And people wonder why I have a hard time believing Christianity
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?
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 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 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.
The purpose of Abrahamic religions is to convince people to become soldiers. Hence the legend of Abraham itself that these religions are named after - it's a message to parents to sacrifice their children to war if needed. The entire thing is to groom us into a society with soldiers and babymakers.
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 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.
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.
Source?
The early Church would be gathering in people's private houses and back rooms with no admission fee and food and drink would be freely sheared in common.
For most popular religions such as the cult of Mars or Jupiter or even Judasim you were required to either give to the temple or provide sacrifices to the temple sacrifices are not cheap.
LOL i was never catholic, i couldn't care less if you think your sect is superior to another-- it's ALL make-believe. santa claus for "grown-ups"
and you haven't yet addressed the core belief of original sin, which honestly, pounding that crap into kids' heads is child abuse if you ask me. here you are, a grown ass adult, genuinely believing that because you were born human, you and everyone else is paying the price for an equally make-believe storybook character's egregious crime of eating "forbidden fruit"
sure "it's allegory," whatever. the fall of man has to do with knowledge, somehow.
i really don't care about the details, because it's all bullshit anyway. and there's always someone there to preach about it. thank you for illustrating that point
Maybe you should have phrased it differently then because I didn't disagree when you said original sin is bullshit. Adam and Eve sined. That was their issue. You live your own separate life
Original sin is a Catholic teaching. So which flavor of Catholic are you? Were you a Methodist? A calvinist a Lutheran, a Baptist, a born-again or just generic American ist
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)
Not only through that: Children taking on (or being taken on) the beliefs of their parents.
Also, don't forget the systemic "borrowing" of local traditions in an effort to ease conversion:
How would this impact your personal belief, though? The New Testament condemns violence and conquest constantly
Aside the Qur'an encourages conquest and taxxing non Muslims, as well as enforcing an arab way of life
Do you have a source to that? There is a lot of mistranslation. Also old testament not looking good either....
Tell the disbelievers that if they desist, their past will be forgiven. But if they persist, then they have an example in those destroyed before them.
Fight against them until there is no more persecution—and ˹your˺ devotion will be entirely to Allah. But if they desist, then surely Allah is All-Seeing of what they do.
And if they do not comply, then know that Allah is your Protector. What an excellent Protector, and what an excellent Helper!
Know that whatever spoils you take, one-fifth is for Allah and the Messenger, his close relatives, orphans, the poor, and ˹needy˺ travellers, if you ˹truly˺ believe in Allah and what We revealed to Our servant on that decisive day when the two armies met ˹at Badr˺. And Allah is Most Capable of everything.
Allah will judge and destroy them, not the reader.
Well the bottom picture was them trying to reclaim lost lands. Neither event was clean.
Meme should show Christianity spreading to the new world. Much more one sided slaughter.
Well the bottom picture was them trying to reclaim lost lands. Neither event was clean.
Are you referring to the Crusades? Those weren't really Christians "trying to reclaim lost lands," since the Middle East was never "owned" by Christians. Christianity, especially Catholicism never really took root in the Middle East until much later, so the Pope declaring that all good Christians should join the Crusades really was a war of aggression.
On the other hand, you could be referring to the reclamation of Spain, but I don't think that's what that painting is depicting.
Those weren’t really Christians “trying to reclaim lost lands,” since the Middle East was never “owned” by Christians. Christianity, especially Catholicism never really took root in the Middle East until much later,
4th-7th centuries AD under the Eastern Roman Empire call that into question.
Fair enough. I guess I should say that the group calling for the "reclamation" of the Middle East for Christianity was not the indigenous people. The Romans were a colonial power in the Middle East, so saying that a Roman Pope could call for a reclamation is like Great Britain trying to reclaim India.
While I may have gone too far in saying Christianity has not taken root in the Middle East, I stand by my central thesis that the Crusades were wars of aggression.
The Romans were a colonial power in the Middle East, so saying that a Roman Pope could call for a reclamation is like Great Britain trying to reclaim India.
I mean, if we're going that route, the Turco-Persian Muslims occupying the Levant at the time were a colonial power there too, and the Levant only came under Muslim control in the first place because it was quite literally conquered by non-native inland Arab tribes from a Byzantine-Christian majority in the 7th century.
While I may have gone too far in saying Christianity has not taken you in the Middle East, I stand by my central thesis that the Crusades were wars of aggression.
Agreed there.
History is mostly a great play of conquering powers deciding who gets to tax the starving masses.
Yeah you remember the 4th Crusade right? I think that kind of derails your argument here buddy.
How does the 4th Crusade retroactively revert the ownership of the Levant in the 4th-7th centuries under the Christian Eastern Roman Empire.
Never suggested it did. However I'd like to hear your argument as to how Catholics were just trying to reclaim it for Christians when they were slaughtering Romans and sacking Constantinople.
Never suggested it did.
Then you aren't arguing against a position I've actually put forward.
The position you put forward had nothing to do with the general Topic at hand? Your position did not try to refute the comment you quoted in that post? When he specifically mentioned Catholics in the post and you quoted it? Just a complete deviation that had no merit? Well my mistake then I apologize. I thought you were participating in the conversation.
It was not so much an act of aggression as it was an act of protection. Christians in those areas, people as well as traders, were killed and taken into slavery.
You really think Christians wanted to March down until a dessert region thousands of miles from home just for the fun of it? Christians were under attack in the region.
Not saying it was all sunshine and rainbows, but the notion that the crusades were about spreading Christianity is not accurate.
