What religion aligns with CoAlpha values the most?

Eh?
They just get brownie points with god for every convert.

Alright, here's the run down. I'll try covering the entire service in a linear sequence.

My previous post explains how the service started. I'll now elaborate. First, I wasn't aware were in the month of Ramadan. Since we're in the month of Ramadan, the services are extra long and probably follow a slightly different format than normal.

I arrived at the muslim mosque at 8:00pm and waited outside for the translator. A few observations: The building has separate entrances for men and women. Men and women don't mingle at all. Most of the men seem to be middle eastern, or north african immigrants. At about 8:00pm I met the person whom I thought was the translator. It turns out he was the sheik. The sheik asked me to follow him in. Before we entered the building, we removed our shoes. We then entered the building and went into a large room that was probably sitting upwards of 100 men. It could of easily been 200.

The whole floor was covered in clear plastic wrapping from wall to wall. This was because we'd later eat off the floor. The sheik led me to a spot and we sat down. He spoke very rabidly for several minutes with a heavy accent. I could not understand most of what he was saying so I just politely nodded my head. After about 10 minutes of him rambling on, he asked to hold my hands. What I assumed was some type of prayer, was actually the conversion process to becoming muslim. He asked me to repeat a few things after him, which I did. Then from one moment to the next I had probably half the room looking over at me. Men started walking up to me and saying "welcome to the brotherhood", "you have a brotherhood now", "you are now muslim", ect.

I must say it's a somewhat terrifying experience. You're being welcomed into a tribal group. There's an implicit assumption that you're not allowed to leave the group once you enter. On the same token, I see this rite of passage as something similar to what gang members do to each other. While there's an element of fear, there's also a sense of pride they're beating into you. I can see why this is a very effective religion for recruiting men. The basis of a rite of passage for men, is older men initiating younger men. There's few other outlets in modern society where men are initiated by other men.

It's amazing how quickly they want to fully convert you though. Almost right after I'd gullably followed the shiek's words a few people were asking the sheik if my name was going to be changed. Islam seems to have a very rapid process of conversion.

A lot of people were watching me at this point, so it wasn't exactly the best moment to clarify miscommunications. Imagine a 100 men staring at you whom are straight from the middle east. It's high pressure situation. Another muslim asked me to follow him. We had to do a cleaning ritual for washing our hands and feet. You basically need to wash certain parts of your body three times and in a specific order.

After I washed my hands and feet, we went back to the large room. Now the sheik was talking on the microphone and he asked me to come forward in front of everyone. He wanted me to introduce myself. I probably came across as being comical more than anything else. I introduced myself very briefly and then sat back down. After hearing the sheik speak for a while we broke up into groups and gathered in circles.

This was when food started being served. I'm not sure if the eating customs I saw were muslim or middle eastern. But they are as follows: We all sat on the ground and ate with our bare hands. I was offered a fork but no one else was using one, so I decided to make the most of this authentic experience and just eat with my hands like everyone else. There was a variety of food ranging from chick to vegetables. It was actually a pretty good meal - and all you can eat. I have to say, muslims have perfected the communal male eating ritual. It's been a long time since I've found myself in such a male exclusive environment. And when your surrounded by hundreds of men scavenging food in such a raw fashion, it can become very appealing experience to embrace. It pumps up your male ego. Of course the women upstairs could of been eating like slobs also for all I know.

After we gorged ourselves full of food we started praying. I don't remember the exact sequence, but I do remember the format. Men form single file lines across the room, facing the front of the room. No gaps are allowed in lines. Whenever a gap occurs, men move forward and fill it. Similarly no gaps are allowed on the sides or between men. It's a very tightly packed form of prayer. This makes sense. There's probably some quran reason for doing this. But in reality I think the purpose is to breed cohesiveness. Military's use the same underlying principle for marching and lining men up.

Anyways, we did this line up praying for about two hours then the service ended close to 11:30pm or so.

What I've learned from Islam, is the key to a powerful religion is having an excellent service format. You need to offer something of value. In this case food is a good incentive to get people to come to religious meetings. Similarly an all male environment is hard to find anywhere else. If you can create a perfect service format, you're likely to win the masses.

Now as for coalpha:

What I've learned so far, is the key to an ideal coalpha religion, is one you can coast in without being forced to convert to. Islam is not a religion you can coast in, in any way. You need to convert. Christianity had much less pressure to convert. I'd like to try Judaism next, which seems to be anti-recruitment. If you have strong opinions, Islam will not tolerate them. Once you join, there's a definite sense that you cannot disagree with anything.

For my personal life I'm realizing religion doesn't have much use for me. Islam definitely has a large enough insular community to block out worldly influences. But this is at life altering cost. Religion in general requires a significant time commitment, both to initially study and regularly attend service. Unless you have a family to protect, I don't see the argument for making the time commitment. The only reasons I could see are possibly, being offered arranged dating. Or the sense of camaraderie you get amongst men. I don't think I'd be willing to give up my ability to disagree for a religion.

That was an entertaining story.  You can see how direct personal experience is worth far more than just reading about a religion.  (Though reading the core books of a religion also has value.)  As I said before, Christianity is about belief, Islam is about submission, and Judaism is about observance.  These are significantly different religions.  I agree that there isn't much reason for commitment to religion before you have a family.  But there is reason to at least do your research to understand different religions.  I suggest that you go to an Orthodox Christian Liturgy to complete the picture of that religion.  You will need to attend an Orthodox Jewish service a few times before you have any understanding of what is happening there.  They will probably be hostile to you since you aren't Jewish, but be persistent and insist that you have a genuine interest in Judaism and they should then tolerate you.

One other thing you may see from your Muslim experience is how critical it is to separate the sexes during service.  I don't think a religion has much value if it fails to do this.

Hi franklin, as i mentioned before I was invited to attend a sunday morning church service last weekend. A friend of mine and i were chatting on the phone and the discussion took a philosophical turn... he invited me to the anglican church. He's a buddhist but apparently the pastor welcomed him regardless, seeming to understand that the "brand" of religion wasn't important, rather the act of religion itself was..

Anyway, I went and it was quite surprising.. it was a family service, and apparently the whole thing was designed by the kids. The topic was "moses leading the israelites out of egypt and through the desert". First of all, there were 2 pastors, both female. The service started with a song that went "Pharaoh pharaoh, let my people go, etc.. " something like that.. and it sounded almost like a rock song or something, and there was a dance that went with it as well :) There was a big television screen acting as a teleprompter with powerpoint slides. Sometimes the pastor would read something out of a book and people were meant to say something in reply (it was all on the TV screen).

there were also 4 stations setup around the hall, one with a bunch of sticks ("touch the sticks, lean on them, and imagine that you are moses.. do you trust the stick to support your weight? that's how you should trust in god"), one with water and glasses to drink from (signifying how moses got them water to drink from out of a rock), another one with an open door leading outside so one could walk on the sand with bare feet and another one with lots of kids stationery to write whatever... frankly it was a bit bizarre, but there was a lot of free-association type thing going on, and in fact this is what happens in most modern churches...

It all seemed a bit new-agey to me...

anyway, it turned out that my friend basically wanted to hook me up with this girl who's around 30 ish.. she seemed nice enough, but seemed a bit reserved and un-trusting... hardly surprising.. apparently she'd just come out of a relationship with an argentinian..

Sounds like your standard modern Christian church.  I wonder if Martin Luther would regret the Reformation if he knew that it would turn out like this.

New to this forum and sort of the MRA circles online but I have to wonder how it is that the Manosphere hasn't come to embrace pre-Abrahamic practices. Like Greek and Roman paradigms and other such ancient European Phallic based religions. It seems to me counter productive to continue to adhere to religions that seek to oppress male sexual expression. Phallic based practices focus on appreciating maleness in all it's complexity. These cultures placed little if any importance of the female. Her pussy was no god to these men and they also were not subjugated by them because they were not forced to have romantic relationships with them only sexual relationships for the sake of procreating. Similarly German culture of the late 19th century until the middle of WWII placed a similar importance on masculinity while simultaneously diminishing the importance of the female and was opposed to the rise of feminism at the time.

Thanks for sharing....