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Wellness Wednesday for March 8, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I've got to say, church is great. My partner and I recently went after almost a decade, despite both being atheists. We are admittedly part of a non-traditional "New Age" style church, but it was great. I actually teared up during the service, which I did not expect.

If you're in a bad way I'd recommend giving it a chance!

Does this “New Age” church conduct wedding ceremonies for homosexuals?

How does that affect his recommendation to go to service if you're doing poorly? It isn't a wedding ceremony and it isn't your church.

Might as well ask their thoughts about transubstantiation.

Might as well ask their thoughts about transubstantiation.

This, but unironically. Do people really choose their church based on whether they like the music and not on their doctrine?

Choosing a church based on the music is way more sensible than choosing based on their opinions on gayness. You should go to a church that makes you feel good. If you're choosing a church based on their politics, then politics is your god.

I wanted to go to church I could agree with theologically. Both music and opinion on gayness are derivative aspects of the fundamentals. That's how I nearly became a Mennonite before I realized I had to expand my search beyond Christianity.

What did you find?

That I reject revelation as a source of divine knowledge on one hand, and that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are totally insufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being on the other. The existence or non-existence of a Supreme Being that has or hasn't created the universe isn't proven or disproven by any faiths and is ultimately irrelevant. It's the believers you have to worry about, since they can and do act according to their beliefs.

Therefore, I don't really care about organized religion beyond avoiding or mitigating its impact on my life. Theoretically, if someone came up to me and explained that if you earnestly believe in some silly things start with axioms A, B, C you end up with a net positive balance of utilons/hedons/whateverons, I would be hard pressed to explain why I won't do this. Waaait a minute, have I just ended up with the plot of South Park S07E12 "All About the Mormons?"?

That I reject revelation as a source of divine knowledge on one hand, and that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are totally insufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being on the other

Wouldn't a philosophy like Buddhism or Stoicism be compatible with this?

The whole 'reject organized religion' doesn't mean you have to reject all prior knowledge and thoughts on how to live a good life.

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