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What is a belief you’ve done a total 180 on? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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I used to be strictly materialist and atheist. Now I’m pretty spiritual. Don’t necessarily follow a religion and don’t support bigotry but yeah, I’m fairly spiritual now. This is a recent development and I never thought I’d be here like 5 years ago.

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[–] 75 points 8 months ago (13 children)

Idk why we've reached the point where anyone saying they're anything but an atheist has to specify that they aren't a bigot. Being religious doesn't make you a bigot and being atheist doesn't mean you aren't one either.

I had a similar 180 though, I used to be an atheist but in the last year or so I pivoted into druidism. Turns out following a religion that focuses on spending time in nature helps to get you out of the house when you're going though a depressive episode.

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  • [–] 28 points 8 months ago

    Idk why we've reached the point where anyone saying they're anything but an atheist has to specify that they aren't a bigot

    The main issue is that the cohort of people with megaphones broadcasting their spirituality is virtually entirely comprised of profiteers.

    Like all such parasites they follow the pattern of establishing out groups for you to despise, simply because it drives engagement better. Same reason all major social media now attempts to shape you into a being of hatred and impulse. It keeps you stressed and activated so you jump at the opportunity when they offer to let you spend money to blow off some of the steam.

    Bigotry as a phenomenon has many origins, but wherever it springs from it ultimately doubles as an inherently appealing strategy for those who wish wring dry their community.

    At any rate, as we all sit here dying around the same poisoned watering hole, we see these profiteers dressing just like us while actively dumping the poison in. Ashamed, we feel compelled to proclaim, “I am not them! They only wear my clothes!”

    Spirituality is an incredibly comfortable and practical “clothing” for many people. You’re absolutely correct in drawing attention to how bad it sucks that the people who embrace that comfort now feel pained to differentiate themselves from the abusers who pervert their fashion

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  • [+] 24 points 8 months ago (9 children)
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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    You say you were "intellectually honest" so I'm curious what it was about Zen that appealed to that kind of approach?

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  • [+] 14 points 8 months ago* (7 children)
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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    But aren't there things that you can objectively know to be true? Wouldn't this just lead to believing whatever you want to believe?

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  • [+] 8 points 8 months ago (5 children)
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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Okay, thank you for explaining.

    I admit I don't get it, but maybe I'll consider reading that book. It seems I had a mistaken idea about Buddhism. Or at least Zen Buddhism.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    What they describe is similar to the discourse in western philosophy about the mind and the objective reality. There is no way to prove or disprove that the reality exists outside of the mind of the observer, i.e. that solipsism is true or false. But it also follows that solipsism is practically useless. So we must agree that we probably have a shared experience with other people, which we'll call ‘reality’. Then the question is, how close the experience of one observer is to that of other people. This is where stuff like qualia comes in, which posits that it's impossible to qualify immediate perceptual experiences, because each person only refers to what they themselves have experienced. It could easily be that one person's sensory experience and perception of the world is wholly different from that of another person. It seems, though, that in practice we have a shared vocabulary for our perceptions and use that to build our knowledge of the world.

    @SenK@lemmy.ca does this sound like an accurate interpretation of your concept?

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  • [–] 18 points 8 months ago

    I had something similar. I grew up catholic and was very devout until I learned some stuff about myself that made me step away for a while. I expected to come back like a year later and join the episcopalians or something, but I wound up an atheist for several years. During that time I was kinda insufferable about it for a while. Then I started exploring pantheism, earth worship, and ancestor devotion because I'd felt I was missing something without religion and lighting candles to talk to my mom helped me cope with how much of my life she doesn't get to be there for. Later an acid trip and some exploration would help me delve deeper and find the goddess I primarily pray to these days. Somewhere later I started using the Wiccan holidays because they're really convenient for solar and seasonal observance and meditation. They also help make it so I don't wonder where the hell the year went.

    So yeah, catholic to atheist to pagan. There are many paths up the mountain, find the path that is best for you and makes you better.

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