C'mon admit it D, you'd love to have been a season ticket holder to the Colosseum in ancient Rome. All those Christians burned alive or eaten by beasts, or both, in either order! Ironically, that means you may well have been happier living in the iron age. Anybody else think the Pope's out to get them? That a final solution for Christianity is needed? Anybody else tilting toward Christian windmills? Joking aside, how many here think everything would be beautiful if not for Christianity? How about Judism, or does the stigma of antisemitism dampen your resolve? What about Islam? Anybody willing to claim that the war on terrorism is really a war on religion? In other words, how many here pile upon [-]the whale's white hump[/-] Christianity the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by all of humanity? In my opinion all the ills of humanity can be piled upon but one thing. Humanity itself.
The world would have been better, our species more advanced, if all varieties of Abrahamic cult had stayed confined to the sandbox. Let the Semites believe in Semitic gods, leave the rest of the world out of it.
All Semitic high cultures are intensely puritanical, which in my opinion makes them detrimental to the mental health of the population.
I entirely agree with your last sentence....and since organisaed religion is created by humanity it can be included within it. For all those religious people who claim that they are put upon by atheists and agnostics, and play the hate card as a result, I would ask them to tell me what religion has ever really done for the evolution of humanity. From my perspective very little. Those elements that have helped cultures develop throughout the centuries have all been scientific, medical, politicial or legal. During that time religion has, if anything, held back the progression of these elements. Indeed, it's no surprise that as the world has evolved the seperation of religion from all of these elements has increased. As I say, since religion is created by humanity...and I think it's no surprise that in many of those second and third world countries where trouble continues to exist religion is a major player. Yes, religion is most definately an ill of humanity.
Heck of a claim, but I did ask for opinions. Do you consider other religions equally detrimental? Live and let live? Yeah I'm cool with that too.
Oh Johnny, you're such a card. I'm really glad we survived in the few hours vacation you took from teh interwebs.
I can think of a few parts of the planet that would've progressed differently had they not been subjugated by the spread. I'm more likely to assign blame to all three strains of desert dwellers' faiths and their feuds equally. (Not that your concluding sentence isn't the simplest truth). Arguably, monotheism ingrained some of our oldest bigotries , held up art and science, and delayed development of democracy by about 500 years.
^Another interesting take. Art, science and democracy were all hindered by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Most people have an innate need to believe in 'something'. Remove abrahamaic religions and they would have been replaced by something else. Would that have been better? maybe, maybe not.
No. Buddhists never had Crusades, Scandinavian pagans never had Inquisitions. In general, Skin has never seen any evidence that polytheistic or pantheistic religions ever engaged in the epic bloodshed and enslavement that monotheistic religions have, and to Skin's knowledge, only the Abrahamic religions are monotheistic.
Interesting question. Does anyone think that without religion the murderous extremists would not exist? Or would they exist and still be killing, just under another guise? As for polytheistic religions not being violent, clearly anyone who thinks that packs an education in ancient and recent history.
Well, in order for religion not to exist then basic human psychology would have to be somehow different, as religion is a product of how our brains work.....
Yes, Skin has heard of those who went fara i viking -- but here's the sticking point: They didn't do it for religious reasons. They sacked and plundered, but they didn't do it to convince anybody to worship their gods.
It's a rather large, hulking question, one that can't really be answered without weighing all the variables, and when you're weighing what-ifs and religion in world development, you're weighing a metric fuck-ton of variables, and it would be nearly impossible to consider all of them. I have no wish to see religion wiped out, because even if, somehow, religion was removed from the world, there would still be violence. Humans have killed for the most petty of reasons, with and without a god or gods. People are still going to be cruel, greedy, hateful and bigoted. They would just have to find another shield to stand behind. The problem with religion on that front is that it's so easy to manufacture. You can make up your own god, get a bunch of followers and start killing people, claiming god told you to smite the non-believers. At the same time, religion has inspired works of art, architecture, it's helped spread the written word around the globe, it can bring people to charity, and help the common good. Most people are good because they are simply kind, generous, fair people. Some feel a religion is needed for justification, and while I disagree, if it gives them fulfillment, and they don't harm anyone, it isn't my concern why they choose to contribute to humanity. Still, all in all? I would be happy if the heavily dogmatic faiths took a hike. Those are the ones that endorse stoning people for adultery, and preventing children from getting blood transfusions, and so on. So yeah, there's no way to give a full, concrete answer that has weighed all the possibilities and variables involved, but I can give you a gut reaction mixed with some reasoning. Hopefully that gives you an idea.
Care to name a polytheistic or pantheistic religion that's violent? Skin again reminds you that in order to answer that question, it's not enough to simply point out that a culture was warlike but to establish that the warlike nature of that culture stemmed from a polytheistic or pantheistic religion.
The Mayan civilization was polytheistic, and human sacrifice was central to their religion. They were very bloody.
There is considerable violence in the Hindu religion to name a recent example. Prior to the monotheistic religions taking over, the poly's were just as violent and into forced conversion. You don't see that anymore due to their extreme minority status. Many wars were fought in ancient times over "the Gods".
No, Skin didn't forget about Rome. Rome wasn't trying to forcibly convert anyone to the worship of Zeus. All their religious forced conversions were done for Christianity, not their own polytheistic religion.
That's news to Skin -- and Skin doesn't mean that sarcastically, either. Skin's never been too hep to the ways of the heathen Hindoos. Got a source for it? Skin's always up for interesting reading.
Hold on there, killer. Western Civilization would have a very different character and standing in the world without Christianity. For the majority of its history, the Church was the single greatest sponsor of the arts and sciences. The fervor with which Western theologians debated trivial points about Christology and God’s economy—that was the same philosophical zeal that evolved into the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. The Protestant work ethic is widely credited for the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. We’ve done a whole lot of butchering over our beliefs, but they eventually earned us our liberal democratic ideals and our advanced technological economies. The non-Abrahamic world is still trying to catch up.
So are dreams, doesn't mean we'd have to blithely shrug if some ass made a Sandman, or Freddy cult, and demand its tenets be legislated.
Most children have a bitch of a time being broken from the bottle, and getting potty trained. If you walk in on someone chugging down anti-freeze, is your first question "wait...what will I replace it with?"?
Politics (theoretically) has to play by a set of rules. Religion utterly refuses to. Always has. It demands a special respect it didn't earn, you're supposed to be uncritical to religion's assertions "just because", why, this very thread is a victimhood cry for same, and, look at the immunity from secular law some clerics have cleverly gotten for themselves on..no rational basis whatever. I'll take the shitty politicians.
