Attitude to Religion and its believers.

Nemo , 10 days ago

I myself am Christian and have never had trouble getting along with others no matter their religious beliefs. The only conflict is when someone thinks their religion or religious precepts should be made law; I have no tolerance for that.

crazyminner , 10 days ago

I am Anti-theist, If anyone brings up religion around me I will not hesitate to tear it down. These people are playing make belief and if affects my life, I have to live in a world where people make decisions based on some imaginary sky friend.

I will not play nice for the sake of someone feeling good about their bullshit.

Cagi , 10 days ago

So you’re an asshole, using religion as an excuse to berate and bully people, got it.

crazyminner , 10 days ago

I actually care a lot about people. I don’t care much for ideas though.

How’s it go? Love the person hate the imaginary “friends”?

One thing that’s nice about being visibly queer is that luckily people don’t try to con me into their religions.

crazyminner , 9 days ago

Flat-earther comes up to you and tells you the earth is flat. What do you do tell them to each there own? Or do you tell them no the earth is not flat and they should educate themselves?

Cagi , 9 days ago

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you don’t need to be an asshole to disagree. You don’t need to “tear down” beliefs and “not play nice”. Being rude to people for being wrong just makes them dig deeper into being wrong out of defensiveness. It isn’t about edification, it’s about finding an excuse to be mean.

That said, other people’s education is not my responsibility. Taking the time and energy required to correct a random stranger about what shape the earth is isn’t going to change the world but it will take a toll on me. Being wrong doesn’t make them a bad person. Being a jerk to them for believing so does. Believing in a flat earth a symptom of fundamentally flawed reasoning skills that I don’t have the time or energy to deal with. If someone believes the earth is flat, I’ll politely disagree and state my opinion, but ultimately I’ll let them do them. Who cares. I choose my friends, they won’t make the cut.

red_pigeon , 9 days ago

Unfortunately, “these people” have to live in a world where you exist too and your conflicting attitude affect their lives.

Learn to live and let live, my friend. You cannot expect the world to accept you if you are not ready to accept them.

crazyminner , 9 days ago

I accept people, I will never accept irrational/harmful beliefs. Luckily it looks like access to the internet’s vast wealth of knowledge is killing religion in the next generations.

Zerlyna , 10 days ago

I’m an ex-Christian, the more I read the Bible, the more it doesn’t make sense. But I respect others choices to believe in their higher power, whatever that may be that makes their life work. Double points if they respect back. They all can’t be right.

EleventhHour , 10 days ago

Those who believe in an invisible sky wizard (or any other delusion) belong in psychotherapy.

stoy , 10 days ago

As someone who is mostly agnostic, those who belive that absence of evidence equals evidence of absence belong in psychotherapy.

There is zero evidence either way, the best we can say is that we don’t know.

electric_nan , 10 days ago

Literally anything that anyone can ever imagine, is not all equally probable.

EleventhHour , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

I believe in that which we can prove, because we have evidence of those things.

Not invisible sky wizards. Lol

hemko , 10 days ago

Yeah man something about Russell’s tea pot

We have no evidence for gods, that’s it. There’s no need to provide evidence for absence of god, the burden of proof belongs to the person who makes the claim (that there’s a god/gods).

CableMonster , 10 days ago

The problem with this theory is that we dont have a complete explanation for existence without the existence of a higher power.

hemko , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

Yep, but we have tool for trying to understand it. It’s called scientific method, and it has so far been able to help us understand the mechanics of the universe without resorting to crazy claims such as “yeah must have been super powered aliens”, which is the only offer from religion.

I do get that there’s a chance that it’s all bogus, and that there really is or was a god that created everything in a way we have been able to measure it, but why exactly should I believe it? Which story should I believe? ‘In this world of a million religions everyone prays the same way’, the same human made stories written over centuries trying to explain the world around us. In this context religion seems nothing more than a predecessor to scientific method turned into crowd control tool.

CableMonster , 10 days ago

My main point is any philosophy about where humans came from is a matter of faith. I was just pointing out the issue where evolution doesnt sufficiently explain things, but most atheists are aware of this or just handwave away the problem.

I suppose on picking a religion you would need to look at what makes the most logical sense, and is most consistent. Also I would look at what has the best track record with the best outcome.

hglman , 10 days ago

Yeah that religion is called science. To suggest that gaps exist on evolution so we need to go examine religion is an a joke of an argument. The difference in successful capturing of the reality of the process of life by the theory of evolution to any religion is galactic in scale. Your justification is ridiculous and only exists because you cannot let go of the lies someone taught you as a child in order to control you.

CableMonster , 9 days ago

The joke is that you think you follow science and then outright discount things when they are not what you want.

hglman , 7 days ago

I mean we can talk about how god is a non sense idea.

CableMonster , 7 days ago

So with what certainty do you think there is no God?

hglman , 7 days ago

Around the same certainly that I think balloons exist inside giraffes on the moon of TRAPPIST-1b.

CableMonster , 7 days ago

So this points out how you dont care about science because you are completely close minded. What you will find is that with your group this is common, they will not even begin to admit the possibility of a deity.

hglman , 6 days ago

I gave you my assessment of my the possibility, more over the subject has been significantly more explored than the evidence for it. Doing good science is not endlessly chasing any possible outcome, it is rigorously evaluating those you can investigate.

That said,

There is no god and your a fool, feel fucking bad for you. I’m really sorry people manipulated you as a child to the point your trapped by the idea. Haunted even.

CableMonster , 6 days ago

and your a fool

hemko , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

Evolution theory DOES explain where we came from, and the theory is proven billion times over and over. It’s insanity to believe anything else. As Dawkins neatly put it, we have more evidence for evolution theory than we have for Holocaust.

but most atheists are aware of this or just handwave away the problem.

No, ‘atheists’ do not handwave problems found in scientific theories away but study it until it’s no longer a problem. What religion does is just says “it must be gods” and throws any reason to thrash bin

CableMonster , 9 days ago

The issue is you guys do handwaving about how the basic building blocks started and then go on to look at fossil progression. You guys need to stop and look at how it seems to be impossible for DNA to develop and how evolution doesnt have a good explaination for it.

hemko , 9 days ago

No one is handwaving away problems we are yet to solve, except the people just claiming “must have been gods”

There has always been and probably always will be new problems to solve. Scientists have been working on trying to understand and resolve those problems, and we know so much more today than we did 100 years ago. We take evolution theory as a fact, because it’s the theory that has been proven billions of times again and again, and we keep finding more proof for it. Just because we might not know everything yet, is not an argument against the only working theory we have.

Your Christ illusion has been proven zero times

CableMonster , 9 days ago

You can say its not handwaving, but as evolution currently stands it is an impossible theory. Until there is an actual explanation you can say its been “proven billions of times”.

hemko , 9 days ago

Until there is an actual explanation you can say its been “proven billions of times”

All the evidence we have supports evolution theory

CableMonster , 9 days ago

Except for the very start of it, and unless you can answer that question it voids all of evolution.

ianovic69 , 9 days ago

about where humans came from is a matter of faith.

If that’s your main point then you’re in a great position to examine your beliefs using tried and tested methods to know things.

Of course, you may have to adjust those beliefs to be in accordance with reality, which can be much more difficult. Should you accept this challenge that life has presented, your chosen subject of evolution has mountains of good evidence to study.

what makes the most logical sense, and is most consistent…what has the best track record with the best outcome.

This is interesting use of language that usually applies to the scientific method. I’ve often seen it used in attempts to legitimise religious reasoning, and sometimes it goes with assertions of “proper basic beliefs.”

You should be aware that these are just more modern methods of things like Pascal’s Wager, that are not meant to convince anyone except those who already believe.

All religion, at least those with god belief and certainly the Abrahamic three, contain no sensible logic, are completely inconsistent, have a terrible track record and very often horrible outcomes.

CableMonster , 9 days ago

How do the the Abrahamic three all have a terrible track record?

ianovic69 , 9 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

Just to be clear, ignoring everything else I said doesn’t somehow make them irrelevant. In fact it does the opposite to any further opposition you may bring later.

Also, it’s kinda rude.

As to your question, the track record of those three religions to convincingly explain anything they claim to, is complete and utter failure. Every time.

If they can offer any good evidence as answers to the subjects discussed in this post, I’ve yet to hear them. I’m open to being convinced and I try to adjust my beliefs accordingly when presented with good evidence contrary to my current knowledge.

But there’s been nothing so far.

CableMonster , 9 days ago

I didnt ignore what you said, its just pointless to write super long responses to all the subjects, it just gets to be a wall of text.

Let me be more direct, what is the horrible outcomes that christianity or judism brings?

ianovic69 , 8 days ago

Super long wall of text? You’re kidding, right? ಠಿ⁠_⁠ಠ

Look, I even put it in it’s own, separate paragraph

As to your question, the track record of those three religions to convincingly explain anything they claim to, is complete and utter failure. Every time.

So, to avoid any confusion before moving on, you didn’t even try to explain your reasoning for the criteria you set out. You didn’t offer any good evidence to justify those criteria, and you dodged replying by pretending it’s too difficult for you.

This isn’t a good look for you or those who share your beliefs.

And you’re really asking me to point out terrible things that have come about as a result of religion or been perpetuated through religious belief?

Off the top of my head -

Holy wars.
Witch trials.
Destruction of indigenous cultures.
Widespread misogyny.
Discrimination towards minorities.

CableMonster , 8 days ago

So this was exactly the way I thought you would go so I didnt want to invest a lot of time. Those things you mentioned are not related to christianity, it christians doing things. If you actually understand the bible I would say 4/5 go directly against the bible and the last one is questionable.

The main issue is that people apply the things that a person of a belief system does to that belief system. For example they will see a Rep or Dem commit a crime and say that the particular party is responsible, or for in your case christianity is responsible for what its people do.

“But the people are the fruits of what the religion is!” No, they typically are a failing of following the tenants.

ianovic69 , 8 days ago

Nonsense. We are talking about things people do as a direct result of their beliefs, also known as outcomes. Bait and switching just makes you look even worse.

And accusing nearly all Christians of not doing it right is disingenuous, elitist and pitifully sad.

Perhaps instead of disgracing yourself further, you can tell us what these tenets are that so many go against?

CableMonster , 8 days ago

“But the people are the fruits of what the religion is!” No, they typically are a failing of following the tenants.

If you dont understand what I am saying then just ask, insulting is just childish.

ianovic69 , 8 days ago

I didn’t insult you, I pointed out your poor behaviour.

And I did ask you, about several different things, the most recent being about the tenets you claim to follow.

Why don’t you try again?

CableMonster , 8 days ago

No, you are not related to me and I dont care if you try to scold me. I did nothing wrong or shameful and I dont need to explain anything to you. If you get offended by internet conversations then dont have them. If you dont understand what I am saying feel free to ask questions but I am not answering to you.

ianovic69 , 8 days ago

I’m not offended and I’m not scolding you.

You need to realise that I’m merely highlighting your poor behaviour for others to see.

Why so defensive? If you can’t justify your position then just say so, but pretending otherwise is just childish.

CableMonster , 8 days ago

You keep gaslighting me and I dont really care. My behavior was normal and you just seem to be over reacting about something. Just like you claiming I am being defensive, I am jsut telling your I am not going to explain myself to you, and I dont care if you are wanting to scold me, you dont have any power over me.

ianovic69 , 7 days ago

Gaslighting? That suggests I’m inventing things just to make you look bad.
Unsurprisingly, that’s not true. Here’s you lying and generally being awful -

Those things you mentioned are not related to christianity, it christians doing things.

Not what I said. I’ll repeat -

We are talking about things people do as a direct result of their beliefs, also known as outcomes.

That’s about as related to Christianity as you can get, which means you misrepresented what I said. Also known as lying.

I would say 4/5 go directly against the bible and the last one is questionable.

Accusing people of doing it wrong is not a good way to make your point. It either discredits your own religion, or it belittles the beliefs of your fellow Christians while elevating your own.
Not a good look.

If you dont understand what I am saying then just ask, insulting is just childish.

Again, I did ask. More than once. Here’s an example -

Perhaps instead of disgracing yourself further, you can tell us what these tenets are that so many go against?

So again, accusing me of being childish to cover up that you’re lying.
Lovely.

No, you are not related to me and I dont care if you try to scold me. I did nothing wrong or shameful and I dont need to explain anything to you.

If you’re going to behave like a child and pretend you didn’t when called out on it, that doesn’t mean you didn’t or that I’m wrong. But it does make you a liar. Again.

If you get offended by internet conversations then dont have them.

Heh, you’re funny.

If you dont understand what I am saying

If anything you said was new or original, I would have asked about that. Not that you would answer me anyway.
But its all tired repetition of the same old guff we’ve heard a million times.

Oh well.

CableMonster , 7 days ago

Yeah sorry, I am not going to read all that wall of text. Have a great day!

ianovic69 , 7 days ago

Poor thing, running away like they always do.

ianovic69 , 10 days ago

Why is that a problem?

Isn’t it a much bigger problem to invent an explanation and insist it’s correct, rather than just admitting we don’t know?

CableMonster , 10 days ago

The problem is that DNA and associated parts are too complex to evolve, so there is no explaination how it would have gotten to that point. You can say that religion doesnt do a good job explaining, but the various religions have one even though its kind of cheating. Evolution seems impossible without another unknown factor which makes it another faith based system.

juliebean , 10 days ago

isn’t a ‘higher power’ just kicking the can down the road?

CableMonster , 10 days ago

It could be, I guess it would all depend on the theory of what a higher power is. If its God, then thats the endpoint, if its aliens or simulation theory, then it definitely is a kick.

juliebean , 10 days ago

i am not sure what’s the difference there. why is one an endpoint, and the others aren’t?

CableMonster , 9 days ago

God would be an endpoint in that its the full explaination, where as if aliens put the basic building blocks of life on earth then the question is where did the aliens come from.

hglman , 10 days ago

Unknowns just exists, religion assigns the unknown form. Why is that justified and even more incredible important to those who believe that it be true and to make choices due to the assignment of that form?

hemko , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

Because science tries to understand the unknown using reason, religion throws the reason away and says it was gods.

GreyEyedGhost , 9 days ago

I get what you’re saying, but saying people who choose to believe something that can’t be proven and hasn’t been disproven need psychotherapy is like saying the same for color preferences. Sometimes there is no right answer and people should be able to choose.

hemko , 9 days ago

Opinions are opinions. Opinions don’t change the fact that earth is orbiting the sun or that religions are a hoax

GreyEyedGhost , 9 days ago

First, religions and the existence of God are two different things, just like the existence of the earth and the earth being flat are two different things. Likewise, the existence of religions is no guarantor of God’s existence, nor is there many flaws proof of his non-existence. And unknowns are facts we haven’t discovered or proven yet, much like germ theory, or fanciful ideas which haven’t been debunked, such as the idea that an imbalance of humors was the cause of disease.

aleph , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

As someone who is mostly agnostic, those who belive that absence of evidence equals evidence of absence belong in psychotherapy.

This position is a straw man. Atheists generally do not argue that God categorically does not exist. Instead, we usually say that we don’t believe in God because there is insufficient evidence. Much like the proverbial invisible unicorn in your backyard - since there is no evidence that it exists, there is no reason for it to affect how we go about our daily lives.

When it comes to whether you’re agnostic or atheist, I think it helps to answer the following question on a scale of 0 - 10: How confident are you that God exists? If you say around 5, then you’re agnostic. If you say around 1 or 2, then you’re an atheist.

stoy , 10 days ago

The one thing that still remains unclear with regards to science and god is the big bang.

The way I have heard it explained is that before the big bang there was nothing.

Which to my mind becomes:

First there was nothing, which exploded

This does not make sense to me, how can nothing explode?

So there are three categories of answer to this question:

A. There was something before the big bang which exploded, though this offeres not explanation of how the thing that exploded came into existance, I have heard theories about how the universe is cyclical and how it will eventually collapse into a new big bang, but that doesn’t answer the queation about the first big bang.

B. God exists and triggered the big bang, that means that the god entity exists outside of our universe.

C. We are just a highly advanced simulator, the big bang was the the program starting our simulation.

aleph , 10 days ago

There is no rule that says the universe must make sense to human beings. In fact the more we learn about it - subatomic particles, quantum mechanics, the multiverse, etc. the stranger it becomes and the less it appears to operate in ways that are intuitive to our primitive primate brains.

Hell, even space and time might not be fundamental properties, and could themselves be abstractions which emerge from an even deeper underlying reality…

All of which is to say your list should have an extra option:

D. Who The Fuck Knows?

stoy , 10 days ago

That’s fair.

I was about to add that option, but forgot about it.

I guess what makes me annoyed about it is that we know that the big bang happened, but we don’t know what triggered it or what was before.

hemko , 10 days ago

The way I have heard it explained is that before the big bang there was nothing.

It’s more like what happened before big bang has no consequences to what happened after. Because this, we have little idea what happened before because there’s no direct evidence.

stoy , 10 days ago

That is a new way of putting it that I have not heard before, I like it, it doesn’t answer my questions as much as defecting them. It forces me to realize thsybit doesn’t matter.

fluffery , 8 days ago

It’s ok, I’ll pray for you /j

I have a spiritual need and that’s liberation from this discrimitory bullshit /srs

CaptainBasculin , 10 days ago

Religious or not, I don’t care. What matters is their personality. (except for jehova’s witnesses, every time I’ve interacted with them it made me think they’re some sort of cult rather than a religion, so not sure if this counts.)

I do have religious friends that I get well with.

spittingimage , 10 days ago

In New Zealand we’re currently waiting on the release of a report from a parliamentary commission on the state of the Jehovah’s Witnesses following decades of abuse claims. We don’t expect it to be light reading.

aleph , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

As someone married to a JW and who is friends with several others, I will say this: like any group of people, they can be a mixed bag. Some are more closeted and “in the truth” whereas others are more outgoing and “worldly”.

One the things that I actually admire about them (the individuals, mind you, not the Watchtower organization) is that they really seem to try and live by the teachings of the Bible and study it frequently. Much more so than, say, your average evangelical Protestant.

Haus , 10 days ago

For the don’t-anger-the-sky-daddy religions, roughly the same as having a crazy aunt who gives 10% of her shit to a psychic or Trump. I haven’t experienced the be-one-with-the-universe religions being as exploitative, but I guess those wack Theravadan Wats don’t pay for themselves.

SnotFlickerman , 10 days ago

www.cnn.com/2023/04/10/india/…/index.html

Buddhism has its own set of worthless freaks, you know.

Tarquinn2049 , 10 days ago

When my siblings and I were kids, our parents considered themselves christian and we went to church. But as we grew up, we all stopped believing, and we convinced our parents to stop too. I don’t generally want to convince most religious people to stop, but we were kids at the time and didn’t really know the ramifications of disillusioning our parents. If religious people can believe in “heaven”(or equivalent) and think they are going there, it’s a really nice thought that I don’t want to take away from them. But people that use religion to hurt people, yeah I kind of want to take it away from them. I guess like anything else in life, if you are using it to be nice and constructive, cool. If you are using it to hurt people, take it away.

The real version of death kind of sucks. It honestly kind of physically hurts/feels bad to even think about ceasing to exist permanently. I feel like that has always been the true purpose and main point of religion. Pretending death is absolutely anything else other than what it really is. I don’t want to take that aspect away from anyone.

SnotFlickerman , 10 days ago

Pretending death is absolutely anything else other than what it really is. I don’t want to take that aspect away from anyone.

I do, because choosing to believe in a comforting lie is what leads us to despots killing anyone who is different. There’s a direct line between the two.

Donald Trump is a comforting lie that a strong man (like God, the ultimate strongman) can come in and just “fix things” because it’s easier to believe that than do the hard work of understanding how complex and confusing our world is. That’s where we’re at, the comforting lies appeal to humanity more than cold truth and it’s going to fucking kill us all.

Sorry, humans need to get the fuck over themselves with this not being able to handle death shit or wake up to our own extinction. Eternal life, reincarnation, it’s every flavor of stupid.

LarkinDePark , 10 days ago

What is your general attitude towards those

I pity them.

Do you get on well with any religious friends and neighbours?

Yes.

Have you ever thought of believing in a religion at some point?

I was quite religious in my youth.

If you do not like the faiths, why?

I believe that they limit human growth and enable the “evil” that they pretend to protest.

I remember the huge fad of atheism that struck a few years back and led to the psychological liberation of a huge number or subjugated people. It was an inevitable eventuality of the rise of internet usage. It seemed to be mainly impacting Americans, but mass outbreaks of enlightenment also struck other western nations such as Ireland (where I’m from), freeing people from a society dominated by patriarchal oppressive and highly abusive social regimes.

Of course there was then a backlash to the backlash and now forces of liberation are ridiculed on the western internet. Liberalism has held sway and the institutions of oppression still maintain power, particularly in the USA. This continues to enable massive human suffering, for example with America’s latest genocide, enabled in part by apocalyptic Christian death cults.

I’m not very familiar with the details but I understand that the Christians are in cahoots with the Zionists in destroying some Muslim place of worship to bring about the end times. And there’s some cows mentioned in a thousands of years old book that need to have the right colour coat and stuff.

But of course, as usual, they’re not true Scotsmen religious people… etc…

tl;dr Religion is a net negative influence in the world. Trying to suppress it is counterproductive and will never work, meanwhile it’s going to kill us all.

SnotFlickerman , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

Despite the claimed ostensible “good” Religion can supposedly bring…

We’re literally in the middle of a mass extinction event and facing our own extinction and belief in this religious horseshit precludes people from caring or believing in man-made disaster.

We’re literally facing our own extinction because these people can’t be fucked to face up to reality instead of playing cult games of “but I’ll have everlasting life after death so who cares what happens to the planet!”

I don’t give one flying fuck what “good” it can do for an individual, it’s going to be the downfall of human fucking civilization.

Whatever “good” it brings is destroyed and overshadowed by the cult like behavior that would worship corrupt figures like Donald Trump and who choose to live in a false reality simply because it is more comforting.

fubo , 10 days ago

Imagine if that person did all the same things they do, but without the label of “religion” being attached.

Charity? Awesome! Habitat for Humanity is an explicitly Christian organization and does great work. In my neighborhood, the local Lutheran and Quaker churches give out free food to the poor, and they don’t sneak any Lutheran or Quaker cooties into it. If you’re good to others because you think God wants you to be good to others, that still really does count as being good to others.

Prayer? Okay, take “religion” off of it and they’re meditating, thinking, or talking to themselves. That’s good. Unless they’re thinking and talking about torturing their neighbors eternally, or something creepy like that. (But even then, better to keep those fantasies to yourself than to act them out in public.) Die Gedanken sind frei — thoughts are free.

Going to worship services? Okay, they’ve got a weekly social event where they sing songs and listen to speeches. Sounds great, unless the songs are about “everyone outside this room is a terrible person and deserves to suffer forever” and the speeches are about hate politics. If they’re about how wonderful it is to be nice to each other, or being brave and standing up against oppression, or something else that would be positive even without the label of “religion” on it, great!

Dietary rules? It’s okay to have preferences, distinct cultures, cuisines, and so forth. For that matter: my family isn’t Jewish, but when I was little, we ate kosher beef hot dogs, because my mom expected the rabbis would care about the meat being sanitary. (Unfortunately in retrospect, kosher slaughter is, shall we say, not clearly better than secular slaughter.)

Glide , 10 days ago

I like this. You’re good people.

SnotFlickerman , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

I like this interpretation but last I checked the vegans aren’t going to vote for a despot who will kill all non-vegans, and that they don’t view the death of all non-vegans as a positive thing. (Most vegans I know are keenly aware they can only participate in veganism because of modern agricultural, distribution, and economic systems. They know veganism is an elitist choice that a lot of the world cannot make.)

I think that’s the major difference here.

fubo , 10 days ago

Sure. Voting for religious genocide is just as bad as voting for non-religious genocide: e.g. on the basis of nationalism, pseudoscience, or the like.

SnotFlickerman , 10 days ago

Agreed.

jerkface , 9 days ago

Wow, you sure did manage to slip in a bunch of self-serving misinformation about veganism for no fucking reason. Who are you actually trying to convince, I wonder. (I’m being sarcastic, I know perfectly well.)

Krono , 10 days ago

What you said is all true, but you are ignoring the negative aspects of religion.

Religious influence, both on their followers and on government, is anti-science, misogynistic, and anti-LGBT.

Religions are funded like pyramid schemes, with the most desperate and vulnerable as their victims.

Religious indoctrination is child abuse.

fubo , 10 days ago

Anti-science, misogyny, etc. are bad independently of whether they are done in the name of religion, or pseudoscience, or political ideology. Doing bad things in the name of religion is exactly as bad as doing them in the name of communism, or capitalism, or racial ideology, etc.

Krono , 10 days ago

Anti-science, misogyny, etc may be bad independently of religion, but they aren’t independent of religion. Religion is a source of these problems.

You can imagine a hypothetical religion that is simply a “social club” or whatever, but here in the real world religion comes with baggage.

Religion is why my cousin’s children have never seen a doctor in their life. Religion is why my gay friend in high school tried to kill himself. Religious indoctrination has led to lifelong shame and trauma in many of my friends.

And this was just from a “moderate” sect of Christianity- the millions living under fundamentalist religion have it even worse.

GreyEyedGhost , 9 days ago

Every terrible thing done under religion has been done without religion. None of them have happened without people (except for killing the different). Maybe people are the problem and religion is just one of many tools that can be used to harm other people. Tribalism exists in many forms, religion in its many flavors being just one of them.

inconspicuouscolon , 9 days ago

Yepperoni, thanks for putting this so succinctly.

Seleni , 9 days ago

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. -Steven Weinberg

fubo , 8 days ago

Maoism did a lot of evil without any religion. Were all of its perpetrators bad people?

Krono , 9 days ago

Saying “maybe people are the problem” is reductive and unhelpful. But I agree with you broadly, religion is just a system or a tool, it can be used for good or evil.

To judge if religion is a good system or a bad one, we can use a cost benefit analysis. This is what we have been attempting to do in this thread.

But when it comes to sensitive subjects like religion, many people have a tendency to avoid, overlook, and deny the associated costs.

GreyEyedGhost , 9 days ago

Saying “religion is the problem” when the problem crops up in many different areas regardless of which religions are present in an area or if religion isn’t present at all makes it seem like you might be focusing on the wrong thing. Nationalism, religion, strong ideologies, groups with deep emotional bonds and a sense of insularity are all susceptible to the same things - charismatic leaders can easily direct their attention and they have a tendency towards directing their hostility towards groups that don’t fit into their group.

So, tribalism. And if one tool won’t work, or is removed completely from access, those who wish to use tribalism to mobilize a large group to help them achieve their goals will just use the next one that is available to them. The tools are rarely what are important to them, but the results. So I don’t see how focusing on one tool, even a particularly well-suited tool, will solve the problem.

Vanth , 10 days ago

Raised Catholic, and I definitely see organized religion through that lens. I see charismatic leaders manipulating followers. I see systems to keep people, especially women and children, subservient. I see followers giving up responsibility for their own actions and beliefs. Even if a religion doesn’t start out that way, the way they organize makes them susceptible to the power-hungry who will corrupt it.

Am I extremely sceptical of organized religion? Yes, doubly so of people who seek positions of authority within organized religion.

Do I recognize some people who follow an organized religion are good and well-intentioned? Yes.

Do I call bullshit on the people who think the only way to be a good person is by following an organized religion? Heck, yes.