Ask Lemmy

Intra-generational rituals, community, basic comfort… where are the secular alternatives? Effective altruism? Music concerts? Solar eclipses?

Don’t get me wrong, humanity really comes together sometimes, but consistency is important for people.

children on this platform asking if the moon is cheese. ffs

People need to believe in something. Otherwise life feels meaningless to many.

It's difficult to get people to accept this knowledge

Religion isn't just about evolution and how old the earth is, those are distractions from the big issues. All of the knowledge in the world won't help you deal with the questions, "Why am I here?", "What is my purpose? What is the point of it all?", "Do we just die and disappear?" Knowing all the science in the world won't make you feel at peace with these questions.

We are emotional creatures who are sadly aware of our mortality. Many need a parental figure to keep us in line, "God is watching", and a companion for loneliness and hopelessness, "Jesus loves you" when no one else will or can help. It can feel like you have some protection against things overwise out of your control (disasters, wars, sudden deaths, accidents, illness, etc). Many people like the structure it brings their life and the comradery from being part of a like-minded group. Some join the military for this, some go into orthodox religions thick with rules and traditions, like Hassidic Jews. It can lead to a strong tribalism too, same with politics, where you instinctively distrust those who believe differently but feel you can trust those who do because you feel you understand what they feel and think.

"Religious suffering is the expression of real suffering and also a protest against it. Religion is the opium of the masses. Religion is the heart of a heatless world. Religion is the soul of soulless conditions."

Religion isn't a separate thing from culture that can be cleaved off like this. The form it takes is contingent on conditions of people's lives and power structures. People also don't make a conscious choice to believe or disbelieve in religion, if you're an atheist you can't just willingly choose to believe. Society is not directed by the willful actions of people's collective beliefs like this either, it's more a Darwinian process.

Also civil religion is a thing and it doesn't necessarily align with what people think of "religion" but operates in a very similar way. A lot of atheists are probably adherents to aspects of civil religion without knowing or thinking of it this way.

Some would say ya gotta have faith faith faith

Being a programmer, I was always just as baffled about religion, mysticism, and various esoteric stuff, because it just didn't make logical sense, and it was hard to take people who are into it seriously.

tldr: Was sceptical, gave it a try just for fun and to see what's the fuss, found out it's net-positive as long as you don't take it too seriously, let it define your whole personality, or use it as an excuse to be a dick. It's basicaly just like playing solo TTRPGs, and it feels great once you get rid of your jugement.

Then, during high-school, I've stumbled upon the Psychonaut Field Manual, which is a nicely written guide about chaos magic. And I read into it, because the presentation seemed fun, and most importantly - it was the first book where the introduction and first few pages convinced me, that it makes sense and could, in a limited fashion, actually work.

What convinced me was looking at mysticism as something akin to "hacking your own mind" - by using symbols, rituals, meditation and whatnot, you convince your unconscious mind to push you slightly more towards doing what you need. And that sounded like something interesting, especially since I just finished reading the Art of Game Design, which had a few great chapters focused on the subconscious and how to work with it when being creative. Of course I still don't believe that you can affect any external factor of your life through it, but now something like "I do a ritual to finish this exam", and my subconscious may just give me a little nudge to study more, since that's what it's convinced we really want.

So I went into the rabbit hole of modern mysticism, and eventually discovered more about the whole movement of Chaos Magic, with authors like Phil Hine. And their reasoning has won me over - their main point is that all mysticism is the same - learning symbols and doing rituals, so you can convince your subconsciousness. And the flavor or dogma you attach to it doesn't matter, so just do whatever you want. Want to do Wicca? Suit yourself. Christianity and angels? If it works for you. Invoke Spongebob with pentagram out of pizza, or go with Lovecraftian Old Gods? Why not, the only important thing is that you do really believe in it, because otherwise you probably won't convince your subconscious.

And that's why they work with something I find really interresting - they call it paradigm shifts, where you hop around various systems, dogmas and religions, immersing yourself into their rabbit hole and honestly giving it a try, to see if that's what works for you. And that sounded like fun, letting go of the prejudice about religion or esoteric bullshit, and just trying it out for myself, log what results I have, and have fun learning about it.

There's another point that won me over for chaos magic - one of their core principles is, that every mysticism was so full of themself and took it too seriously, that they've forgotten how to have fun. And having fun while doing it is important.

And so I throughout next few years went into the rabbit hole of Wicca, Golden Dawn, Enochian, and probably bunch more I don't really remember, just trying to take it seriously and see for myself how does it work for me. The hardest part was getting rid of feeling absolutely stupid when you sit in your room with candles, incense, and memorize various bullshit, but it was still pretty fun.

To get to the point - Wicca is one of the only systems I've tried that is also a Religion, and works with deities. And I've enjoyed this system more than the others, which were more focused on occultism and abstract concepts, because it basically meant you got an imaginary friend. The small daily rituals, that are celebrating nature while also being appreciated by said imaginary friend were fun little games, that made my day pretty much universally better, just like it turned a simple walk through nature as something wonderful - because I started paying more attention to what is around me.

As long as you don't take it too seriously, don't let it control your life, don't talk about it with others that are not interrested, or use it as an excuse to be a dick to anyone, and just enjoy adding a little bit of magic and fantasy into your daily life, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's a net-positive change, and not too different than just playing a game of TTRPGs.

I've since forgotten about it and don't really do anything in regards to religion or mysticism, but I still fondly remember the few years I've tried, and it has definitely changed my point of view on a lot of things in life. I'd recommend to everyone here to give it a try and see for yourself - you don't have to tell anyone, it's a fun rabbit hole to explore (if that's something you find interresting), and most importantly - you can decide it's not for you and forget about it at any moment.

Same reason people buy lottery tickets despite the odds..

Dude, we have people that think vaccines are giving people disabilities and that the moon landing was fake. There's no shortage of morons out there. I'd go so far as to say many, if not most religious people are fairly rational, especially by comparison xD