Religion, weaponized religion, and the separation of church and state

[Fastbreak 3985]

I really prefer Greek or Egyptian religions. They just didn’t take shit as seriously with killing and oppressing people, so they didn’t stick like the current big 3.

There are some great stories…

Contendings of Horus and Set begins with the death of Osiris — killed by his brother, Set. There is a court battle between Set and Horus, Osiris’s son and reincarnation, about who gets to inherit Egypt. The Enead, ancestors, call for a break and tell the uncle and nephew to stop fighting and to meet back in court again in the morning. Set invites Horus to his house and that night the two end up having sex - But, right before Set ejaculates in Horus’s ass, Horus pulls out Set’s cock and holds it in his hand, and Set unknowingly ejaculates into Horus’s fist. In the morning, Set leaves all happy and heads to the garden. Horus takes his uncle’s semen to his mother/wife, Isis, who quickly cuts off the defiled hand and feeds it to a fish that swims away deep into the river (an important detail). Isis then jerks off her husband/son, collects his semen, and she goes to the garden and secretly wipes it on Set’s favorite lettuce, which he carelessly eats for breakfast.
Later that very morning, at court, Set announces to everyone that he has new information: “I had sex with Horus last night. He is therefore emasculated and has no right to the throne.” Everyone looks to Horus who just laughs and says, “He’s lying.”
“No,” Set replies, “I can prove it! Call forth my semen and it will come out of Horus’s head [where it was believed all semen is stored].” They call out for it, but the semen doesn’t come out of Horus’s head; it comes out of a fish suddenly seen sailing through the air from out of the river! Everyone laughs (because it implies that Set fucked a fish last night). Horus then says that the opposite it actually the case. “The truth is that I fucked my uncle Set. Call out to my semen and it will appear right where it should.” They call it forth, and the semen sure enough appears as a shiny drop in the center of uncle Set’s forehead.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Thoth appears and grabs Horus’s semen, slaps it onto his own head, and crowns himself King of Egypt
.
It’s interesting how the anointing of oil on the head will be picked up by the Hebrews, who will call the holy oil, ‘shemen.’

[dcbc 14480]

22 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

One could surmise that those that voted to leave would but their parish did not, would then seek a new spiritual home where the hating of gays is still sanctified in Jesus’ name. Well, not Jesus’ really since the common biblical reference is from the OT way before Jesus was born. 
 

hey, kinda like the 10 commandments!

One could

[atomheartbevo 89659]

16 minutes ago, Fastbreak said:

I really prefer Greek or Egyptian religions. They just didn’t take shit as seriously with killing and oppressing people, so they didn’t stick like the current big 3.

There are some great stories…
 

[956 Worldwide 34710]

6 hours ago, BevoAbyss said:

With all due respect: just because you are not informed on the subject does not mean it is "gibberish." 

Apparently, you know nothing of the revolutionary work of the great Jane Goodall — perhaps the most important primatologist of the 20th century. Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

"Then suddenly we found that chimpanzees could be brutal—that they, like us, had a darker side to their nature. .... Her findings revolutionised contemporary knowledge of chimpanzee behaviour and were further evidence of the social similarities between humans and chimpanzees, albeit in a much darker manner."

For a more detailed explanation of Goodall's findings, here is a screen capture from Wikipedia. . Note the clear examples of tribalism, violence, dominance, ganging up (feeling superior?) on a solitary monkey and killing it, etc.  

 

 

Did a sentient fedora type this statement? How fucking condescending can you be? 

Like I said, this is “science-y,” not science. As even Jane Goodall would tell you, apes are capable of responding to aggressive instincts, but incapable of experiencing motives or motions that we could recognize as “evil” or “bad.” 
 

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/22585935/jane-goodall-chimpanzees-animal-intelligence-human-nature

Quote

Given the two poles that you discovered — some very trusting behavior and bonds, and some aggression and violence — do you think of chimps as being capable of altruism or kindness on the one hand, and malice or evil on the other?

Jane Goodall

Not evil. I think only humans are capable of evil. Because to me, evil is not just responding to an aggressive impulse (which is what chimps do), but sitting deliberately in cold blood and planning the destruction of another human being or planning a war. Just like them, we have a good side and a dark side. But I think our dark side is worse because we are capable of evil. I think our good side is better. Because while chimps can be altruistic, they’re responding to the immediate emotion. But we can be altruistic thinking about the consequences to ourselves and realizing that if we move ahead to help that person, it may have serious negative impacts on us, but doing it all the same because of this compassion we have.

Apes are certainly capable of expressing dominance. You can also go watch it at a dog park. “Superiority” requires a level of thinking that apes don’t have, or at least, they can’t tell us about, because it requires a concept of “better than” in a deeper way than preferring a big banana to a small one. And apes don’t have that, it is nonsensical to attribute to a chimpanzee the ability to believe it is “better” than another chimpanzee. 
 

There’s a lot of deep thinking and discussion about things like primate cognition and the continuum between what they experience and we experience but you’re not doing it here. It’s gibberish to say things like “feelings of hate and supremacy are from the apes.” 

[956 Worldwide 34710]

5 hours ago, BevoAbyss said:

I fail to see how turning away from the very evolutionary things that clearly separate humanity from the apes — namely, our science, reason, logic, aesthetics, to name a few things that we developed — is the path away from the apes.

How is the belief in an unseen, never seen, never heard from God (who does not a damn thing to improve life on Planet Earth) any better than apes? It's not and history has shown that time and time again. 

You posted a pic of a chimp, apparently suggesting that grasping our evolution origins is counter to humanity. Lulz.

This pic from the original Planet of the Apes (1968) captures the essential attitude and worldview of religion toward science, logic, evidence, or anything that refutes their beliefs. And, to offer the obligatory quote from the astronaut Taylor (played by Charlton Heston): "There has to be something better than man out there. Has to be."  

The failure of basic science education in this country is astonishing. It's no wonder MAGA-GQP are so powerful. We're in the middle of an epic intellectual/educational collapse and a huge swath of America is literally devolving right before our eyes. Taylor's also right about something else: "It's a madhouse!

More gibberish. Belief in an unseen, never heard from God is a great example of the chasm between apes and people and how they can think.  An ape is incapable of imagining or conceptualizing something it has not seen or heard. Apes respond to particular things in their environment. 
 

Attributing various phenomena to unseen sentient forces may be wrong, but it’s a way-station to things like science and reasoning and aesthetics. Getting the idea that doing a particular dance at a certain time of year causes an unseen entity to make it rain is unscientific, but it’s far more advanced than what apes are capable of (apes do not ponder where rain comes from or goes and simply respond to it when it happens). 
 

 

[956 Worldwide 34710]

11 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church say hello.

No reasonable person brings up Soviet Russia et al. because they’re irrelevant to the subject. Believers like to bring them up as a means to argue the dangers of atheism but that’s a fallacious argument. Authoritarianism is bad in all its forms. Just look at what a responsible member of the global community Russia is now that Putin has embraced the church. It’s not because they didn’t have religion that the regimes you mentioned were bad. In those systems the government took the place of religion. You can’t blame it on atheism which, again, isn’t a belief system. We can and do fill volumes with accounts of the atrocities committed in the name of the Christian god during the medieval period when there was no separation between the state and the Catholic Church, an era that we commonly refer to as the Dark Ages and which lasted for centuries.

Nobody is saying atheists can’t be assholes. I’m sure there are atheists out there who rape little children just like the Catholic priests and Baptist ministers do. But they’re not doing it because they’re atheists anymore than the Christians are doing it because they’re Christians. I’ll bet there are a lot more Christians raping little children than there are atheists doing it, though.

Which reminds me, I wonder if that “Atheists don’t...” website is still up...

<searching>

...Nope. I didn’t think it was still around. There used to be a website that compiled examples of awful acts committed in the name of religion. You could click through example after example endlessly of things atheists don’t do.

Now the first thing I found was this, which is still pretty cool:

 

Just like we have science-y stuff on here, we also are getting stuff that is “historical-ish.” One of the reasons that “new atheism” can get so tiresome is the reliance on dogmatic, oversimplified, frequently wrong narratives of the past that are useful polemically but unhelpful to actually understand what happened and how people thought. If that sounds familiar, it should— they are basically Bible stories for atheists. 
 

The mistakes range from the semantic (there is almost no reputable historian working today that uses the term “dark ages”) to the more meaningful. For instance, Christianity is the only Abrahamic religion that has virtually ALWAYS had some inherent degree of separation between religious and secular authorities (aside from the Papal States).  And it’s one of the distinct differences between what came before it in supposedly more enlightened Roman times. The term “Pontifex Maximus” was one of the titles of the pagan Roman Emperor, who combined religious and secular authority in one person. The emperor inherited it from the Republican era, when religion and state power were absolutely one and the same.
 

That was never true for the bishops of Rome and the late Roman Emperors or bishops of Rome and subsequent European chieftains and kings, or for that matter the various eastern bishops and the eastern emperor, where church and state were always cozier than in the West. Medieval churchmen would hurl “pontifex Maximus” as an epithet and the term was officially reintroduced to the pope well after the Renaissance kicked off and the authority of the bishop of Rome was beginning to wane. 
 

It’s far more accurate to say that the idea of separation of church/religious authority and secular state is an invention of late antiquity and the middle ages as opposed to a creation of those times, major conflicts revolves around where the authority of each ends. Rewatching “A Man for All Seasons” might be useful here. 
 

There’s also the counter-intuitive— the “Darkest” part of the early Middle Ages involves the least Christianized parts of Europe where the church’s influence was weakest, because that’s where literacy collapsed, not because the church enforced ignorance.
 

Then there’s the popular legends with no basis in fact— witch hunts and witch burnings were not a feature of the “Dark Ages” and churchmen of the time told the secular authorities not to execute women as witches because belief in witchcraft and the existence of witches was a pagan superstition. What we think of as witch-hunts took place mostly in the modern period and was most intense where protestantism and Catholicism were in most intense competition. Solidly Catholic Spain and Poland basically ignored the witch-burning craze, although of course they got up to other bad shit based on religion. 
 

TL; DR— your interpretation of history is basically late-enlightenment era Protestant propaganda, redressed in the clothes of atheist polemics. It’s been commented upon by people smarter than me that new atheist polemics have a striking rhetorical and intellectual similarity with Anglo-American evangelical polemics and it’s no surprise that this is the background shared by Dawkins, Hitchens, etc. 

 

[956 Worldwide 34710]

5 hours ago, Fastbreak said:

I really prefer Greek or Egyptian religions. They just didn’t take shit as seriously with killing and oppressing people, so they didn’t stick like the current big 3.

There are some great stories…
 

The Greeks (and Egyptians) for that matter were awful. I like the Greeks in particular as the counter-example for the “religion is the prime motivator for violence and subjugation in the world.” 
 

Quote

Athenians. For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences- either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us- and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Quote

We will now proceed to show you that we are come here in the interest of our empire, and that we shall say what we are now going to say, for the preservation of your country; as we would fain exercise that empire over you without trouble, and see you preserved for the good of us both.

Melians. And how, pray, could it turn out as good for us to serve as for you to rule?

Athenians. Because you would have the advantage of submitting before suffering the worst, and we should gain by not destroying you.

 

Quote

Athenians. When you speak of the favour of the gods, we may as fairly hope for that as yourselves; neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise among themselves. Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can

TL;DR: Might makes right, surrender to us before we give you a real hurt, and the gods are irrelevant in any case.  This is just how it all works— we are bigger and stronger. 
 

The Athenians would later kill every adult male in Melos, sell the women and children into slavery, and send their own colony to take it over.  I fail to see how a poor Saracen cowering at the pointy end of a Crusader’s sword was somehow worse off than a Melian because of all the God bits, as opposed to the ruthless Athenian “we are doing this because we can.” 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Perhaps the patriarchy infused into most religions is also part of the problem.  

[TexPx 2323]

One could surmise that those that voted to leave would but their parish did not, would then seek a new spiritual home where the hating of gays is still sanctified in Jesus’ name. Well, not Jesus’ really since the common biblical reference is from the OT way before Jesus was born. 
 
hey, kinda like the 10 commandments!

[BevoAbyss 2058]

I've known this for 30+ years. It is pointless to engage in debates over Sky God v. Big Telescope or Spiritual Human v. Evolved Human. Utterly pointless. 

However well-intentioned (or not), various people, friends, and writers always do the following: Put words in my mouth, or draw invalid inferences from what I said, or conflate concepts, or willfully deny logic and evidence, or offer "but, what about this," or deploy doublethink, or see the Sky God in every tiny gap in a theory or a sentence I utter or write. Meanwhile, no one has ever proved Genesis 1:1. Never. No Sky God in sight, not even in a Hubble Deep Field image. That's in contrast to what's been proven by Big Telescopes. Indeed, Taylor is right in Planet of the Apes, "It's a madhouse" on Planet Earth.

So I rarely ever debate all this with anyone, anywhere, not even with girlfriends (no pics) over the years (never had desire to get married and have kids). Yet, I still get drawn in sometimes, as on this thread. My bad. Apologies for any lack of clarity in my posts. 

Specking of madhouses, when the hell is UT football gonna win anything of significance? As in a National Title? 

Edited April 23, 2023 by BevoAbyss

[Nicole44 22059]

Very intriguing discussion and thread. I took a history of religion course at UT—equally fascinating. My mom grew up Church of Christ—like bare bones Bible stuff—mostly “you will burn in hell if  you go against anything the Bible says not to do.” Not to be confused with Church science folks that don’t believe in medical intervention.
 

It’s weird bc people of a lot of people in my mom’s generation believe in Jesus Christ and yet place all this emphasis on the Old Testament.
 

Reading about all the denominations in America and how they split off from one another for something as simple as music or dancing or instruments in the church. Anyway…pardon my interruption, I am enjoying this thread. I have been trying to find a church in Austin. I am finding it extremely difficult. It’s either a mega church or a dying one. It sucks. I’m a Christian but it is hard for me to go to any church that only wants to talk about how Christ died and returned but not spend any time encouraging others to truly be like Him. I have so many questions and issues with organized religion. I figure even if people are open to it they just see bastardizing assholes spouting shit about Christianity when in truth so many people who claimed to love Jesus are just cafeteria types with a Santa Claus list worth of demand letters (I mean prayers.)
 

Great thread.

 

[Nicole44 22059]

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

2 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Perhaps the patriarchy infused into most religions is also part of the problem.  

That was brought up on page three of this thread, but didn't get too far.

I think @BevoAbyss has brought this up, but one need only read the history (while we're still allowed) of the historical  treatment of indigenous peoples in America with respect to their own beliefs, perspectives, and very existence versus the Eurocentric-minded government and settlers and how they are viewed today to see parallels across societies. Most on here understand that, I think. However, there were tribes in the Americas wherein females had much more agency until the colonies were created. Many most religions simply will not tolerate that. Any that claim otherwise typically confine that 'freedom' to specific roles that have no true authority over the male gender, but the opposite is not true. I've pretty much given up hope that the collision course upon which our nation is set will end without a massive toll.

That's the ledge for you, hard to see humanity as any other than ants.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

19 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

However, there were tribes in the Americas wherein females had much more agency until the colonies were created

I was hoping someone would bring this up.  Several indigenous tribes have a matrilineal and/or matriarchal social structure infused with their religious practices.  (Particularly the Hopi and Cherokee.) Are these societies better at “keeping the peace” than their patriarchal counterparts?  Someone should do a study. Perhaps there is an argument to be made. 

[Mileslong 4727]

Next time someone tries to preach to you just give them this quick video

https://fb.watch/k5n-0XOjBM/?mibextid=q5o4bk

[dcbc 14480]

19 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

There are places I want to visit in Montana, but when I read about what they are doing to the trans representative and not even allowing her to speak, well, I will just not go there. My God what a bunch of backwards ghouls picking on a small group of people just to score some political points. A lot of our fellow citizens really do not deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us. Montana is what religious fundamentalists look like. These are mentally broken, deranged and unwell people. 

[tx 3 putt 76933]

This is fucking bs …..

 

[TwiceHorn 31457]

14 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

This is fucking bs …..

 

Take. Their.  Tax.  Exemption.

ETA:  I support tax exemptions for churches that behave themselves.  Not for this.  That has no place in the pulpit whatsoever.  IDGAF if Deacon Sack is running for dog catcher, you don't say shit about it from the pulpit.

Edited April 24, 2023 by TwiceHorn

[Satchel 6938]

Let’s wash the nasty taste resulting from the Gateway and Robert Morris foolishness with this kind of Christian witness:

A Nebraska church has helped raise over $500,000 to pay off the medical bills of local residents, with the proceeds going to help around 500 households in the surrounding community. 

First-Plymouth Congregational Church of Lincoln raised the total by Easter Sunday, receiving donations from around 10,000 people, many of whom did not belong to the congregation.

The total was raised throughout the 14-month campaign, with church leadership initially thinking that their efforts would only bring in around $8,000.

"Sometimes love has to be expressed in actions. We have had an initiative all year that is just love on the move," Senior Pastor Rev. Jim Keck said in his Easter sermon on Sunday. "The church decided that there were too many homes right in our neighborhood that were saddled with medical debt. ... The church decided that every dime that went into the collection plate ... would go to forgive the medical debt of homes right here in central Lincoln."

[WhatTheBuck 28779]

23 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

See the rest of my posts. You (and Hitchens) want to paint religion as the root cause when atrocities are perpetrated by the far right. It’s not, as evidenced by the fact atrocities from the far left have been committed (and at a far greater scale, though this is due to technological advances in killing rather than lack of effort in earlier societies), where not only is religion not used to justify the acts, it is violently suppressed by the perpetrators. 
 

That clip from Hitchens is intellectually lazy and one long logical fallacy. 

You’re mistaken. I specifically said, “I’m sure there are atheists out there who rape little children just like the Catholic priests and Baptist ministers do. But they’re not doing it because they’re atheists anymore than the Christians are doing it because they’re Christians.” That’s the opposite of what you’re accusing me of doing. But it’s also true that religious people do a lot of really shitty things because of their religion, and have throughout history. You can’t deny that. They also do really shitty things because they’re shifty people and use their religion as an excuse, like suppressing the rights of black and brown people, of women, and of members of the LGBTQ community.

Back to the example of Soviet Russia one last time. Any of the other examples you mentioned could also be used, as could others like North Korea under the Kims. Atheism means you don’t believe in god. Period. That’s it. That’s all it means. It’s not an ideology. It’s not a belief system. It doesn’t command you to do anything. It doesn’t command you to kill the believers. Totalitarianism, authoritarianism, dictatorship...those things command you to go kill the enemies of your ideology. Don’t let yourself get fooled into confusing atheism with Stalinism, Leninism, etc. We bring up the atrocities committed in the name of someone’s god, or with the sanction of the church, because those things have happened in such great numbers throughout history, numbers too great to count, that to point to instances where a totalitarian regime tried to outlaw religion in order to enforce the primacy of the state, just to impugn atheism as being the cause of the associated atrocities, is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. You can’t say a lack of religion leads to atrocities when the presence of religion so consistently fails to prevent them at best and instigates them at worst. That’s why it’s a bullshit argument to bring up the godless commies when talking about atheism. It’s not a good faith (no pun intended) criticism of disbelief. And it’s always used by believers as a defense of belief.

It’s not hard to understand but it requires you to use the part of your brain that uses logic and reason, not the part that believes in god. 

[WhatTheBuck 28779]

20 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

There are places I want to visit in Montana, but when I read about what they are doing to the trans representative and not even allowing her to speak, well, I will just not go there. My God what a bunch of backwards ghouls picking on a small group of people just to score some political points. A lot of our fellow citizens really do not deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us. Montana is what religious fundamentalists look like. These are mentally broken, deranged and unwell people. 

Idaho says, “Hold my beer.”

[Satchel 6938]

44 minutes ago, Satchel said:

Let’s wash the nasty taste resulting from the Gateway and Robert Morris foolishness with this kind of Christian witness:

A Nebraska church has helped raise over $500,000 to pay off the medical bills of local residents, with the proceeds going to help around 500 households in the surrounding community. 

First-Plymouth Congregational Church of Lincoln raised the total by Easter Sunday, receiving donations from around 10,000 people, many of whom did not belong to the congregation.

The total was raised throughout the 14-month campaign, with church leadership initially thinking that their efforts would only bring in around $8,000.

"Sometimes love has to be expressed in actions. We have had an initiative all year that is just love on the move," Senior Pastor Rev. Jim Keck said in his Easter sermon on Sunday. "The church decided that there were too many homes right in our neighborhood that were saddled with medical debt. ... The church decided that every dime that went into the collection plate ... would go to forgive the medical debt of homes right here in central Lincoln."

This is what Francis of Assisi meant by preaching the Gospel without using words.

[WhatTheBuck 28779]

20 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

An ape is incapable of imagining or conceptualizing something it has not seen or heard. Apes respond to particular things in their environment. 

An ape doesn’t understand what it means when you point at something but a dog does. It‘s because dogs evolved by interacting with humans, they wouldn’t exist without us, but I’ve always found that interesting.

Only the human brain has evolved to the point where it is conscious of its own mortality. As the Bible puts it, we’ve eaten from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That’s what sets us apart from all the other animals, even our closest cousins the apes. I also think it’s interesting that our ancient ancestors had some concept of that evolution. Obviously the evolution of human intelligence from animal intelligence was a process. It didn’t happen overnight. There wasn’t a line between one set of parents who didn’t possess human consciousness and their offspring who did. (I’ve considered that there must be some comedy to be found in a comic strip that imagines there were. I just lack the creativity to find it.)

Even though it was a process, that experience must have been transmitted down through the generations, even to the point were we knew there was a time when we didn’t experience pain during childbirth, back before we evolved to walk on two legs. Whether at some point our consciousness was similar to that of modern apes and to what extent they’ve evolved on a divergent path is unknowable. But it’s an interesting subject that might be suitable for its own thread. Young earth creationists need not participate. 

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

36 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Even though it was a process, that experience must have been transmitted down through the generations, even to the point were we knew there was a time when we didn’t experience pain during childbirth, back before we evolved to walk on two legs.

We didn't evolve to walk on two legs.  It's an engineering design problem.

 

[atomheartbevo 89659]

14 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I was hoping someone would bring this up.  Several indigenous tribes have a matrilineal and/or matriarchal social structure infused with their religious practices.  (Particularly the Hopi and Cherokee.) Are these societies better at “keeping the peace” than their patriarchal counterparts?  Someone should do a study. Perhaps there is an argument to be made. 

The Cherokee elected Wilma Mankiller as the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation at one point.  They were putting somebody in their place.

[Nivek 16928]

12 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Take. Their.  Tax.  Exemption.

But I have been told if they are taxed, the will become political and we will be living under a theocracy.   Heck, we might even lose access to medication....    

[Nivek 16928]

12 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

You’re mistaken. I specifically said, “I’m sure there are atheists out there who rape little children just like the Catholic priests and Baptist ministers do. But they’re not doing it because they’re atheists anymore than the Christians are doing it because they’re Christians.” That’s the opposite of what you’re accusing me of doing. But it’s also true that religious people do a lot of really shitty things because of their religion, and have throughout history. You can’t deny that. They also do really shitty things because they’re shifty people and use their religion as an excuse, like suppressing the rights of black and brown people, of women, and of members of the LGBTQ community.

Back to the example of Soviet Russia one last time. Any of the other examples you mentioned could also be used, as could others like North Korea under the Kims. Atheism means you don’t believe in god. Period. That’s it. That’s all it means. It’s not an ideology. It’s not a belief system. It doesn’t command you to do anything. It doesn’t command you to kill the believers. Totalitarianism, authoritarianism, dictatorship...those things command you to go kill the enemies of your ideology. Don’t let yourself get fooled into confusing atheism with Stalinism, Leninism, etc. We bring up the atrocities committed in the name of someone’s god, or with the sanction of the church, because those things have happened in such great numbers throughout history, numbers too great to count, that to point to instances where a totalitarian regime tried to outlaw religion in order to enforce the primacy of the state, just to impugn atheism as being the cause of the associated atrocities, is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. You can’t say a lack of religion leads to atrocities when the presence of religion so consistently fails to prevent them at best and instigates them at worst. That’s why it’s a bullshit argument to bring up the godless commies when talking about atheism. It’s not a good faith (no pun intended) criticism of disbelief. And it’s always used by believers as a defense of belief.

It’s not hard to understand but it requires you to use the part of your brain that uses logic and reason, not the part that believes in god. 

Religion is about amassing wealth and power and selling you an idea.  Some are true believers.  But the Osteens are not.  God is a green rectangle for many christians.   Jesus was a hippie, but the bible is a cudgel.   Those wars were not about faith.  They were about plunder, land, money, and power.   

Edited April 24, 2023 by Nivek

[formermav43 4606]

54 minutes ago, Nivek said:

But I have been told if they are taxed, the will become political and we will be living under a theocracy.   Heck, we might even lose access to medication....    

I don’t think Twice is for taxing churches in general like you, but for removing the exemption for those who violate its terms, like this one.

[TwiceHorn 31457]

1 hour ago, Nivek said:

But I have been told if they are taxed, the will become political and we will be living under a theocracy.   Heck, we might even lose access to medication....    

As I edited to add, I broadly support tax exemptions for religious orgs.  But there are rules.  Follow them and enforce them.  Do this and reap the whirlwind.

[HamsterHookah 112]

I read this today and thought it was interesting commentary on the psyche and personalities of people and generally aligns to the unhappiness and bitterness seen in people online and IRL who are anti-theists:

Quote

 

What do very happy people have in common? The Wall Street Journal followed up with the 12% of respondents in a WSJ-NORC survey who called themselves “very happy”  and asked them what they were all about. Here are the traits they share.

Companionship: 67% of the happiest people said that marriage was very important to them, compared to 43% of overall respondents.

Religion: Two-thirds of very happy people characterized themselves as moderately or very religious. The overall share: less than half.

Closer to death: People 60 and over accounted for 44% of the happiest group, but represented 30% of total survey respondents.

Gym rats: Fitness was a common interest among very happy people.

What doesn’t seem to matter to being very happy? Political party affiliation or avoiding following politics.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/happiest-people-america-poll-ef7c854c?st=cutgv2qdpi7pk67&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

Work out your own happiness with fear and trembling, I guess.

[WhatTheBuck 28779]

1 hour ago, Nivek said:

Religion is about amassing wealth and power and selling you an idea.  Some are true believers.  But the Osteens are not.  God is a green rectangle for many christians.   Jesus was a hippie, but the bible is a cudgel.   Those wars were not about faith.  They were about plunder, land, money, and power.   

It can be, but religion has been around a lot longer than money. Religion can be about explaining things you don’t understand like what the sun and the moon are. It can be a way of teaching your kids how to behave when no one else is watching. It can be about worshipping your dead ancestors, the animals you depend upon for food, or the big volcano on your island. Religion has been around longer than all the religions practiced today. 

[Captainant 27660]

1 hour ago, HamsterHookah said:

I read this today and thought it was interesting commentary on the psyche and personalities of people and generally aligns to the unhappiness and bitterness seen in people online and IRL who are anti-theists:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/happiest-people-america-poll-ef7c854c?st=cutgv2qdpi7pk67&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

Work out your own happiness with fear and trembling, I guess.

TBH my bitterness towards religion has moreso been seeing places that exist to show "the LOVE of God" turned into a shelter and place of comfort christian fucking nationalism. Much of what you would call my "anti-theism" comes from that betrayal of trust and a general disillusionment with seeing people who you thought were god-fearing good men act like fucking fascists.

I guess if you're able to ignore and turn a blind eye to that ugliness, you would be much happier

[UpperWestside 6163]

4 hours ago, Nivek said:

Religion is about amassing wealth and power and selling you an idea.  Some are true believers.  But the Osteens are not.  God is a green rectangle for many christians.   Jesus was a hippie, but the bible is a cudgel.   Those wars were not about faith.  They were about plunder, land, money, and power.   

I have a friend here that is a really nice guy. I remember him mentioning he likes listening to Osteen. I kinda smiled and said “Well I suppose he is a good motivational speaker.” The Osteens of the world were here before him and they’ll be here after he is done using Jesus to grift his way to millions more. I have met one mega church pastor in Stephen Furtick. I have said here that I thought he came across as a normal guy and we had a pleasant conversation for about 15 minutes. He may one day turn out to be a horror show of a human being, but that’s up to him. 
 

All the wars fought in the last two millennia that were done in the name of Jesus were exactly as you describe them. People are prideful and greedy and enough is never good enough. I have said this to many people over the years, but if Jesus came back tomorrow and attempted to enter a Christian church they’d likely turn him away because of how he looked, smelled or was dressed. The mission of Christianity has been lost on a lot of folks. Not all, but when the number is in the millions you have an issue that is not going away in any of our lifetimes.

Edited April 24, 2023 by UpperWestside

[UpperWestside 6163]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

TBH my bitterness towards religion has moreso been seeing places that exist to show "the LOVE of God" turned into a shelter and place of comfort christian fucking nationalism.

I completely understand this. I think that what was once done in the dark is now done in broad daylight and put right in the storefront window in too many “Houses of God.” If a church is espousing things that run contrary to what the New Testament actually says, it’s a good bet you should stay far away from that place. Seeing what “Christians” will do in God’s name to inflict emotional or physical pain on those they deem to be lesser-thans is an absolute horror show. We get one life and people choose to waste it inflicting pain on others to make themselves feel better.
 

I also think the most well-adjusted and happy person I have ever crossed paths with was a man I worked with pre-Covid named Mohammed. He was an African man of the Islamic faith from Gambia if memory serves correct. He was in his late 50’s and was a cook and I asked him how he was always so happy and he said to me “What do I have to be unhappy about? God is good to me.” That moment has stuck with me for the simplicity and poignancy of how he said it. More of us need to be like that man whether we are religious or not. 

[Pancho 44771]

 

[DigglerontheHoof 21195]

There are Christofascist "comedians"?  

[Neonmoon 38129]

37 minutes ago, Pancho said:

 

It’s a cult. It always was.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33869]

3 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

It’s a cult. It always was.

not trying to be pedantic, but aren't cults where the leader is alive and religions are when they're dead? I think these people *think* they're followers of christ. to me it's still just old fashioned religion. nothing has changed but the media

[Neonmoon 38129]

7 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

not trying to be pedantic, but aren't cults where the leader is alive and religions are when they're dead?

Correct. 

But if someone you knew was a People’s Temple follower or a Branch Davidian follower, and they’re like no, it’s not crazy, it’s not a cult, my leader is dead, it’s a religion now. Would that make it better?

The only reason Christianity isn’t viewed as a crazy cult on the level of Scientology or Heaven’s gate, is because Christians murdered all their detractors over the past 2000 years and engrained themselves into the fabric of society.

[UpperWestside 6163]

4 hours ago, Pancho said:

 

These people…These people are the ones who absolutely disgust me and I find myself adamantly opposed to. That is some blatant false teaching going on there and all while invoking Christ’s name. Christ would have ZERO to do with people like that. 
 

The next logical step an insane human being like that takes is not only wanting to have control of everything and everyone, but to also persecute non-believers in every way possible. That is some storefront window Christo-fascism. There are other countries with different belief systems that do this to the lesser-thans in their country and it is no more right. Human beings are taught to hate the world over and religion is an easy way to infuse hatred and we are better than others when you hear stuff like that. 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33869]

the great irony is if jesus rose again today he would be terrified by and stay away from white people and for totally racist reasons too. i find that hilarious.

[Satchel 6938]

I believe it is prudent to objectively evaluate religious people with the same probity we would members of any tribe. The point at which we surrender to the temptation to no longer see individuals but to judge tribes in the most parochial way, we run the risk of seeing every member of the group as irredeemable. 

[HamsterHookah 112]

On 4/25/2023 at 9:49 PM, Satchel said:

I believe it is prudent to objectively evaluate religious people with the same probity we would members of any tribe. The point at which we surrender to the temptation to no longer see individuals but to judge tribes in the most parochial way, we run the risk of seeing every member of the group as irredeemable. 

I read an interesting article from WSJ that gives hope that the next generation (the young adults and youth of today) will be MORE spiritual/religious than we have now. Which makes sense to me and passes the eyeball test with my lived experiences. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-surprising-surge-of-faith-among-young-people-424220bd

Quote

 

A greater share of young adults say they believe in a higher power or God.

About one-third of 18-to-25-year-olds say they believe—more than doubt—the existence of a higher power, up from about one-quarter in 2021, according to a recent survey of young adults. The findings, based on December polling, are part of an annual report on the state of religion and youth from the Springtide Research Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit.

Young adults, theologians and church leaders attribute the increase in part to the need for people to believe in something beyond themselves after three years of loss. 

For many young people, the pandemic was the first crisis they faced. It affected everyone to some degree, from the loss of family and friends to uncertainty about jobs and daily life. In many ways, it aged young Americans and they are now turning to the same comfort previous generations have turned to during tragedies for healing and comfort

 

Anti-theists aren't gonna like it.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

The abrahamic religions are so fucking bizarre to me. There is so much crazy in the various books. Seriously, if aliens came to earth and told you these stories, changing the names like Abraham and Jesus to Zork and Xorian, you would think they are ABSOLUTELY INSANE. Just like how Christian’s view things like Scientology as insane. They are all crazy and weird.

Y’all are some strange motherfuckers.

[HamsterHookah 112]

21 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

The abrahamic religions are so fucking bizarre to me. There is so much crazy in the various books. Seriously, if aliens came to earth and told you these stories, changing the names like Abraham and Jesus to Zork and Xorian, you would think they are ABSOLUTELY INSANE. Just like how Christian’s view things like Scientology as insane. They are all crazy and weird.

Y’all are some strange motherfuckers.

Ultimate reality is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit; 3 Gods yet 1 God.

Everything that you and I know waterfalls from this community of Gods in the Godhead loving one another, dancing like 3 particles in an infinite dance where they have for all time glorified and loved one another, before our creation.

Think about what I just said now and try to process it. We will never fully understand it, the nature of the Triune God.

If you were going to simply invent a story for a religion-- you wouldn't have chosen this framework. You'd figure something else that's easier to sell.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Ultimate reality is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit; 3 Gods yet 1 God.
Everything that you and I know waterfalls from this community of Gods in the Godhead loving one another, dancing like 3 particles in an infinite dance where they have for all time glorified and loved one another, before our creation.
Think about what I just said now and try to process it. We will never fully understand it, the nature of the Triune God.
If you were going to simply invent a story for a religion-- you wouldn't have chosen this framework. You'd figure something else that's easier to sell.

Wrong.

But if that’s how you have to sell it to yourself to keep the faith, have at it.

Right now the Christian right that wants this nation to be a theocracy believe Satan got Tucker fired. Insanity.

[HamsterHookah 112]

6 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Wrong.

But if that’s how you have to sell it to yourself to keep the faith, have at it.

Right now the Christian right that wants this nation to be a theocracy believe Satan got Tucker fired. Insanity.

I'll take your word on all that, I don't know your friends or what is going on with all that, as I don't care and am not the target demo.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

I'll take your word on all that, I don't know your friends or what is going on with all that, as I don't care and am not the target demo.

I assure you I am not friends with the Christian right or Christian white nationalists.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tucker-carlson-firing-right-wing-christians-1234724478/amp/

[Hermanator 7042]

On 4/23/2023 at 12:44 AM, 956 Worldwide said:

An ape is incapable of imagining or conceptualizing something it has not seen or heard. Apes respond to particular things in their environment. 

 

 

We have absolutely no way to know that. Especially with the certainty of speaking it as fact. There are behaviors in the animal kingdom, including with non human primates, that we cannot explain with current technology. 

Some animals do show examples of behaviors that could possibly denote an ability to reason and grieve, and we can't conclude there isn't some ability to worship in their own way. 

One example is a "crow funeral". We observe behaviors of crows similar to the human reaction to death. They gather around the corpse, vocalize in groups, and ward off scavengers from the corpse. So are they able to comprehend death and grieve similar to humans? Or is it purely a biologically evolved instinct to recognize potential dangers in their environment. 

[nbmishoid 949]

55 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

I'll take your word on all that, I don't know your friends or what is going on with all that, as I don't care and am not the target demo.

Don’t care because one is not the target demo.   True hero of the republic.  Brave, brave Sir Robin.