The whole point of any piece of comedy is that you're inflating and exaggerating to a comedic effect, so it's the easiest thing to cut the legs out from under it. It's the easiest, stupidest, most worthless thing to do.
In deference to the Liger, I will refrain in this post from making any exaggerations in the service of RAPE comedy.
I don't believe in a god, at least not in the sense of Sky Dad. I don't believe in souls. I don't think we're ruled by a divine intelligence, nor told what we ought to do by some transcendental authority.
So as I originally said, you don't believe in this religion shit.
With that said, ceremony and philosophy, and their conjured fruit, religion, are things that have the positive power to enrich some people (myself being foremost in my thoughts at this turn); morality is a lever upon which one might rest enough weight to shift human sympathies and actions.
And as I said in another post, just because religion is associated with morality doesn't mean that morals don't exist in the absence of religion, or even that religion is the optimal means by which to tap people's morality.
Considering all of this, it seemed to me that life was worth revering and people were worth guiding and protecting, that religion was not empty rite, and that there was no reason to act coy about having spiritual sentiments anymore.
Rather than pretend it was all meaningless bullshit, I could take it seriously.
But you aren't taking it seriously! See how glibly you dismiss religions for petty reasons, oftentimes for little more reason than "that's... not.... how I feel." That's like Scarlett Johansson in "Lost in Translation" deciding that her spiritual path was bogus because she was not instantly enlightened by staring at a bunch of buddhist monks. Your main considerations when talking over the job with your brother are whether you have the skillset and background necessary, then deciding what actual religion is the Truth you will represent.
My fear, as someone who has known you forever, was that eventually the cognitive dissonance of guiding people down a solemn spiritual path that you don't take seriously would make the job ultimately miserable for you.
[...]
BUT, and here was my mistake, I had the wrong idea of what Unitarianism was. (and from this point on this post is territory where no liger would dare tread!) It was my understanding that Unitarianism was a branch of Christianity that rejected the Trinity in favor of a strict Monotheism that denied the divinity of Christ. Kinda like how the Anabaptists opposed baptising children too young to understand.
Apparently this WAS what Unitarianism was, but sometime in the 50s, the church declared, "Fuck it! Nobody really knows," and stopped giving spiritual instruction, but for some reason everybody kept going to church. Now anyone can come and follow whatever spiritual doctrine appeals to them at the moment, even Atheists are welcome! There have been many dead religions throughout history, but this is the only undead religion I know of.
So basically it's a social club with silly rituals, like the Elks, but tax exempt. Since being a unitarian minister would be more like an event planner, and the unitarian values you would be preaching would include such topics as "yay, democracy!" then sure, knock yourself out. It's a religion that doesn't even take itself seriously!
He is a funny sort of lawyer who judges first then builds his case then researches his opponent.
The discussion is functionally over, of course, but I wonder now: correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not religious, y/n? It's not like this is a mark against you, it's just - if you're not religious, why do you have such an orthodoxy about what religion is and isn't and what ought and ought not to motivate a person to declare a faith?
I found it completely dazzling that "I don't agree with its tenets" was insufficient reason, by your measure, to reject a faith. If I told you the literal voice of God had rung in my ear and commanded me to dispose of everything I had previously cherished, and to make haste to some particular temple, and to give up there all my venal little philosophies in favor of some doctrine with some MM-sufficient force of historical power or holy force - would that be more endurable as a motivation?
Isn't it more pleasant to think that we live in an era of good general education and social tolerance? A person might recognize his spiritual leanings and celebrate the milestones of his life in the company of similarly-inclined people, and while each person in the congregation follows his or her own specific path, the general church organizes and informs them all, and there's no more need to declare heretics or campaign against sodomites or demand fealty to a particular way of cutting a penis or eating a lobster.
I suspect you're one of the submission-and-sacrifice lot at heart - it's not Really religion unless you're doing something you wouldn't otherwise do on pain of damnation. But I'm not interested in playing complicated games of Chicken with Sky Dad, and fortunately I don't need to be. I think this is a tremendously fine thing. I wonder why you think it's a laughable one.
