fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #540 ]

[ SECRET POST #540 ]

⌈ Secret Post #540 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 16 pages, 400 secrets from Secret Submission Post #078.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 4 - too big ], [ 1 2 3 - repeat ], [ 1 - internet scientist ], [ 1 - person lost the game ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

~~Oh damn, now I'm going to be browsing Wikipedia articles on ancient deities for the next three hours~~

I had to butt in to say that I agree, though. I find it amusing that people can read through things like Greek myths and treat them as fairy tales and then turn around and go to church on Sunday so they can hear about a virgin 14-year-old who gave birth to a baby who died and then rose from the grave ~~as a zombie vampire~~ later the next year.

~~OH SNAP FAGKUDERA- I mean. XD Yeah, Wikipedia is a black hole like that.~~

I just don't get how everyone, including religious people, demand rationality from all the other aspects of life, except where it involves their religion. They wouldn't sit there and unquestioningly believe in aliens (... mostly, lol I think THAT'S part of why Scientology gets mocked to death), so I don't have any idea why God and Jesus get a free pass.

I mean... seriously. If some guy came up to you on the street and said, "Hey, you see that guy over there? He's the Son of God." Any sane person's reaction would be "yeah, I don't have any change/here's a few bucks." And if they detailed how the guy had really walked on water, raised the dead, so on and so forth, what's the natural reaction to that? "Prove it." And it'd have to be some solid proof, let me tell you. The fact that Jesus has been dead for thousands of years really doesn't make it much saner to believe in the stories about him with no evidence whatsoever.

~~YOU MEAN GOKUGAYRA - rather, yes, the only thing that's worse is TVTropes. :P~~

I always got the impression that it's 90% about what you're raised to believe. I mean, if someone told you every day of your life that there's a giant elephant in the sky, it gets kinda hard to deny. In the same breath, though, my parents are both religious/spiritual types (one's a church-goer, the other a flakey spiritualist type) and I stopped believing in God around the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus ~~at the end of the year if you've been good you get presents! At the end of your life if you've been good you get heaven!~~ There has to be a certain amount of taking personal responsibility for what's inside your head.

If enough people parrot something, it becomes truth. It's not just one crazy guy on the street, it's an organized group of crazy guys that look quite tempting and sane.

My brother went through a religious phase a few years back before ending up as an atheist again, and he said it was mostly about the sense of community, feeling like you're part of a whole. In that sense, religion seems to me like nothing more than a widely-accepted cult. :/

Well, I guess you understand belief in Christianity about as well as I understand belief in Atheism - which is to say, "not at all." You can't see yourself believing in some things, some of us can't see ourselves not believing in some things.

That said, I see true faith as a very personal thing. (I'm honestly not *strong* enough to accept atheism. I *need* to believe in something beyond death, someone in charge of everyone to stay relatively sane, if that makes sense... which it probably doesn't to you, but that's me).

.... I do see us (Christians) as being very weird, though. I step back and think about our stories and, yeah, we believe in some very bizzare things from a purely rational perspective (Zombie Jesus!!! XD ).

I think one of the bigger differences between Christianity and Scientology, though, is the fact that Christianity is extremely diverse. There are people of a lot of varying "petty" beliefs who consider themselves Christians -- Everyone from the scary politicians and televangelists to the quiet little "personal faith" people like me (who don't agree with Conservative politics and don't even go to church anymore). Then, of course, there's the Amish who segregate themselves away from modern society altogether and don't even bother people on the Internet.

Scientology, as far as I know, is one entity who all believe in things that most others don't much understand, their origins are well-recorded in modern times, and they demand a financial burden of their members. In other words, much more... organized?

Still, I see the point -- just leaves me wondering why she didn't say "ridiculous beliefs like the Qu'ran" or "like Wicca."

Belief and faith are tricky things - and in the end, we're all going to think of each other as "ridiculous."

Just so long as we can get rid of the whole "correlation between belief/lack thereof and intelligence." To me, there's no correlation. There *are* rock stupid atheists and thare *are* extremely intelligent religious people, believe it or not.

Scientology, as far as I know

I think you've pointed out the problem right there.

Christianity is also much bigger.

I think you were just trying to cause wank, frankly.

The OP picked on a religion/cult that's popular to pick on. So did you.

I hate to tell you this, but it just smells of "Ooh, look at how edgy I'm being!" when you're really not. Honestly, this type of thing is getting downright *boring.*

Iawtc. And I'm not religious.

There's nothing trollish about pointing out that your admittedly narrow scope calls your argument into question.

I'm not picking on anything. I'm advocating critical thought. You shouldn't pick on a person's belief system if you're unwilling to examine your own.

If you think that's edgy, then I am at the motherfucking edge.

But, if you're talking about *me,* specifically, you've got the wrong person. As I've said above, I *do* understand that Christianity is a weird religion to outsiders -- even weird to me, but I'm happy with it. I was never much one for whatever "normality" is supposed to be.

I'm just honestly sick of the "let's make fun of people's beliefs and look down on them!" in general. Whenever I see a "I found out this actor is a Scientologist, and I've lost respect for them now" secret, I cringe... and roll my eyes. Insert, for example, "gay" for "Scientologist" and just WATCH the universal beat-down. I personally don't give a whit what an actor or writer's personal life is, as long as they're making stuff that entertains me.

I did find 143 funny, but only because I think a "Cult of Chu" would make a fun website. I mean, I used to be a part of a massive chat and onetime, we made a "religion" out of modern bands. (Some forceful opinions held Queen up as "God') - all based on Judeo-Christian mythos (that most of the chat didn't believe in) -- I found it frickin' hilarious and managed to get U2 in as Archangels.

The OP of 143 didn't *have* to put in the spiel about Scientology. I don't think you *had* to put in the spiel about the Bible (insulting *both* Christians and Jews, by the way). The wank on these things is so *friggin* predictable. You get people saying "Dur, hur, hur, Christians/Jews are so ridiculous/stupid, why do people believe in God nowadays?" Then you get people like me saying "Dude, not funny!" Why don't people ever spice it up a little? Pick on religions that are more accepted/acceptable in fandom? (I'm not talking about outside-fandom-majority, I'm speaking of fandom specifically, where Christianity seems to be *almost* as unpopular and accpeted to bash wholesale as Scientology). Not that I *really* want people picking on anyone's religion... but really, I'm sick of all of it, it's getting frickin' old - on all sides.

I don't like being treated like I'm less intelligent, less "sane," or a "waste" as someone once called me for *one* aspect of my life anymore than anyone else does.

I am afraid that your social experiment, as noble as its goal was, happened to have been worded in a particularly wanky way.

... Um, I never said any of that. This was my point. (http://community.livejournal.com/fandomsecrets/172546.html?thread=64559362#t64559362) Christians get bashed a lot in fandom, but that doesn't give you an excuse to act so deeply offended when I point out that actually, the bible is full of equally fantastical stories. I'm not calling you a mouthbreather, and that's something you need to level with.

I think if you had to bring other religions into making a point about the stupid secret, you could have said, "The Bible, The Hindu Scriptures, Buddhist stories, the Qu'ran, Wicca... etc." BECAUSE Christianity is "popular to bash" in fandom. Be more frickin' creative! Stop hitting below the belt with something you know also gets made fun of in fandom a lot!

If the OP had stated that they were Christian or Jewish, you would have had a stronger point. I see the point you're trying to make, but you honestly didn't have to drag any religion besides Scientology into the argument. It's bad enough that the OP brought that up.

... I'd like to never see a religion-related secret again, honestly.

I'm not hitting below the belt, and I don't talk about Hindu and Bhuddist scriptures because that would be presumptuous of me, since I know fuck-all about Bhuddism and Hinduism.

By the way, since I've actually thought about it (pathetic) I'd either have an Eeve-lution team, or something combining Dark and Fire types. I'd love a Houndoom.

Then there's always that rogue Pidgeot hand-raised from a Lv. 2 Pidgey...

It's not just about believing in 'some things', it's the very idea of believing something that's completely unsupported by fact. It's not a 'why could you think this is true' (I can understand wanting to be comforted by the idea of something after death, though I personally find the idea abhorrent and would much prefer oblivion :P I'm very much in line with the Jungian theory that religion was created in order to fill in the gaps of humankind and comfort us in our fear of things like death - the omnipotent being of any religion is often depicted as a parent, 'Call no man on Earth your Father/You have only one Father and He is in Heaven' etc., it makes sense) it's a 'how could you think this is true'. Even if I wanted to believe in God - and there was a time that I did when I was younger, I went to church and bible camp and all that stuff - but none of that made a difference because I was unable to believe in something that isn't backed up by fact. It's just completely irrational. The ability to believe in something that's not there - I just don't get it, fundamentally speaking.

Since Christianity is so popular, it's the one that gets picked on the most, really, that's the only reason. Though personally speaking I find most flavours of Wicca - key word most flavours, sometimes it gets weird - to make more general sense than Christianity, as it all comes back to the threefold rule (something like karma, whatever you do, good and bad, comes back to you threefold), the Wiccan Rede (an it harm none, do what ye will), and respecting nature and all that. No weird stories to believe there.

It's not about being stupid, and I hate to say gullible, but it takes a certain type of personality to believe in religion, and my problem is that I can't differentiate between the type of person who would join a cult and the type of person who would go to a Christian church. Both require the same sort of blocking out certain sets of information (scientific, accepting your own religion while, in most cases, denying others) while accepting others without question.

~~And speaking of questions: Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons?~~

Eh. Why am I imaginging Clone Homer from that Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons wearing a fig leaf and eating an apple? XD

Well, the whole "gullibility" thing is in the eye of the beholder. Just because I do believe in "one set of rules" doesn't mean I'm going to believe in everything, and I hate when people act like it does. And I especially hate it when people act like they're somehow "better" because they don't believe in anything supernatural. It's as obnoxious as people who think they're somehow "better" because they do. We're all just humans.

To bring it into fandom stuff again -It's one of the things I loved about "The X-Files" - Mulder believed in everything *but* Christianity, while Scully was a skeptic about everything, but a believer when it came to them investigating Christian and Catholic related weirdness. The writers didn't do the "easy thing" and decide that "because Mulder believes everything, he must believe this" or "because Scully is a skeptic who thinks critically, she must be an atheist." It all boils down to being selective.

Just because I believe in a Higher Power doesn't mean I'm prone to believing in aliens and faeries. Or the fantasies of L. Ron Hubbard.

And really, faith is like that. Faith *is* believeing in that which is unseen. Not everybody understands the concept. Some people need to have something to poke with a stick in order for them to believe it exists, I understand that. What I wish more people wound understand is that having that need to poke something with a stick or it's not there doesn't make the people who have it necessarily better or smarter people than those who look at the stars and think that "something's gotta be out there, even if I'm not able to see it or touch it right now."

Because the Simpsons have done everything, that's why. :P

But why one, and not the other? What makes one so special?

I have unfortunately never seen any of the X-Files, but I can gather that despite Scully and Mulder's differences of opinion on the topic, the show is about uncovering mysteries, right? Eventually they're going to look into something to see if it is true or not. When you go to church, you don't go there looking to uncover evidence of the existence of God, because you already take it for granted. I honestly don't know enough about the characters to say anything else on that. -.-;

And believing in the possibility of life on other planets isn't necessarily as baseless as something like fairies... then again, I am talking about a possibility only.

So what is the qualifying category, then, the element that makes something convincing? Beyond the agnostic 'possibility that there may be something out there', what makes a religion plausible? Is it how many people practice it, or whether your friends practice it, or how old the religion is, or is it how many places it was written down? Aliens and fairies and Scientology are thought to be nonsense by the majority of the population of... well, the world. Because everybody else believes something to be true, does that make it so?

They're all the same to me, so I want to know why God is easier to believe in than Santa Claus.

Well, I believe that Santa Claus is real - he lives inside each and everyone of us at Holiday time as the spirit of giving. *Grin*

Alright, smaltz aside... It's probably because, when I was 8, I discovered "Santa Claus'" presents to me in my older sister's bedroom before I fell asleep on Christmas Eve. Basically -- we adults know *for certain* where those presents are *really* coming from.

God is just too big an entitiy, idea.... thing... and people experience him in many different ways. Frankly, Christianity is just one choice, and itself has much variety in how things are interpreted (see my other comments).

The whole "God" idea is such that... we are going to proove it to anybody - belief is a personal choice, but neither are you going to be able to disproove him to anybody who truly believes.

I look at the Bible and I see stuff that makes sense to me (as outrageous as that sounds). I look at some of the general beliefs of other religious and they make sense to me too, while other aspects do not. I don't believe in Santa Claus because I found those presents. However, I've had prayers answered and have been comforted in dark times.

Maybe Santa Claus is easier to believe in for you, but my personal experience speaks differently. And that's all it is... personal decisions and personal experience.

And since I didn't see your thing about "blocking out science" -- Okay, I'll give you that some religious people (of all persuasions) do that, but not me.

I was turned onto Evolution by a fellow Christian, in fact. A doctor. Nice guy. Most of the people I've seen whaling on the obnoxiousness that is "Intelligent Design" have been various stripes of Christian, too.

Intelligent design is the one ragged on the most, but that's not just what I'm on about - the principles of what we call science are basically just recording what we see and drawing conclusions on what we observe. While believing in an omnipotent being doesn't necessarily have to contradict anything we've learned scientifically, it does stab science in the foot by saying 'we're going to draw conclusions based on this we can't observe'.

At any rate, if you chose to accept 'science as we know it' you are then forced to null out parts of the Bible, LARGE parts of the Bible. Yes, I know, it's not to be taken literally, it's advice for an age long gone, but when your religion is largely centered around the writings in one book I'm confused by the fact that different flavours of Christians seem to pick and chose the parts of the Bible that are convenient to them to believe in. What is the Bible then? Is it God's word, or is it just a bunch of humans cobbling together pieces of stories they'd heard? If the Bible was written by men, then where is the religion even supposed to come from?

I'm not trying to attack your faith personally - I've been around that bush about a million times with my dad (he's a non-church-goer as well, but definitely one with strong faith) and I know where that leads. :/ I'm genuinely interested in discussing it.

And I'm not sure I'm up for super- heavy disscussion right now. To tell you the truth, I'm still very upset at being called "gullible."

Personally, I tend to think that there's a whole lot of symbolic stuff in the Bible, and that "God tried to explain things so people back then could understand." If you went back in time and tried to talk to people about all the funky stuff we know about today - microbes and viruses, for example, they wouldn't quite get it because their "science" of the time would have said "We cannot see them."

As for the varying Christian demoninations... it really is very tricky, and is about interpretation. Some groups interpret things very litterally, others more symbolicly, and some "as applying to a specific time and place.' For example, women preachers - I used to go to a Baptist church and they were forbidden, citing something Paul wrote in one of is letters (which was most likely specific to a time and place, not a general rule for all the Church indefintely, but they took it pretty literally). The Baptists kind of ignored other parts of the Bible which *did* have women in power... such as Deborah in Judges. (Think it was Deb, I just woke up and am too lazy to get my Bible to look it up again right now).

I went a couple of times to the Methodist church near where I live - they had a lady preacher because the Methodists interpret things differetly.

Humans are natural arguers and will debate upon the details of everything - whether it's of an ancient book, or thoeries in science --- hot debate over the origin of life (primoridal soup or hydrothermal vents?), the existance of other planets (until that was confirmed by somene seeing star-wobble), everything. When it comes down to it, there's loads of evidence for everything and everyone picks and chooses.

The problem with religion is that it has to remain the debate of religious scholars and indivuduals because God's Will, isn't exactly something one can apply the natural, physical aspects of scientific method to. It belongs to a whole different sphere (supernatural rather than natural). And that's probably where your problems with religion lie? I understand that, I really do. And I'm not out to convert you.

I just see "faith" and "science" as just belonging to completely different realms. And I like both.

I only get upset when people throw out insulting terms, or they act like "once we get rid of all the stupid religious people, we can have a shining atheist utopia" or whatnot. Listen, I already know that I am a weak person (for many reasons, not just the religion thing). I see people all the time wanting people of this or that group that I belong to to GTFO the planet, or to "never reproduce" (which probably will not be a problem with me, actually). I'm not going to be able to be "reeducated." Just as you cannot bring yourself to believe no matter how much you want to - I have the opposite problem. I cannot just snap my fingers and stop believing (even during those days I think life would be easier for me if I didn't).

My beliefs have changed a bit... I used to be a bullheaded Southern Baptist, now I'm a Methodist-interested, non-church going "basic Christian" who is skeptical of the U.S. religio-politics. But I cannot just snap my fingers and completely abandon the of of God. Maybe it makes me weak, but I've always been "more heart than head" -- and it does hurt to see insults, or to have people imply that "my ilk" are worthless people. (not talking yo specifically, just this whole thread which has made my head hurt)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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