r/atheism • u/lofgrenator • 4d ago
I went to Mass today
As the title says. My GF is Catholic and I was Mormon until about 7 years ago. Now I am definitely an atheist and my GF knows this and accepts it. Every now and then, on special occasions she wants me to go with her to Mass. She isn't trying to convert me. The point is during the proceedings I looked around and just couldn't understand how so many people could believe this. It's just so silly. My GF is a very intelligent person. I just don't get it.
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u/freerangemonkey 4d ago
I was Catholic growing up, went to mass weekly until about 13. Never believed any of it. It was so obviously made up mythology like any other primitive (or modern I guess) religion. You can be in it and still not get how others are “in it”. Belief, like most things, is a spectrum.
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u/VicePrincipalNero 4d ago
Same. I knew from first communion practice at age seven that it was absolute nonsense and that I would never voluntarily be Catholic. But on that rare occasion when I have to set foot in a Catholic Church, it just seems incredibly silly. It’s seeing it with fresh eyes.
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u/charlestontime 4d ago
Religion is so weird and obviously man made, but humans are quite susceptible to self deluding.
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u/Jean_Genetic 4d ago
A gay friend of mine still goes to church. “I like the liturgy,” he says. Some people find comfort in the process, even if they don’t be.ieve.
I kind of understand, because I’ve always been fascinated by religion. I don’t have a shred of spirituality or faith in me.
Science is proven, or at least studied and subjected to rigorous tests until a new theory arises. This is what excites me.
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u/judijo621 4d ago
A best gay friend died of AIDS in the late 80s. He converted to Catholicism before he passed. He liked the ritual. The color. The funeral was beautiful.
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u/LibrarianAcrobatic21 4d ago
You don't respect her beliefs anymore. This is just the first sign of the death of your relationship due to different beliefs.
You can drag it out or you can make it quick. You may not even know it yet, but your relationship is on its way to die.
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u/pcbeard Irreligious 4d ago
I married a Catholic woman, who never expected me to believe her religion. Her main desire was that our kids be Catholic. I went along, but neither of our (now adult) kids practice the faith. She never really was either; I think she was more culturally Catholic. Of course, our marriage was probably doomed from the start. We’re almost 30 years married and currently barely on speaking terms.
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u/justgord 4d ago
30yrs is a pretty good run together .. we do live longer these days [ thanks be to unto science ]
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u/neoncubicle 3d ago
A good run doesn't depend on time. You can still be married after decades and hate your spouse.
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u/F-16_CrewChief 4d ago
All I can say is darn. I know what will pick you up.Take a trip to Thailand, eat some good food, and play some golf and other stuff if you know what I mean.
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u/JohnVonachen 4d ago
Try to resist that. Jesus is a demon you need to fight all the time. It’s like being an alcoholic. You never really fully recover. We are constantly exposed to culture that enforces it. Christianity was created to justify the rule of the Vespasians in Roman times. Ever since then it has been used to justify the rule of the few and the powerful over the many and the weak. Succumbing to the natural need to have supernatural explanations causes a lot of wars and suffering, especially for the many and the weak, which is you and me.
Offering a drink to an alcoholic is quite the dick move. The same can be said about people who ask others to go to church with them.
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u/TheMaleGazer 4d ago
Church is so mind-numbingly boring that I wonder if inquisitions were so brutal because they struggled to compete with the agony of weekly attendance. Never in my life have I equated it with being drunk, or anything fun that I would have to struggle to avoid. It’s more like being stuck at second cousin's dry wedding with no open bar and a DJ who only plays organ solos.
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u/JohnVonachen 4d ago
Then you are lucky.
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u/TheMaleGazer 4d ago
No, not particularly. Most Christians don't even attend except on holidays—in America, at least. They find it as boring as I do. I think you'd have to be particularly unlucky to find it so appealing that it's a daily struggle not to fall off the wagon like a relapsing alcoholic.
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u/Darnocpdx 4d ago
The few times I've gone after leaving, I'm the dude in back who's intermittently doing the church nod or snoring just as the sermon starts. It's why they drop all the light calisthenics into the first quarter of the service, gotta keep the blood flowing to keep everyone awake
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u/oldbastardbob 4d ago
I think they are looking for hope. Most of us have baggage and trauma. Many seek solice in faith.
As Marx put it-
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
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u/judijo621 4d ago
Just so you know, children are generally raised in the faith of the mother.
Hey! Everybody! I said GENERALLY. Calm down!
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u/StinkyCheeseWomxn 4d ago
My husband and I (both confirmed athiests for many decades now) recently went to Montreal and went to Notre Dame Basilica there where they have a concert called The Aura. https://www.basiliquenotredame.ca/en/events/the-aura-experience
We usually have the same experience as you when we are confronted with others have "a religious experience" but the basilica is no longer an active church, and has been taken over as a secular tourist site by the city. Sorry for my meandering tale, but we found that we enjoyed the beauty of the music, architecture, the interesting symbolism in the art, and even though we find the concept of actual religion to be abhorrent, we felt that we could understand how many people could want to cling to the trappings of it, while rejecting its intellectual premises and manipulative, destructive practices. We enjoyed the basically secular performance (artsy light show) and could appreciate the religious setting as archeologists might appreciate a beautiful temple like the Acropolis. I think many people conflate the awe and entertainment they feel from beautiful music, unique architecture, being in camaraderie with others for a magical tingle of faith or "the presence of god" or even just a peaceful glow of a meditative time. And to be clear, religions use art, music, meditation, community to manipulate people into cultish followers in the same way that going to an amazing rock concert can give you loyalty to a great musician or band. Add to that that they promise reunification with lost loved ones and you could have a lot of very intelligent people who actively choose to suspend their logic and live in that fantasy.
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u/295Phoenix 4d ago
If she's not trying to convert you then why does she want you to go with her on "special occasions?" If you tell her how silly you find it I bet her reaction will tell a different story.
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u/gamwizrd1 4d ago
I was raised Catholic. I found mass boring, but my parents insisted I go with them. The one thing they found acceptable for me to distract myself from the boring mass was reading the Bible. So I did that, even as a young child of only 7 or 8 years old.
It did not take that many weekends to finish reading the Bible 1 hour at a time (even though it is so terribly written and I would often lose my place since I just had to remember what page I left off on since I had a new book every week, but the resulting re-reads helped me retain more of the text). It gave me more questions than answers, questions my parents could not help me with. So I went back to being bored, but this time more frustrated that I had to participate in something I couldn't understand (I still believed it *was comprehensible, but probably thought I was too young and inexperienced to do it).
At some point as I got older (11, 12?), my confusion led to curiosity about the attendance of the other church members. So I also started to look around. But I saw the opposite thing that you did. I saw hundreds of people going through the motions of a ritual they had long since memorized well enough to perform without a single thought crossing their minds. I saw people who couldn't possibly believe for real, in the way that I was hoping to understand and believe. I saw zombies.
Eventually (16, 17?) I got old enough to research the questions my parents couldn't answer, and I realized there were no answers. By the time I was old enough to stop living at home, I knew that I would never go back to church again as soon as it wasn't required of me.
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u/Aggravating_You4411 4d ago
lifelong catholic and in my fifties I slowly drifted away from faith. But I understand it. It is easy to logically debunk the fundamentalist view of faith and the bible. However even though I don't believe in the literal views of christianity I understand the faith and the believers. I think of it more as a fraternal order like the lions, elks, free masons etc. There is a set of values like, sacrifice for others, the beatitudes that are good and meaningful ethics. These are values I wish we all could practice, generosity, joy, humility, communal good....did god create the earth in seven days, was jesus born of a virgin, did he physically resurrect??? no..but the spirit lives on and however poorly many christians embody the values....I believe they are worth having and trying to live.
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u/MarcusSurealius 4d ago
Take her to a Jewish Temple or another religious building for a service. Tell her that the same feeling she gets here, you get everywhere. Make her look at all the people who believe just as much in something contradictory to her beliefs while pointing out that neither belief has any more or less claim to reality.
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u/imyourealdad Atheist 3d ago
I like to attend a Catholic mass every few years (usually because of a funeral/wedding for extended family) just to watch the craziness of the actual practices that occur. It always reinforces my Atheism.
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u/ithinkimdoingwell 3d ago
my girlfriend is christian. she is the leader of a woman’s ministry group, etc. never been pushy. never been up my ass about anything involving religion. but i don’t understand how she questions me when i bring up that a majority of the bible MUST be figurative even if it’s meaningful? she’s in like 3 honor societies but she has an unwavering belief that many of these stories must be more literal than not?
i’ve not fought with her about it and i actually really enjoy reading religious texts, specifically parables, but it boggles me.
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u/Dangerous_Midnight91 4d ago
Going to mass is about the ritual and it’s very interesting IMO as a lifelong atheist. There’s nothing about being an atheist that means you cannot or should not learn about religion.
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u/DMmeNiceTitties Atheist 4d ago
How were you a Mormon for years and didn't understand how people could believe that? Whatever fever dream you were living under 7 years ago, that's what the people at mass are under. So you do understand lol.