All religions are shit, some are more shit than others. Just depends on the degree to which they impede human progress by imposing arbitrary rules on their followers, offering a haven for abusers within their leadership structures and interfering with politics in general (but particularly where education policy is concerned). Negative value across the board.
100% agree.
Hijacking the top comment to suggest everyone read the book The Dark Side of Christian History by Ellerbe. It’s really good. It’s super short but does a great job highlighting how at every point in the Church’s history, whenever they had to make a decision, they always followed whichever direction led to more political and social power for the church at the expense of spiritual enlightenment, justice, truth (obviously), or human lives.
I read 1984 at the end of last year and man it’s crazy how much Orwell basically described life under the Church during the Dark/Middle Ages at the height of it’s political power.
Christianity is not inherently better than Islam, it just behaves better nowadays.
And the reason it behaves better is not something inherent to christianity, but because it got dragged, kicking and screaming, into the age of enlightenment and beaten up with education, democratisation and secularisation until it had to bend or break and it’s adherents decided to bent.
Islam is still more radical because it faced less opposition to it’s ideas from within. The islamic world needs it’s own age of enlightenment where radical tensions between religion and an educated public reduce the influence of religion on that public.
And I don’t think this has much to do with Islam being younger. Islamic natural philosophers are behind some of the most important discoveries in the sciences and the Islamic Golden Age ended around 200 years, before the Renaissance even started.
If the Islamic Golden Age had not declined, today Christianity might have been the more radical religion and we might have seen a mostly secularized islamic world. It is mostly through chance that history unfolded differently. And with Project 2025 in the US, we might still see a return to barbarism and departure from secular enlightenment in the most powerfull nation puppeteered by christian extremists.
It doesn’t behave better. It’s coerced into being less harmful than it used to be, due to its irrelevance in the daily lives of millions of people coming from places with a Christian history, and more secular legal frameworks, which, you’re right, where fought for tooth and nail.
Give Christianity a finger, and it’ll take the whole arm. It’s still as dangerous as it’s ever been, but it’s more contained than it used to be. Cf Poland, France, the Southern US, Russia on issues like abortion, feminism, LGBT rights, and even geopolitical stuff like the support of Israel thought to be a step towards the apocalypse.
The Southern US Y’all Qaeda types are proof that Christianity is just as backwards as Islam is, when given the opportunity.
Edit: I’m not opposed to you, I’m just adding more thougts to yours. Sorry if this sounded adverserial.
It doesn’t behave better. It’s coerced into being less harmful than it used to be, due to its irrelevance in the daily lives of millions of people coming from places with a Christian history, and more secular legal frameworks
Oh absolutely, that’s how i meant it. 100% agree.
Not the OP, but you’re not coming across as adversarial. Those of us who aren’t wedded to an identity over common sense can disagree without feeling attacked. However, I don’t disagree with you. Everything both of you said is true, with your comment making both more true, if that makes sense.
I took my partner to a catholic church to check out the ceremony (she’s from a non-christian country). We’d toured it before because it’s very grand and impressive from an architectural standpoint. I try to view it through her eyes, as though for the first time (I didn’t grow up catholic, but I’d been to many varied-christian masses). What a bizarre ceremony. Any people consider it completely normal. This reflection has nothing to do with the original topic. It’s just something that crossed my mind as I typed this out.
Islam will be much harder to reform because it claims to be THE FINAL revelation. There is no-one allowed to come with new ideas because of that. Add to it the barbaric penalty for leaving the religion and you’ve got a hot mess.
All religions are shit, but Islam is worse at its present state.
I left the church so i could do shit like this tho
Hey, how you doing?
All religions are shit.
What atrocities have mainstream Buddhists participated in? I know there have been Buddhist terror groups but it really doesn’t seem like the norm. Aggressive and greedy people use religion as a tool, some religions are more likely to engage in violence than others though.
I doubt you’ll get a response. You’ve made your position clear in your statement: any actrocities referenced will be declared an act by a terror group outside the norm.
What do you mean, how is that even a position? There have been crusades lead by Christians numerous times though, Islamic conquest, Jewish Zionist terror groups, a lot of history to be referred to, when within Buddhism it is much rarer. One historical tale is of Ashoka, a powerful emperor in the Indian subcontinent who supposedly after converting to Buddhism spent most of his efforts spreading teachings about kindness and non-violence. Buddhist principles of harmony and non-violence helped unite Japan, bringing about relative peace after centuries of conflict.
Buddhists in Tibet have been involved in perpetrating atrocities, both against each other and individuals of other religions. The historical context reveals instances of violence and oppression within Tibet, including the feudal serfdom system that subjected serfs to harsh conditions and exploitation by their owners, who were often monks and aristocrats.
Moreover, the involvement of Buddhists in violence is not limited to Tibet but extends to other regions as well. For example, during the Cold War era in Southeast Asia, Thai Buddhists were complicit in anti-communist mass killings under a nationalist ideology that aligned with Buddhism’s principles. This involvement in political violence highlights how Buddhism has been weaponized by political authorities to consolidate power. The history of Buddhist violence underscores the complex relationship between religion and politics, showcasing how religious beliefs can be manipulated to justify or incite acts of aggression. Some notable examples include the mass killing of Ajivikas in India, the violence in Myanmar against Muslim Rohingyas.
I guess what you were trying to say was that Buddhism wasn’t as powerful as Christianity to reach the scale of Crusades.
You are correct that what I said could just reflect the fact that Buddhism hasn’t reached the same level of political consolidation as Christianity. But there have been Buddhist empires throughout history.
You do point out another aspect that I was reflecting on though, that these religions are used as tools by nationalists or other political authorities. In my view it is not the religion itself that enables or supports these atrocities but the centralized power that these organizations are able to hold. Human societies have had religion for all of known history so it is difficult to thoroughly prove that these societies would be more or less violent without religion of any type. If they didn’t have a religious group driving the masses to be pawns of their violence, it could be a trade group like the Dutch East India Company.
i mean, to some degree, any act of terror can be deemed outside the norm specified. I think realistically. As long as a group has a tangential terror rating lower than the average human populous that’s probably a good thing.
Myanmar.
“I know there have been Buddhist terror groups but…” the joke writes itself 😂
Buddhism has extremely good PR, but ultimately it is just that: PR. You can find messages of peace, compassion, and violence in plenty of religions to higher or lesser degrees, but as soon as they become large enough to be politically relevant, one leader or another will resort to violence sooner or later, and will take advantage of their followers’ faith to justify it.
As for Buddhism specifically, this is a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence#Regional_examples
In ancient China, Buddhist organizations also had a history of annexing land, oppressing people, and competing with secular governments.
Religion has always been a tool for conservatives to wield power over normal people.
You say that as if conservatism has always been. Its a relatively recent phenomenon. Religion, at its earliest historically, has been a function of community; and essential service to strengthen a community’s bonds. Eventually it was used by the ruling class as a guise for divine right, to legitimize the power of those in power. Then it has evolved into what it is today, a cash grab. Of course this is very surface level, but my point still stands.
“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.” - Christopher Hitchens
Heh. Got me!
That’s the leather flag they’re flying
Both are shit but at least one of them grew up a little and stopped doing this shit
Not a big student of modern history, are you?
“Srebrenica massacre, slaying of more than 7,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) boys and men, perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, in July 1995. In addition to the killings, more than 20,000 civilians were expelled from the area—a process known as ethnic cleansing. The massacre, which was the worst episode of mass murder within Europe since World War II” source
The christians were committing so many murders of non-christians, because they were non-christians, NATO intervened to protect the non-christians.
You could’ve said that without being a dick.
Oh get off your fucking high horse mate. That was some of the tamest shit ever, oh no they pointed out the user was ignorant of the topic they were talking about and didn’t mollycoddle it in a layer of feel good compliments, the fucking horror.
And than you come along and call them a dick.
You’re absolutely right, and for that I apologize.
I get frustrated that people make strong statements denying the suffering of others. However, because of how I said it, I’m sure I create more friction that needed. Thank you for calling me out on it. I’ll remember this in the future and try to hold my frustration in check.
Did NATO intervene in NK in 1992 when muslims were killing christians? No, cause those muslims were feral cousins of Turkey, and Turkey is part of NATO. Just in that case christians got lucky and managed to defend themselves.
I think you suck at modern history too.
Please look at the thread title, the post I responded to, and then ask yourself if your response applies.
Applies to statement I was answering.
Okay, I’ll explain your error.
@Jimmydean1366@lemmynsfw.com was referring to christians that “stopped doing this shit”.
You said:
Did NATO intervene in NK in 1992 when muslims were killing christians? No
So how does your comment refute that christians “stopped doing this shit” when I posted the historical reference to Bosnia? Your comment doesn’t. What other people besides christians is irrelevant in this line of conversation. Your comment about muslims doesn’t apply. We’re not playing “but others did it too!” I was responding directly to the comment about christians still doing this.
Linking to the serb / Bosnian war is kinda cheating.
That’s an absolutely atrocious event, which indeed was caused by christians, no doubt. But that whole region was awash with every possible flavor of violence.
Well yes religions tend to throw areas into waves of violence.
In fairness, it’s also just a tool to justify the violence against others. “No, I don’t want your territory, that would be bad. I want to follow God command, and if there’s riches by accident…”
In fairness, it’s also just a tool to justify the violence against others. “No, I don’t want your territory, that would be bad. I want to follow God command, and if there’s riches by accident…”
That seemed clear when I first learned of European imperialism. We learned about Spanish conquest of the new world, we would study their reasons for going to the west. Quoting the period they would say they needed to spread religion, but also that there happened to be a fabled city of gold that they had to find. It’s no different today. Authoritarian governments will use whatever means to spread their culture and dominance. Religion is a convenient tool, if properly studied though how can it actually justify any atrocities? Every major religion has specific guidelines about not killing innocent people, not doing ‘evil’, helping the needy, etc.
It’s not that religion got better, it became weaker. And at this point there a lot of people in the West who don’t subscribe to it hard enough to ignore attrocities. It’s important to know it’s not individual faith, it’s institution that kisses, sloppy style with corporations and governments and supports or even inspires their agenda. Islam in the East could be powerless just like christianity elsewhere if it wasn’t married to power-hungry reactionary governments. And even buddhists, who has a white-as-a-bedsheet reputation in the West, did a genocide of muslims in Myanmar. At this point I believe even My Little Pony can become the proclaimed reason for genocide and torture if some congregation of power and force put it on as a mask. And it’s a shame that most sceptics who aren’t into that BS are less centralized, cooperative, than religious shmucks by their nature.
It actually got better before it got weaker. All those Catholic institutions we tie to the bad parts about Christianity in mass culture (a-and in Sabatini books, et cetera) were actively and productively working against barbaric shit, also influencing legal practices in non-religious matters as a result.
I upvoted your opinion as a legit one, but I don’t really agree with that. Even after christianity got somehow okay, we had these fellow christians massacre american natives and roping indians to cannons en masse as they were thought of as barbarians. Even in Iraq, Chechnya, Afganistan, there were still traces of this dehumanization not only by racism, but by religion too. At least that’s what I’ve heard from soldiers who served in these places themselves. It’s hard to rationally dissect religious hate from racism, but they usually go hand in hand now. We won’t, hopefully, slay another thousand of white Yugoslavian people over it, but for brown persons it’s an open question. Still, at least some progress.
we had these fellow christians massacre american natives and roping indians to cannons en masse as they were thought of as barbarians.
Which Catholic clergy was formally protesting all the time, expressing horror and disgust in official documents etc. Islamic religious authorities are now, today, at best split on what ISIS was doing.
It’s hard to rationally dissect religious hate from racism, but they usually go hand in hand now.
Yes, it’s just that among “brown people” non-Muslims are more often victimized by Muslims than vice versa.
I understand that in historically Christian societies people want to clear their own conscience first, and American Christian supporters of Israel are a good example of how it looks when they don’t, but Islam is a bigger problem than Christianity.
Comparatively, yes, even for themselves, but we had a bad time trying to meddle in their politics and are partially responsible for another wave of radical uprising.
Is it though a correct way to view everything muslim as bad and christianity as miles better than this? Giving christianity an unequal treatment is asking for some MAGA shitheads to overturn another handful of human rights. They are insane bigots who use religion as their tool too.
Yes, it’s just that among “brown people” non-Muslims are more often victimized by Muslims than vice versa.
That’s known, right. In my lovely country ch3chen forces even steal people on the streets if they are dare to speak up, if they don’t want to marry a picked partner or god-forbid if they are gay. If it wasn’t allowed by my own federal gov, they couldn’t have stolen a poor girl from fucking Moscow that’s not heard of for a year+ after that. But it’s not even on ch3chens, the inaction and enabling of our own forces if what makes me angry the most, as with other governments exchanging political prisoners with insane states.
and are partially responsible for another wave of radical uprising.
Not sure if “partially” is even needed here, mohajeds are Muslim Socialists sired by the USSR and the West initially, who grew out of control, Al-Qaeda were sired by the USA and grew out of control, Ba’ath (Arab NS give or take) was born of many things, none particularly Arab or Muslim.
Something very basic, barbaric, simple and universal for that part of the world had to emerge.
Is it though a correct way to view everything muslim as bad and christianity as miles better than this?
No, but this principle shouldn’t be tied to constants anyway.
If it wasn’t allowed by my own federal gov, they couldn’t have stolen a poor girl from fucking Moscow that’s not heard of for a year+ after that.
They have kidnapped people from Armenia in the past. Recently there was a news article that another such attempt failed, but the beginning was pretty wild - over some connections or acquaintances girl’s uncle simply told some people in the Armenian police to arrest her and they fscking did.
And I think I’ve read about Chechens being kidnapped even in the EU.
But it’s not even on ch3chens, the inaction and enabling of our own forces if what makes me angry the most, as with other governments exchanging political prisoners with insane states.
Russia is one country in the world where minarchism (the second letter is “i”) would be absolutely for the best. Faking of everything seems to be so ingrained in the society that only a Darwinist mechanism can help.
One is the single largest pedophile ring in the last 2 millenia.
Christianity was FORCED to stop this bullshit, because otherwise it’d fracture into even more different doctrines than it already has.
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If you don’t think radical atheism isn’t like radical Christianity and radical Islam, you haven’t studied the history of the various communist countries of the world.
People who are absolutely certain they are right can do some fucked up shit.
Do you mean anti-theism? If you’re talking about people that actively oppose religion. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in theism.
I’m also not sure how communism relates either, unless you’re talking about secular societies that were communist and committed atrocities, such as Soviet Russia under Stalin. In Soviet Russia the state belief was atheism, but again, in their pursuit to eliminate religion I would argue that is really anti-theism.
I can agree with everything you said here, but read most of the posts and comments in atheist communities and tell me most of them aren’t at least somewhat anti-theist.
By this logic, the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t so much about Christianity, as it was about anti-Islam and anti-Judaism.
I’d say the inquisition was more about decolonization. Decolonization isn’t always a pretty thing.
Antisemitism is usually about finding a convenient scapegoat for problems which is mostly about horrible people solidifying power more than anything else.
Religion is often warped to gain political power which is why a separation between church and state is so important.
Whatever belief or non belief anyone has isn’t the problem … it’s when those individuals want to impose this beliefs or non beliefs onto other people whether those other people want it or not.
I really don’t care what other people think, that’s their life. The problems start when people start thinking that they have a right to force their ideas or thoughts onto other people.
Add up the populations of the countries where atheism is imposed on people.
More people have had atheism imposed upon them than any religion.
Add up all the people that have lived over the past 4,000 years … wars, genocides, conflicts, violent revolutions have all led to countless dead because of religions.
You might be surprised to learn that the world population hasn’t historically been as high is it is in modern times for more most of those 4000 years.
So I got at least a couple of billion people having their beliefs oppressed by atheists. You can now go through the exercise of going over historical documents and adding up the number of people that have been oppressed by religions throughout history, and let me know when you reach 2 billion and I’ll start doing a more accurate accounting of the number of people oppressed by atheists. Because when you consider the populations of the Soviet Union and China and there being multiple generations living under atheist rule, It’s likely the number is significantly higher than 2 billion. But I doubt you can get to that very conservative estimate by looking through all of history.
Sorry to be the one to break this to you, but atheists have been the absolute worst people to have held power in all of history. The facts just don’t line up with what you believe.
I’m counting the dead not the oppressed … atheists haven’t been around long enough to rack up the same murderous numbers of death and destruction as theists have over the past few thousand years.
The Soviets and communist Chinese (both systems I disagree with and do not support) never launched full fledged pogroms, death camps or extermination programs of killing in order to get rid of religious groups … they oppressed and abused religious groups and maybe even killed often … but never to the level of industrial killing … the Nazis did that and even though Nazis may be identified as atheists, they had a political / ideological belief system that was more identifiable as a religion than a lack of belief
The only system in history that has any blood thirst for killing opponents has been and still is religious based.
Are we not including the numbers that died in various famines resulting in atheists thinking that because they aren’t religious they can just decide how science works? That’s like half a billion deaths from incompetent atheist governing.
I mean if you’re going to consider the Nazi movement to be a religious movement and not a nationalistic fascist movement then I think it’s fair to consider the famines under atheist rule to be religiously motivated too. Not nearly as much of a stretch as you’re making considering the writings by Trofim Lysenko.
The only system in history that has any blood thirst for killing opponents has been and still is religious based.
Pol Pot has entered the chat. You ever hear of the Killing Fields in Cambodia, son? Some fucked up shit, maybe you’ll learn about it when you’re ready.
More people have had atheism imposed upon them than any religion.
This might be the most retarded thing I’ve ever read. Congrats!
Ha! Look at this dude and his radical atheism!
Imagine an actual violent war broke out between Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans. They are bombing each other’s conventions, and shooting each other in the streets. From the outside, you’re just like, why are they acting like this? None of it is even real! Why can’t you just let each other enjoy science fiction? Why do they have to like YOURS better?
Atheists, like all people, do have things to go to war about. Money, power, real things that are important to them, and it may be greed or love that pushes an atheist to war, but science fiction had nothing to do with it.
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Religious people, like all people, do have things to go to war about. Money, power, real things that are important to them, and it may be greed or love that pushes the religious to war.
Cute, but that doesn’t work when “kill the infidels!” is literally their warcry. They openly call them Holy Wars and promote them as driven by religion. Sure, there’s money and power involved as well, but people are fighting over religion. That’s just fact.
You’re defining your feelings as fact. Just like fundamentalist religious people that cry out “kill the infidels” do.
It’s also a fact that atheists have killed even more people because of adherence to weird ideologies.
Like I say, people who are 100% certain of things can come to strange conclusions. Real life isn’t so simple as seeing one person saying “kill the infidels” and concluding that all people in that religion think the same way.
Joseph Stalin was an atheist, does being an atheist make you think the same way as Joseph Stalin?
Oh. No no. You misunderstood the whole time. I never said or believed that ALL religious people are warmongers. That’s completely foolish.
Now imagine a war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, with tens of millions of casualties.
Or pretend we’re talking about Trekkies. Whatever fills your holodeck I guess
I’d be surprised if you had a single though about this whatsoever… Not only do you somehow link atheism, a philosophical outlook on the impossibility of godhood as described by religion, with Communism, a socio-economic model, you attribute the actions taken by dictatorial semi-socialist leaders to both.
I don’t think a regular human could say something this stupid if they tried.
“Somehow” linking atheism with communism, gee.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_anti-religious_legislation
Apparently everything done by a government is now inherently linked to every single system and model used by said government. Do you people even think… at all?
Are you saying it hurts when you’re just lazily lumped together with fundamentalists simply because there’s some overlap between what you believe and what they believe?
No, I’m saying you’re an idiot.
I didn’t know France was communist country before even Marx wrote Capital.
i think it’s fair to say that hard line anything tends to devolve into some form of power structure or authoritarian control.
Lol, I’m a radical atheist I belive that no God, is God!
Here is our credo
1/0 = god
I mean religion is pretty much just the concept of defining the relationship between us and the Universe we live in. God is the Universe. Atheism is all about being pedantic about meanings of the words God and Universe. Usually it’s just people that were in a radical religious sect that believes that scriptures are literal and atheists reject all religion because they think that what they were taught in Sunday School as a child is the totality of religion.
If you’re in an atheist that feels the need to join an atheist discussion group tho constantly reinforce your “non-belief” you kind of out yourself as a radical atheist.
Considering their respective ages, hard line Islam is pretty much up to what Christians were up to in those days.
LOL, this was literally an argument in favor of Nazis in the Soviet “17 moments of spring” series. We are a young ideology and movement, why do you judge us so harshly…
Islam will be judged by the same measure as everything else, by which it’s an infection (mostly, Nizari-Ismaili guys are chill).
See when you start debating history, that’s just weird. What I said is a fact, Christians 500 years ago were doing horrendous things. All religion is bad.
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Why is it that being on the internet turns people into complete pieces of shit. Would you really call someone dense in the middle of a scholarly debate in a face to face setting? No, cause you know that doing that sort of thing makes you a garbage human, yet here you are on the internet being a garbage human and you think it’s acceptable.
I also wasn’t “debating history”.
Would you really call someone dense in the middle of a scholarly debate in a face to face setting?
No, but in the middle of a scholarly debate I’d be able to express many things with my face.
homie we are on lemmy, shitposting about religion being bad to humans. This is anything but scholarly. Go write a dissertation on it.
But… Islam is older than Christianity…?
Islam is technically 1400 years old in the way Christianity is technically 2000 years old.
Modern Islams and Christianities, it’s more complicated.
Huh, TIL! Thanks for the info!
Hey, yo! Here’s a fun one. Jesus is a side character in Islam. Isn’t that rad?
Rad or mediocre retconning?
I think it’s an homage to George Lucas. It rhymes.
Muhammad died in 632 C.E
Nah, Mohammed came out and claimed that although Jesus was indeed a prophet his word was somehow corrupted, hence Islam.
Christianity 2: The Dune Messiah
Nope islam is the successor to christianity, so it has to come after
If you think Radical Islam is alone I’d like to introduce you to Ireland and India. Both countries proving that radicalism transcends race and culture.
Radical Buddhist monks in Myanmar fomented a genocide. I always point that out when someone says Buddhism is the one good religion or whatever.
Indians are committing Genocide on Muslims. Somethig something blame Islam.
All religions are or have the potential to be completely shit. End all religions.
Who ever thought that? To me the muslims are the better people by a big margin. It takes a lot more 9/11s to even the score.
Makes sense it’s a German instance you are registered on. There seems to exist that instinctive attraction to Nazis in them, you just have to remove the Nazi label.
“Muslims” includes Turks, so you are immediately wrong.
“Muslims” includes conquering, forcibly converting and often genociding all of historical Christian and Zoroastrian and much of other Asia, something Christians have, yes, done to Americas, but one can argue that, first, to a smaller degree (yes, Muslims were even worse), second, accompanied with Catholic clergy loudly protesting against the treatment of natives (no way in hell Islam can be against enslavement, genocide and conquest, they are formally against forced conversion though, just like Christians, formally), third, they don’t do that anymore.
Wow!
Germans: Muslims aren’t bad.
You: Nazi!
Anyone(even Germans): Muslims aren’t good.
Probably you: Nazi! Also racist!
1
Anyone got her IG?
TiedUpAndWet
