Comment on Just 2 people.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 8 months agoA lot of us have been victims of the church(hi); its leaves a bloody trench in its wake.
or tried our hand at activism and been smacked down by religious groups for doing the shit they espouse on paper (not strongly me, in any way I care about) and are understandably bitter.
And it hits harder, because most people grew up hearing these are the paragons of moral virtue, and then then pull this shit.
Plus they won’t shut up and get a ton of special treatment, but almost never use it for good (notice nobody’s talking shit about Harriet Tubman, john brown, or the quakers. Diggers levellers anabaptists, too, not even the ULC or church of Satan). Makes a hell of a target.
rwhitisissle@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Sure, and that’s terrible, but from a different perspective, most of these beliefs and behaviors you’ve identified would persist without religious institutions and their proponents formalizing them as policy. Religion can give people a way to justify a lot of the terrible beliefs that they had internalized anyway, because it’s part of the dominant culture. But misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and xenophobia aren’t caused by religion or religious beliefs, any more so than atheism or agnosticism causes people to be tolerant or accepting of others in spite of their differences. And that’s a foundational premise to many of the criticisms of religion I see on Lemmy. But it’s just objectively wrong. If you want to look at a historical example of the productive power of religion, look no further than the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), which was one of, if not the most significant, political and religious organizations of the Civil Rights movement. It helped to organize people into a fighting force for real progressive change and it did so by way of lines of communication between black congregations across the country. For even more examples of religion as a tool of social progress, I recommend the wikipedia page on Liberation Theology.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Missing the point.
rwhitisissle@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I already mentioned that shoehorning criticism of religion into conversations that were unrelated came across as bitter and myopic. Your point was, essentially, that a lot of people are bitter towards Christianity, which is implied by my own observation. If you have nothing to add beyond restating what was already said by the person to whom you are replying, then I would suggest saving yourself the time in the future and just clicking the up arrow. Or doing literally nothing. Either of those are fine options.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I was commenting after thatthat had been done. Youre arguing with the wrong person, regardless of how I feel about your points. I’m going to be the bigger person and leave now
Then come back, after a cup of tea, and write this part.
You can be all manner of shitty without religion, but religion as a framework is generally (and they’re not all the same) a tool for getting people to accept and do awful shit-partially, I admit, a (violent) selection pressure, but when you believe blatantly magical bullshit, you’re more easily manipulated against your stated conscience and general interest, and the people willing to do that tend to be the biggest bastards. Its also a mostly static model of reality youre very emotionally attached to, with no or problematic adjustment mechanisms, and those are always dangerous, even when they’re as or more accurate than other options (which none of the big ones are).
Religion doesn’t determine good/bad, but it’s got its finger on the needle. That’s not to say it hasn’t produced things I respect; Spinoza, Hegel, guy whose name I can never remember how to spell who wrote ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’, but I’m not sure how much any of those are attributable to it, and a lot (most? One is too many) of those holy wars (including the worst ongoing genocide I’m aware of at time if writing) serve(d) little/no material interest, of anyone.
So I’m only saying this because you basically walked up and asked me. But also I’m queer and it makes me feel very unsafe. Its a kind of volatility, if someone is, say, any of the abrahamic faiths, that they can just… Turn, almost instantly, for reasons I can’t argue or persuade or accommodate, for no real reason, against my very existence. Ive lost a lot of people to that. And it fucking sucks. No nonreligious person did this to me until ~2016. It took fascism, which I would argue is a (particularly bad) religion.