Don't ask, don't tell, don't persueFollow

Not everyone. I kinda enjoy those people.

You do the same with science. Unironically, sometimes, too.

I can tell.

For me, a lot of it began to unravel when I left home as well. My parents were fairly good Catholics by most standards - my mother had been a postulate before she ran away from the convent to join the Army (she figured if she was getting treated like that she might as well get paid for it) and my father was a lecter, reading passages from the Bible every Sunday in his wonderful, rich, well-trained voice. Even so, my parents didn't always agree with everything the Church taught, and my mother was a big science and science fiction enthusiast. (Any mother who lets the six year old stay up til 1AM to watch Dr. Who with her on BBC is automatically the Coolest Mom On Earth.) I was trained as a cantor from the time I was twelve, and I learned to sing with a full voice that filled our large cathedral as my godmother, the organist, played music that ranged from 16th century hymns to 20th century high masses with a peppering of random black spirituals mixed in. Every Sunday, I stood in front of five hundred people and sang my heart out, and I believed what I sang.

When I struck out on my own to go to college 2 hours away when I was 18, I visited the little church on campus and I was devastated. Everything was wrong. The music was wrong. The priest was a Franciscan. The musicians played *gag* country music.

And I realized that I had believed in the music, and not in the religion.

It was rather devastating. I started researching paganism and for a good many years happy lived as a full fledged Discordian. I went Wiccan for a while before I decided that was just silly. Then I jumped ship to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

And then a funny thing happened. I began to have doubts about my doubts. Little moments, here and there. And at some point I began to kind of believe again. No fancy being born again, no need to go preach the good news - there are many ways to salvation, and as long as someone eventually finds one way, that will be the right way for them.

These days, I consider myself a quasi-Christian agnostic. The Bible is a collection of oral traditions of the nomadic tribes of a lost civilization, full of wonderful fables and great advice and stories of a great man who changed the world. But it's not literal, and I pity anyone who lives in a world where the Bible is all they have ... because the higher power I believe in is not confined to a single book, but fills an entire universe.

Edited, Jan 7th 2012 8:05pm by catwho

Absolutely!
I don't look down on anyone for what they do or don't believe. My rants on here are just rants. Perhaps it's like touching a hot plate even when you know it's hot. This is just a message board. In actual life I don't do this.
My goal here is, and always has been(even as a pagan), to make people think about things that they usually wouldn't think about; but even when I was ranting about reincarnation, magic, and the non-locality of the soul; people's heads didn't spin like they do when Jesus is involved.



This is where you don't get it. Pagan ways are what society backs though. Society is getting more and more hostile to Christianity every day.
It's kind of peculiar if you consider that all of the other mainstream religions are largely embraced by their societies. The Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, etc.. to those people their religion isn't the taboo that Christianity has become.

It is kind of amazing that kids under the age of 12 in this country now consider the words "Jesus Christ" to be swear words.

I doubt anyone actually buys this.

Are you really going to play the persecution card?

You're not really surprised, are you?

Yeah, whatever happened to "turn the other cheek" and all that jazz? Christians are supposed to halfway want to be persecuted, because standing by their faith through persecution means they are resolute and stuff.

Showing less favoritism is not quite the same as increased hostility.

I don't know any atheists or agnostics personally that have a hatred for Christianity, they just don't want to be bothered by it.

No, just someone who doesn't use internet forums solely to figure what people are about. I think most people are more open minded when they don't have a keyboard in front of them. Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic in that regard.

I'll freely admit I unfairly criticize Christianity more harshly than it deserves and more so than other religions. Part of that's proximity, and part of that's a lot of terrible personal experiences that objectively don't represent the whole.

I'm pretty sure that there are millions of Protestants who are disgusted with the Catholic Church, too.