Religion is ignorance and refusal to face reality.
As long as people behave, treat others, and vote according to the sacred scriptures written by a crackhead thousands of years ago, and their influence shapes the world around me and puts a limit to my freedom, then there will be no distinction between religion and extremism. The lesser of two evils is still evil.
I’m a pansexual protestant Christian skepticist, who has not once tried to convert anyone and votes for far left parties. Please enlighten me how I’m inherently ignorant and taking your freedom.
I don’t get what your sexuality has to do with anything, but anyhow.
Why do you have to be {insert cult-membership here} if you believe in something? Don’t dare to believe {whatever} for yourself? Do you need to be told what to believe and how? You don’t make it sound like that, yet you are christian, hence member of said cult? I don’t get the correlation. Why does one rarely hear people say “i believe in some god, but I’m not a member of blahblah”?
Somewhere along the line churches have gotten it all wrong, along with supporting corrupt politics. So it’s them that needs fixin is how I see it
Unfortunately I don’t think you will be able to actually getting anything from them. They clearly already look down on you for believing what you believe.
Care to back your statement that ‘religion’ is ignorant? No one has any Idea what happens after death or are you enlightened enough to know and which case I would like you to tell us, which religion is taking away your freedom? You have the choice, you can follow any religion or leave it
Care to back your statement that ‘religion’ is ignorant?
You can just go back and read your own comments, makes a pretty strong case.
No one has any Idea what happens after death
What happens after is that brain stops functioning, as a result of that, your body starts to rot. Nothing else happens. Your brain, that I argue is the real you, stops functioning.
which religion is taking away your freedom?
My parents circumcised my penis when I didn’t know what they were doing, they permanently stole a part of me; and as a result of that crap, my sex life is ruined forever. They took away my freedom because of you shitheads who are ruining our world by influencing people into accepting religion. You guys have the audacity to claim that people have a choice after indoctrinating children of religions so that once they are adult they follow your religion.
If you are so about choices, then make sure your kids don’t get to know about superstitious beliefs until they are an adult and only then tell them about your fantasies that you believe that a bearded man is watching us from the sky. I bet your kid is going to think you’ve gone crazy.
Religion is not a useful tool and it’s not good in general
Are you kidding me? Religion is supremely useful in controlling and exploiting people. It promises all of the wonderment and fantasticnous you can imagine while also promising the absolute worst nightmares you can imagine, and all you have to do is pay and pray, and the prayers are optional.
“Work in service to your masters and you will be rewarded after you’re dead. Defy your masters and you will be punished for eternity” is the perfect tool of control for the uneducated/unintelligent.
Religion is not a useful tool and it’s not good in general
People who are active in religious congregations tend to be happier and more civically engaged than either religiously unaffiliated adults or inactive members of religious groups, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data from the United States and more than two dozen other countries.
You can’t fight either directly. Fight stupdity and both go away.
I think the argument for moderation is the worst in the religious context.
Pascal was right about his Wager in one way. If god exists, it should change everything for you. Especially the christian one. Eternity in pain or pleasure outweighs everything.
If that is your reality, how is failing god moderation?
Seriously if you don’t want people to die from cancer at all, how is that not extermist?
Are reference point defines “moderation”? Look at us vs eu politics.
Even if you want to define moderation as the average or median position in a society, then Nazism can be moderation if you get enough Nazi together.
Wake up, my fellow extremist.
Pascal’s wager doesn’t even attempt to make a philosophical argument for God’s existence, and it only works if you assume a singular god. Of course in this case it’s Christianity.
So let’s say someone agrees that it’s better to worship a god on the off chance they exist than to not do so and end up in hell, now what? Where do I go from here? You’ve opened up a can of worms because now I have to decide what the logical choice is (since PW only relies purely on logic) in which god to choose.
The “logical choice” only works when you have a singular alternative, but if you have a dozen different gods to choose from then everything falls apart. The only logical thing to do is to worship the god with the worst hell, on the off chance that they are the one true God. At least you spared yourself from that.
In the end though the wager essentially only sees/works with atheism and one religion, which is why it’s so flawed. The moment you introduce multiple religions to a coin toss logic scenario it fails to work.
You typed so much and understood so little.
I don’t think pascal’s wager works. Which is why I said, I said he is right about one thing which is the infinites reward fucking up everything. IF!!! there is a god, and he rewards and punishes you like pascal believed, then everything becomes irrelevant compared to it. Failing to follow god would be an extremist action. Unacceptable due to the unmeasurable damage it would cause. Think about it, in an atheistic world, a Terror Attack is bad, like really bad, but the damage is finite. In pascal’s world, disbelief has worse consequences. The harm is bigger, to a literally infinite amount. For pascal, your disbelief should be worse than bombing a Christian church while there is a service.
You are talking about different and compatible critiques of pascal’s wager, and your condescension at the beginning of the post is unwarranted because he is correct, just not talking about the same thing you are.
“extremism” is what neoliberals invented to liken egalitarians with Nazis to make themselves look good.
Well that’s certainly a hot take!
No, we should be fighting religion.
Fighting Religion on its own fixes Extremism as a biproduct and nobody can convince me otherwise.
Ironic.
Does it though? The issues that feed extremism will still be there and find a new outlet.
Mussolini
Tbf extremism itself isn’t wrong. Any perspective can be considered extreme if it is too different from the status quo. Different isn’t necessarily bad.
Granted religious extremism is typically far right reactionary ideology which is bad so I’m not really defending it. However, I find that a lot of people, especially Americans, call anything that radically challenges the current system extreme and therefore bad.
Tbf extremism itself isn’t wrong
The same can be said about religion. Less than 20% of Americans identify as Atheist or Agnostic, the far right extremists do not have support from 80% of the population.
I wouldn’t have disagreed. I’m not against religion
We should be fighting both
Do people willing to live in climate extremes count as extremist? /S
Tell me you are a Christian who is sad that people keep calling out how Christians have vitriolic hatred for their fellow man with telling me you are a Christian.
Also anyone get a strong feeling that by extremist, OP means Muslims not Christofacist in the US
- I am not a christian lol
- I mean extremism by any person who uses religion as an excuse, not any particular one
All religions are extreme.
so 80% of the population are extremists?
Is 80% religious practioners? I mean I probably show up in some statistics as protestant.
I probably show up in some statistics as protestant.
According to the guy I replied to that makes you an extremist.
If you look up “% people in (your area) religious” you’ll find roughly 80% identify as one religion or another. If religion is the problem it’s 80% of the population.
But I am not religious. So seemed not so reliable stats
You just said you were Protestant
Both. Both. Definitely both.
If extremist = trying to convince others, who are not interested, to join you relligion, then I agree
The problem is that they aren’t trying to convince anyone to join their religion, they are trying to remove the choice by changing laws to reflect their religion. They could give two shits about if you believe, as long as you obey.
Then it has nothing to do with religion. Religion is just the excuse to gain power over others.
Well then you should not try to convince people to accept atheism as well🤷🏻
Edit: This is not a serious counter argument in case it isn’t clear, ofc no one is going to every individual person, events and stalls are put up for this purpose, so it is obv. that the only one who will go there are the ones who are interested, there should be no force involved
I have never had an athiest knock on my door and tell me I needed to stop believing in God or I am going to suffer for eternity.
The thing convincing people to be athiests isn’t other athiests. Facts and logic are the missionaries for athieism.
Trying to save a person by pulling them out of the cave of ignorance isn’t the same thing as trying to convince them that the boogyman wants them to stay in the dark. This is an enormous false equivalency.
Trying to save a person by pulling them out of the cave of ignorance
A religious person has the exact same argument…
Yes, I’m aware. The difference is in that one of our beliefs is founded in the observable world and the other delusion. One holds up to scrutiny and the other does not.
The difference is in that one of our beliefs is founded in the observable world and the other delusion. One holds up to scrutiny and the other does not.
Scientific scrutiny shows there are health benefits to belonging to a religious organization. The only thing that “holds up to scrutiny” is “I’m right and you’re wrong” which, again, the religious person also believes.
So instead of having “rules for thee but not for me”, maybe everyone should not be trying to force their beliefs on others.
Assuming we’ve read the same study, that study also showed the exact same benefits you’re describing could be achieved with regular yoga or meditation; it seems to me the real benefit is getting out of your own head and devoting yourself to something other than your internal monologue for awhile.
But beyond that, any health benefits are entirely an aside to whether or not the philosophy itself holds up to scrutiny, which no religion I’ve encountered does.
Finally, I don’t believe in rules for thee, not me. They are welcome to present their beliefs in the marketplace of ideas as well. I believe in the power of veracity; I am not challenged by false ideals. I’m not anti-proselytizing, i believe in proselytizing the proselytizers.
Neither, fight the conditions underlying both.
Every time someone uses extremist as a pejorative
Sounds like a pretty extremist view there buddy puts on my fighting skirt
I’m sorry, no hate or incivility intended towards you as a person, but this idea is pandering centrist bullshit.
Woah.
Centrist?
EDIT: Tried to make a joke and it seems to have missed the mark. Centrist was the least surprising thing in that comment to be shocked by, I thought, so only being shocked by that I thought would have come off as funny. Poe’s Law prevails lol
I mean, yeah. On one hand, you have pretty much all of Conservatism which is empowered largely by religious ideology, and is propelling the West full-speed towards fascism. On the other hand, you have people’s freedom to believe in an authoritarian skydaddy who gives them permission to seek dominion over other people without being challenged.
This take sits right in the middle: “Yes, extremism is largely a result of religious indoctrination, but don’t hurt people’s feelings by challenging their beliefs.”
No, sorry. Challenging people’s bullshit supernatural beliefs is very method in which we attack extremism. If those beliefs justify cruelty, there is no shame in telling a person that their beliefs are bullshit and their behavior is reprehensible.
There is also a modern definition of fascism as “Inequality through mythological and essentialized identity”. Basically you foster belief that because of some mythos you are special (gender, ethnicity, religion), and that allows you to deserve more or discriminate against the others. Religions that demand blind faith are contradict modern science more or less have to foster part of this thinking. Not that you need religion for this but it’s close. And not all extremism is fascist ofc.
Yes, because it’s basically the “hey guys, not all cops are bad” take but applied to religion.
Like yeah obviously don’t be a hateful asshole and persecute religious people, obviously, but pretending there is no value in tearing down religious structures is apathetic centrist enabling bullshit. We should shine a light wherever ignorance dwells, not turn a blind eye to it.
