this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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Trippin' Through Time
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Tripping' Through Time
A Lemmy community for historic art pieces overhauled into modern memes.
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Lemmy has a strong atheism bias. You'd think as much as they cling to the "rationality" of it they'd realize that the stats literally show that religious people live longer. DIYing your own tight knit subcommunity that looks out for each other and have a shared set of traditions to mark both the passage of time and provide a structure for people cope with significant life events is a LOT harder than getting one off the shelf. Like it's super hard to even find the people who want to do that without accidentally starting a cult. Like I've thought about trying to find people to do regular group meditations and create holiday traditions with and then realized I'm literally describing either a cult or something that could easily become one.
And that's the other thing; most religions have some kind of regular meditation built in on how they relate to the world that usually focus on gratitude and prosocial behavior. Because it's a tradition that almost always predates modern psychology they don't always reliably meet those ends but the fact that they often do is a big part of why prayer of some kind is such an enduring tradition in most world religions.
People are so ready to dig on humans even a few centuries back for doing stuff like singing / chanting over an tincture / extract or other concentrated medicine they're making but how the fuck else were they supposed to time how long it takes for to brew a medicine with a narrow therapeutic range that needs to be exact? They didn't have fucking kitchen timers!
So, I'm kinda baity when it comes to talking religion. Partially, because I have a family member who is an antagonistic atheist. He constantly talks about how much smarter than me, he is. Because he doesn't believe in a god. I do. So, that makes me a fool, supposedly. But after almost half my life has gone by, I have found more peace, tranquility, and community than ever before. My church houses different sects, and religions to hold services. We celebrate our differences and compare our love and our holy sacraments and meld them together into something beautiful. It's incredible how similar we all are. We almost all agree that we serve the same entity. And that service is to provide love, care, needs, and anything else someone in our local community needs. These are the kind of things, that I think are beautiful.
With all that said, I know I'm somewhat biased by my own upbringing. I had a very pentecostal family and it was very much fire and brimstone. So much so, that I developed severe depression disorder since 8 and I've had it since. Can't seem to shake it lol. But there's so much beauty in all the hate and evil that has entered my life. They made me, me. And so, I thank G-d for that.
I just want all of us to get along, have peaceful disagreements and show that the world is a beautiful place. (and I am no longer afraid to die tee hee). I know, I am not a paragon of this, you can look into my comment history and see. It's most commonly about religion that I get heated, but failure is only the price of progress.
Some of us have moved on from atheism to post-theism. In part, because some atheists can be very annoying. (Thanks a lot, four horsemen of the dorkalypse).
To your point, I do sometimes miss the music, rituals, fellowship, and liturgy of my old church. It was a mostly wholesome experience, and many of the people were very good people. In particular I miss being a member of the choir.
It was interesting (and revealing) when I left the church to experience which of my old friends from that church were very accepting of my walking away, and which ones wanted nothing to do with me anymore.
Anyway, I have found that my table top gaming groups (mostly RPG games) have helped a lot with social needs. Not a full replacement for a church, of course. But it is an activity that creates interpersonal bonds and encourages folks to be vulnerable around each other at times. And, a little bit like churches and temples, the quality of the experience can vary greatly from one group to another.