Knockout Anonymous Confessional Response 1

Louka:
I am a very outspoken Catholic and I had a brief year-long brush with Islam a few years ago. I run both this confessional but also the "what's happening with young men" thread which has been mentioned. I talk about the Church and my faith a lot. I do not find this shameful. If I am this outspoken, and I believe, then obviously I do not share the observation that there is "no good religion". Knockout, contrary to popular belief (as observed on some other sites), is a welcoming space. The first step of "be nice to others" is something that people (bigots) often fail to do which results in the impression that Knockout will remove anybody that's not queer/atheist/of some marginalized group. Is everybody here nice? Not always, but that's not an excuse for people to not be nice. I try to be kind as much as possible even when others aren't.
 
Response:
I'm well aware of how outspoken you are and I find it utterly abhorrent. I really don't care that you don't find backing such a horrible institution as the Catholic Church to be utterly shameful. That just means I will never respect you as a person. I am aware that Knockout is a welcoming space, believe me I've been here long enough. Doesn't change the fact that religion is a disease and cancer on society. You try to be kind, yet I can never accept it as genuine given at the core of your belief system is that not doing so means you are condemned to an eternity of damnation in a terrible place. Your kindness and niceties will never come across as genuine as long as that remains a fact. That's my problem. It's completely fake. Say what you want and will to justify your position, won't change anything.
 
Louka:
The conjunction of queer people and overall Christianity has been discussed before, and is very visible on this page of the thread. Christians have a woeful and well-known tendency to use faith as a vehicle to justify their bigotry, more so than the participants of other religions, which ironically enough is categorically forbidden by the very precepts of Christianity.
 
Response:
I've read that page and I back Brosef fully. Spirituality is nothing but religious mumbo jumbo. One would never exist without the other as religions give us the notion of a spirit in the first place. It's one of the most common threads almost every religion shares, no matter what age it comes from. It's really not just Christians who use faith against queer people. Have you forgotten Islam? Or can I not point that out on account of leftists making Islam a race thing and not a religious thing? Because fucking hell do people love to do that. Islam is not about skin tone, it's a shitty fairytale with a paedophile at its core. Both love that stuff.
 
Louka:
There is absolutely a place for queer people in the church and I feel that those in charge have failed to properly discern it-or explain it-through the gift of knowledge. If one adopts a strictly scriptural approach on how to best integrate people into the church, based exclusively on what the scriptures say is good and isn't good, then nobody would ever be able to join the church. Even the most upheld "correct" people wouldn't be eligible to partake.
 
Response:
My point is that queer people shouldn't engage with something that actively wants to harm them, but fuck it humans love cognitive dissonance something fierce. One has to wonder why any scripture even exists or is used if no one adheres to it beyond what they pick and choose is relevant. I mean the fact that you have to even do that should be evidence enough that the whole thing is a farce. The fact that everyone ignores that is fucking mind-boggling. But hey, eternal "paradise" worshipping some self-absorbed, magical asshole who's as useful as a broken condom is just the tits. To paraphrase a line I heard before: I'd rather kill myself than go to heaven.
 
Louka:
I see what the church has done, is doing, and then I think of how the church can be made better. It is the same mindset that must be applied to any enormous institution, which holds in its hands the powers of good and of bad. Think of, for example, how a good United States government could serve its 400 million or so people extremely well. Half the population, every 4 years, vote on the belief that this is possible. Today, you see how such an institution of possible good can serve a certain evil. Yet, nobody loses hope that change is possible through reorganization, not abolition.
 
Response:
And yet you still choose to support it? Just because "it can be made better"? It doesn't deserve to be made better. It deserves to be removed from the face of the planet and the annals of history, for the sake of every victim that has and continues to suffer under it. The United States of America and the Church are not comparable beasts. The "good ol' USA" is suffering as a result of its own people and a multitude of different factors. Those same people have no say in anything that goes on in the Church. None of us do. You can reorganize the States, you cannot reorganize the Church in the same way. Just hope, or engage in the delusions of prayer, someone within the Church will do it of their own volition.
 
Louka:
On that matter, I do not see any good in abolishing the church, and with all it does and promises, I know it can be an exceptional, trans-national, absolute vehicle of good. Any perceived advantage in abolishing the church and its beliefs is simply a difference in spiritual opinion and observance, which a good tolerant society needs. It is for the same reason you'll see me, for example, support a separation of church and state, or irreligious schools, despite my convictions. TBH the state enforcing religion is a rabbit hole, I can simply imagine how one day a state legislates it back into existence and then in a few decades time, the "state religion" becomes twisted and changed into something unrecognizable to those who hypothetically voted for it.
 
Response:
Of course you don't. You're naive enough to think it can be a force of good and we can all brush the atrocities it enabled under a rug. It's nothing to do with spiritual anything. That's more religious shit. Again, atheist and anti-theist here, don't believe in that. Get your head out of your pastor's asshole. I won't settle for just a mere separation of church and state, it's not good for anyone until the church, and any organised religion, is shunned for the barbaric delusions that it is. As long as you support it, you will be forever complicit in the problems it perpetuates because none of you condemn it enough or make any noise about how vile it is. It's the All Cops Are Bastards approach, if you and your pastor buddy ain't shunning and outing every paedophile priest that crops up, then you're complicit in what they do.
 
Louka:
The pathologization of belief is a slippery slope. We're already in a tight spot with how, for example, we tend to pathologize beliefs resulting from spiritual experiences generated by entheogens (hey, we even had comments on the matter in this very confessional, lol). If you start meddling with the mindset that being human requires you to believe or contrariwise not believe something, then you are introducing a very explosive idea into the world. It has already been used (and sadly still being used) by bigots, many of which claim themselves to be good Christians, to describe people as less than human. How many people have wished death upon somebody else for holding the wrong opinion? How many people have been outright killed for it? And then, how many people consider otherwise mundane observances to be fantastical, and say these observers are also deserving of death?
 
Response/off the rails tangent:
It's nothing to do with wishing death upon people for their beliefs. It's the fact that it only exists to manipulate the masses through their fear of death and the unknown. Explaining it all away with fantastical nonsense. Hell, it's not just that, the religious iconography and lore is just disturbing. Your profile background, as of writing this, is just awful to have on display. The whole thing is fucked, showing off a dead dude like that so much. I don't care for the lore, I don't care that he died for peoples sins, it's just disturbing. It creeped me out as a kid and still creeps me out to this day. The fact that no one in that religion looks at that poor fucker hanging on a cross and things "this is beyond unhinged" just unsettles me. I usually read this thread on mobile and I don't know if you changed your background to that weird iconography as a result of this or something else, but that is just... not cool to see while I type this up. I don't know how you look at that and think "yeah that's a good representation for me on this website". Even the barely clothed kids as angels is just weird man. How does anyone sit there and say "yeah this totally isn't unhinged". If that was any other scenario, people would ridicule the kids alone. Fuck me, that's so wrong, unnerving, unsettling, horrible. I'll humour looking at a response to this for now, but I'm avoiding you and this thread like the plague after that so I don't have to look at that background. Dude in front is just the kind've abhorrent shit that makes religion so problematic too. Fuck all that.