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Potential BFF posted:The Soviet Union was a nightmare during the Stalin years because of Stalin and the cult of personality that was built. The Soviet Union was indeed officially atheist but personality cults are pretty bad irrational poo poo that isn't grounded in reality. Even if you could argue that Stalin's personality cult was technically a religion (and I admit that it shared a number of features with traditional religions, as did the cults of Mao, Hitler, etc.), the fact that after the Russian Orthodox Church was suppressed it was quickly replaced by an extremely destructive new religion still does not bode well for the idea that getting rid of existing religions would fix anything.
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Dec 17, 2015 02:42
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VitalSigns posted:You think religion is the cause of this, but it's not. Mythmaking is endemic to human thinking and it creates religion not the other way around, which is why when confronted with atheist regimes that have their own national myths and irrational taboos you No True Scotsman them into not being atheist after all, because your definition of "secular" is "things I like" and religion is "things I don't like" I haven't defended or even really mentioned any atheist regimes or some such. You must be confusing me with some other poster. I simply said that faith based thinking is inherently bad, religion relies on that kind of thinking, and is bad. Obdicut posted:Again, no, you can't separate it out. It is not worse than other parts of culture to derive values, laws, and norms from. There are plenty of parts of culture that act exactly like religion and yet have gently caress-all to do with the supernatural. Why can't you grasp this? This doesn't challenge an average freshman. I was gonna ask for examples but I see you cited Eugenics above. Eugenics in and of itself isn't bad. Eugenics as applied by racists and folks with a political agenda IS. I find that different than faith based ideologies because eugenics can be measured. It can be falsified. You can hold it up to what you want in a society and what it does and say "This is bad" and put that tool back in the tool shed. With faith based ideologies you can't do that. Its still right, its still supreme because its untestable without changing what it means when you want it to mean something different. You're forced to rationalize faith to fit what is acceptable vs picking an acceptable faith. This is why religious beliefs are harmful; they are based on unfalsfiable epistemology that says whatever you want it to say when you want it to.
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Dec 17, 2015 03:49
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I don't see what good it does to point out examples of non-religious shitiness. I don't think anyone's claiming that religion is the sole source of all bad things. The fact that homophobia, for example, occurs in irreligious culture and/or for non-religious regions doesn't invalidate the idea that it could also come from or be exacerbated by religious beliefs.
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Dec 17, 2015 03:56
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PT6A posted:I don't see what good it does to point out examples of non-religious shitiness. I don't think anyone's claiming that religion is the sole source of all bad things. It was claimed to be the sole source of suicide bombings, so no you're wrong there.
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Dec 17, 2015 03:59
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PT6A posted:I don't see what good it does to point out examples of non-religious shitiness. I don't think anyone's claiming that religion is the sole source of all bad things. The fact that homophobia, for example, occurs in irreligious culture and/or for non-religious regions doesn't invalidate the idea that it could also come from or be exacerbated by religious beliefs. It could be, but there is no evidence of it. Homosexuality and women's rights have been almost universally deplored and punished with death throughout history. We are living in a sliver of time where a small part of the world believes otherwise. It seems premature to draw any conclusions about why that is.
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Dec 17, 2015 03:59
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SedanChair posted:It could be, but there is no evidence of it. Homosexuality and women's rights have been almost universally deplored and punished with death throughout history. We are living in a sliver of time where a small part of the world believes otherwise. It seems premature to draw any conclusions about why that is. We can, however, look at the organizations that are spending money in an attempt to roll back the progress that has been made and their justifications. I don't give two shits if someone is religious but I do care if their loving church is donating to the FRC that exists solely to inflict their backwards views on other people.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:11
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Potential BFF posted:We can, however, look at the organizations that are spending money in an attempt to roll back the progress that has been made and their justifications. I don't give two shits if someone is religious but I do care if their loving church is donating to the FRC that exists solely to inflict their backwards views on other people. Would it be different if those same people that made up the church donated to that organization instead? Your outrage only makes sense if the church is doing this without their consent.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:13
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computer parts posted:Would it be different if those same people that made up the church donated to that organization instead? Which gets to what my criticism was. Religious faith makes it so people that would otherwise not agree with shity behavior to be complicit in said lovely behavior. I know more than a few Catholics that think the churches stance on social issues is deplorable, disagree with prohibitions on premarital sex, think divorce is ok and so on, yet they still give them a ton of money because its "the moral thing to do".
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Dec 17, 2015 04:29
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Jastiger posted:Which gets to what my criticism was. Religious faith makes it so people that would otherwise not agree with shity behavior to be complicit in said lovely behavior. I know more than a few Catholics that think the churches stance on social issues is deplorable, disagree with prohibitions on premarital sex, think divorce is ok and so on, yet they still give them a ton of money because its "the moral thing to do". Again, this is a criticism of organizations in general. Leftists here deplore Democrats for selling out to Wall Street yet still donate and vote for them pretty regularly.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:31
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I think this whole thread is an overblown circlejerk. Terroriats are muslim, why posters be trying to gussy things up with a bit of lipstick on a pig? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 17, 2015 04:33
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computer parts posted:Again, this is a criticism of organizations in general. Leftists here deplore Democrats for selling out to Wall Street yet still donate and vote for them pretty regularly. To a point I agree. My criticism here is that religion is unique in that it claims moral superiority from god. If I'm a mad Democrat I can ostensibly change the rules to benefit my agenda through voting and donating. The church ideas come from god, I ain't changing that without fundamentally rewriting religious texts. Also no one claims the Democrats (or political parties) are "moral" by their very nature like they do for the church, thus depriving them of the social "cover" to do lovely things that churches get. If a Republican says "All gays deserve death" then they are being assholes. When WestBoro says its, "oh oh, its their misguided religion" (as a non specific example)
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Dec 17, 2015 04:34
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Jastiger posted:
This is exactly the opposite of how the Catholic Church works. And even in Protestant churches, there are dozens of stories of people splitting off and forming their own church after the ruling authority does something they disagree with.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:44
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Jastiger posted:The church ideas come from god, I ain't changing that without fundamentally rewriting religious texts. On the other hand, recorded history.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:44
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Jastiger posted:The church ideas come from god, I ain't changing that without fundamentally rewriting religious texts. You could have just posted "I am totally unaware of the history of any major church in the world" and saved everyone a whole bunch of time. Like, churches reform, change policies, have councils, etc all the time. The Church of England did not start off pro gay marriage, abortion, and granting equal rights/participation to women. It adopted these policies over time. Some churches have an easier time implementing reforms, some have too broad of a membership base to be able to rapidly react to changes in public opinion in some of its regions, etc but they all do it. Even the Catholic Church, the church that most strongly believes that it is infallible, that has the most spread out membership across 5 different continents, that has the most tradition/inertia behind change, does change and reform frequently and is even today going through reforms to decentralize its administration and allow for priests to preach more diverse opinions.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:45
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I didn't say they can't change, I'm saying they can't change what the text said. They can only change how they interpret it. Splitting off and quitting is entirely different than fundamentally changing the organization. Whenever a church change it isn't rewriting the texts (though they have MYSTERIOUSLY had a revelation or discovery of some new text as politically expedient times), they are simply changing how they REACT to the texts. Its a bad way to do things to rely on ancient mythology to find morality, law, and science.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:52
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Jastiger posted:I didn't say they can't change, I'm saying they can't change what the text said. They can only change how they interpret it. And what you're ignoring is that many religions do not only rely on the text. The Catholic Church for example, relies on materials outside of the Bible for their theology.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:54
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computer parts posted:And what you're ignoring is that many religions do not only rely on the text. The Catholic Church for example, relies on materials outside of the Bible for their theology. Well it'd be false to say "only" but it'd be true to say that without texts and ancient myth there isn't much going on there, no?
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Dec 17, 2015 04:56
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Jastiger posted:Well it'd be false to say "only" but it'd be true to say that without texts and ancient myth there isn't much going on there, no? It depends what you mean by ancient myth. The purpose of religions in general is to be a moral & ethical center, along with being a center of social interactions. The use of "myth" as you describe it is primarily in the former context, and in that regard it doesn't matter how old it is. After all, Jesus made up a whole bunch of parables on the spot and none of them really depend on existing Jewish myth. In fact, the timelessness is sort of the point. The parable of the Good Samaritan works back then and sure as hell works today.
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Dec 17, 2015 05:08
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computer parts posted:It depends what you mean by ancient myth. The purpose of religions in general is to be a moral & ethical center, along with being a center of social interactions. The use of "myth" as you describe it is primarily in the former context, and in that regard it doesn't matter how old it is. After all, Jesus made up a whole bunch of parables on the spot and none of them really depend on existing Jewish myth. Right and more to my point, its almost as if we can find good things like the parables without the rest of the superstitious stuff, no? (Also those stories are found in other texts, religions, cultures, and instances, some that predate Jesus' supposed existence, sooo.................)
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Dec 17, 2015 05:11
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Jastiger posted:Right and more to my point, its almost as if we can find good things like the parables without the rest of the superstitious stuff, no? The parables are themselves "myths".
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Dec 17, 2015 05:12
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Jastiger posted:Well it'd be false to say "only" but it'd be true to say that without texts and ancient myth there isn't much going on there, no? You know how all the Evangelical Christians in America who believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God are constantly going on about how abortion is evil? Guess which Bible verses condemning abortion they base this on? The answer is nothing, because not a single verse in the Bible condemns abortion. Strangely, this doesn't seem to stop them from constantly saying that God hates abortion.
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Dec 17, 2015 05:14
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My Imaginary GF posted:I think this whole thread is an overblown circlejerk. As Ted Cruz said last night, "all horse thieves are Democrats, but not all Democrats are horse thieves." You and he (like the soul brothers you are) are making an implication of mistaken reasoning however, because many terrorists are Christian. In fact, with the pace of hate crimes against Muslims in this country increasing it'll soon be easy to say that most terrorists are Christian.
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Dec 17, 2015 05:21
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INH5 posted:You know how all the Evangelical Christians in America who believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God are constantly going on about how abortion is evil? Guess which Bible verses condemning abortion they base this on? Well, it does have a lot of passages about god creating life and you not being able to harm a hair on your head, and the extrapolations they get from there. No one accused anti abortion people of being rational or even honest. This all goes back to the original points I was making re: Islamophobia and the like. Accepting faith as a "good" thing gives cover to a lot of bad ideas wrapped up in faith based reasoning. If less people gave respect to ideas founded on religious texts or myth there would be less cultural and political pressure from groups that rely on said faith. This goes for anti abortion people, this goes for anti gay people, this goes for violent people, this goes for people that think women shouldn't be able to have sex, this goes for people that think the founding fathers were God-men. By respecting faith and treating ancient myth as somehow noble, we open the door to people taking it too far and doing bad poo poo whether it be bad people finding their easily found justifications (9/11 Hijackers) or good (or benign) people finding those justifications for doing bad things (Kim Davis).
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Dec 17, 2015 05:22
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computer parts posted:It was claimed to be the sole source of suicide bombings, so no you're wrong there. To be fair, that guy was quite obviously a giant moron. Islam and/or religion is not the sole source of suicide bombing, nor of homophobia, nor of sexism, but I think any religion can certainly contribute to these things and we shouldn't ignore that just because it's a religion.
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Dec 17, 2015 05:26
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Jastiger posted:Well, it does have a lot of passages about god creating life and you not being able to harm a hair on your head, and the extrapolations they get from there. True. It also has verses like this: Exodus 21:22-25 posted:If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. Which clearly doesn't consider the death of a fetus to be "serious injury." There is also this: Numbers 5:11-31 posted:Then the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure—then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing. So forgive me if I have a hard time believing people who say that they oppose abortion "because the Bible says that it's wrong." INH5 fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 05:36
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gently caress the posters in this thread (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 17, 2015 05:39
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The Bible says GMOs are evil. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 17, 2015 05:40
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Obdicut posted:It's a pretty clear indictment of your bizarreness, given that there's huge areas of Islam where FGM is not practiced, and areas where Islam isn't where it is. It's not something that stems from Islam, it predates it, demonstrably. You seem to have a thing for telling Muslims(among others) what they really believe. Despite the fact that most major schools of Islamic jurisprudence regard FGM as either a religious obligation or something sanctioned by Islam. Despite the fact that tens of millions of women and girls in countries where FGM is prevalent regard it as a religious obligation. Weren't you trying to lecture the thread about how "there is no Islam", and therefore there are absolutely no flaws in Islam? Not that I'm disappointed to see an abandonment of such an incoherent position, but "there is One True Islam and I am the arbiter of what is and is not Islamic" doesn't seem an improvement?
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Dec 17, 2015 05:46
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Jastiger posted:Well, it does have a lot of passages about god creating life and you not being able to harm a hair on your head, and the extrapolations they get from there. No one accused anti abortion people of being rational or even honest. Yes they're irrational and dishonest because they've made up that abortion is murder from whole cloth, it's not supported anywhere in the texts, early Christian sects varied on whether they forbade it but the ones that did often treated it as a sexual immorality like pulling out or blowjobs and not like murder. And anyway when exactly a cell becomes a human being with rights and dignity is a philosophical question unanswerable by science, so there are plenty of atheists who also claim abortion is murder and for much the same misogynist reasons. In fact, the entire evangelical Christian opposition to abortion was invented in the 1970s as a Republican political strategy to find a wedge issue to grab religious voters who were drawn to the Democrats' message of economic justice. Ironically it completely failed to win over the Catholics who still vote majority Democrat (despite the Church's stance on abortion) but it flipped evangelicals (probably in combination with Nixon's anti-civil-rights dogwhistling). Abortion is a perfect example of how the literal interpretation of the text takes a backseat to other economic, cultural, and political factors. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 06:39
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SedanChair posted:It could be, but there is no evidence of it. Homosexuality and women's rights have been almost universally deplored and punished with death throughout history. We are living in a sliver of time where a small part of the world believes otherwise. It seems premature to draw any conclusions about why that is. I don't think this is an accurate statement w/r/t homosexuality, there are many societies throughout history that have been accepting of homosexuality. This would only really apply if you were limiting your history to the past couple centuries.
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Dec 17, 2015 06:52
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Baloogan posted:gently caress the posters in this thread Go cry in your trump hat you baby
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Dec 17, 2015 06:58
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MaxxBot posted:I don't think this is an accurate statement w/r/t homosexuality, there are many societies throughout history that have been accepting of homosexuality. This would only really apply if you were limiting your history to the past couple centuries. In the Mediterranean and Near East culture that Western Europeans share with Arabs and Iranians, prohibition of and bigotry against homosexuality is ancient and rooted in misogyny, that to be penetrated is womanly and disgraceful. It predated Islam and Christianity. Those scriptures have been a useful tool to justify homophobia that people absorbed from the culture, but they weren't necessary since the bigotry predated Rome's adoption of Christianity, and atheist regimes have found other reasons to ban and persecute it (naturalistic fallacy, it's a betrayal of one's duty to procreate for the race and the nation, it's a symptom of bourgeois decadence, whatever). You can watch people who have a cultural dislike of homosexuality point at a few lines in an old book, and then ignore the next few lines that condemn eating food that's popular and accepted in their culture, the literal words don't have the importance you think they do.
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Dec 17, 2015 07:15
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MaxxBot posted:I don't think this is an accurate statement w/r/t homosexuality, there are many societies throughout history that have been accepting of homosexuality. This would only really apply if you were limiting your history to the past couple centuries. Though even those societies tended to only approve of it in certain circumstances. For example, Ancient Romans allowed male citizens to have sex with their male slaves as long as the citizen topped, but under no circumstances was a citizen allowed to be the "bottom." With Ancient Greeks it was very similar, except replace "citizen" with "older man" and "male slave" with "teenage boy." Also, homophobic scriptures aren't an insurmountable obstacle to homosexual acceptance. The poets of Islamic Spain, for example, produced a lot of gay love poetry. INH5 fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 07:24
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Even the proud Anglo-Saxon tradition potentially had the same level of shame associated with being the "bottom" Being called a rassragr (i.e. one who is penetrated as a woman would be) was an insult so insulting that if you didn't meet it with violence it would be taken as true.
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Dec 17, 2015 07:42
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The Insect Court posted:You seem to have a thing for telling Muslims(among others) what they really believe. Despite the fact that most major schools of Islamic jurisprudence regard FGM as either a religious obligation or something sanctioned by Islam. The proof of this statement lies where? quote:Despite the fact that tens of millions of women and girls in countries where FGM is prevalent regard it as a religious obligation. And your explanation for FGM among Christians in Egypt, the almost total lack of FGM in the almost-totally Muslim Niger, and the fact that FGM predates Islam, is what, exactly? quote:Weren't you trying to lecture the thread about how "there is no Islam", and therefore there are absolutely no flaws in Islam? Not that I'm disappointed to see an abandonment of such an incoherent position, but "there is One True Islam and I am the arbiter of what is and is not Islamic" doesn't seem an improvement? That is the same position I just took in that post, too. There's no one true Islam. What are you talking about?
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Dec 17, 2015 10:33
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Is fun that right wing politicians are anti climate change solutions and/or climate change deniers. I would love to see a scientist / engineering effort to completely track how this has happened and the causes. I doubt the bible say anything about climate change, that the bible deny climate change. And I think this particular crazyness is recent, or at least I don't remember it 20 years ago. Because of the cynical person I am, I think the reason this can be: - Existing anti-science stance caused by literal interpretation of the bible. I don't live in USA, so I don't know, but it seems theres religions in USA that believe in a literal interpretation of the bible, and this cause right wing politics to face against many scientific proven facts. Theres also the problem that schools are paid by the area around them. - The economical cost associated with fighting climate change. Beijing in a normal winter day smell at capitalism, with all the smog from factories and lack of any ecologic control. If you allow capitalism to run will, you get a dense fog where its almost impossible to breath. But the only solution to that is to force capitalist to install filters in and recycle wastes. And recycling wastes cost money. Some USA politicians are against things that cost money to business. Since USA is not a toxic wasteland, I imagine they are not against all ecologic legislation. But they are against doing anything big, and so they sabotage it. - Ecologism has ben traditionally a "left wing" thing. This stupid strategy to oppose whatever stance the other party take. If the republicans decide to be pro-free software, the democrats will be against. If the democracts are pro-net neutrality, the republicans will be against. One party take the opposite option of the other party, even if that means being in favor of something bad for everyone. If one party decide to save baby clubs, the other will go club raiding. - Social responsibility. Have the word "Social" in it, that sounds like "Socialism" that is associated with "Comunism" that was the militar enemy of USA about 60 years ago, that 70 year old politicians still consider the biggest enemy of USA. Communism and Satan are interchangeable. Social responsibility = Satan. So is universal healthcare, workers rights, and so on. I would love to see science analize this and found how this happened (beyond the lines above, that are only my stupid opinions). I think if we track how this particular meme has spread, we will know more about how other memes spread, like the religion supermeme. In a few generations being against saving the planet will be a religious meme, very religious people will sabotage efforts to solve ecologic problems; like they are now against sex education, same sex marriage, abortion and other things. Tei fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 10:40
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INH5 posted:True. It also has verses like this: You aren't forgiven! To be honest, I'm not sure what the passage has to do with the modern abortion debate. VitalSigns posted:Yes they're irrational and dishonest because they've made up that abortion is murder from whole cloth, it's not supported anywhere in the texts, early Christian sects varied on whether they forbade it but the ones that did often treated it as a sexual immorality like pulling out or blowjobs and not like murder. And anyway when exactly a cell becomes a human being with rights and dignity is a philosophical question unanswerable by science, so there are plenty of atheists who also claim abortion is murder and for much the same misogynist reasons. Which is my entire point: Faith based systems allow anything (or nothing) to be true. Its bad epistomology, and there isn't anything inherently noble about it. My criticisms in this thread haven't been designed to go after this or that Bible or Koran verse, its been to show that religion and faith do not deserve the respect that people give them, especially on the left. Look at the OP who said that religion was super duper important because it helped them in hard times. The OP is obviously on the left of the political spectrum and finds it troubling that people bash on Islam and labels it Islamophobia. My argument is that it isn't Islamophobia to criticize religions, even Islam, because the ancient traditions, myths, superstitions are garbage and untrue. I also argue that moderate belief and special privilege for faith allows for the rise of more extremist sects and ideas within in each ideology because the moderate believers give "cover" to the more strict interpretations. It goes from "Your stance on abortion is wrong because of [rational reasons]" to "OH well that is just their RELIGIOUS opinion man, you can't challenge that!". Replace the topic with anything if abortion doesn't work for you. That all I'm saying, I'm not disagreeing that religious ideas can be twisted to mean anything, that was actually kind of my point.
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Dec 17, 2015 13:43
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Tei posted:- Existing anti-science stance caused by literal interpretation of the bible. There is dominium terrae, Genesis 1:28, which says mankind shall subdue the earth and rule over it. Any reasonable interpretation says that a good ruler cares for their ruled subject and does not want to destroy it. The argument of the American right is mainly political in the sense of "Everything a Democrat says must be wrong". But I think that the American right is slowly getting pretty lonely in this regard. Even conservative governments in Europe are now starting to fully accept the scope and severity of climate change. Unfortunately this knowledge is often still unhinged from actual policy.
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Dec 17, 2015 13:52
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Jastiger posted:My criticisms in this thread haven't been designed to go after this or that Bible or Koran verse, its been to show that religion and faith do not deserve the respect that people give them, especially on the left. You're not going to convince anyone of anything with your "it's bad epistemology" argument. You're not a good critic of religion because it's clear you don't understand religion.
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Dec 17, 2015 13:53
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Jastiger posted:You aren't forgiven! Religion is not the only faith-based system, not all of religion even depends on faith, culture is full of faith based systems, stop treating religion like it's special.
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Dec 17, 2015 14:36
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