Atheist/Humanist/Non-Religious

Americans becoming less Christian as over a quarter follow no religion

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/17/americans-less-christian-religion-survey-pew

The proportion of US adults who describe themselves as Christian has fallen to two-thirds, a drop of 12 percentage points over the past decade, according to data from the Pew Research…[Read more]

Here’s your goat. Oh, man! It’s Dee-lish! I’m not just offering it up to you, but eating it for you, too. That’s just the kind of faithful follower I am.

Any decline in the number of Xtians is good news. I know some nice Christians. They don’t attend church, don’t tell table prayers in restaurants, don’t think Trump was sent by Jesus… I think they might be Buddhists.

Not rapid enough.  I’m still waiting for some offerings of barbecued goat; doesn’t anyone want to appease a Greek god before their house gets hit with a lightning bolt?

I’ve known some good Christians, some good Muslims, and lots of good Jews and Buddhists and even a few good Hindus, but I still hate religions – all of them.  Religion makes good people do bad things to honor a being that doesn’t exist.

How very Christian of her.

If you believe in everything, you believe in nothing.

I think the explanation for her belief sounds better when expressed in science fiction terms. Think infinite parallel universes all moving to the future and the human mind can sometimes cause an intersection between them. The trick, I suppose, is being to accept that sometimes the universe is…[Read more]

It wouldn’t hurt the kid to have his tailfeathers singed.

My experiences were tame compared to yours.  I dabbled, really.  Read a lot of books – and occasionally tried different chants or meditations.  I was so overwhelmingly depressed as a younger man that I was desperate for some kind of meaning.

I was 20 or 21 when I met a fellow who became, for a time, a sort of “spiritual mentor”.  I had run int…[Read more]

OK, K. Kulinski — as non-religious as they come —  I’ll have to put his name in the lightning bolt carousel.

@ohiobarbarian

Hi ob,

Yep – each of us has to find the meditation practice best suited to our own nature.

For some it is Zen.  For others it might be Noting or Vipassana or Dzogchen.  Finding the right meditation method is part of the path.

TAT

@nvwino

You get it. I must admit I’d never before entertained the concepts of the New Age movement and smog in the same thought. Oh, that leads down a most satirical road…

@thouartthat Zen is better, IMHO. At least, it has been better for me. It’s definitely helped me from the Navy on, from time to time. Mainly, it always helps me focus on the critically important thing to do in the immediate future, or it shows me that doing nothing for now is the best choice.

And the Way of the Laughing Buddha is a sanity-saver.

I have a New Age story. I was involved with a “mind expansion” (for lack of a better word) group. We did an exercise to be the magnet of the universe and attract  whatever we wanted. I decided to generalize rather than be specific. I asked for a knight with shining armor.

Two weeks later, as I worked the northern Renaissance Faire, I met a man…[Read more]