Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.
Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.
“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.
I mean, you threw yourself in here, so I feel this is fair game…
Listen, while I certainly respect some of the concessions you are making here in acknowledging the issues with the broader issues of modern Christianity, at a very fundamental level the core beliefs are problematic for a modern society.
My guess is that you believe a dead body came back to life and floated up into the sky.
In part, I make this assumption because Paul effectively mandated this as a litmus test in 1 Cor 15 in response to Christians at the time who rejected that belief.
So you believe that things outside the scope of what is naturally possible has occurred.
This is then tied to a belief of inherent unworthiness such that without this event having occurred, you are somehow deserving of suffering and it is only through this event that you could have avoided such a fate.
You were most likely fed these beliefs as a child - beliefs people in the first generation after Jesus weren’t even all that keen on - and you will likely continue to pass them along generationally.
The entire time effectively ignoring that the version of Christianity which survived was simply the one that had successfully adapted beliefs in line with supporting authoritarianism of the Roman monarchy, of slavery, and of financing the organization out of the pockets of its members, etc - ideas that I’m skeptical you’d end up endorsing if they were positioned to you on their own, and are each beliefs that can be individually challenged on their connection to a historical Jesus in the first place.
So the social exchange of even a “good Christianity” minus the worst parts of today’s oversteps is still one in which children are raised to believe in magic, in their inherent unworthiness without the religion, of continuing on outdated and obsolete social norms and practices, and on preserving ideas that benefit authoritarianism.
Much as I think you’d probably agree it wouldn’t be good for people growing up in a world of science and technology to be indoctrinated with beliefs about Muhammad having been able to split the moon in half or a belief that the universe is in fact the dream of a giant turtle, beliefs that you yourself subscribe to happen to run counter to everything from an evidenced based approach to understanding the world and our place in it.
Christian certainty in their beliefs led to suppression of ideas ranging from the notion matter was made up of indivisible parts (atomism) to the idea life that existed around us was not from intelligent design but simply based on what survived to reproduce and what did not - both ideas present and broadly discussed in Jesus’s day.
With all due respect for the freedom to have faith in something, at a certain point faith should not be put on a pedestal over evidence backed evaluations and it is necessary to let go of the past in order to embrace the future.
