs. nihilism. We know what Gods are now, mostly. We know how people create them and why they are created. This is really what is keeping me personally from embracing any kind of traditional Christian spirituality. It's hard to go back to a "one true God" metaphysical framework and really buy into it. There's another side of that coin though: you can make your own God, with full understanding of what you're doing. After all, there's nothing about a God that intrinsically has to be tied to dogma.

>>24178 >Things are discarded all the time, religion always stayed Monotheistic religion, which is what this thread is about, is 1000+ years younger than the Giza complex. Christianity is 2000 years old. Islam is even younger - there are existing companies that are older than Islam. Evangelicalism started in 18th century - I live in a building that's older. Humans as a species are about 200 000 years old, religion is a blip on the radar, there's nothing always about it.

I find it interesting they all went TradCath rather than TradProt. In my experience the protestant church is just as if not more conservative than the Catholics at times, so they aren't doing it for more tradcoin (tm). On top of that historically Protestantism was always seen as the whiter religion between the two (something these people tend to care about). I think thier preference for Catholicism shows that they are really doing it for the aesthetic and not for the content. Aesthetically the Roman church has so much more to give than Protestantism. Longer history, bishops and cathedrals, byzantine organization structures, etc. Expect the this trend to die as quickly as it began, fascination based on aesthetics are inch deep at best and have no staying power.

>>24232 I dont believe the followers matters as mcuh as the rulebook. Catholics have one obvious difference to protestants - they have stricter rules. Thats a clear bonus for a convert trying to validate himself and act hardcore. You cant act though if the rulebook says you dont need to. >Protestantism was always seen as the whiter religion between the two (something these people tend to care about) If they cared about that kind of crap they would go paganism or some other old style. Evangelism is itself an infestation that deleted their traditional religious roots.

>>23747 >Be me >Be raised by Paganistic parents >They give me the freedom to do whatever religiously, but teach me interesting stuff on japanese/hindu/christianity/paganistic culture/stories >Get to my edgy years, do that atheistic thing >Also get brought to a 'Unitarian Universalist' church several times, which was actually cool >The UU place had people from almost all religions showing up to hear the preacher do his thing >He did his damnedest not to stay on a single religion or concept, and was a philosophy major before going preacher (if I remember right) >Then after doing stuff, end up in a soykaffest that lasts years >Actually end up reading sections from a Catholic Bible I picked up that gewd advice after years of nihilism >I'll call myself 'Religious' when asked, but I don't bother adding stuff to it, read when I need spiritual/moral compass when mine fails, occasionally pray I mention this story because I think that alot of lainons might have had/felt lots of bad stuff happen to them. (Not trying to convert, just convince lainons to mebbe poke some philosophy and religious texts?) >>24072 >I get along better with genuine atheists than religious fakers Same, and that could be simply because they are genuine? >I am still in a strange place spiritually those feels, anon... >>24178 I think you've managed religion, lainon. I just do not think of religion as a purpose, without being clergy. I continue, as the rest of your post seems to point at, guide you to that purpose. I'm 'Religious' and still got no clue

>>24007 I am also an Orthodox Christian. What I tell converts is to ignore the groups online. There you will find the most extreme people, many of whom are not even faithful but only use the Church's aesthetics and name for gain to acquire their own flock and following. Orthodoxy is ultimately about repenting of your sins, treating others (all people, not just the ones you like) with love as they are made in God's image, and growing closer to God. Most of the people who like to use the faith as a means to play politics and roleplay (ie the western born anti-western slavophile who has an unrealistic view of the reality of life in Russia or the leftwing liberal ecumenist/modernist) really do just leave after the novelty wears out or when they learn they must repent/pray regularly and treat others with love. Btw, nice post. I found it edifying.

>>24223 and yet there is evidence for religious experience prior to monotheism such as the animistic early religions. Its pretty hard to dismiss religion as a blip on the radar when it's been with man since he was man.

>>24232 depends on who you're talking about. the crusades larpers are definitely coming at it from the "legacy of the west" angle you're talking about. on the other hand, the ones who actually care about the theological side have this image of the protestant church as a bunch of "pastor jims" who are just making soykaf up and have no divine right to speak for god. they essentially view divinity as something that gets delegated from the top down. god chooses people to sort of "speak for him" and those people can transfer this authority to other people (i'm sure catholics would object to this characterization but i don't know enough about their theology to do better). protestants don't think that god chooses popes or saints or anything like that. essentially they think everyone is basically the same in that none of them truly know god's will directly. pastors are more like scholars of the bible who share their interpretation of it but offer no concrete guarantees. they fulfill a very different role than a catholic priest, at least in theory, so i can see why catholics would view them as inadequate or even heretical.

>>24144 >Regardless, if we ever get the point where we use machines to determine morals and ethics, I don't think we will be very human. I agree. Humanity is a compromise between beasts and ghosts anyways. Our state of being is too volatile to sustain itself. Our nature will be undone or our being, I don't see it as avoidable. Growth of technology is outpacing growth of biology and when it is completely independent of humans technology will phase out humanity as a no longer relevant byproduct of progress. Humans will change into something entirely different and me integrated into the systems.

>>24265 But the early animalistic beliefs glorified that what was uncomprehensible to humans at the time - animals, forces of nature, the day/night cycle, and seasons. We've moved past it, such beliefs no longer dominate. Now religion seems to be a either a source of meaning to those that can't wrap their heads around science, or look for a moral code to live by in our consumerist society. But there will come a time when this will no longer be necessary as well.

>>24244 UU is a nice place to start, too bad most of he ones in the area I am in focus more on teaching about being "socially progressive" then the different aspects of religion. I did have a good conversation with someone I think was UU who said the church he went to had a pastor who was a clinical psychologist before he became religious (iirc the pastor wanted to understand religion psychologically, which made him study people and religion and then he became more spiritual). I have spoken with many theologians on the subject, and while UU is almost the opposite of orthodox, they both share some similarities (mainly that religion must be deeply internalized and it comes from within). The structure is more rigid with orthodox than more liberal faiths, but the basis of devotion is more clearly defined, one by its description of many faiths to which you must interpret a path, and one by a single faith that must be interpreted (by internalizing words and custom). I am somewhat surprised islam does not surface more in these types of discussions, as it is in essence a complete submission to god, which is clearly stated , while other religions imply you must submit though you still have free will. Islam gets a bad rep because of terrorists, but there are many sects of islam, just like how the westboro baptist church is not representative of all baptists etc. Within muslim communities though, there is the classic case of raised in the faith, and not knowing anything but the faith that has been impressed on someone, which defines clear social and spiritual roles and custom, which makes it easy to adapt to all aspects of living. Most orthodox jews I have talked with seem more interested in custom than in religion (I have known several who actually left the faith because of this). It is also somewhat strange being referred to as guys in a casual conversation. I have also met a few people who were essentially draft dodgers in israel who had some interesting perspectives on religion.

>>24333 >animalistic dude it's animistic, not animalistic

How do people justify their specific belief when they believe in a higher power? What solid evidence is there that the Bible is more likely to represent God over the Torah, the Quran or the Vedas? I often hear the religious argument that faith is outside rationalization but i dont see any reason why scripture should be.

>>24368 That is a complex answer, but from my experience, there are geerally two schools of thought that I have encountered: >similarities within another religion are an affirmation f ones own religion, and simply another way of stating what one believes (i.e. as an alternate interpretation or otherwise differing paradigm of the same belief). >other religions are absolute falsehoods by comparison with ones own religion and are disregarded.

Well I think some people are just contrarians, and they always want to against the mainstream for whatever reason. But also, it's probably because there were flaws in the new atheists' worldview. Like many of the new atheists' criticisms of religion were totally valid. But at the same time, new atheists were unable to explain how you can have objective morality without religion. Also, some new atheists' criticized religion solely because it can't be scientifically proven. However, just because something can't be scientifically proven, that doesn't mean that it isn't true. People saw that these were bad arguments, and that's what pushed them towards becoming more religious.

>>24368 Personally, I'm a Hermetic, which is inevitably tied to personal experience. You're not supposed to follow some scripture, you're supposed to experience it for yourself. It's much the same with Zen Buddhism at least. >>23747 The modern world is getting more and more spiritually crushing/empty, which means that more people who previously would not have noticed it are feeling the void where something was supposed to be. Blame materialist philosophies in action, combined with the leftward drift of western society putting people at the forefront of their movement that are clearly deranged and demanding not just tolerance (aka ignoring the crazy person) but actively making them a part of your life (like drag-queen story hour) The fundamentalism is explained by the fact that any new convert to a religion tends to be more fanatical than people born into it, as a way to show he belongs. >>24232 >the whiter religion between the two Only in America, and you get the same religious trend in Europe. Modern Protestantism has a lot of facets that could be seen as "progressive", like female priests, priests marrying, and even lesbian priests, at least in Sweden, which is what probably contributes too. And the more conservative Catholic groups that the modern church tries to forget about can be positively dark ages. Opus Dei is doing pretty well and they practice flagellation, for example. And then there's the sedevecantist groups, which can be five minutes from witch burnings, ideologically speaking.

>>24368 Usually one or a mix of: >personal revelation >analysis and comparison So, for an example of the last one, muslims sometimes argue that Islam is true based on the beauty of the Qu'ran. Personal revelation can have a pretty wide spectrum to it, from "I was lost, and God guided me to answers in the scripture" to visions.

>>24462 >You're not supposed to follow some scripture, you're supposed to experience it for yourself. It's much the same with Zen Buddhism at least. Buddhism looks great in theory but in practice it looks like Bob Ross, a college philosophy club and a yoga gym in one convenient package. You know it's the most middle-aged upper class thing imaginable on the planet when closing your eyes for 30 minutes is supposed to do something about your stress.

>>24484 And before you say "but the monks get to galaxy brain mode by closing their eyes": the monks live with other monks who took monk vows, in a sanctuary with 0 stimuli or stressors to encourage that, and free food from all the stressed wagies.

>>24484 The kind of meditation that Zen monks practice isn't supposed to destress you, it's supposed to bring you closer to enlightenment. Properly practiced, it's actually quite straining. And it's certainly supposed to last a lot longer than 30 minutes. The problem you get with buddhism, especially Zen buddhism, is that the practice in the west and the east are vastly different. In the east, becoming a monk involves a ten+ year long training while living in a monastery. In the west, it involves five meditation weekends in a resort. Not every western temple is serious, most are just hippies/new agers living the buddhism fad.

>>24486 I don't agree with your East vs. West dualism since a lot of Buddhist institutions in the West are full of Asians at this point, both on the lay side and monk side. Either those Asians went through a sloppy training in their Asian homeland, the Asian laypeople are sloppy Buddhists themselves, or there's not a lot of difference between Western and Eastern practice. No idea about Zen since it's strictly Japanese, but knowing how fond Japan is of aggrandizing its own traditions and going by what's under the broader Buddhist umbrella, I'm a bit skeptical.

It's nothing new. Man has always had a history of digging itself into a hole - then finding that a higher moral code digs them out. Religion/Philosophy came, stayed, and evolved for that very purpose. Noting mysticism from awareness of the being isn't a delusion. It's a minor evolution.

new atheism leaves people vulnerable to existential crisis because it provides no tools for coping with meaninglessness, just assertions of meaninglessness. Invariably, people have that existential crisis and either go full nihilist sadsack or latch on to religion. However, they usually don't have the community which makes religion feel 'real', and the only other way to make it feel 'real' is to latch on to absurd rules and dubious lore. It's a pretty classic example of the rule of five: first there was nothing, then there was ancient religion, which provided order both destructive and constructive (aneris), this was dashed by the scientific revolution(s) which brought destructive chaos, then the reaction is to revert to the old ways but lose the good parts, bringing destructive order. The last one is chaos both destructive and constructive, otherwise known as eris. In other words, y'all motherfuckers need Eris.

Eternal children who think being contrarian makes them smart. When atheism became mainstream enough they looked for the opposite thing. This "catholic identity" mumbo jumbo is particularly strong in my country and it's always some basement dweller with no direction in life who suddenly thinks he's in a position to lecture everyone because "he has God on his side". It's like everyone is either your regular, run of the mill normal person with no strong opinions(apart from what they're indoctrinated into) or complete retards who think they know the answer to everything because they spend their days insider trading about it on imageboards. I wish I was a better manipulator, that way at least interacting with people might still offer some enjoyment.

>>24368 In my experience, people who are particularly fanatic about it don't dwell on those questions as much unless they have a source that reinforces the indoctrination they're tending towards. Anything that doesn't confirm their adopted worldview is corrupted, and they put special emphasis on it if they can be "extra-contrarians" and claim to understand the real truth about history or what have you.

Early-internet-atheism and current-internet-gnosticism share in common a lack of inherent guilt. The universe is fuarrrked, not you. This isn't to say that the idea of catholicistic inherited guilt is a more productive approach, but I think that the strongest commonality between these strongly idealistic movements is the draw of not having to blame one's self, just the system one was borne into.

It's because so many people are blind or powerless to follow existentialism. People want meaning so badly, and they're offered it up in the form of stupid fairy tales. Rather than examine their actual physical material circumstance and draw upon themselves for meaning, they latch onto something that claims to have all the meaning baked in. Perfect, no thought required. No effort. No feeling of angst, just tidy little walls to demark acceptable thoughts from unacceptable. These people lack the capacity for the true agency (by all appearances, since some people do come back from the maw of the void), and the responsibility to take charge of their thoughts and actions. Bluntly, religion is the most in-authentic thing they could do, as it ultimately takes away their ability/will to create their own world of possibilities. Boxed in, they have no desire to escape, since it would require facing the incredible anxiety of somebody with unlimited potential.

There is a near-infinite gulf between "lobotomized religious sheep" and "one who knows God exists." the atheist too often tilts at the former and declares victory against the latter. it is no great feat to skewer a lamb, nor is it sporting. >No feeling of angst God exists. It is silent, and it does not hear my cries. There is no refuge in God. I do not see, or hear, or even believe. I know, but that brings no comfort. Ah! To forsake- to slake this thirst in the fountains of human pleasure, yet e'en those wettest waters are scorched to ash in the face of the Divine. Far easier to play Fox among the Lambs, I assure you. Anon said to Lain: "Boxed in, they have no desire to escape, since it would require facing the incredible anxiety of somebody with unlimited potential." Lain smiled, and said to Anon: "Boxed in, you have no desire to escape, since it would require facing the incredible anxiety of somebody with unlimited potential."

>>24462 >modern world is getting more and more spiritually crushing/empty Many internet converts have a history of diving into various online abysses e.g. violent political extremism. You could say that they're diving into another cultish subgroup, or you could say they're trying to grab on to anything that will stop them from shooting up a school or whatever. >>24398 >some people are just contrarians Yes. If you want to be a troll, you can make more people mad online by telling them to stop doing drugs and read the Bible than by saying that drugs are good and Christians are lame. >>24081 It's true that evangelicals spend money on PR-like proselytization, but this doesn't explain why most "internet converts" become tradcaths or orthodox, who have less money and whose "PR" is limited to music composed centuries ago, videos of mass on Youtube, and some early 2000s looking websites. >>23769 Most of these make sense. >>24368 Catholics and Orthodox do not believe in the infallibility or the primacy of the Bible. "Sacred tradition" and apostolic succession are equally important in these churches. This probably has something to do with the internet convert phenomenon. It's hard to tell if it's really a "phenomenon", or just a few dozen to a few hundred posters. Religion at large continues to decrease in the US and other developed countries. Census data from 2020 will probably reveal further decrease.

Don't know. I'm full atheist, but sometimes I wish I could believe in god. People assume I'm religious because I have religious art all over my social media... although these accounts are all fake, and I use them to keep up with the times.

>>24007 This.

>>23756 >weak people who deserve pity damaging themselves due to some serious issues they have vs weak people who deserve pity gradually degrading their sexual preferences two sides of the same coin really

>>23747 It's mainly that non-Christians are just LARPing as those various pseudo-Christian groups because they are exotic to a greater or lesser degree. Tradcath is just pre-Vatican 2.0 papism, but is nevertheless "abnormal" to some extent. Orthodox (whether eastern or oriental but mainly eastern) are quite exotic, thanks to the heavy influence they have from eastern mysticism. Gnosticism is of course exotic as it has been effectively dead for 1500 years.

“Tradcaths”, Orthodox Extremists and rabid evangelicals are pretty much just the modern incarnation of reactionary / conservative IdPol. Internet “Gnostics” whatever you want to define that as are pretty much just the modern outgrowth of people interested in a more spiritual form of Christianity

They are just young people dissatisfied with the modern world. It's not a surprise that they would attempt to run into religion (and traditionalism, in general) as a way to "oppose" everything contemporary, which they despise. This is in opposition to the Christian USA from the 2000s and the atheists that popped up as a means of opposition to that. This resurgence is smaller than you think and probably will die out soon.

>>29225 Religion gives you a purpose too. If you're a prospectless, jobless man then having an organised religion give you a set of rules and tasks with a promised reward of eternal happiness alongside the idea of doing God will is extremely alluring.

>>23747 Atheism destroyed Christian evangelicals online. Atheism couldn't quite as easily destroy churches that actually have philosophies and theologies well established for hundreds or thousands of years thought up by men who were, no matter your disagreements, quite intelligent. 20% of the alt-right were fallenaway Caths/practicing Catholics, so that underbelly was always there. Half of Catholics between 18-25 have fallen away, so lots of non-Catholics have influences from it.

>>29600 It's also a community. You are at least supposed to find people who share your beliefs. If I walk into a Buddhist thing I'll meet people who more or less like those values, etc. That's probably the most important thing about religion, it ties people together by what is supposed to be the more core stuff of their personality, their ethics and life outlook. With Christianity disintegrating because it had to adapt to a consumerist society that sees ethics and values as a hindrance, the West doesn't have any easy for people to find a community. There's only social media which is a complete failure from this point of view, because you can only find people who share the same product fetish or other crap like that. Anyway atheism was inevitable, I mean how can you justify God without willfully suspending disbelief with the awareness that belief is arbitrary and it's about the goal, not truth, nobody thinks that much about things. The masses will abandon religion because at some point it inevitably clashes with the sterilized global society of consumers endgame of capitalism.

>>29931 I agree with you that New Atheism mostly "destroyed" things that were already running on fumes, but this included large, large numbers of Catholics. Just look at these polls, from 6 years ago at that. Probably at least half of Catholics in the US only identify that way for cultural or ethnic reasons, and people raised evangelical with their same level of belief or church attendance would just say "unaffiliated". Evangelicals still exist and are basically alive and well, but with far less people and cultural influence. They're also taking over Latin America from Catholics. I noticed it seems silly even talking about "atheism" as a thing now. Nobody even has this atheism vs Christianity debate anymore, because the whole world has become atheism. Every aspect of mass culture just ignores God entirely. I was reading an account of an explorer in Africa, and he met with an extremely primitive tribe, more primitive than any of the dozens of other tribes in Africa he'd met or anywhere else he'd been: they had no conception of what happened to people after they died (they didn't even have burial rituals) and didn't conceive of any higher power at all. Sounds like most people these days.

>>29931 People still continue to have religious experiences. Any materialist argument pales when you're faced with the inhabitants of the spiritual plane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I11L71PD3Lw https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/how-become-christian https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/prayer/the-sinners-prayer-4-examples.html

>>30102 Religious experiences are only religious when interpreted in a framework of religosity. Many people interpret 'inhabitants of the spiritual plane' to be extra-dimensional beings, animistic spirits of the land, expressions of their inner insecurity, hallucinations that they dismiss immediately, "machine elves", aliens, etc. etc. >>30017 >I was reading an account of an explorer in Africa, and he met with an extremely primitive tribe, more primitive than any of the dozens of other tribes in Africa he'd met or anywhere else he'd been: they had no conception of what happened to people after they died (they didn't even have burial rituals) and didn't conceive of any higher power at all. Sounds like most people these days. Having "no conception of any higher power at all" is surprisingly common. Arguably many schools of Buddhism assert a total lack of gods in the Abrahamic sense, and many ancient proto-religions preferred to talk of spirits and entities that had distinctly human characteristics and limitations. There is also the fact that many societies are extremely secretive about their religious practices. Pre-European Australians are an example, many of them resist any attempt at outsiders understanding their religion.

>>23747 >For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction When the pendulum swings far to one side it will return with an equivalent force towards the other. Catholics and a rise in “traditional” Christianity will be a beginning, next Pagans and Gnostics leading eventually to Esoteric Hitlerism and O9A.

Pop-esoterics are a thing, despite the contradiction. Take an idea that sounds spooky, abstract, yet enlightened, and boil it down to mindless practice. Which is appealing in an age of information overload; simplicity is a commodity. It's a problem tradition undergoes where the context and reasons for a tradition become lost, leaving a ritual that only exists for itself. Also these choices are made more for individual reasons rather than societal change. Like you want a cool new badge for your collection. >>32257 Paganism hasn't had a major undercurrent for ages. Pretty much the only people practicing it (in the West at least) are wannabe witches and nazi LARPers. The conflict of traditionalism and modernity has left it out of the loop for now.

Religion is just schizophrenia collective Also best example of "people believe/know what you tell them to believe/knkw"

>>32263 Can you elaborate?

>>32263 Couldn't you also apply this to science? Have you ever seen oxygen molecules or viruses? If not, then aren't you just blindly trusting what the system tells you?

>>32274 unlike religion, science only claims to accurately model reality. Having taken some classes that involved me using these models to predict the outcome of real world events, I trust most of it.

>>32274 At some point one has to put their trust in something. I choose to trust the methods and claims of the people who produce things that I can see with my own eyes. When I want to bring light into my home, I don't pray to some god and get a priest involved. I flip a lightswitch installed by an electrician, developed by an engineer, based on principles discovered by a scientist.

>>23747 I will say the Orthodox Church has compelling arguments and many on here and elsewhere grew up Christian, but for me is still a hard pass at this point as I read more up on it. Having said that still is an interesting faith.

Having done both the atheist thing and the trad thing in my life, I didn't actually find that one demanded significantly fewer axioms taken on pure faith than the other, but tradition has a much more sensible approach to living a healthy and fulfilling life, so I understand the appeal.