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Theme Changer

 Topic: The Price of Bread

 (Read 20134 times)
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  • The Price of Bread
     OP - November 27, 2010, 09:40 PM
    I got a Scientology leaflet through the door and it emphasised what I already know - that humans want to be happy and have bread on the table and anything that offers them that they'll sign up to:
    _______________________

    "How Happy Are You?"

    Do You Lack Confidence?"

    "Why Can't You be Successful?"

    We offer courses in:

    * Communication.
    *Work Efficiency
    *Relationships
    *Life's Ups and Downs.
    *Financial Success.
    _______________________

    What more do you want?

    Leaving religion means leaving all that.

    And leave it for what?

    Nothing.

    We offer nothing.

    No support - no community (in RL) - no social network - no place to congregate and feel good - no promise of success (in this life and a promised next one) and bread on the table.

    Do you wonder why no-one leaves their religion?
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #1 - November 27, 2010, 09:57 PM
    Quote from: Hassan on November 27, 2010, 09:40 PM
    No support - no community (in RL) - no social network - no place to congregate and feel good - no promise of success (in this life and a promised next one) and bread on the table.

    Someday. Cry
    "Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
    - Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #2 - November 27, 2010, 10:06 PM
    I hope so.

    I think humanity is taking an evolutionary step away from the need for religion.

    But for the first few it is painful and lonely.

    We must find an alternative to the 'opium for the masses'

    We have to provide those things that religion gives people.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #3 - November 27, 2010, 10:12 PM
    Quote from: Hassan on November 27, 2010, 09:40 PM
    We offer nothing.

    No support - no community (in RL) - no social network - no place to congregate and feel good - no promise of success (in this life and a promised next one) and bread on the table.

    On the contrary.

    This place offers support and community/social network online and IRL. Promise of success can be found in the fact that we are not puppets of a sadistic demiurge - it's up to us to make a difference and create something meaningful. And that's a lot more than most religions could ever hope to offer.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #4 - November 27, 2010, 10:31 PM
    Quote from: Hassan on November 27, 2010, 10:06 PM
    We must find an alternative to the 'opium for the masses'

    we do, and this is not a drug, its reality

    Quote from: Hassan on November 27, 2010, 10:06 PM
    We have to provide those things that religion gives people.

    What's that, false hope?

    My Book     news002       
    My Blog  pccoffee
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #5 - November 27, 2010, 10:31 PM
    Quote from: Kenan on November 27, 2010, 10:12 PM
    On the contrary.

    This place offers support and community/social network online and IRL. Promise of success can be found in the fact that we are not puppets of a sadistic demiurge - it's up to us to make a difference and create something meaningful. And that's a lot more than most religions could ever hope to offer.


    This site is a gem and we should all be very proud of it.

    But we need more RL support.

    Yes I personally rather a bitter truth than a comfort blanket.

    But most prefer a comfort blanket and want to take care of their family have a good job, the support of a large community and someone to love.

    We need to provide what religion provides - without the bullshit!  grin12
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #6 - November 27, 2010, 10:39 PM
    Quote from: IsLame on November 27, 2010, 10:31 PM
    What's that, false hope?


    No - I'm talking reality.

    The real attraction of religion is not the bullshit - it's that it provides a community, a support network, and identity, a place to meet people... all the RL things that organised religion provides that people really want - the bullshit is an add-on that most ppl don't really give two hoots about.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #7 - November 27, 2010, 10:47 PM
    I think the RL support will follow out of the website.  Right now we are too spread out to have a "critical mass" of RL support, but it will come and there is RL support building in Britain.  We'll get there, we just got to put in the hard work of getting the word out, of being strong in our convictions, and putting out our "product ( that is a place for support and discussion without the bullshit anti Islamic Christian rhetoric)
    So once again I'm left with the classic Irish man's dilemma, do I eat the potato or do I let it ferment so I can drink it later?
    My political philosophy below
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwGat4i8pJI&feature=g-vrec
    Just kidding, here are some true heros
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTgvK6LQqA
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #8 - November 27, 2010, 10:48 PM
    Quote from: Hassan on November 27, 2010, 10:39 PM
    No - I'm talking reality.

    The real attraction of religion is not the bullshit - it's that it provides a community, a support network, and identity, a place to meet people... all the RL things that organised religion provides that people really want - the bullshit is an add-on that most ppl don't really give two hoots about.


    Agreed.  It does provide transcendence and luminousness for people as well.  At least it claims the experience 
    So once again I'm left with the classic Irish man's dilemma, do I eat the potato or do I let it ferment so I can drink it later?
    My political philosophy below
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwGat4i8pJI&feature=g-vrec
    Just kidding, here are some true heros
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTgvK6LQqA
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #9 - November 27, 2010, 10:50 PM
    Quote from: Hassan on November 27, 2010, 10:39 PM
    The real attraction of religion is not the bullshit - it's that it provides a community, a support network, and identity, a place to meet people... all the RL things that organised religion provides that people really want - the bullshit is an add-on that most ppl don't really give two hoots about.

    But I think most Muslims are not the type that hang around in mosques or use Muslims support networks, I know I wasnt, so I dont think most of them are missing out that much anyway.  

    Its only those that are really into Islam that feel comfortable in these groups & environment anyway.  Actually as a Muslim I always felt like an outsider, and feel part of a larger community now.  Perhaps you were different because your work revolved around it.

    And if I seeked this kind of group, outside of friends, family & COEM, I am sure I could find it depending on whatever group I was looking for - be it sport, recreation or religion (humanist/agnostic/freethinking groups)
    My Book     news002       
    My Blog  pccoffee
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #10 - November 27, 2010, 10:58 PM
    Jah bless us all
    ''we are morally and philisophically in the best position to win the league'' - Arsene Wenger
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #11 - November 27, 2010, 11:02 PM
    Quote from: abuyunus2 on November 27, 2010, 10:58 PM
    Jah bless us all

    Not so sure about that. According to the OT he has got a few screws loose in his head.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #12 - November 27, 2010, 11:05 PM
    I was talking about the Ali G-rastafari Jah  grin12
    ''we are morally and philisophically in the best position to win the league'' - Arsene Wenger
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #13 - November 27, 2010, 11:06 PM
    Quote from: Hassan on November 27, 2010, 09:40 PM
    I got a Scientology leaflet through the door and it emphasised what I already know - that humans want to be happy and have bread on the table and anything that offers them that they'll sign up to:
    _______________________

    "How Happy Are You?"

    Do You Lack Confidence?"

    "Why Can't You be Successful?"

    We offer courses in:

    * Communication.
    *Work Efficiency
    *Relationships
    *Life's Ups and Downs.
    *Financial Success.
    _______________________

    What more do you want?

    Leaving religion means leaving all that.


    You really believe the church of Scientology & mosques provide all of these?  Or is it religion just gift-wrapped as life-skills?
    My Book     news002       
    My Blog  pccoffee
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #14 - November 27, 2010, 11:17 PM
    IsLame - you, me and all of us who have been the 'few' who have left Islam have left because we found it easier for whatever reason. You felt alienated and never had much invested in the social or community side and others had similar or different reasons.

    We are the few - but for the many they have a lot invested and gain too much from it.

    Yes Scientology offers a great deal of comfort in a shitty world.

    All well-organised religions do.

    We have yet to provide anything for the majority.

    we can keep on being a small group of misfits.

    Or we must appeal to the needs of man.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #15 - November 27, 2010, 11:26 PM
    And let's not forget the feeling of "Mental Well-Being".

    Perhaps the most important drug religion offers.

    Just because you and I and others don't get it means nothing.

    That's why we are here, We are able to hold it together with out that drug.

    But the "majority" need some sort of framework within which to live their lives. Some sort of reason.

    We reject religion but offer them nothing.

    Until we do we will be the tiny few.

    Christian Evangelicals and all the other Hyenas prowling round Ex-Muslims know that better than you do Islame.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #16 - November 27, 2010, 11:31 PM
    When I was new to Canada and was desperately looking for a job, I saw a sign, "Now recruiting" outside Scientology church. I went there inside, and they gave me one hour test, and then they showed me videos, and then wanted me to sign up for it. And told me that I wont be changing my religion but I would also be a part of Scientology. And for this job, they said they won't be able to offer me much except for money for my bus pass. And they wanted me to work there full time
    Admin of following facebook pages and groups:
    Islam's Last Stand (page)
    Islam's Last Stand (group)
    and many others...
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #17 - November 28, 2010, 12:01 AM
    And this is it. Religious people are plugged into something: even if that thing is completely false. They feel a group supernatural condition and treat each other accordingly.

    I love Muslims. My best times in my life have been just clean, halal, fun at the mosque. Togetherness, community. Feeling high off Ramadan, going to a BBQ or iftar dinner, or to see Shaikh [] speak at the [] masjid. Feeling love and good will. Talking to a brother. Some of those brothers will give you the shirt off their back.

    It's a pity that a very vocal and proactive minority of them subscribe to such terribly conservative bullshit views.

    I became a Muslim because I had a heart. Then I lost my heart. Then I lost Islam. Now I'm just some middle class misanthrope. I want change. I need that change. Maybe my personality is more suited to Muslims.
    The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint - Hannah Arendt.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #18 - November 28, 2010, 12:09 AM
    Quote from: abdalwali on November 28, 2010, 12:01 AM
    And this is it. Religious people are plugged into something: even if that thing is completely false. They feel a group supernatural condition and treat each other accordingly.

    I love Muslims. My best times in my life have been just clean, halal, fun at the mosque. Togetherness, community. Feeling high off Ramadan, going to a BBQ or iftar dinner, or to see Shaikh [] speak at the [] masjid. Feeling love and good will. Talking to a brother. Some of those brothers will give you the shirt off their back.

    It's a pity that a very vocal and proactive minority of them subscribe to such terribly conservative bullshit views.

    I became a Muslim because I had a heart.


    This ^^

    But I removed the bit about losing one's heart.

    I never have lost my heart and never will.  It was my heart that led me out of Islam - before even my mind.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #19 - November 28, 2010, 12:13 AM
    I'm glad for you Br. Hassan.

    I think my heart was killed through concentrating on all the bullshit and becoming completely disillusioned. It slipped before I knew it. I'm trying to find it again. I know it's in there somewhere.
    The language of the mob was only the language of public opinion cleansed of hypocrisy and restraint - Hannah Arendt.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #20 - November 28, 2010, 12:35 AM
    Of course it's there, abdalwali - perhaps you've just lost sight of it for a while - you will find it again.

    Hint: It's where it always was. Wink
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #21 - November 28, 2010, 01:57 AM
    You make a lot of sense, Hassan.  I agree with all you have said. Afro
    "Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so." -- Bertrand Russell

    Baloney Detection Kit
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #22 - November 28, 2010, 05:01 AM
    I too never felt at completely at home as a Muslim, but at least there was still that artificial put-on sense of belonging. Since I left Islam I have missed that and have been searching for a sense of "community". A lot of people I live with are ex-Hindus or lapsed Muslims, but they just seem to be able to cope much better, it seems pompous of me to say this but I think many of them probably weren't as invested religiously as many of us were.

    This forum has provided that community to an extent, if it wasn't for this place I would be probably in a much worse state right now.

    I often wonder whether I could forget everything and crawl back under that warm comfort blanket, go back to those warm iftar meals and those study circles where everything about the world was certain. But I can't, none of us can. Hassan is right, we need to create that real world environment where people like us can come together, and I hate to say it but it's people like us who have to do it.



  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #23 - November 28, 2010, 10:10 AM
    Maybe we should be looking at what the Humanist movement has achieved. They have cohesive formal structures, ritual, codes of conduct to sign up to, officiants, conventions and all the other things that formal religions have but without the fantasy, bullshit and belief that give the excuses to do ill to others.
    I personally don't need a security  blanket or to have someone else do my thinking for me; after all, we all come with strings but some of us prefer to pull our own.
    Religion is ignorance giftwrapped in lyricism.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #24 - November 28, 2010, 10:19 AM
    Oh, I forgot Charity. The Humanist movement has it's own Charities. There are charities, like Med SF, operating all over the World more effectively because they do not have any religious affiliation. The people who man them are driven by concern for others, the Well- spring of which they have discovered within themselves without reference to external commandments or pronouncements.
    Religion is ignorance giftwrapped in lyricism.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #25 - November 28, 2010, 02:05 PM
    Quote from: sojournerlumus on November 28, 2010, 10:10 AM
    I personally don't need a security  blanket or to have someone else do my thinking for me; after all, we all come with strings but some of us prefer to pull our own.

    Me too.  I don't need the ready-made answers.  I'm mainly after the social and support network (in real-life).  The mosque/church is like the local pub, where friends meet regularly and maintain bonds.  And obviously, people who meet at the mosque will have similar world-views/interests and live in the same area.  Having said that, in the West, particularly in Britain and Scandinavian countries, it is much easier to meet new people with similar world-views and interests.  It just takes some effort. Smiley
    "Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so." -- Bertrand Russell

    Baloney Detection Kit
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #26 - November 28, 2010, 02:15 PM
    Bar/Club > Mosque
    Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #27 - November 28, 2010, 04:27 PM
    Quote

    We offer courses in:

    * Communication.
    *Work Efficiency
    *Relationships
    *Life's Ups and Downs.
    *Financial Success.


    These things should not be under the control of or influenced by religion anyway, certainly not the Abrahamic faiths. Such religious institutions and the doctrine they are built on nurture the atmosphere of fear, distrust, blind obedience, and the demonising of dissent, of which all the religious atrocities great and small are just a symptom. They need this atmosphere to survive, to perpetuate the dogma - dogma that simultaneously creates and relies upon faith. Its an endless cycle of faith > dogma > faith > dogma. Its not benign. Schools of thought like this allow insane political ideas and proposals to gain adherents amongst the ignorant and irrational masses they have had a direct hand in creating. It allows primative customs and commandments to be imposed and made law in a society - unfair inheritance and gender/racial/sexuality apartheid at best, zealous and ritualised murder for imaginary and victimless crimes at worse - in turn, fuelling the machine, keeping the pyramid scheme healthy and the anointed in positions of power and influence where they can get away with all kinds of grubby bullshit.

    These institutions are unfit wardens of the universal life skills they falsely claim responsibility and expect praise for, held at bay from their true nature only by the secular values and systems that they obey because they have to, and not necessarily because they want to.
    Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #28 - November 28, 2010, 07:38 PM
    All true, Ishna, but they have for centuries organised society and the lives of men to the extent that human society has yet to provide these things fully without religion.

    That is what we must start doing.

    Like I say, it is only natural that us first few do not feel the need for the comfort and direction religion provides - that why we were able to shake off religion - that's why we are here.

    But unless we want to just remain a small, exclusive club, and sod the all the other poor bastards - then we have to start thinking about how to help those less able than us to stand on their own. We need to start providing the things that religions provide - and I mean those things they have no business to claim ownership of.

  • Re: The Price of Bread
     Reply #29 - November 28, 2010, 07:54 PM
    Quote from: Hassan on November 27, 2010, 10:06 PM
    I hope so.

    I think humanity is taking an evolutionary step away from the need for religion.

    But for the first few it is painful and lonely.

    We must find an alternative to the 'opium for the masses'

    We have to provide those things that religion gives people.


    This shouldn't surprise anybody coming from me...  whistling2.... but I think

    \/ \/

    "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?' Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
    Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge." - Carl Sagan

    We can offer people reality. I don't know what anyone else wants, but Science and Nature, always make me feel great. Though that's the thing, different people want and enjoy different things, I don't think it's wise trying to group all atheists together. There are groups and communities out there specialising in a wide variety of interests, I don't think we need any that are exclusively for atheists. It's organised religion that attempts to group people, we don't have to do that too. We can offer a chance to love all people regardless of race, gender, orientation, nationality, religion...our humanity before labels... what else is there?
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