I wonder if it would become more interesting to the OP if all debates were required to include flying yak cocks on treadmills. If the opposing sides were to combat in a Joust type game atop those yak bits, it would certainly become more interesting.
Yeah, that’s the first thing that came to mind for me as well.
Personally, I like pondering the question of human existence and the possibility of a higher Being. But even if you don’t, it’s kind of impossible to not care about religion if you live in the US and give a shit about politics and current issues, because there are a lot of people in this country who care very deeply about religion.
Wider society, hell. Someone who isn’t interested in religion isn’t interest in people, full stop.
</atheist>
As an atheist, I’d be thrilled if I never had to think about religion again.
I’m interested in religion from an anthropological and historical point of view, and sometimes alarmed by it from a civil rights point of view. But as far as participating in the many, often frothing debates on the boards, I’m an occasional lurker and and a never-joiner.
I’d hazard that the OP is pretty normal or lives in a liberal area. I don’t mean that as an insult either. As a gay man in the Bible Belt, I am keenly aware of how religion affects me.
Like Pochacco, I’d be happy if I didn’t have to think about religion. Notice there aren’t many if any threads in GD about astrology. Do you think there aren’t any astrologers? Astrologers are mostly harmless. They don’t pass laws about what you do or who you associate with. If the religious behaved likewise, I bet most of the threads about religion would dry up.
I’m not going to tell you that you need to fear the religious. If you are mostly average and I mean that in the ‘being normal’ sense of the word, you probably have nothing to worry about. Religion is mostly about status quo though it can be reactionary. But if you value science or diversity (I’m not just talking about us queers here), I urge you to take a look at the effect that religion has on the laws of the land.
As for the yak cocks, it was all inspired by something I read by William S. Burroughs (although I can’t remember what exactly.) But I decided to use it as a substitute for “rat’s ass” here because that expression is played out. “Yak’s cock” is spicier, tangier and packs more of a phonemic punch.
My only sense of a higher power is some kind of vague energy force that binds all matter in the world together. Even then, I hardly ever think about it. I would not call myself either an atheist or an agnostic because to do so would imply that I define myself as having some sort of position at all on the issue of religion, which I do not. I don’t really care about any of the current political issues that have to do with religion. I don’t give a shit if they want to put “in God we trust” on coins. I don’t care if they have a license plate with a picture of Jesus Christ holding a sign that says “Convert to Christianity Now!” I don’t care if they want to put a gigantic statue of the Ten Commandments right outside of every school in the country. And I don’t care if they passed a law outlawing any of that stuff, either. I’m sorry, folks, I just don’t care.
I think this has a great deal to do with the fact that I am not close friends with anyone who is religious. I don’t have a single friend, nor immediate family member, not even my grandparents, who practice any kind of religion. The closest I can think of is one guy who I’m only vaguely acquainted with who claims to be a Buddhist although from what I’ve heard about Buddhism, displays none of it whatsoever in his personal attitudes. I just never had religion play any kind of important role in the immediate world around me. It just never resonated with me at all. Whatever bell rings within the human mind at the topic of religion, I either don’t have it, or it has not yet been struck. Either way, like I said, the very word “religion” makes me start to feel bored just seeing it in text or hearing it spoken.
And as for caring about the rest of the world’s issues with religion - which I admit are important issues - I just don’t really see it as being about religion. I see it as being about power, and the basic human desire to maintain it. Terrorist groups, cults like that FLDS thing with all the underage girls, the evolution debate, etc - as far as I’m concerned, it’s either about power or about maintaining the status quo. Religion is just being invoked to justify whatever shitty things are being done.
Whatever the case may be, I’m not going to be convinced to care about religion. I started this thread to see if there were others here who didn’t care. Feel free to explain why you DO in fact care, if you want to. But it’s not going to make me care.
There’s this line in the novel Sideways that says “life for Jack was what he could see and touch and taste at any given moment,” or something like that (in reference to the character of Jack.) That would describe me pretty well. I care about what’s around me, first and foremost. I read the local newspaper far more often than I read any kind of international news. I’m not interested in politics either, except for things that directly effect me - like, am I allowed to have a gun, am I allowed to smoke weed, etc.
I feel like I’m digressing majorly here, so I’m not sure what else to say. Religion is boring to me. Boring as all get-out. But more than anything else, the American religious discourse - Christians versus evolution, abortion, etc etc etc…just doesn’t interest me at all. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.
I think it’s one of things that’s easy to ignore until your lab gets its funding pulled or your pharmacist tells you he can’t sell you birth control because of his beliefs. Then, as they say, it’s personal.
I was raised Catholic, and now I’m an Athiest. My mom is very religious, my brother is very religious, and everyone else in my family is at least moderately religious. Most, if not all, of the people where I work are religious. The employees from India tend to be very religious. The city where I live is quite religious. I know maybe 3 other people personally who think like me. Opening my mouth about my opinion on religion is generally a very bad idea. I save myself a lot of trouble, and this is something I know for a fact, by keeping my mouth shut.
As a result, I come here. Here I can actually say what I think, and know that not only will there be people who don’t think like me, but there will be people who do think like me. Here, if I say I’m an athiest, I don’t have anyone telling me that there’s no way I’m athiest, everyone believes in god. No one will stare at me and avoid me from now on. And I won’t have to listen to anyone telling me how disappointed they are because of how I turned out.
I would absolutely love to never once think about religion ever again (or yak cock for that matter). But it’s not going to happen.
I don’t care one bit. At least in a Doper kind of way. I have no interest in being involved in religious threads. Don’t even read them. Seems to be the same shit bounced around by the same few posters. I don’t go to church except for weddings and funerals. As long as you don’t try and push your beliefs on me I don’t even think of religion. I am highly offended when people are put down because of their religious beliefs. Intolerence annoys the fuck out of me, whichever direction it is coming from.
I am very rarely confronted with having to declare what my religious beliefs are or having to hear much about religion of others beyond getting the “I’m blessed” response to inquiring about a stranger’s day. I’m glad I don’t live in the Bible Belt anymore, as it was a LOT more important for people to investigate about how religious you were than it was to chat politely about the weather or something else neutral. At this point, I’m not very religious, but I’m an animist; I don’t necessarily have to have my reverence of the supernatural and natural world follow a specific schedule or with a group.
That said, I generally don’t care that much about religion. I think it’s problematic that a handful of super-religious Christians want to turn the nation (or their local area) into a theocracy, and I think that anti-evolution arguments aren’t based in understanding the actual theory of natural selection that they’re arguing against, but I don’t have the vitriol I see spewed by some of my fellow Dopers. Not all religion is dangerous, and not every person of a particular religion is going to be a crazy nutter about their beliefs; it’s not being pushed on you by existing if nobody’s specifically coming up to you to bother you about it. I just think that some people are defending themselves from something that is not as big or prevalent of a threat as they make it out to be. Yes, there are horrible people who do terrible things in the name of religion, but that doesn’t make every single religious person bad.
Very true. Yak cock is here to stay.
I have learned that religious discussions are challenging even in those cases where people agree. There is simply too much back story to try to intuit.
What may seem to one person like an innocuous assumption or a basic thesis comes off as a full-on frontal assault. In some cases, a well known bible verse or a particular scientific theory has already been used as the jumping off point for an attack or a broad reproach of either a religious or a secular doctrine. Use that same verse or theory and it is easy to have enough words shoved in your mouth to choke a gnu.
In short, I do enjoy reading about, thinking about and studying religion and religious criticism, but trying to talk about it is fruitless.
I don’t care about religion. I have morals.
If being religious helps others stay moral, so be it. But I see a lot of religious people that aren’t particularly moral.
I don’t believe in religion or GD. I do have my beliefs but it is more spiritual. I think generally it is to help people get to a point that they believe in something.
But I was raised Catholic. Went to Sunday school. My mother a sunday school teacher. My father was a alter boy back in his day, but something happened where they all stopped going. Never did find out what…
Though just recently I went into my part time job and there was a scripture from the bible framed on the wall (I work in retail and it was in eye view of every customer). As soon as I got in there, I pried it off the wall and sent an email to my boss. Call me a bitch all you want, but not the place for it. Nor did I find it appropriate.
ETA. So ya. No. I don’t really care much for it.
No, just strange enough to pity. And to think about how much more advancement there would have been if not for being held back by superstition.
I don’t know. I think Christianity is pretty damned boring, but I’m an agnostic who was raised in a fairly religious Catholic family, so I’m probably just sick of it. If someone tried to tell me I was a bad person for not sharing their beliefs, I wouldn’t get pissed off, I’d just think it was pretty unimaginative of them to let religion determine their opinion of me. I don’t think using religion to make an argument is convincing, mostly because (to me) it shows a lack of individual thought. But as long as people aren’t trying to force me to share their beliefs, they can believe whatever they want and I won’t care. Like I said, I’ll just think it’s kind of unoriginal (unless they’ve thought about their beliefs and know why they have them, instead of blindly following the religion of others around them).
I do think the question of whether there is a higher power is interesting and important, because I fear nonexistence. But I have yet to see a compelling argument either way, and yes, the same old debate over and over gets pretty boring. The topic itself, though, is definitely NOT boring.
Some people worship the yak.
Respect the yak, and tame the ox!
I feel the same. There are times where I have to learn about it in college, but I approach it with a “Oh, so that’s why these set of values were rampant in a certain nation”, but other than that I don’t give a damn about any religions.
You know, there is a reason that the literature of William S. Burroughs is typically located as far away as possible from the “Self-Help” section in a bookstore, owing to the propensity of its readers to obsess, as they demonstratedly do, on images of the reproductive organs of Central Asian bovines and the emissions therefrom, a topic that is not generally enjoyed by the public at large.
That’s called “money”.
You are what a friend of mine labels (and refers to herself as) an “apathetic”. It’s a perfectly reasonable attitude to hold, as long as you don’t live in the Great Flat Brownness of the American Midwest where advocating indifference toward religion is even more offensive than being a Jew, or belongin’ to one o’ them weird Eastern Jesus-hatin’ faiths that make ya wear a tablecloth or bedsheet on yer head and drink funny smellin’ milk. And in the South you are better off proclaiming an adherence to Satanism than utter indifference to organized religion. Heck, it’s like ya’ don’t even care about football.
Instead, of course, we have religion thrust into every sphere of public life as some kind of aligning principle on otherwise apious subjects. Not that this is anything new, as anyone who remembers the three way gang-rape of religious nuttery that was the 1980 presidential election can attest. (Hostages and swamp rabbits aside, I think Reagan won because he was able to say “God” without sounding like he was going to fly off the pulpit.) So even those of us who don’t really care about the mentality and philosophy behind modern religious practice are forced into some kind of consideration about it.
Personally, I think most of the precips and claims of organized religion and New Age-ish faiths are pretty demonstrably silly, although generally not one more than another (though the business about Transubstantiation is just too wacky to be believes). And watching religions stuggle with trying to rationalize prescientific claims with the experimental evidence of modern science is alternatingly amusing and irritating. Watching religions steamroll over science and fact-based public policy, on the other hand, is pretty frightening, especially given where many religions have gone with this before.
Oh, and I don’t really give a periwinkle’s metanephridia about yak’s cocks. Am I the only person here who feels that way?
Stranger