My point is that many "all religions are bad" folks couldn't tell you a thing about any religion other then Christianity. They just assume all religions are the same, they are all like Christianity. Their Atheism is informed only by Christianity and so they are inadvertently Christian supremacists.
It's important to understand that you CANNOT lump all religions together into one big whole, which is where many militant Capital A Atheists get in trouble. They tend to see all religion as Christianity. And it's NOT. So much Atheism is just informed by Christianity and it results in bigotry.
Yup. Judaism is Christianity - Jesus. Buddhism is Christianity with Buddha instead of Jesus. I have no idea how they even conceive of indigenous religions, that's right, they don't. They dismiss them as being not complex enough for that. 🙄
Oh god don't get me started on those people referring to "Judeo-Christian" ideals or "Judeo-Christian" beliefs when we all know damn well they just mean Christian
Especially when they're also doing it to exclude Muslims,
who are arguably closer to core Judaism than Christians are.
And when they're doing it to assert cultural supremacy so they have an excuse to promote politics that violate the beliefs of both Judaism and Christianity.
And in the end it is all disingenuous. It isn't even honest to talk about Christian ethics or Christian values as if there were one clear answer to either of those things. It is always used as a normalizing shield to mean "MY ethics" or "MY values."
Y'all ALL cultures have been influenced by others. That does not mean Jesus is cobbled together from Greek myth anymore than that other religions are just versions of Christianity. YES Christianity shares some similarities w other 1st cen Med mystery cults. Doesn't mean Jesus is Heracles + dudes 🤦♀️
It doesn't simply share similarities. Those similarities were put there on purpose.
To attract local practitioners, who were, for the most part, Roman pagans.
Again, you speak with certainty about something we can only apply conjecture to. Is it possible? Yup. Are there theories around this? Indeed! Are there equally valid theories that construct Jesus ENTIRELY on a Mosaic lens? Yup. Without any of the authors available to comment: interpretation!
way too many people think Judaism is just some sort of "christianity lite" - like they can't conceptualize that we do things for entirely different reasons. see, e.g., explaining that we don't proselytize: bsky.app/profile/very...
One of the things that confuses a lot of people with Christian backgrounds is that Jews generally do not proselytize to non-Jews. So any “displays” of religious identity for Jews will necessarily serve a much more internal purpose than, say, the display of Christian symbols.
It's not an accident, either, it's a product of centuries of active reinforcement of Christian Hegemony that has been so successful the average USian or W. European literally cannot differentiate between 'of actual Christian origin' and 'secular culture' until/unless someone points it out to them.
I used to work in an office that was all Atheists, one evangelical, and me (Greek pagan), so I read some Dawkins to better understand their arguments, and even on 2007 it was OBVIOUS how Christian that sonofagun was. Also how knee-jerk all his arguments were. And also that he was an ass.
Yeah there’s also Hitchens who’s somehow even worse ;)
More seriously, there’s a difference between someone who doesn’t believe in religion and a capital-A Atheist.
Lol yes 😂
And there is! It's complicated. I think all religions have harmed folks, either institutionally, by making parts of the religion law, or by pressure of the peer group, or just by the teachings of the religion itself. I think this is often conflated, while these are different processes
... that have happened /been done by different religions over different times in different places. I think much of that harm has more to do with power than religion,but the religion is often the justification.
Lol.
But in a thread on how you shouldn't say all religions are bad, coming up with the point that one influential atheist is bad and so seeming to argue that therefore all atheist(s arguments) are bad... I dunno, it seems ironic.
The subject here is culturally Christian atheists, and I'm FINE saying all culturally Christian atheists are *starting* from a place of profound ignorance because they're steeped in a hegemony like a fish that's never heard the word "water". Some learn, but most don't. 1/
Most of them are running the same programming as Xtians: there is only one truth and everyone who doesn’t subscribe to that truth is bad and wrong.
I have yet to see a "debate" between a culturally Xtian atheist and a Jewish person that wasn't 100% about correcting the former's ignorance. 2/2
Claiming that all organized religion is harmful when your reference point for 'organized religion' is Christianity is, in fact, a way of supporting Christian supremacy and supersessionism.
I admittedly used to be one of those kind of guys, especially since a lot of what led me to atheism was podcasts by guys like that, and what helped me out of it was working in libraries in Black neighborhoods and being reminded how much religion was tied to the Civil Rights movement.
We're told how MLK and other leaders being ordained ministers, but it really doesn't sink in until you look into the history just how much churches were part of helping to organize the movement.
Not to say there aren't abuses or problems, but to dismiss religion entirely dismisses things like that.
Also, just listening to people from other cultures and faiths talk about themselves and their history put into perspective how much of my worldview for most of my life was based on Christianity despite me no longer practicing in the religion itself. Shame more people don't just shut up and listen.
Also the whole "all religions are bad because they are basically Christianity except that Islam is extra bad" people make my head spin *even more*, somehow.
Stating "All Religions Are Bad" on its face is disingenuous to people who do good works because their faith compels them. I'm an agnostic, I have doubts about God-like beings' existence or if their existence matters. What matters is the observable universe here around us and what we do while alive.
And these good works, do they do them without harming themselves (like burning themselves out)? Does everyone benefit, or are you as a recepient forced to follow their faith? How "good" are those works, really? I know this mostly from Christian examples, but do often they come with strings attached
Curse the limitations of character limits but I'm not here to nitpick or debate.
Some do charitable acts because their relationship with their religion tells them it's good. To dismiss them by saying "all religion is bad" therefore is a slap in the face of such persons. That's all I was driving at.
Just to add a different perspective, the reason I was into religion wasn’t the strict laws or the promise of a perfect afterlife; it was these amazing stories that inspired me to be a better open-minded person and even create stories of my own. Besides that, the Universe itself had better lessons!
I wasn't saying that they need religion to do good work but that for some having that religion is a motivator for those acts. I'm not endorsing or condemning such persons, but stating facts and that we shouldn't be so harsh on people of faith whose faith motivates them to act charitably.
People are basically self-oriented, and someone still has to teach us right from wrong, and we have to find the reasoning compelling.
Religious faith is just that plus occasional eternal consequences. I no longer find the promise of heaven or hell compelling, but the morality is still there.
We have morality as a species, as the basis of something moral to us are avoiding action that hinder our species' strengths; that of living in social collectives.
Our powers of language has put those morals to words, but they exist without religion, and are for the most part hard coded into humanity
Yes, but then I always question what the actual motivation is.
Do they do good things because their religion tells them it's good? Or do they recognise that independently?
Is it because they believe they'll be rewarded for it, like creating good karma? How genuine would that make their actions?
I'm not sure it really matters. Even people without faith often do good things because they find it rewarding. At its very core, it's still self-oriented.
We do good things because they make us feel good. We don't do bad things because they make us feel bad.
But then I'd prefer people who do good things without faith because then I know they feel rewarded by simply doing good, and not something ulterior.
In the end it doesn't really matter, because the result is still good, but it does colour my opinion of the individual doing it.
