|
BrandorKP posted:Would each of you say that as a category religion was universally harmful? The imagination of human beings is something that should be expanded and encouraged, and the intersection of imagination and ignorance is mysticism. The religious history of humanity is therefore proof of its sapience, that is has a mind worth something more than a pocket calculator. It's just that religion has outlived its usefulness.
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2017 14:15
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:13 |
|
|
Gods did not make man, man made gods. Examine the political subtext of what Christian dogma is saying here: subservience is a virtue. Don't you think it's a little odd that archaic societies, with a strict vertical hierarchy, had belief systems that rationalized total and unquestioning obedience, to an all powerful father figure? When you say "you can't question god", what you're actually saying is "you cannot defy traditional political authority". That's the subtext you're unintentionally internalizing. You're hypnotizing yourself into slavery, because you don't have the backbone to accept reality as it exists. Defiance of God, that's called revolution. Thinking for yourself, that's called freedom. The death of God, that's called progress.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2017 02:05
|
|
|
BrandorKP posted:As a category Christianity contains denominations that range from neo-platonists who know things with science to basically having no epistemology or real philosophy whatsoever. But they do love to pretend that we are all Calvinists for some reason. ..
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2017 05:15
|
|
|
Shut up Shbobdb
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2017 05:15
|
|
|
Or people who are sick and tired of the influence evangelicals have, combined with their stubborness. Logically, abortion has no right to be the massive shitfest of an issue it is - we know that someone's consciousness is stored in the brain, fetuses can't support that until much later, ergo abortions before viability shouldn't matter. It should be a non-issue, if you look at it scientifically. But it's not. Same with climate change - the science is in, the modelling has been done, we've got to deal with the problem. Now to be clear here, I don't think the problem is strictly speaking whatever metaphysical beliefs you have. Some legit tech millionaires think they're in the matrix, whatever, that's just as absurd as any other metaphysics. The problem is that, the way these things are setup, you get two major negative consequences. The first is that organized religion is acting as a kind of 'moral heirarchy'. People, (not God/s, people) at the top give their interpretation of the religious mythos, that interpretation becomes law. There's no critical thinking or debate about policy or outcomes, absent pointless theological bullshit, because by challenging that law, you automatically get threatened with expulsion/exile - a really terrifying and frightening thing when this is your only community. The second consequence is that said leaders tend to be influential people in their own right, either proximate to or themselves rich and powerful. When the chips are down, who's interests are they going to represent? Themselves. I dont really have any problems with pagans or bahai or whatever, and that's not usually what these discussions are ever talking about. Nor is that what the question in the title is referring to. Its refering to this propaganda that somehow the left is intrinsically anti-christian/(whatever majority religion the reader has), and by consequence hates the reader. There's a further implication that this choice is arbitrary or, worse, itself a direct manifestation of whatever stupid metaphysics they have. (And therefore, all rational objections the left have are invalid. It doesn't matter how logical or reasonable they sound, because that's just ~dark magic~ i.e. The only way to stay faithfull is to shut your brain off). The usual comparison here is with either the French or Russian revolutions. The context of those revolutions, and the clerical collaboration with the overthrown regimes, is never acknowledged. Someone, only organized religion is granted the unique positron of being able to act like a 'political actor', yet also able to absolves itself of ever having to accept responsibility for its politically motivated actions. It gets to meddle in and enable the politics it prefers, all the while still holding the illusion that it is 'above such world concerns'. Projecting an image of clean and pure innocence, while dipping its fingers deep in the dirty world of political horse-trading. Its such blatant hypocrisy.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2017 07:16
|
|
|
You can't beat religious zealots at their own game. 'Jesus was a socialist ' comes off as inauthentic, because the people with the moral authority to decide what jesus was or was not, are generally hostile to socialism, or even jesus' stated beliefs on income inequality. Stop thinking of religions as a catalog of beliefs, and start seeing then as power structures. Said power structures are never going to stop being hostile to the left. It doesn't matter if the left uses the right phrases or whatever - they are actively hostile to the goals of emancipation & universal brotherhood, because that is not in their self interest. No amount of flowery language is going to change that. No amount of rational dialogue is going to dislodge that. The people who get to decide what is Christian, and what is not, benefit, personally, from an oppressive society. They will rationalize that oppression as justified, and the opacity/convoluted bullshit of theology lets them do that without encountering cognitive dissonance. Religious dogma is not incidental, it is not arbitrary, it is chosen so as to benefit the dogmatists.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2017 05:45
|
|
|
Bolocko posted:"Stop looking at it like this one uncharitable reductive thing in bad faith, and instead look at it like this other uncharitable reductive thing in bad faith. Pick the most opportunistic distortion." Because that's whay you're suggesting, when you claim that appealing to scripture is actually going to work. It's not, because what any piece of scripture means isn't even determined by what's actually written, but by what is politically convenient at that moment in time.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2017 08:45
|
|
|
The myth of the 'eye of the needle' referring to a gate is like exhibit A here, but it gets worse the more abstract and more contextual you get.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2017 08:48
|
|
|
I was responding to your directly reply of mine. If your answer to the problem of the political integration of religious leadership into the ruling class, is 'the second coming', then you're not ready to talk about this seriously.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2017 09:43
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 05:13 |
|
|
Agag posted:Good points for sure. I think that socialism, by which we ultimately mean Marx, ends up as almost a competing religion and you can't stay loyal to both.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2017 08:33
|
|