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

[NWBuck 8552]

1 hour ago, Patricio Swayze said:

 

Right. Because the thing that would have stopped the violence at a Christian School is a printed copy of the Ten Commandments.

They seem to be suggesting that having the Commandments on the wall would be like having the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and such (Happy Passover!), but that story is one of violence towards innocent children too, so it might not be the best analogy to go with.

[DigglerontheHoof 21195]

They can take their Jesus and shove him up their evil asses. 

[WhatTheBuck 28779]

5 hours ago, NWBuck said:

Right. Because the thing that would have stopped the violence at a Christian School is a printed copy of the Ten Commandments.

They seem to be suggesting that having the Commandments on the wall would be like having the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and such (Happy Passover!), but that story is one of violence towards innocent children too, so it might not be the best analogy to go with.

Ten bucks says the Ten Commandments were on display somewhere in that school. 

[CooterBrown 18007]

Fuck. Off.




Christians are groomers.

Down that thread is a video of a homeschooling mom. She lives in my hood. Her husband ran for the SBOE on the platform of abolishing public school. They both went to Texas and I think he went to UT Law so I’m sure someone on this board knows them. Brian and Julia Russell. They always put up their Trump shit in the yard during election season. In ‘20, the neighbor across the street aims a banging porn stars for Jesus sign back at them. Unfortunately it didn’t stay up long.

[DigglerontheHoof 21195]

2 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

Down that thread is a video of a homeschooling mom. She lives in my hood. Her husband ran for the SBOE on the platform of abolishing public school. They both went to Texas and I think he went to UT Law so I’m sure someone on this board knows them. Brian and Julia Russell. They always put up their Trump shit in the yard during election season. In ‘20, the neighbor across the street aims a banging porn stars for Jesus sign back at them. Unfortunately it didn’t stay up long.

Why?

[CooterBrown 18007]

5 minutes ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

Why?

I'd guess they were both responsible for destroying each other signs. They went through a dozen yard signs for Trump until they finally made one out of plywood and hung it up in a tree.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

I'd guess they were both responsible for destroying each other signs. They went through a dozen yard signs for Trump until they finally made one out of plywood and hung it up in a tree.

Would it be illegal for one homeowner to snipe the other with a BB gun when the other neighbor entered the property and destroyed/stole the sign? Asking for someone looking for more hobbies.

[hornmpa96 2618]

14 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Would it be illegal for one homeowner to snipe the other with a BB gun when the other neighbor entered the property and destroyed/stole the sign? Asking for someone looking for more hobbies.

I think the magic words are “I feared for my life”

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

I would think defending personal property with non lethal means would not only be legal, but fun for the whole family.

[F250 28770]

1 hour ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Would it be illegal for one homeowner to snipe the other with a BB gun when the other neighbor entered the property and destroyed/stole the sign? Asking for someone looking for more hobbies.

It would be cooler to ride out on a horse across the front lawn wielding a mace yelling "Freedom!!!"

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

I get the distorted view of the 2nd amendment.  I disagree with it, but I get it. 

But this religious nationalism -- fuck, I thought we were over that by the time the Puritans came over.  No, we weren't over wacky hardcore burning witches religion -- I just thought that we were kind of over the the idea of a theocracy doing the burning. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

43 minutes ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

fuck, I thought we were over that by the time the Puritans came over.

The pilgrims that came over on the Mayflower didn’t have the concept of separation of church and state fully developed.  In fact the Mayflower Compact is saturated with religious overtones. They wouldn’t hesitate to ban someone from the colony if their religious views didn’t align.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Puritans are the worst. They don’t do anal.

[Pato del Muerto 52492]

Shouldn’t Christians be working from the New Testament as their reference material?

[Gap03 3304]

20 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Puritans are the worst. They don’t do anal.

What???? They don't believe in the Loophole?

 

[formermav43 4606]

28 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The pilgrims that came over on the Mayflower didn’t have the concept of separation of church and state fully developed.  In fact the Mayflower Compact is saturated with religious overtones. They wouldn’t hesitate to ban someone from the colony if their religious views didn’t align.

It’s not a matter of it not being fully developed; they didn’t believe in it at all.

There’s a broad misconception that people like the Pilgrims came here seeking “religious freedom.” They already had that in Holland. They came here largely to establish their own religion. 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

What???? They don't believe in the Loophole?
 

Catholics believe in the loophole. You should visit Latin America.

[Gap03 3304]

3 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Catholics believe in the loophole. You should visit Latin America.

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

Look, I'm not saying the Puritans wouldn't have established a theocracy. I'm just saying that they ultimately didn't -- they just hung a few Quakers.  They founded Harvard and were the Congregationalists, and we know how liberal those guys became.

The separation of church and state as a political idea was taking hold. 

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

36 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Shouldn’t Christians be working from the New Testament as their reference material?

[formermav43 4606]

21 minutes ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

Look, I'm not saying the Puritans wouldn't have established a theocracy. I'm just saying that they ultimately didn't -- they just hung a few Quakers.  They founded Harvard and were the Congregationalists, and we know how liberal those guys became.

The separation of church and state as a political idea was taking hold. 

You’re telescoping a couple of centuries of development there, though. The only colony advocating separation of church and state early on was Rhode Island-established as a refuge because Roger Williams was expelled from Massachusetts as a heretic, precisely because the Puritans did NOT believe in it.

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

35 minutes ago, formermav43 said:

You’re telescoping a couple of centuries of development there, though. The only colony advocating separation of church and state early on was Rhode Island-established as a refuge because Roger Williams was expelled from Massachusetts as a heretic, precisely because the Puritans did NOT believe in it.

Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just finished some Marxian
historian, Pete Garrison probably, and so naturally that's what you believe until next month when you 
get to James Lemon and get convinced that Virginia and Pennsylvania were strongly entrepreneurial and 
capitalist back in 1740. That'll last until sometime in your second year, then you'll be in here
regurgitating Gordon Wood about the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military
mobilization.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33869]

2 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Shouldn’t Christians be working from the New Testament as their reference material?

I've been screaming this for decades, as a recovering catholic. why is the old testament relevant at all? it's like people who haven't read the bible don't know there's kinda two gods in that book. the second was a lot nicer than the first one. and the second one and his son basically said ignore that old bastard, listen to us. whatever, dumb mythology all of it

Edited April 6, 2023 by Longhorn_Fan68

[TwiceHorn 31457]

9 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

They can take their Jesus and shove him up their evil asses. 

Maybe "their Jesus," but believer or not, Jesus was a pretty righteous dude.

He should probably be left out of most people's asses.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Not zombie Jesus though. I don’t want to catch whatever sickness Christian’s have. The carpenter that liked whores is pretty cool.

[formermav43 4606]

2 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

I've been screaming this for decades, as a recovering catholic. why is the old testament relevant at all? it's like people who haven't read the bible don't know there's kinda two gods in that book. the second was a lot nicer than the first one. and the second one and his son basically said ignore that old bastard, listen to us. whatever, dumb mythology all of it

Marcion was screaming that about 1,900 years or so before you.

[nbmishoid 949]

About the Puritans, it’s my understanding that they were the self appointed enforcers of religious purity in England post Cromwell,  and after their brief stint in legislative power they were booted and encouraged to GTFO as part of their FAFO experience.  I don’t look upon them as sympathetic characters. 
 

And have any of you encountered someone from the Boston area, who claims to have ancestry to the Mayflower?  These might be the biggest assholes, outside of Texas and Florida.  

[Stilicho 1397]

28 minutes ago, formermav43 said:

Marcion was screaming that about 1,900 years or so before you.

Look at the big brain over here.

[atomheartbevo 89659]

5 minutes ago, nbmishoid said:

 I don’t look upon them as sympathetic characters. 

Yeah, they weren't exactly here by choice.  I may have the two mixed up, but if I recall, the Pilgrims wanted to break with the Church of England, the Puritans wanted to change it, and neither group was popular.

5 minutes ago, nbmishoid said:

And have any of you encountered someone from the Boston area, who claims to have ancestry to the Mayflower?

There is absolutely nothing special about having an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower.  Nothing.

I gave a brief talk a few years back at a genealogy society's yearly shindig, and because it was the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower (COVID made it virtual, so it was 2020), there was another speaker who gave a talk poking fun at certain types of would-be genealogists.  He talked about how it was both annoying and amusing to have people showing up at our meetings claiming to have Mayflower passengers as ancestors, but they couldn't quite prove it, but they just knew it because of family stories. The Mayflower groupies - they always had this sense of inflated self importance that some ancestor came over on the Mayflower, and so they were special because they were related to Presidents, etc.

He dug down into the stats, and used the statistics of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (aka the Mayflower Society) which are well-documented/cited, to show that there is nothing special about it - tens of millions of living Americans are descended from at least one of the 50+ Mayflower passengers/crew who are known to have descendants, and worldwide there are probably 35-40 million living descendants (plenty of families came over who had left kids back in the Old World).

If you're like "holy shit, 50 people have 35-40 million living descendants", take a break and do a little math - it's not that hard.  That's only 700,000 living descendants apiece of 50 people from 1620, except keep in mind that a lot of those first few generations intermarried, so the numbers get a little fuzzy, but nonetheless, those people were pumping out a lot of kids at times (or their kids/grandkids were pumping out a lot of kids as farms got big).  The early adulthood/childhood mortality rates come into play, otherwise we'd be easily talking 100 million+ having ancestors on the Mayflower.

For reference, I was in a DNA study concerning a bunch of cousins of mine that were doing research on a pair of our common ancestors that were married and having kids in the late 1780s through early 1800s. This couple had a dozen kids, with 10 surviving and having their own kids (our research group covered lines down from 6 of those 10). Just with the 6 lines we fully documented over several  years, and extrapolating out (but still being conservative) for the others (which we knew there were living descendants of at least 3 of the 4), we found over 50,000 living descendants.

So a couple born in the 1760s and having 10 kids had 50,000 living descendants.  Jump back 180 years for 50 people, with lots of kids in each generation, and it's not hard to get into tens of millions of living descendants.  It's 12-15 or so generations back to the Mayflower, so not that long ago, but  yet still more than long enough that half-a-dozen kids or more for most of those generations gets you into the millions fast.

If anybody is curious, belonging to the Mayflower Society (and/or your state's society) gets you free admission to some museums in New England, extra access to some website stuff (profiles, etc), discounts on subscriptions to some other genealogy/heritage organizations, invitations to some events  in New England that they hold every now and then as well as your state society's events, and apparently your kids get some scholarship offers.  I have not participated in any of events or been to the museums in New England, (it's on our bucket list), but have done some of the Texas stuff.  Somehow I missed the get together this year, which was in McKinney a week or two ago, because going to McKinney is always such a treat. I kid, I kid, Texas has a strong contingent (well over a thousand members).

[atomheartbevo 89659]

edit: boring stuff.

Edited April 6, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

5 hours ago, formermav43 said:

Pilgrims came here seeking “religious freedom.” They already had that in Holland. They came here largely to establish their own religion. 

I mean, isn’t that religious freedom? My understanding is the kids in Holland were becoming too Dutch and their jobs sucked in the textile factories.  They wanted to give their kids an “English” upbringing away from the worldly “corruption.”

[nbmishoid 949]

Atom

Well, I just met one, and that woman was impossible to tolerate.

[formermav43 4606]

28 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I mean, isn’t that religious freedom? My understanding is the kids in Holland were becoming too Dutch and their jobs sucked in the textile factories.  They wanted to give their kids an “English” upbringing away from the worldly “corruption.”

Your understanding is not wrong, but part of the point was to establish a pure, holy society-that “ city on the hill”-in contrast to the worldliness of Holland. That meant they needed to uphold their covenant with God, which was enforced very strictly, so that he would bless them. That‘s not religious freedom at all.

[BevoAbyss 2058]

Holland was ground zero for science in Europe, giving birth to the telescope and microscope—perhaps the two most radical technologies ever invented. Kicked off the sheer revolution of our understanding of life and the universe, per Galileo, Leeuwenhoek, etc.

Bottom line, 99% of them "freedom loving" Christians did not want any competition for the sacred scrolls and their interpretation of them. So they fled to America to impose their religion ... on everyone and anyone that got in their way. Just ask the Native Americans. Genocide. All in the name of "religious freedom." Pure propaganda.

The reality is most were fleeing the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution (among other issues). MAGA-GQP still are fleeing science and enlightenment, as are the creationists/fundamentalists in America and around the world.

The genius wisdom of a few founders (Deists and those wise to centuries of religious bloodshed) made sure the First Amendment said "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Prior to the "free exercise thereof." Freedom from religion is atop the Bill of Rights, freedom of religion comes second.

But the Christian myths and propaganda are still ruling forces in America.

Edited April 7, 2023 by BevoAbyss

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

33 minutes ago, formermav43 said:

That‘s not religious freedom at all.

I guess it comes down to whether they were trying to establish a theocracy… eh ok

[Longhorn_Fan68 33869]

7 hours ago, formermav43 said:

Marcion was screaming that about 1,900 years or so before you.

i didn't claim to be unique. but i did come to awareness despite my indoctrination, which is apparently more unique than not

[nbmishoid 949]

18 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Yeah, they weren't exactly here by choice.  I may have the two mixed up, but if I recall, the Pilgrims wanted to break with the Church of England, the Puritans wanted to change it, and neither group was popular.

There is absolutely nothing special about having an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower.  Nothing.

I gave a brief talk a few years back at a genealogy society's yearly shindig, and because it was the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower (COVID made it virtual, so it was 2020), there was another speaker who gave a talk poking fun at certain types of would-be genealogists.  He talked about how it was both annoying and amusing to have people showing up at our meetings claiming to have Mayflower passengers as ancestors, but they couldn't quite prove it, but they just knew it because of family stories. The Mayflower groupies - they always had this sense of inflated self importance that some ancestor came over on the Mayflower, and so they were special because they were related to Presidents, etc.

He dug down into the stats, and used the statistics of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (aka the Mayflower Society) which are well-documented/cited, to show that there is nothing special about it - tens of millions of living Americans are descended from at least one of the 50+ Mayflower passengers/crew who are known to have descendants, and worldwide there are probably 35-40 million living descendants (plenty of families came over who had left kids back in the Old World).

If you're like "holy shit, 50 people have 35-40 million living descendants", take a break and do a little math - it's not that hard.  That's only 700,000 living descendants apiece of 50 people from 1620, except keep in mind that a lot of those first few generations intermarried, so the numbers get a little fuzzy, but nonetheless, those people were pumping out a lot of kids at times (or their kids/grandkids were pumping out a lot of kids as farms got big).  The early adulthood/childhood mortality rates come into play, otherwise we'd be easily talking 100 million+ having ancestors on the Mayflower.

For reference, I was in a DNA study concerning a bunch of cousins of mine that were doing research on a pair of our common ancestors that were married and having kids in the late 1780s through early 1800s. This couple had a dozen kids, with 10 surviving and having their own kids (our research group covered lines down from 6 of those 10). Just with the 6 lines we fully documented over several  years, and extrapolating out (but still being conservative) for the others (which we knew there were living descendants of at least 3 of the 4), we found over 50,000 living descendants.

So a couple born in the 1760s and having 10 kids had 50,000 living descendants.  Jump back 180 years for 50 people, with lots of kids in each generation, and it's not hard to get into tens of millions of living descendants.  It's 12-15 or so generations back to the Mayflower, so not that long ago, but  yet still more than long enough that half-a-dozen kids or more for most of those generations gets you into the millions fast.

If anybody is curious, belonging to the Mayflower Society (and/or your state's society) gets you free admission to some museums in New England, extra access to some website stuff (profiles, etc), discounts on subscriptions to some other genealogy/heritage organizations, invitations to some events  in New England that they hold every now and then as well as your state society's events, and apparently your kids get some scholarship offers.  I have not participated in any of events or been to the museums in New England, (it's on our bucket list), but have done some of the Texas stuff.  Somehow I missed the get together this year, which was in McKinney a week or two ago, because going to McKinney is always such a treat. I kid, I kid, Texas has a strong contingent (well over a thousand members).

I understand your mathematical point.  In the same vein everyone on earth can say they are descendants of Charlemagne.   My point was about real Bostonians, what they say, and how irritating and assholish it is.   Nothing to do with their veracity.  

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

So I was in Ireland last month and went to the big Friary in Killarney.   They were doing confessions and as a lapsed Catholic I decided to go.  It was nice.  Although my last confession was at least five years ago and I got a hefty penance to do.

I really think the most healthy way to live ones life is to treat soft-shell, loving religion as metaphorical truth.  It allows one to practice social engagement, truth, and mental wellness, and it gives one at least a bit of the ability to try to understand those with a more literal (and often harmful) bent.

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

20 hours ago, nbmishoid said:

And have any of you encountered someone from the Boston area, who claims to have ancestry to the Mayflower?  These might be the biggest assholes, outside of Texas and Florida.  

My wife's dad makes such a claim. They all became Congregationalist (although they did move out to western Mass. to conquer the Indians and invent insurance.)  And if being on the cutting edge of the abolutionist movement in America makes you an asshole, they are all right by me. 

[TheRealRonWeaver? 1258]

So I was in Ireland last month and went to the big Friary in Killarney.   They were doing confessions and as a lapsed Catholic I decided to go.  It was nice.  Although my last confession was at least five years ago and I got a hefty penance to do.
I really think the most healthy way to live ones life is to treat soft-shell, loving religion as metaphorical truth.  It allows one to practice social engagement, truth, and mental wellness, and it gives one at least a bit of the ability to try to understand those with a more literal (and often harmful) bent.

Or you could skip unnecessary steps and just not be a dick. Less profitable for religious corporations but your neighbors will appreciate it all the same.

[nbmishoid 949]

1 hour ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

My wife's dad makes such a claim. They all became Congregationalist (although they did move out to western Mass. to conquer the Indians and invent insurance.)  And if being on the cutting edge of the abolutionist movement in America makes you an asshole, they are all right by me. 

Apologies for any intended insult to you FIL.  None of the folks alive today had a single thing to do with the abolitionist movement, which, also,  came well after the puritan settlers had passed.  Applause to those who did do it.  Thanks for your point.  

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

7 hours ago, TheRealRonWeaver? said:

Or you could skip unnecessary steps and just not be a dick. Less profitable for religious corporations but your neighbors will appreciate it all the same.

Edit:  I think I originally read your statement wrong.  You're saying, just don't be a dick -- you don't need religion to help you not be a dick.  Understood.  I don't really think religion is about good behavior.  To me it's more about fashioning an understanding of your own existence.  The fact that it's an opiate for the masses means that it has indeed had protective and restorative powers, and destructive powers, and ones involvement is such can help one understand one's relationship to others, to the earth, and to existence itself. 

Original response:

I'll admit to not following every post on this thread, but explain to me how someone who goes to church every Sunday, who is involved with chartiable work with said church, believe is a strict separation of church and state, doesn't prosletyze, and who votes completely the opposite of the religious right, is "being a dick".  The person goes to church for the discipline, the meditative aspects, and because of his own search for meaning in this world. 

And for the frankly self-serving motive of general health:

For example, researchers at the Mayo Clinic concluded, “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.

 

Edited April 8, 2023 by The Original Greaser Bob

[nbmishoid 949]

As a dick, I tend to the sciences, hard and otherwise, to understand my place in the world.  There are vast numbers of tomes  in many languages that also help the hard working student understand their place in the world.  Among all these the Bible is nothing special, except for it being fictional. 
 

As for spiritual type religions, there are also a great many.  In the US, just about one for each person.  Nothing special about any particular one.  

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

2 hours ago, nbmishoid said:

As a dick, I tend to the sciences, hard and otherwise, to understand my place in the world.

I noticed you left out "existence itself" and relationships to others.

Science is a language used to explain the world, as is history and religion.  There is nothing remotely "anti-religioius" about science.  A religioius person understands science just like everyone else.  

The scientist, who pushes religion away, is simply pushing a tool for understanding away, just like he would if he pushed history, or the classics, of the study of Western Civilization. 

[WhatTheBuck 28779]

45 minutes ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

I noticed you left out "existence itself" and relationships to others.

Science is a language used to explain the world, as is history and religion.  There is nothing remotely "anti-religioius" about science.  A religioius person understands science just like everyone else.  

The scientist, who pushes religion away, is simply pushing a tool for understanding away, just like he would if he pushed history, or the classics, of the study of Western Civilization. 

There’s so much wrong with that post I don’t have the time or inclination to address it all. Just a few things...

Science isn’t a language, it’s an approach. It’s an approach to understanding the nature of things through testing and observation. It’s a system, a methodology. It has its own language but the language isn’t the system, it’s just a form of expression. It’s a subset of the system and words like “theory” and “hypothesis” have specific meanings that often differ from how those words are used in casual conversation.

Religion is not a tool for understanding anything. It’s a tool for controlling people’s behavior. It doesn’t try to understand, it tries to explain that which it doesn’t understand. Unlike science, its tenets are not falsifiable. Once a religion has decided that God created man in his current form out of the dirt, that’s it. It’s not open to the scientific consensus that humans evolved from lesser species and that all life on earth evolved from a common single-celled ancestor. The religious believer who denies that indisputable scientific evidence for purely theological reasons might declare, “That’s just a theory,” demonstrating their ignorance of the meaning of that word in the language of science. They think it means an hypothesis, an opinion, a guess. The fact is that we understand evolution better than we understand gravity. That’s a theory too. And we understand it well enough to shoot a rocket that will strike an asteroid and push it off its course by aiming it at a spot where the asteroid will be nearly a year after the rocket’s launch.

Maybe some religious people understand science. A great many don’t. I’d say the majority don’t. And if they do, they don’t apply scientific understanding, a scientific approach to understanding, when it comes to their religion. A whole lot of them will be suspending any understanding they have of science tomorrow while they celebrate a preposterous fairy tale that even their own scripture can’t get the story straight on by serving a meal that their lord and savior couldn’t eat and waving around little replicas of the tool used to torture and kill him.

Science is anti-religious in the sense that it only deals with observable facts and evidence and has no place for magic. Religion is explicitly anti-science when it rejects that approach and it does so all the time.

See, I hesitated to even start in on this. I’m going to stop. I’m trying to watch a movie and I should be using the commercial breaks to measure out the ingredients for banana nut bread which is going to get baked way later than planned as it is. 

[Pato del Muerto 52492]

23 hours ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

For example, researchers at the Mayo Clinic concluded, “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.

Hopefully you understand that in your bolded phrase spirituality is separate and apart from religious involvement? 
 

the better outcomes are from a lower anxiety, which is lower from the peace of mind that comes with faith or understanding.  It isn’t a specific god, or any god at all. It's a belief in something, anything, that gives you inner peace. 
 

and that’s why religion in the abstract isn’t a bad thing- it’s a good thing. It helps lots of people in lots of ways. But inevitably the faith becomes dogmatic, and when that happens is when the problems start- from being compelled to convert everyone to your one true way, to building your cultural laws around it, to killing those that won’t accept it. 
 

Eta:  when you are a small group, you just want to be left alone to practice your beliefs without being bothered by the larger groups. When the group grows in numbers enough to have some power, that’s when the change happens and they start bothering others. 

Edited April 9, 2023 by Pato del Muerto

[formermav43 4606]

5 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

But inevitably the faith becomes dogmatic, and when that happens is when the problems start- from being compelled to convert everyone to your one true way, to building your cultural laws around it, to killing those that won’t accept it. 

That’s not a problem with religion, it’s a problem with humanity. 

[Pato del Muerto 52492]

5 minutes ago, formermav43 said:

That’s not a problem with religion, it’s a problem with humanity. 

[atomheartbevo 89659]

On 4/7/2023 at 12:38 PM, nbmishoid said:

I understand your mathematical point.  In the same vein everyone on earth can say they are descendants of Charlemagne.   My point was about real Bostonians, what they say, and how irritating and assholish it is.   Nothing to do with their veracity.  

Oh, those Bostonians, yeah they are probably fucking Irishmen whose ancestors came over in the 1850s or whenever the English managed to drive a bunch of them out of Ireland with their potato problems.

[The Original Greaser Bob 2830]

12 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Religion is not a tool for understanding anything. It’s a tool for controlling people’s behavior.

You  seem willing to give science a broad definition but your pretty set on a silly and absolutely counter-intuitive definition of religion on the other.  (I'm not expecting you to read all my posts, but this is especially true since I only joined this threat to speak of the benefits of metaphorical truth.)  Most definitions rely on faith or worship.  Clearly, it is relatively easy to find a church or denomination which is not dominated by control of others.  Certainly it's easy to find Christian denominations who aren't remotely anti-science.

The abuse of any large organization will lead to "controlling peoples behavior".  You certainly will admit that scientific dogma has attempted to control other scientists. 

It is good that you stopped, because you were basically defining your terms to fit your preconceived ideas.