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Crowsbeak posted:IE God should just turn us into cenobites. You need to actually watch that movie, because you dont actually know what a cenobite is.
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Apr 2, 2017 20:26
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He shouldn't watch that movie because Hellraiser (and its sequels) are bad. But they have some cool ideas.
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Apr 2, 2017 20:28
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He should really learn what a cenobite is regardless.
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Apr 2, 2017 20:35
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Who What Now posted:You need to actually watch that movie, because you dont actually know what a cenobite is. Well I should actually say they want to be what the character of Frank Clark thought he was getting when he sought the Cenobite puzzle box. Shbobdb posted:He shouldn't watch that movie because Hellraiser (and its sequels) are bad. But they have some cool ideas. The original is one of the greatest horror films ever made. 
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Apr 2, 2017 20:36
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Shbobdb posted:There really aren't a lot of religions out there if you think about local concentration as opposed to global existence. Usually just one particular religion fills the niche for the area. I have no doubt most people just stay whatever it is they were brought up as, same with their politics. But this is the Information Age. There's no excuse to not be curious about Taoism even if you were raised in Kansas, or trying to learn about Calvinism even if you were born in China. I have never delved into some scholarly level of research on any religion but I've watched videos and read articles describing dozens of them. Educating yourself has never been easier in the history of our species and there's no excuse to just give into tribalism and think "oh, well, I was raised Catholic so who needs that Buddhism poo poo anyway." Religion is about self-discovery and that isn't something handed to you on a plate. That's how I have lived, anyway. Not trying to invalidate anyone else's experience. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Apr 2, 2017 |
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Apr 2, 2017 20:48
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NikkolasKing posted:I don't see why it's troubling. I'd say it's less to do with how diverse religions are and more to do with how diverse humans are. People want and need different things and that is why there are so many faiths out there. I'm personally very relativistic when it comes to assessing religions vs. cults because the whole idea of "deprogramming" is more disturbing than the idea of brainwashing, at least to me. You really don't see why it's troubling that Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. are on the same level playing field as Scientology, the Manson family, Heaven's Gate, etc.? They are functionally the same thing. Their beliefs and faiths are both equally valid. Xenu dropping alien souls around volcanoes and blowing them up with H-bombs, then having those alien souls cause mental trauma in our human bodies, is philosophically, morally, and tautologically equivalent to meeting Jesus in heaven, or reaching Nirvana, or making good with Vishnu. What this means is any rear end in a top hat(s) can make any spiritual claim they want. Aslan's rosy coverage of Scientology should be sending up red flags, but it's presented as being a progressive step towards tolerance. Scientology should meet the definition for dangerous cult to any reasonable person. They literally grift as much as they can from vulnerable people, as well as shady kidnappings and denying medical services. Hubbard was a huge piece of poo poo who was trying to get rich off religion. Aslan covering them so nicely will directly lead to people's lives being ruined because they might just try out this Scientology thing it doesn't seem so bad.
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Apr 2, 2017 20:51
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NikkolasKing posted:I have no doubt most people just stay whatever it is they were brought up as, same with their politics. But this is the Information Age. There's no excuse to not fundamentally agree with the individualistic drive of Protestantism. FTFY. Your view on religion is informed by your culture, just as much as the unquestioning people you decry.
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Apr 2, 2017 20:53
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Shbobdb posted:FTFY. Ironic considering I dislike both Protestantism and individualism. But you are of course absolutely right. I am very privileged to live in this time and place. Even a few decades ago here in the US my forays into 'alternative religions" would have been shunned. RasperFat posted:You really don't see why it's troubling that Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. are on the same level playing field as Scientology, the Manson family, Heaven's Gate, etc.? You do realize there are a lot of people who think Islam is the greatest evil of our times? That it is essentially violent and misogynistic and it was founded by a pedophile warlord? Those cults you mentioned are bad and they give bad names to new religious movements. But Scientology is such a joke that everyone knows about Xenu. Scientology is the punchline of late night talkshow jokes and YouTube videos. There are Wikipedia pages on the crazy schemes they planned. Mr. Aslan could not possibly make the public more aware of Scientology's madness. Anyone who is oblivious to it at this stage will never learn.
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Apr 2, 2017 21:01
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RasperFat posted:but even he says that there's no real way to tell the difference between a cult and a religion. Hidden religious cults, by this I mean groups of people who hold in common sets of beliefs, and use in common sets of symbolic language, are pretty widespread right now and they are very harmful. As many are corrupt religions that pretend to be neither religious or cults. rudatron posted:The purpose of a language is to not just express things, but express things clearly and concisely, and religious-mythos-as-a-language fails on that last test. Well thats becsuse many of the metaphors are dependant on experience. Some of the metaphors are clear as daylight to a particular group and utterly opaque to another group. Fig trees come to mind.
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Apr 2, 2017 21:08
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Metaphors are cultural and ideological. They're not actually a definition of language.
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Apr 2, 2017 21:13
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NikkolasKing posted:You do realize there are a lot of people who think Islam is the greatest evil of our times? That it is essentially violent and misogynistic and it was founded by a pedophile warlord? I'm not sure what a racist and xenophobic attitude has to do with the fact that there are no real differences between religions and cults on a base and general level. Islam is definitely violent and misogynistic, but not any more so than the other Abrahamic religions. Scientology is actually a growing faith, and puff pieces like Aslan's gives them mainstream respect. Did you actually read the article or watch the special? It's very much "look how well this faith is working for these totally normal folks". If showing people how crazy a faith is turned them away from it we would have almost no religions. In a vacuum, if someone came and told you that you are actually created by the will of Yahweh and you must cut off your foreskin to appease Him, it would seem crazy but the Jewish faith has survived for thousands of years. It someone came and told you that your body is actually a vessel for energy from Brahman and you will return to the pool of spiritual energy once you die and form a new vessel, it would seem crazy. But Hinduism has survived for thousands of years. You still haven't responded to the fundamental problem of never being able to actually divide religions into "real religions" and "cults". It's not that those cults make new religions look bad, it's that they cannot be distinguished from mainstream religions. BrandorKP posted:Hidden religious cults, by this I mean groups of people who hold in common sets of beliefs, and use in common sets of symbolic language, are pretty widespread right now and they are very harmful. As many are corrupt religions that pretend to be neither religious or cults. I'm not sure what this nonsense is, but I'm not talking about hidden cults. I mean the batshit crazy well known cults cannot be divided from "normal" religions. And somehow this isn't a problem for religious people. RasperFat fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Apr 2, 2017 |
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Apr 2, 2017 21:39
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RasperFat posted:I'm not sure what a racist and xenophobic attitude has to do with the fact that there are no real differences between religions and cults on a base and general level. Islam is definitely violent and misogynistic, but not any more so than the other Abrahamic religions. I'm not responding to it because I don't disagree with it. A religion is a religion. I try as hard as I can to be actively non-judgmental about such things. If your solution is we should laugh at all religions like we do Scientology, that isn't ever going to happen for a variety of reasons.
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Apr 2, 2017 22:10
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm not responding to it because I don't disagree with it. A religion is a religion. I try as hard as I can to be actively non-judgmental about such things. A completely nonjudgemental attitude is actually not a good thing. We should be judging religions on their backwards and harmful beliefs. Scientologists reject the entire field of psychology and its pharmacology as a harmful lie. This objectively causes harm in people's lives. Jehovah's Witness won't allow themselves or their children to get blood transfusions. This objectively causes harm in people's lives. The solution isn't to smugly deride people that practice religion and call them all dumb babies. We do need to stop giving so much credence to people's faith though, and Aslan's Believer series does exactly that. It gives undue respect to people's beliefs, says they are all just different and we can't judge. I call complete bullshit on trying to apply this extreme moral relativism. Doesn't really work for cultures either. I don't really care that people were raised a certain way or it was in the past so we "didn't know any better". Holding beliefs that defend slavery, sexist gender roles, xenophobia, etc. is a lovely thing even in ignorance. It doesn't mean that we slaughter all the religious leaders or outlaw religious practice, but it does mean we need to stop adding and air of reverence to people's nonsensical beliefs.
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Apr 2, 2017 23:38
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NikkolasKing posted:Ironic considering I dislike both Protestantism and individualism. But you are of course absolutely right. I am very privileged to live in this time and place. Even a few decades ago here in the US my forays into 'alternative religions" would have been shunned. The thing with Islam, and all Abrahamic religions, is that you can't disprove them. And they are not religions, they are faiths. If we sent in an armoured brigade, right now, to destroy all the Scientology strongholds, then they'd be done. Scientology would be destroyed. But if you tried to do the same with every Mosque or Church or Synagogue, sure you could destroy the building, even burn the sacred scrolls, but you would not extinguish the faith.
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Apr 2, 2017 23:55
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm not responding to it because I don't disagree with it. A religion is a religion. I try as hard as I can to be actively non-judgmental about such things. You might find some of them good, and support them. You might be indifferent to some, and tolerate them. Some, you might disagree with, but tolerate. And some, you might disagree with, and actively oppose. So go ahead and support the role of church in organizing communities and charitable service, think it's benignly weird that they eat the (literal) body and blood of their god, disagree with their insistence on abstinence before marriage, and hatefully condemn them for promoting LBGTQ conversion therapy and abusive practices like shunning. It doesn't matter how stupid the stories about where we came from, or what happens after we die are. Feel free to laugh or not laugh, it doesn't make much difference. When your neighbors do things that you believe are actively harmful in the world, it's your responsibility to speak up. They usually aren't shy about speaking up when someone does something their beliefs teach them to oppose.
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Apr 3, 2017 00:37
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IronClaymore posted:The thing with Islam, and all Abrahamic religions, is that you can't disprove them. And they are not religions, they are faiths. If we sent in an armoured brigade, right now, to destroy all the Scientology strongholds, then they'd be done. Scientology would be destroyed. But if you tried to do the same with every Mosque or Church or Synagogue, sure you could destroy the building, even burn the sacred scrolls, but you would not extinguish the faith. Except for all the Scientologists still running around, who could rebuild the whole thing. Scientology is exactly as valid as Christianity, less a few thousand years.
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Apr 3, 2017 02:28
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Yeah, I personally believe Scientology is nutty, a cult to steal money from people and a tax shelter for celebrities. But it's got itself established to be "legit" at this point, it has true believers.
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Apr 3, 2017 04:51
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Scientology is exactly as metaphysical valid as any other religion, the only reason you wouldn't call it one, is that it doesn't have the political clout to demand it be seen as legitimate. How's the saying go, a language is a dialect with a navy? So, that would make: a religion is a cult with a voting bloc.
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Apr 3, 2017 05:17
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Would each of you say that as a category religion was universally harmful?
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Apr 3, 2017 05:45
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BrandorKP posted:Would each of you say that as a category religion was universally harmful? Universally harmful is misleading, as it implies everything about it is harmful. Religions are a mix of a lot of things, and obviously not all of them are harmful. Forgiveness, love your neighbor, caring for the poor, etc. can definitely be positive aspects of religions. However, their structures and outcomes are so problematic that they do more harm than good in the end. Ultimately harmful or harmful in aggregate is a much better descriptor.
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Apr 3, 2017 06:16
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RasperFat posted:Universally harmful is misleading, as it implies everything about it is harmful. Religions are a mix of a lot of things, and obviously not all of them are harmful. Forgiveness, love your neighbor, caring for the poor, etc. can definitely be positive aspects of religions. However, their structures and outcomes are so problematic that they do more harm than good in the end. Ultimately harmful or harmful in aggregate is a much better descriptor. Let's say you took religion out of history, what would it look like? Well civil rights movement...that's gone. The civil war?....maybe gone, maybe not. Humanism?.....well seeing as it's an attempt to justify christian morals without the christian god, no way that's not gone. The enlightenment? Oh definitely gone. No church to preserve knowledge, no crusades means no stealing universities and preserved knowledge from the arabic world. Advanced Math? Product of the Islamic golden age, gone. Contract Law? Most Probably gone, even if it exists not nearly as central.
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Apr 3, 2017 07:05
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That's a pretty absurd counterfactual and I'm not sure you can draw the conclusions from it that you are try to. However, most critics of religion are concerned with religious institutions and ideologies as they exist now. Old thought like Christianity is an exceedingly malevolent force on the American political landscape.
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Apr 3, 2017 07:11
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BrandorKP posted:Would each of you say that as a category religion was universally harmful? Religion was useful when it served as both the cultural memory and a governance role. At various points religion was also a useful outlet for anyone too smart to farm dirt but not lucky enough to be nobility. I don't think any of those are particularly relevant strengths in the Information Age, and roots stretching back thousands of years are actually a detriment to dealing with the modern world. In the current era, religion doesn't really empower people to do good or participate in culture in the same way - there are lots of ways to do good outside the boundaries of religion, and books and information is available to anyone. Religion absolutely should not be allowed anywhere near government, because the moral precepts of a people too primitive to understand modern medicine shouldn't be what dictates access to abortion. Basically, sure religion can create communities, but so can Harry Potter, and the Harry Potter fandom hasn't murdered nearly as many people in Dumbledore's name as the Abrahamic God fandom.
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Apr 3, 2017 07:36
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WhitemageofDOOM posted:Let's say you took religion out of history, what would it look like? You know frankly nothing of the islamic golden age if you think its main philosphers were known for being particularly devout muslims. A lot of religious prescriptions went by mostly ignored. The rest of the conclusions are also broadly specious and assume a history where, somehow, everything flows perfectly identically. Your first point isn't even true in the specifics, as some of the early leading figures of the civil rights movement were hardcore marxists.
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Apr 3, 2017 08:12
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WhitemageofDOOM posted:Let's say you took religion out of history, what would it look like? There wouldn't be humans, so history would be the material record assembled by whichever aliens found Earth, assuming such beings were interested at all in that research. "The record suggests there once lived an intriguing anthropoid species that fashioned a few more complicated battle tools, but then set out to sea and was lost." "Check out these rad tigers, though."
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Apr 3, 2017 08:25
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WhitemageofDOOM posted:Let's say you took religion out of history, what would it look like? That's an interesting take, but I don't think it's true. Why would religions be the only mechanisms by which these things could have happened? The Greeks were an interesting ancient people that could easily have had secular organizations that preserved knowledge, as could the Romans. The Mongols didn't really give a poo poo about specific religious practices in their empire (as long as you have the Khan tribute) and valued secular knowledge for its practical applications for their people. Ancient Chinese peoples also preserved knowledge and sought out pursuits like mathematics, engineering, and philosophy for the purpose of strengthening the state and the people. You seem to have an extremely Western-centric and myopic view of history. What about all of the humanist movements that couldn't have occurred without secularization? The Enlightenment is one of those movements, as are socialism and unionization. It seems a bit of stretch to claim that nothing like those movements would have happened without religion, as if people wouldn't care about their livelihoods and equality if religion didn't tell them to first.
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Apr 3, 2017 08:38
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Oh lol now we got the head athiests waxing nostalgic for the Romans and thinking they're atheists. ALso lol about the Islamic golden age pretending most of their scientists were atheists. FInally the Chinese have a very strong traditional religious system. While certainly different than the west is defintley rooted in having an understanding of the supernatural. Oh and LOL about calling others western centric.
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Apr 3, 2017 08:44
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Crowsbeak posted:ALso lol about the Islamic golden age pretending most of their scientists were atheists. I'm sure you can provide a quote of someone saying that. (Edit: Do you know how much twisting is involved these days in pretending Umar Khayyam wasn't actually writing about wine because mainline religious authorities can't accept the notion that one of the foremost poets of the period wasn't a good teetotaler who abided by all the hadiths; heterodox muslim sects were a dime a dozen throughout the period) (Just to make the first one clear: you're so hell-bent in constructing a strawman out of whatever was said that you automatically assumed that "not the most devout" automatically means the same as atheist; I am certain you know how dumb a jump this is) Agnosticnixie fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 08:50
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Crowsbeak posted:Oh lol now we got the head athiests waxing nostalgic for the Romans and thinking they're atheists. ALso lol about the Islamic golden age pretending most of their scientists were atheists. FInally the Chinese have a very strong traditional religious system. While certainly different than the west is defintley rooted in having an understanding of the supernatural. Oh and LOL about calling others western centric. I didn't say they were atheist, I said they had the secular structures in place that they didn't need religion to do things like keep records and pursue knowledge. Of course all the ancient cultures are entwined with mysticism. We literally did not know how our world is constructed on an extremely basic level. Things like fire, water, lightning, earthquakes, volcanos, comets, aurora borealis, death and life itself, etc. were all understood through a cosmic lens. They were the will of God(s) brought to man. We have lived in the atomic age for so many generations it's hard to wrap your head around it, but someone with a 5th grade level of learning knows far more about the natural world than the greatest ancient scholars. A child going into middle school knows what the periodic table and atoms are, the water cycle, basic anatomy, scope of the size of the solar system, etc. My knowledge of history, politics, and religion are definitely slanted towards the West because that's most of what we learn in school in the U.S., but I was responding to the argument claiming that if we had no religion no culture or history would develop at all. This argument is crouched in a Western imperial narrative that people would be stupid apes if the benevolent church didn't save them from themselves.
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Apr 3, 2017 09:33
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I kinda like the idea of religion being similar to language. I dont understand the opposition to it.
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Apr 3, 2017 09:55
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RasperFat posted:We have lived in the atomic age for so many generations it's hard to wrap your head around it, but someone with a 5th grade level of learning knows far more about the natural world than the greatest ancient scholars. A child going into middle school knows what the periodic table and atoms are, the water cycle, basic anatomy, scope of the size of the solar system, etc. In a bout between you and Zeno, I'd go for the Grecian. If I had to choose either a recent high school graduate or Marcus Aurelius, I'd select the latter. Richard Dawkins would fall before Plato, and the poet of Job would be a more useful companion than Neil deGrasse Tyson. Bolocko fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 09:58
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Rexicon1 posted:I kinda like the idea of religion being similar to language. I dont understand the opposition to it. Because it fails most of the criteria for being a language on a linguistic level, while only managing to appeal to sentimentalist notions of the people who care for it.
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Apr 3, 2017 10:16
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Agnosticnixie posted:Because it fails most of the criteria for being a language on a linguistic level, while only managing to appeal to sentimentalist notions of the people who care for it. Can it be analogous to language? And what's wrong with a sentimental notion of religion?
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Apr 3, 2017 10:25
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Bolocko posted:In a bout between you and Zeno, I'd go for the Grecian. If I had to choose either a recent high school graduate or Marcus Aurelius, I'd select the latter. Richard Dawkins would fall before Plato, and the poet of Job would be a more useful companion than Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think you've completely missed the point. As Newton said "I stand on the shoulders of giants". The ancient scholars were brilliant minds that greatly contributed to the advancement of society. However, they lived before we had discovered too many fundamental truths in our natural world. The entire fields of chemistry, geology, physics, microbiology, and numerous others hadn't even been started or were so rudimentary by modern standards that it's practically useless. Plato even explored this phenomenon with the allegory of the cave, where people's knowledge of existence came the shadows cast from an outside source. A world shifting paradigm occurs when one is able to see outside the cave and the sources of the shadows. Science has undergone so many paradigm shifts from the ancient world that almost none the ancient scholars work is considered outside of history, literature, and philosophy. In short, the total amount of factual knowledge 1000+ years ago is easily less than 5% of what we know today, being generous. In that context it doesn't matter how intelligent you are because the entire cognitive framework for processing how the universe functions was missing the vast majority of its foundational building blocks. Does an average middle schooler have anywhere near the intellectual aptitude of classic philosophers and scientists? Of course not. But that middle schooler knows a poo poo load more about the natural world than anyone born more than a few hundred years ago.
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Apr 3, 2017 10:45
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Bolocko posted:In a bout between you and Zeno, I'd go for the Grecian. If I had to choose either a recent high school graduate or Marcus Aurelius, I'd select the latter. Richard Dawkins would fall before Plato, and the poet of Job would be a more useful companion than Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is an opinion borne out of pure nostalgia, and that's all religion has to offer.
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Apr 3, 2017 10:59
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RasperFat posted:That's an interesting take, but I don't think it's true. Why would religions be the only mechanisms by which these things could have happened? We don't know if they are the only mechanism possible, only that they were the mechanisms used. Without religion everything we know would have unfolded differently, vastly differently. I would argue it's more of a strech to presume we would end up in the same place philosophically as it's inevitability with a society and history that looks nothing like ours. I mean the greek atheists were basically straight up anti-science believing everything could be derived from "pure reason", poo poo the west had to grapple with that when we started thinking "what if god doesn't exist". I mentioned western things because it's what I know. I honestly don't know in what areas religion was vastly influential in other regions of the world but I'm sure it was. WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 11:17
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Panzeh posted:This is an opinion borne out of pure nostalgia, and that's all religion has to offer. I would say this is objectively wrong if for no other reason than people still keep making religions. Nostalgia or tradition or what-have-you is a strong motivator but I'd say it's more that people simply have powerful imaginations and want to believe in something. The thing that I've been reading up on lately are "UFO Religions" because, at first, it sounds absolutely absurd, a bizarre combination of two totally unrelated things. And yet when I gave it a bit more thought, it's a match made in Heaven. Infinite Karma posted:There's nothing wrong with actually judging the practices of various religions and their believers. RasperFat posted:A completely nonjudgemental attitude is actually not a good thing. We should be judging religions on their backwards and harmful beliefs. Scientologists reject the entire field of psychology and its pharmacology as a harmful lie. This objectively causes harm in people's lives. Jehovah's Witness won't allow themselves or their children to get blood transfusions. This objectively causes harm in people's lives. What makes me the supreme arbiter of what is right and wrong? A man who gives up everything to go live in a Christian or Buddhist monastery is seen as self-sacrificing, admirable and wise. The guy who gives up everything to go hang with Bubba McCharlatan is judged a fool. Hell, from what I've been told, Christianity itself started as a doomsday cult and a lot of the self-sacrifice in the New Testament is because Paul and friends thought the world was literally coming to an end in their lifetimes. (this might be totally wrong but I recall a lecture on the New Testament where the lecturer stressed this point) My point is, cultural sensitivity is already murky enough. Religion is one step even higher, at least in my view. I fail at it constantly but I do try to be tolerant when it comes to things like this. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 11:24
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Bates posted:Yeah I can't imagine a society that's so bad that every child in it deserves to be drowned and I find the idea revolting. God is oddly supportive of Lot considering he offers up his daughters to be raped. If Lot was the one good enough to be allowed to escape, imagine how bad the rest were. Again, I think this represents a failure of imagination on your part.
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Apr 3, 2017 11:38
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WhitemageofDOOM posted:We don't know if they are the only mechanism possible, only that they were the mechanisms used. The problem is religion itself isn't the actual mechanism by which knowledge was preserved once we got to civilizations with city level populations. In incredibly ancient tribal times (10,000+ years ago) written languages appear to have not existed so mysticism played a large role in passing on knowledge through memorized lore. Once the earliest written languages were developed, religious texts were the most commonly mass produced writings, but secular applications were what allowed societies to develop. Ledgers to keep track of goods and sales for business to form. Laws that can be referred to so it's set in stone, so to speak. Keeping track of weather patterns, celestial movements, crop efficacy, records of heritage, etc. This allowed governments to form, which then had an interest in maintaining texts because those are a part of the foundation of their power. This extends into modern history with constitutions for governments, etc. The secular powers of state, whether they be religious or not, had a vested interest in maintaining texts. The religious texts being prolific is unsurprising as most ancient leaders had a divine right of some sort giving them credence to lead. It wasn't religion itself that preserved knowledge and inspired its pursuit, it was the state's directive and the innate curiosity in humans. History would undoubtedly be vastly different without religion, but that's just wild speculation as to what would happen without it. Largely agnostic/atheist societies aren't culturally, morally, or scientifically deficient in any way, so imagining an ancient culture being able to function as such isn't difficult. NikkolasKing posted:What makes me the supreme arbiter of what is right and wrong? A man who gives up everything to go live in a Christian or Buddhist monastery is seen as self-sacrificing, admirable and wise. The guy who gives up everything to go hang with Bubba McCharlatan is judged a fool. Hell, from what I've been told, Christianity itself started as a doomsday cult and a lot of the self-sacrifice in the New Testament is because Paul and friends thought the world was literally coming to an end in their lifetimes. (this might be totally wrong but I recall a lecture on the New Testament where the lecturer stressed this point) I'm not trying to be a supreme arbiter, I'm talking about things that are causing harm to individuals and society. These things are objectively provable in a way that that I would hope the vast majority of people couldn't argue against. If someone lives in a city where their child could easily get medical care to save their life and the parent denies it on religious grounds, that's something that cannot be ignored. If someone forcefully prevents their spouse from going out in public or dressing a specific way, that cannot be ignored. We need to be sensitive to other cultures, but if we are being real leftists we can't ignore these sort of abuses. Cultural sensitivity is having general respect for people, especially in public, not spreading racist/bigoted lies about groups of people, learning a little about a different culture, and that's about the extent of it. When people open up a discussion claiming that women are created to be submissive by God, that the world is 6000 years old, that queerness is inherently bad, or a the whole smorgasboard of outlandish religious beliefs they should be called on their bullshit. This doesn't mean you antagonize random joe/jane on the street because he is wearing a cross or a yamulka or a veil or whatever. But when people start a religious discussion or are using a public venue, they should absolutely be called out. RasperFat fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 11:40
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NikkolasKing posted:What makes me the supreme arbiter of what is right and wrong? A man who gives up everything to go live in a Christian or Buddhist monastery is seen as self-sacrificing, admirable and wise. The guy who gives up everything to go hang with Bubba McCharlatan is judged a fool. Wise and Admirable or both fools of some extent. The monk's religion is unlikely to vanish twenty years from now so you know job security. And there's the question is Budda Mccharlaton asking for what they gave up or just asking if they give it up? quote:Hell, from what I've been told, Christianity itself started as a doomsday cult and a lot of the self-sacrifice in the New Testament is because Paul and friends thought the world was literally coming to an end in their lifetimes. (this might be totally wrong but I recall a lecture on the New Testament where the lecturer stressed this point) Ohhhh yeah, definitely a doomsday cult to start. WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 11:41
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