Why atheists have a hard time with religious doctrine (my opinion)

You probably are setting unrealistic standards on the people who lived back in that time and not using your imagination to empathize with the way life used to be if you aren’t finding anything like that from your studies. What I have found most helpful in understanding daily life of people in the past is getting a concept of the way they met the same basic needs we do today, in the sense of what did they eat? How did they get their food? What about shelter? Clothing? Things like that.

Can you imagine producing everything in the process to acquire those things on your own, learning how to do it, and being able to do it without the internet, being able to read, and things like that? Religious beliefs being associated around living, real human beings wasn’t a malicious attempt to control and oppress people, but a way to communicate and teach so people could live together more easily and happily.

The same way assholes abuse the Democracy of the USA and her freedom in the US government and with big business, assholes abused religious beliefs and ruined them. Big businesses involving social media via TV, Hollywood, internet forums etc are abusing the interpretation of freedom to have an unethical sense of control and power over the industry as well as attempting to manipulate daily life to suit their personal preferences.

As a result, they ruined the once amazing media industry in the USA and most USA media is garbage now, just like most established religions are garbage these days, particularly the Christian/Jewish/Islamic ones (which are basically 95 percent of the USA’s religious people). Buddhism and Hinduism aren’t really like that in the USA, but in places where they are more culturally relevant, it may be a different matter. I don’t really know what Hinduism is like in India, or Buddhism in the Far East, but I would guess Buddhism is probably the least problematic.

Seriously. How do you make thread? Let alone turn it into cloth and then shape it into a shirt? I can’t sew a simple patch on a uniform and have it last more than a few hours just to pass an inspection, let alone weave it into garments. It’ll probably take me two and a half difficult hours to do it too. If you need me to explain the electromagnetic spectrum and radio communications and configure and operate all sorts of equipment I may or may not be familiar with in various random environmental conditions, then no problem. That’s nothing to me. The ancient art of making clothing may as well be magic though.

I could probably figure out animal hides with what I understand about alchemy though… but that’s not the same thing as a cloak or tunic.

I was just thinking a few moments ago about altering some old clothing of mine, but I may as well be trying to walk on the moon. I can’t even get an email back from a tailor about making clothes that I want and am willing to pay thousands of dollars for a single outfit that suits me. (Not one of the awful, ugly “suits” most people wear. I hate the way that shit looks and feels and don’t even own anything like that, nor do I ever plan on it. After Traitor Trump stepped on the stage, the last thing I want to look like is a businessman or politician, since he thoroughly defiled both of those images.)

Here’s a mind fuck for you: electricity is simple with electromagnetism being a bit more complicated. Both involve the flow of electrons. Where in the electron is your idea stored when you call someone to tell them hello? I have my theories, and I suspect the US government does too, but they probably try to keep it secret in order to have power over others and never make any progress.

(Electricity is simple because it doesn’t change the way it works whenever it feels like it, contrary to what kind of entertainment an audience wants, but to both types of craftsmen, there is a requisite skill* to meet the standards of acceptable success, and a much higher level usually blended with intuition, instincts, and wisdom that makes one a master. Also, an audience won’t fry you to a crisp in an instant for making a mistake, but electricity will.

For example, I’ve known electricians to scrap all kinds of random components from unrelated equipment, like a treadmill, and put it all together to fix something life sustaining, like an oxygen generator, when we were literally resorting to old school alchemy to be able to keep breathing in a hermetically sealed environment. I don’t have that level of electrical skill, but the kind of ability to make a repair like that is master level for sure.)

(When I mention alchemy, I basically mean the cumulative understanding of all the sciences working together, to include cognitive and social science, as well as understanding humanity. Humanity is best understood through art, so being able to think artistically is also useful. Even though it’s good to focus on something, my focus being storytelling, writing, and theology, it’s just as important to have a general understanding of everything else too.

Also, back to the topic of this conversation, understanding religion is integral to understanding humanity. You may not want to like that humans believe in a spiritual divinity of the highest order of existence, but we do, we always will, and it’s for a good reason. That reason is not easy to explain, which is probably what puts people off one way or another, as well as why religious people can often communicate without explanations or even without sharing the same language.

That’s also why betraying someone’s trust is such an instinctually reviled crime by nature, as well as one of the most intolerable crimes under oath. That’s another reason why the USA is facing certain and impending destruction that is imminently near unless a drastic change of course occurs. Imagine if the Titanic had a radar system that could identify icebergs in the dark. Imagine if a person could shine the wisdom of understanding into the darkness of the future and see the destruction of a nation if it doesn’t swerve to avoid the catastrophe.)

*The requisite standard of storytelling isn’t codified because it’s as complicated as the craft itself, but it basically has to do with the purpose of the creator, not what others think about it. Selfishness isn’t against the rules with storytelling if you are glorifying yourself by boasting with a tall tale for example, but, and this may not make sense, malevolent selfishness at the expense of the audience is unacceptable. For example, if one is telling a story in order to mislead people on purpose in a way to do them harm on purpose so that the creator can get some sort of power over them or an ill gotten gain as a result of the harm the audience suffered, then that’s unacceptable. An example being bearing false witness against someone in the way the religious commandment intended to prohibit. There may be an exception, but I’m not going to think about it right now.

Again, it has to do with why you are doing it, and nothing to do with objective quality.

Now that I think about it, it’s best that you only interpret this as my personal requirement for what I accept as a valid religious expression of Storianity, the religion I founded. Sorry if my tangent got confusing. *Standard subject to change unless stamped, double stamped, and then triple stamped, and finally un-triple stamped because you can’t triple stamp a double stamp. For more information on the mystical interpretation of “stamping”, consult with a high school friend of mine. The concept originated from another high school friend, who isn’t as close to me as he is to the high school friend mentioned, but we are of one mind on the matter and have been ever since it was brought to my attention. Court adjourned.