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Religion brings depression and loneliness and stupidity
(midwest.social)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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Religious Cringe
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About
This is the official Lemmy for the r/ReligiousCringe***** subreddit. This is a community about poking fun at the religious fundamentalist's who take their religion a little bit too far. Here you will find religious content that is so outrageous and so cringeworthy that even someone who is mildly religious will cringe.
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All posts must contain religious cringe. All posts must be made from a religious person or must be showcasing some kind of religious bigotry. The only exception to this is rule 2
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Material about religious bigots made by non-bigots is only allowed from Friday-Sunday EST. In an effort to keep this community on the topic of religious cringe and bigotry we have decide to limit stuff like atheist memes to only the weekends.
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No direct links to religious cringe. To prevent religious bigots from getting our clicks and views directs links to religious cringe are not allowed. If you must a post a screenshot of the site or use archive.ph. If it is a YouTube video please use a YouTube frontend like Piped or Invidious
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No Proselytizing. Proselytizing is defined as trying to convert someone to a particular religion or certain world view. Doing so will get you banned.
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Spammers and Trolls will be instantly banned. No exceptions.
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I'm 100% atheist myself but I wouldn't say that this meme is completely wrong. Sure, there's no linear correlation as implied but I think religion can help people to see a greater cause in life, deal with difficult situations, connect with other people and have regular patterns in their life. There are numerous alternatives to religion for all that (family, friends, hobbies, sport, meditation, ...) but still it's one valid way I guess.
The biggest issue I see with religion is that faith is often misused to argue against facts and human rights which is unacceptable. But that critic doesn't mean that it can't be supportive for someone in need of support.
It's not religion that helps people it's being in a community.
I'm very religious but while I mainly agree with you, I'm always prudent when I see people (not you obviously) presenting religion as a cure for depression.
Religion is very powerful, but it can break people as much as it can help them. If someone is depressed or ill at ease, they can more easily be spiritually, psychologically or even physically abused.
That's why, when someone with psychological troubles come in my community, I welcome them wholeheartedly, but encourage them to seek professional help first and foremost.
As you say there are many, many kinds of secular social group activities that can provide in person human contact and communities that reduce loneliness and depression.
But uh, those are rapidly becoming more and more accessible to only the wealthier and wealthier who actually can afford the spare time or other costs to engage in such things.
Add to that the mass proliferation of online interactions, which quite often take place in an unhinged way, or are basically parasocial fantasizing and idealizing 'lives' that are either fake or only possible due to immense wealth...
..and add in climate change fears, economic immobility...
I would say you can make a much better case that capitalism consuming itself, the adversarial, debt-based consumerist culture proliferated by this, and governments largely going along with cannibalizing their constituents, cut by cut by cut, rather than meaningfully pushing, is making the vast majority of people more lonely and depressed.
A lot of it seems to be "third spaces" (or maybe it's "places"?) going away; it went from work, home, and [church, moose, lions, whatever] to mostly just work and home (or work and work and home) for many and this had a lot of negative impacts, I think.
I think spirituality is very important: believing in something greater than yourself for yourself. Centralized religious institution are the plague.
There’s something different with someone practicing their belief in their home as a spiritual journey and a large-scale institution participating in power plays with a societal & ideological project.
You should check out the spirituality book from Hermann Hesse, it’s really interesting (his work is amazing)