Hey FrGamble!

You asked me in kind of a hostile manner
last week if I thought you prayed to an
empty void when you prayed to god.

I'm watching all 7 seasons of a really good
show called The Good Wife. I'm really
caught up in it, I care about most of
the characters, which is why we like
any TV show.

Last night they killed off one of the
main characters in season 5. I was
shocked, took me totally by surprise.
It was the last thing I expected to happen,
and I was hurt and grieved along with
all the other characters in the show.

I knew this was fiction, I knew these
are actors playing parts, yet I still
felt honest emotion about it. Because
I suspended my disbelief for this
show. I wanted to get involved.

Look at religion. You're taught from
an early age all about god and Jesus,
you long ago suspended your disbelief.
You have this whole other world of
god and heaven and hell constructed
in your mind and you're totally a part
of it. So when you pray, of course you
think god is listening. You want him
there, you need him there.

I have done none of that with religion.
I did it with this TV show and it works
great. I could do it with religion too,
but it's all fake. Why would I bother,
I don't need it in my life.

So when you pray, yeah, to me you're
just talking to yourself. And that's a
realization that many religious people
come to, and why they become atheists.
They outgrow the need to invent a god.

Quote: Evenbob

You asked me in kind of a hostile manner
last week if I thought you prayed to an
empty void when you prayed to god.

I'm watching all 7 seasons of a really good
show called The Good Wife. I'm really
caught up in it, I care about most of
the characters, which is why we like
any TV show.

Last night they killed off one of the
main characters in season 5. I was
shocked, took me totally by surprise.
It was the last thing I expected to happen,
and I was hurt and grieved along with
all the other characters in the show.

I knew this was fiction, I knew these
are actors playing parts, yet I still
felt honest emotion about it. Because
I suspended my disbelief for this
show. I wanted to get involved.

Look at religion. You're taught from
an early age all about god and Jesus,
you long ago suspended your disbelief.
You have this whole other world of
god and heaven and hell constructed
in your mind and you're totally a part
of it. So when you pray, of course you
think god is listening. You want him
there, you need him there.

I have done none of that with religion.
I did it with this TV show and it works
great. I could do it with religion too,
but it's all fake. Why would I bother,
I don't need it in my life.

So when you pray, yeah, to me you're
just talking to yourself. And that's a
realization that many religious people
come to, and why they become atheists.
They outgrow the need to invent a god.

Great show
Oh yeah Will Gardner getting shot - touch episode
What do you think of Kalinda?

The spinoff - "THE GOOD FIGHT" - is all anti-Trump all the time (but still an excellent show)
Only available on the CBS App or through Amazon vie CBS All Access (2 seasons so far)

Just as the Good Wife morphed from a law firm program to a program about power-wielding women and politics in general, the views about religion often morph into a recognition of socially encouraged behavior of little actual use or significance. Just as we would much rather have germ-distributing Day Care Centers than mothers at home and saddled with wet diapers and screaming brats, we would rather have religiously indoctrinated conformists than rugged individualists.

I am always attracted to rugged individualism and don't think being religious is anti-thetical to individualism. Religion gives us the out of bounds lines and gives us the freedom within those boundaries to be the best version of ourselves.

Quote: FrGamble

Religion gives us the out of bounds lines and gives us the freedom within those boundaries to be the best version of ourselves.

But it's made up, like a fiction TV
show, and you just go along with
the program. The NT reads like
a bad pilot for a SyFi TV show.
You go along with it because it's
what you were taught and you
don't know any better.

Somebody postulated that if it
was illegal to teach religion to
anybody under 18, most religions
would die. Adults are much harder
to fool with stories of people
walking on water and doing magic
tricks with fish and bread. They
would reject religion just like
they rejected Santa.

I understand what EvenBob is saying but I don't see all that much relevance to it.

We say that the earth is round but, like many politicians, its flattened at the polls.
We say that parallel lines never meet but Einstein says they meet at infinity even though ain't nobody walked far enough to find out for sure.
We fly on airplanes that are designed as if they had wings of infinite wingspan despite the fact that no one has yet found a suitable hangar for one.
We listen to the radio despite its being a theory.
Electronic navigation systems make zillions of tiny adjustments which means they are off course zillions of times but we still get to our destinations without too much worry.

And there was one soybean trader who decades ago made a fortune in the soybeans market under the impression that soybeans were a bean instead of an oil seed. He didn't have to give the money all back when he learned his fundamental assumptions were wrong.

Louis l'Amour dealt constantly with the good and evil as a choice and that within certain confines a man made a choice each day as to how he would live his life. We also know that H.H. Munro (Saki) was a road agent before he became an author of short stories and that many lawmen in the American West were outlaws much of the time.

Its sort of like the guard said in Cool Hand Luke, Thirty years on the job and I ain't never shot a white man. Principles can have some fundamental flaws but someone can still be a man of principle anyway.

Quote: Fleastiff

I understand what EvenBob is saying but I don't see all that much relevance to it.

The relevance is, another convenient
ignoring by the Church of the actual
facts. Like Jesus never mentioned
original sin, yet he supposedly died
for it. OS wasn't even a concept
in Jesus time. But does the Church
tell you that? Just more lies of omission.

Well, most kids in the USA are taught that babies are brought by the stork, but no one really finds the need to bemoan this falsehood

Quote: Fleastiff

Well, most kids in the USA are taught that babies are brought by the stork, but no one really finds the need to bemoan this falsehood

This is more of a safety net for adults who do not want to tell their children the truth about it because it makes them uncomfortable

Quote: Fleastiff

Well, most kids in the USA are taught that babies are brought by the stork,

In 1925 maybe. Nobody teaches kids that
anymore, nobody even knows what it
means. Kids are taught sex ed in school
now very young.