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SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 5 days ago
If you go to the roots of it the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) see the natural world as corrupt and a barrier to god. Nature was something to be “conquered”, human impulses are sinful and sexuality is especially impulsive and therefore sinful. It encourages all kinds of stuff like adultery, kids born out of wedlock (a big problem back then), and STDs (generally considered a divine punishment for sex). Clothing also denoted social rank and was even enforced by law.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 5 days ago
That’s not what their roots are, that’s the branches that became prevalent in every one mentioned (Judaism least of all, but with the state of Israel existing there are attempts to make Jewish religion suck just as badly as others).
Say, gnostic sects of Christianity and Judaism had this sometimes inverted, sometimes different from how you describe it. Natural world was considered wonderful, but bigger than our existence, in some, and the way to divine was to take off your mortal existence, like clothes, and embrace it in full. In Judaism it’s almost mainstream that natural sexuality is good and actually sacred when in marriage, and only outside of marriage is it bad, but not on the degree of murder or theft.
I’m not very knowledgeable on Islam, but I think even Shia Islam is not so cruel on that part, though since Iran is Shia, I guess nobody will believe me. Alawis being massacred right now have a pretty tolerant to life religion, and Druze too, though they have that weird relationship with death similar to Latin American Catholics. Smaller branches like Nizari-Ismaili are very tolerant. It’s just that Islamic mainstream of today is barbaric genocidal Wahhabism or Salafism, and generally Sunni Islam is not nice.
My point was - restrictive rules correlate somehow with strong organization, so such branches win the struggle for power.