- cross-posted to:
- atheistmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- atheistmemes@lemmy.world
christianity’s dying LOL
this is why they’re fighting tooth and nail to force it into public elementary school: to anyone over 10 hearing about it for the first time, it’s just a bunch of goofy bullshit to guilt and shame you into compliance. not to mention the super fucked up perpetual fear from “god is watching you”
I hope this happens to all Abrahamic religions. Scratch that, I hope it happens to all organized religion. It had its place in the development of human society, but we are past the point of needing angry sky-man to scare us into being nice to each other. It’s possible to teach kids to have a moral compass without fear of divine retribution.
have a moral compass without fear of divine retribution.
plus, how good is someone, really, if the only reason they’re behaving is out of fear of punishment or hope for reward?
Good enough for civilized society.
sure, until they aren’t
yes, non-religious people are bad too, but if religion is supposed to “make people good,” and has such high rate of failure, then what is it for?
SPOILER ALERT:
Same as any laws, the main goal is control. Whether for good, profit or anything else, it depends on who’s in control and their motives.
i agree. everything is about control (which money buys).
i’ll even do you one better and voice my own controversial opinion: even the concept of monogamy and marriage was invented to control the commoner. can’t have just anyone running around with 50 kids and 300 grandkids, all loyal to their patriarch unto death, presenting a threat to the power of the tribe’s chieftain
I disagree on that. Monogamy was invented by rich people to secure inheritance rights.
The purpose of Abrahamic religions is to convince people to become soldiers. Hence the legend of Abraham itself that these religions are named after - it’s a message to parents to sacrifice their children to war if needed. The entire thing is to groom us into a society with soldiers and babymakers.
I believe it will, as you can see accross the world that eternalism is crushed beneath the weight of high quality education, delivered on mass.
The problem is, capitalists love what Christianity metastasised into.
If anyone want to see the effect modern Christianity has on people, you won’t have to look further than the west indies, during the abolition of slavery in the British empire.
Obviously, they wouldn’t let aboloshionists anywhere near the slave plantations of the west indies. However, the slavers would allow missionaries. The rational from the missionaries being that once the people kept as slaves became Christian, the slavers would have no option but to let their fellow Christians go.
However, the enslaved converts didn’t go to the slavers, demanding their freedom. Bizarrely, vast numbers of them seem to conclude “oh well, as this is only temporary and I’ll have the rest of eternity to enjoy, there’s no need to rock to boat here. So, I’ll settle down and be the best slave I can be, in service to God.”
Crazy huh?
When we think of the vast differences in the world religions, you can only imagine how fortunate the rich and powerful must have felt when that specific version of that one specific religion became the biggest on the planet. They must have thanked their lucky stars when they found that out.
I grew up Christian and I still find myself occasionally praying and wishing I still had faith… But it just doesn’t seem to add up. If religion was real, why is there zero evidence of anything divine? If Christians are full of God’s holy spirit then why are they so hateful and ignorant? Millions of German Christians cheered for the Nazis and now they are doing the same for the Republican fascism.
Divinity might still exist. Also it’s we who might be self-inflating our importance to it.
Bigass universe out there, trillions of known galaxies and less than a universal second since we gained consciousness.
It’s like a culture of microbes in between your ass cheeks yelling at what they consider to be the sky because you’re not paying attention to them. Make the ass itch though and someone might just scratch it.
I’m sorry that you were raised Catholic.
There shouldn’t be a marriage of church and state, with that said, there are sects of Christianity that actually follow Christ’s teachings and not the myriad laws and interpretations added over the ages though they are rare.
there are sects of Christianity that actually follow Christ’s teachings
ok. ‘original sin’ is bullshit too. the thing is, you CAN be a good person without any of the supernatural stuff about “you must believe if you don’t want to go to hell”
also, please name a sect of christianity for which one of the MAIN duties of the “good christian” is not to convert the world to christianity?
Greek Orthodoxy, Ethiopian Orthodoxy as well as the Coptic Christians
Much higher emphasis on taking care of people and being a caring person.
wow, ok THREE even. do you belong to one of those sects?
Show me on the crucifix where the Catholics touched you. Greek Orthodox
Not sure that’s true. Christianity is pretty inherently evangelical. That’s one of the big reasons why it spread so far.
If you want to have a historical discussion about this I would be more than open to that. I have spent many years studying abrahamic religions. The three sects of Christianity that I have mentioned are all prior to romanization of the church. The Catholic church is the foundation of almost all sects of Christianity, but the Catholic church is itself a splinter group from the original church that was a sect people who still thought of themselves as Jews and were not very open to outsiders. See the whole Jew versus gentile discussion in Acts. But the long of the short is that the Roman Catholic Church did not become a thing until roughly 200AD. And it was only after that point that it became the monster from the meme. Prior to that it was the religion of the poor and downtrodden because it promised a better life after you died. Which was in direct contrast to the Roman religions where you had to pay in to get to heaven.
Which was in direct contrast to the Roman religions where you had to pay in to get to heaven.
I’m about to go to sleep, but that’s not even close to correct.
Religions spread through cultural genocide
Not only through that: Children taking on (or being taken on) the beliefs of their parents.
In France almost all churches were built on pagan sites, after civilians were massacred
In the US we built them where we genocided the native populations. God was apparently asleep or hiding during every genocide his followers participated in.
What soldiers used to say in France to convince themselves that they did nothing wrong was that if you killed an innocent they would go straight to the paradise and have a good time. Therefore you could kill anyone. They massacred entire towns of tens of thousands and still as of today, the Church commemorates these events as the right thing to do. They even write songs to brag about these great croisades
Also, don’t forget the systemic “borrowing” of local traditions in an effort to ease conversion:
Sounds like something a heretic would say…
Well the bottom picture was them trying to reclaim lost lands. Neither event was clean.
Meme should show Christianity spreading to the new world. Much more one sided slaughter.
Well the bottom picture was them trying to reclaim lost lands. Neither event was clean.
Are you referring to the Crusades? Those weren’t really Christians “trying to reclaim lost lands,” since the Middle East was never “owned” by Christians. Christianity, especially Catholicism never really took root in the Middle East until much later, so the Pope declaring that all good Christians should join the Crusades really was a war of aggression.
On the other hand, you could be referring to the reclamation of Spain, but I don’t think that’s what that painting is depicting.
Those weren’t really Christians “trying to reclaim lost lands,” since the Middle East was never “owned” by Christians. Christianity, especially Catholicism never really took root in the Middle East until much later,
4th-7th centuries AD under the Eastern Roman Empire call that into question.
Fair enough. I guess I should say that the group calling for the “reclamation” of the Middle East for Christianity was not the indigenous people. The Romans were a colonial power in the Middle East, so saying that a Roman Pope could call for a reclamation is like Great Britain trying to reclaim India.
While I may have gone too far in saying Christianity has not taken root in the Middle East, I stand by my central thesis that the Crusades were wars of aggression.
The Romans were a colonial power in the Middle East, so saying that a Roman Pope could call for a reclamation is like Great Britain trying to reclaim India.
I mean, if we’re going that route, the Turco-Persian Muslims occupying the Levant at the time were a colonial power there too, and the Levant only came under Muslim control in the first place because it was quite literally conquered by non-native inland Arab tribes from a Byzantine-Christian majority in the 7th century.
While I may have gone too far in saying Christianity has not taken you in the Middle East, I stand by my central thesis that the Crusades were wars of aggression.
Agreed there.
It was not so much an act of aggression as it was an act of protection. Christians in those areas, people as well as traders, were killed and taken into slavery.
You really think Christians wanted to March down until a dessert region thousands of miles from home just for the fun of it? Christians were under attack in the region.
Not saying it was all sunshine and rainbows, but the notion that the crusades were about spreading Christianity is not accurate.