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christianity's dying LOL
this is why they're fighting tooth and nail to force it into public elementary school: to anyone over 10 hearing about it for the first time, it's just a bunch of goofy bullshit to guilt and shame you into compliance. not to mention the super fucked up perpetual fear from "god is watching you"
I hope this happens to all Abrahamic religions. Scratch that, I hope it happens to all organized religion. It had its place in the development of human society, but we are past the point of needing angry sky-man to scare us into being nice to each other. It's possible to teach kids to have a moral compass without fear of divine retribution.
have a moral compass without fear of divine retribution.
plus, how good is someone, really, if the only reason they're behaving is out of fear of punishment or hope for reward?
Good enough for civilized society.
sure, until they aren't
yes, non-religious people are bad too, but if religion is supposed to "make people good," and has such high rate of failure, then what is it for?
SPOILER ALERT:
Same as any laws, the main goal is control. Whether for good, profit or anything else, it depends on who's in control and their motives.
i agree. everything is about control (which money buys).
i'll even do you one better and voice my own controversial opinion: even the concept of monogamy and marriage was invented to control the commoner. can't have just anyone running around with 50 kids and 300 grandkids, all loyal to their patriarch unto death, presenting a threat to the power of the tribe's chieftain
I disagree on that. Monogamy was invented by rich people to secure inheritance rights.
I believe it will, as you can see accross the world that eternalism is crushed beneath the weight of high quality education, delivered on mass.
The problem is, capitalists love what Christianity metastasised into.
If anyone want to see the effect modern Christianity has on people, you won't have to look further than the west indies, during the abolition of slavery in the British empire.
Obviously, they wouldn't let aboloshionists anywhere near the slave plantations of the west indies. However, the slavers would allow missionaries. The rational from the missionaries being that once the people kept as slaves became Christian, the slavers would have no option but to let their fellow Christians go.
However, the enslaved converts didn't go to the slavers, demanding their freedom. Bizarrely, vast numbers of them seem to conclude "oh well, as this is only temporary and I'll have the rest of eternity to enjoy, there's no need to rock to boat here. So, I'll settle down and be the best slave I can be, in service to God."
Crazy huh?
When we think of the vast differences in the world religions, you can only imagine how fortunate the rich and powerful must have felt when that specific version of that one specific religion became the biggest on the planet. They must have thanked their lucky stars when they found that out.
I was rewatching Community again and got to the Starburns funeral episode. Basically, the study group manages to start a riot and destroy the school, yada yada yada.
Anyway, prior to the riot, each one in the study group is asked to say some words about Starburns, and they end up trash talking the school. We get to the Christian mom of the group Shirley.
When asking her to come up to say her piece, the Dean says something along the lines of "What about you, Shirley? I think we can all use a little bit of Jesus during this time."
Now I've seen this episode....countless times and I highly doubt that Dan Harmon actually meant this to be a critique of religion but it was the first time it really hit me that this must have been how kings and dictators use religion to placate society. How useful it would have been to use an invisible, all knowing, all powerful god.
The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
-Edward Gibbon
TL;DR: Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
~~Lucius Annaeus Seneca~~
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous.
-Voltaire
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. -Lucius Annaeus Seneca
That one's by Edward Gibbon, in reference to the Roman Empire. Seneca is a common misattribution.
ah, thanks!
I grew up Christian and I still find myself occasionally praying and wishing I still had faith... But it just doesn't seem to add up. If religion was real, why is there zero evidence of anything divine? If Christians are full of God's holy spirit then why are they so hateful and ignorant? Millions of German Christians cheered for the Nazis and now they are doing the same for the Republican fascism.
The atmosphere is gay! Look at all the rainbows even in a sunrise and sunset rainbows everywhere!!!!!111
Divinity might still exist. Also it's we who might be self-inflating our importance to it.
Bigass universe out there, trillions of known galaxies and less than a universal second since we gained consciousness.
It's like a culture of microbes in between your ass cheeks yelling at what they consider to be the sky because you're not paying attention to them. Make the ass itch though and someone might just scratch it.
It’s like a culture of microbes in between your ass cheeks yelling at what they consider to be the sky because you’re not paying attention to them. Make the ass itch though and someone might just scratch it.
LOL so earth is the anus of the universe, and humans are the microbes making it itch
that tracks
I'm sorry that you were raised Catholic.
There shouldn't be a marriage of church and state, with that said, there are sects of Christianity that actually follow Christ's teachings and not the myriad laws and interpretations added over the ages though they are rare.
there are sects of Christianity that actually follow Christ’s teachings
ok. 'original sin' is bullshit too. the thing is, you CAN be a good person without any of the supernatural stuff about "you must believe if you don't want to go to hell"
also, please name a sect of christianity for which one of the MAIN duties of the "good christian" is not to convert the world to christianity?
Greek Orthodoxy, Ethiopian Orthodoxy as well as the Coptic Christians
Much higher emphasis on taking care of people and being a caring person.
Not sure that's true. Christianity is pretty inherently evangelical. That's one of the big reasons why it spread so far.
If you want to have a historical discussion about this I would be more than open to that. I have spent many years studying abrahamic religions. The three sects of Christianity that I have mentioned are all prior to romanization of the church. The Catholic church is the foundation of almost all sects of Christianity, but the Catholic church is itself a splinter group from the original church that was a sect people who still thought of themselves as Jews and were not very open to outsiders. See the whole Jew versus gentile discussion in Acts. But the long of the short is that the Roman Catholic Church did not become a thing until roughly 200AD. And it was only after that point that it became the monster from the meme. Prior to that it was the religion of the poor and downtrodden because it promised a better life after you died. Which was in direct contrast to the Roman religions where you had to pay in to get to heaven.
Which was in direct contrast to the Roman religions where you had to pay in to get to heaven.
I'm about to go to sleep, but that's not even close to correct.
In France almost all churches were built on pagan sites, after civilians were massacred
In the US we built them where we genocided the native populations. God was apparently asleep or hiding during every genocide his followers participated in.
What soldiers used to say in France to convince themselves that they did nothing wrong was that if you killed an innocent they would go straight to the paradise and have a good time. Therefore you could kill anyone. They massacred entire towns of tens of thousands and still as of today, the Church commemorates these events as the right thing to do. They even write songs to brag about these great croisades
Damn, that is heart breaking. Speaking of France, I am a bit jealous that they have the constitutional right to freedom FROM religion. That is kind of amazing, both for the people, the government, and the religions themselves. Religion and politics should never, ever mix. To do so corrupts both the state and the religion. (Just my two cents)
Sounds like something a heretic would say...
Religions spread through cultural genocide
Not only through that: Children taking on (or being taken on) the beliefs of their parents.
I got a fever and in the thumbnail on mobile Jesus looked like a gun.
Also, don't forget the systemic "borrowing" of local traditions in an effort to ease conversion:
