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maurelian
@maurelian.eth
Ok, here is something about me, and it somehow feels embarrassing to say, but I think the conversation is returning to earnestness again, so here goes. I grew up attending a United Church every Sunday, where the dogma is relatively chill, and things like questioning the age of the earth were acceptable. But still, the Bible stories were the cornerstone of it. My family said grace before dinner each night, but the wrath of God wasn’t used a cudgel. More New Testament than old. Sometime in high school I became an atheist, and that felt freeing. But at some point something flipped. Eventually I came to feel like something was taken from me. I can’t go back now. There’s no point pretending that Santa Claus is real. But that doesn’t mean the belief itself is without value.
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Dean Pierce 👨💻🌎🌍
@deanpierce.eth
I was raised atheist (my dad grew up in one of those bad churches in Texas) but I've come to understand that there's a lot of value in community ritual. Religious literalists are kind of doomed in the information age, but apparently Christian literalism only emerged in the Roman era when religion was outlawed, and only the most die hard followers who believed bible stories are literally true persisted. What's important is a shared cannon within the community. Books that everyone has read and can discuss the implications of once a week, and figure out how the lessons of yesterday can inform our actions tomorrow. I think that was well understood in the pre-Roman era. It was a book of morality tales, just like any other book of fairy tales, and that was fine, because every kid learned them and could use them to ground their shared philosophy within the community. I feel like that's what religion should be.
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maurelian
@maurelian.eth
Yes, this is very much how I see it. The consensus and shared understanding.
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