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.
It was necessary when we understood nothing. Thats not an excuse we can use anymore.
We have understanding. We have gained knowledge that makes religion meaningless. It did its job, served its purpose. Now its time to grow beyond it.
We should be fighting religion.
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A distinction without a difference. Religion produces demonstrable harm to many people. To be religious is to be an extremist. The entire idea that a being from your imagination should influence my behavior is whack.
To be religious is to be an extremist.
Over 80% of people in the US believe in one religion or another. The country is not 80% extremists.
And there’s the problem with the idea of extremism to begin with. It’s only extreme because too different. The idea of extremist ideologies is inherently conservative, and really we should be judging ideologies by how they negatively or positively affect people.
Again, can you tell me how if you are not religious, how is religion influencing you? And how is your opinion different than any other religious extremist who also claims that anyone who doesn’t follow x religion is bigot? It’s the same thing where everyone is just hating everyone else who doesn’t share the same belief, except being an atheist somehow gives you a free pass to bash on everyone else’s belief, you all then should not be complaining if anyone starts saying all atheism is extremism
Edit: I am gonna clarify that I personally don’t think atheism itself is extremism, anyone has the right to chose what path they think is correct
Something about my religious leaders wanting to strap electrodes to my junk and torture me for being gay has given me some strong opinions. Don’t you dare dismiss my experiences as invalid, I’m fighting terrorists here.
My friend is estranged from his family because he is trans and they don’t accept him because the bible says blablabla
Religion teaches and reinforces bigoted and anti-science views, generally. Yes, there are good people that reject this basis of their religion, but religion itself has done far more harm than good.
How do you qualify “more harm than good”? You’re making a pretty broad claim about 85% of the world’s population, according to Pew Research.
You’re putting words in my mouth, lmao. I explicitly separated Religious people from Religion itself, and you’re tying them together as slander.
Religion has done more harm than good as it has been the foundation of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, rejection of science such as Evolution, and more. Religious people can be good, and have done good things, but Religion itself is harmful.
I respect people’s rights to practice, but I don’t respect Religious people using religion as justification for anything bigoted, anti-science, or generally harmful.
The audacity of claiming that religious adherents are uniquely racist!
Racism is literally the foundation of Darwinism, as explicitly stated by Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix.
It’s right there in the title of Darwin’s book: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
It’s human nature to fight each other, and the tendency towards extremism is universal.
I did not claim religious people were uniquely racist, only that religion supports and reinforces racism. Kindly refrain from putting words in my mouth and actually answer my actual points.
Human Nature is a naturalistic fallacy, and is a way to avoid actually addressing whether or not religion assists and reinforces racism or not.
You said it’s the foundation of racism.
foundation noun foun·da·tion 1 : the act of founding here since the foundation of the school 2 : a basis (such as a tenet, principle, or axiom) upon which something stands or is supported the foundations of geometry the rumor is without foundation in fact
Technical arguments don’t change the fact that Darwinism is inherently racist.
Please provide sources for your claims, what religion you want to believe in is a different topic, read the books of all the major religions and see how many and which one of them is ‘bigoted’ and ‘Anti-Scientific’
If you are not gonna do that, atleast not fire such claims because you yourself don’t have the knowledge.
All major religions reject science by asserting the baseless claim of divinity. They propose a foundational divine, without any proof. This is anti-science.
As for being bigoted, quick examples are Christianity and the other Abrahamic religions supporting homophobia, transphobia, sexism, strong gender roles, and more.
Because apparently Christianity is the only religion in existence and all religious people want you to practice their religion. Or something.
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.
That’s just saying “people who are in a social community are happier and more engaged than those that aren’t” because most social communities are currently religious focused.
Sure. Doesn’t change the fact that Religion can be used as a tool for social engagement and can have a measurable, good effect on people’s lives.
When people misuse a hammer to cause harm you don’t blame the hammer.
“guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, does that mean there should be zero regulations on guns?
Religion is the same, and historically has been the CAUSE not the TOOL for countless genocides and “justified” killings.
“guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, does that mean there should be zero regulations on guns?
Strawman. I was mentioning hammers, are there any regulations on hammers? I never once called a gun a tool.
Religion is the same, and historically has been the CAUSE not the TOOL for countless genocides and “justified” killings.
If you believe the people causing genocides wouldn’t have fun another reason to excuse them I have a bridge to sell you. The Holocaust wasn’t motivated by religion.
Yeah, I’ll give you the strawman, sorry about that. Made sense before I said it.
The Nazi belief was absolutely a religion. Not one of deity, but of superiority. A group of people held the same belief and tried to beat that belief into the whole world. TBH, sounds just like the crusades, just less successful. Thank goodness.
The Nazi belief was absolutely a religion. Not one of deity, but of superiority.
That agrees with my point that if you managed to abolish all religions people would still find excuses to perform atrocities. They’ll just do it in the name of their “superiority” instead of their “god”.
No, we should be fighting religion.
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Ironic.
Does it though? The issues that feed extremism will still be there and find a new outlet.
Mussolini
Institutionalized religion is bad, religion for yourself isn’t imho. I can understand the need for answers, although I don’t necessarily need them. I think that is part of tolerance, to accept the believes of others.
“Religion for yourself” in the age of internet of called “personal belief”. So, the term “religion” now only means, like it or not, “institutionalized religion”.
This is 100% caused by the fact that people “identify” as Y (not using X as a variable, as it is now a fucking confusing buzzword), and are subsequently grouped together in “echo rooms” by various platforms algorithms. This happened so overwhelmingly that in less than a decade, it redefined the default behavior of people, online, and you will now see people automatically seeking those echo rooms. Even on Lemmy, where people are literally seeking instances that will validate their own beliefs, and block those they do not share.
Thats … Just your believes man
If you keep away from social media as much as possible (as anyone should) its not so bad. I know a few people, that don’t go to church but believe in god.
No one feels great by being critiqued, but its necessary imho.
Oof.
Please do elaborate
An adult that still believes in Santa might not lead to anything bad, but it leads to them indoctrinating their children to also believe in Santa into adulthood,
And if some dude can live on the north pole and travel to every home on earth in one night, then other equally ludicrous ideas might not sound so far fetched
And before you know it you’re wearing radioactive stickers to rebalance your chakras, sticking jade eggs up your ass to bring luck and you’re blowing up a shopping mall because your imaginary friend hates gay people
This is a classic slippery slope fallacy. Millions of religious people exist from all sorts of ideological spectrums. The vast, vast majority are not evil and don’t do bad things.
The extremism present in religious people is also apparent and present in atheists, agnostics, or whatever generic belief system you can think of. Religion by itself doesn’t cause extremism: ad hominems, whataboutisms, and disinformation causes extremism. Constantly comparing yourself to an enemy and convincing yourself you are in the absolute right causes extremism. Sure, you see some ‘religious’ people going crazy and shooting up places. They also have manifestos that are completely detached from reality in a way that reeks of far-right propaganda and disinformation, and never any real coherence or thought given to the religious teachings they supposedly follow (if they mention their religious texts at all, it’s often cherry-picking or outright incorrect).
We should not try to fix the issues of mental health that plague a lot of countries by going after religion. If anything, that would only backfire by virtue of validating any persecution complex religious people might have. We should instead focus on providing affordable mental healthcare that is easily, immediately accessible and normalized for the wider population, as well as providing clear sources of valid information and having any questionable sources that construe facts and claim to not be news sources in lawsuits or elsewhere be forced to clearly denote themselves as not news regularly.
What if I keep a jade egg in my ass just for fun?
That sounds an awful lot like sexual depravity, which makes god sad for some reason so i believe you’ll be cast into a fiery pit to have your skin melted off, regrown, then melted off again, for all eternity. And this will be just, a punishment that fits the crime
And while you’re in excruciating pain for all eternity just remember: god loves you ♥️
I can understand the need for answers, although I don’t necessarily need them.
Btw do you think atheists always need answers for everything? I think atheists can be okay without knowing the answer. The religious people are the ones who always wants an answer(wrong answer counts) and they always explain thinks they can’t explain as “god’s creation/mystery/whatever”
No I certainly don’t have have all the answers, the people that think they do are a huge problem.
I can understand the need for an explanation, but I simply don’t have that need, although I like to know how things work. But if we as humantiy don’t know I don’t think its so bad.
Yeah, if you try to change the facts because of your believe we have a problem. If your religion can adapt to new facts (or live besides them) I don’t really care.
People created god as an explaination of how the world is created and maintained. People who do science really knows that we can’t know everything for sure, and are familiar and okay with not knowing that thing.
I said we cant know everything but we must be okay with that. Religion just takes something they see and put the “god made this” label and refuses to question god.
If religious people don’t have that need for explaination, would they belive god created everything? Aren’t they okay with saying “we don’t really know how everything was created”?
I can understand the need for an explanation
Religion usually explains with something wrong and the followers simply take it as real truth. Don’t say atheists are the ones who need explaination for everything
There is no one religion and they sure don’t handle conflicts with science the same way, so which one are you talking about?
For example, Buddhism in its core is accepting of change in the world and aims to adapt.
which one are you talking about?
Which is “your” religion? I’m pretty sure it isnt Buddhism. I am talking about whatever religion that puts “god” as almighty and the one who made everything including us.
I dont have one, but its an important part of peoples lives, so i think about this stuff.
The point being, that i have less issues with that way of resolving conflicts between your believes and scientific facts.
Thoose “god belivers” are like against spirit of science. Not scientific facts but scientific spirit of accepting that we have much more things to know and cannot put a god as someone who made everything the way it is, without questioning.
You don’t need religion to believe in something, did this occur to you? I don’t have anything against people who believe some even weird shit. Let me hear it, let us discuss it, but do as you please (who am i to judge? I don’t know the truth).
But the moment you enter some cult (or religion if you prefer that term), you’re on my hate-list. They are to control the weak sheeple. Period.
Why do people always take it, that belief equals religion?
It did, because believe systems are religions I didn’t differentiate, because its besides the point.
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.
In regards to the wager, the actual canonical depiction of Hell wasn’t eternal torture but instead not being allowed into God’s presence so, eh…
Miss me with turning into Fanta regardless
Which misses the point of my argument.
I don’t say you are wrong. But my point is strictly about what people believe and how these beliefs should be quite important and turn “moderation” to “extermism” from their pov.
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.
Your assumption is that religion wants you to suffer.
Religion, in my experience, wants you to be compassionate, accepting and give back to the community. This is not extreme.
Could you show me that assumption? I don’t see that assumption present in my comment. Please help me to understand your perspective. Thanks.
Most people talk about Religions people being fanaticists with a disregard for human wellbeing. (Outside of their religion) I associate this with the sects that emigrated to America due to prosecution in Europe and American New religons. (Amish, those Utah people etc., those wierd evangelicals(?))
Of course there are also good religious groups in America.
How is that related to my comment and how does that answer my request for clarification? I am sorry but this seem completely unrelated.
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I beg to differ. This bullshit was right below it in my feed for some reason:
Thanks, I hate it
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I recently visited reddit and was horrified to see how many people there say “Lol he believes in sky dady, his opinions are worthless, ban all religion” and even some extreme comments like “All christians are pedoes” and I am seeing this rising slowly on lemmy as well
Any sort of extremism is bad, whether that’s religious, political or atheistic(?), and thats what we should be fighting, banning hijabs is not gonna do any good
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“I want to kill all brown people like the crusaders before me”
“I want him to not be allowed to do that and if he does he should be dealt with severely and quickly.”
“now now guys you’re both being too extreme”
When it comes to atheists vs religion, I know which group I’d trust to not firebomb my workplace.
Pls tell me which religion says to kill brown ppl
Ask the crusades
They killed “pagans” not “black people” there is a difference.
*brown
Weird how it was almost exclusively brown people who were targeted as pagans.
Idk, latwians aren’t brown
Making his point…
The Naxalite-Maoists of India are explicitly atheist and they also firebomb innocent people.
Political and religious extremism are two sides of the same coin.
The coin is human nature.
Religion is for the feeble minded.
Extremism is not bad. The only proper response to fascism is antifascism, for example. Balance is not a virtue, that’s like saying we need both the KKK and the antiracists to make a nice balance.
‘Two wrongs make a right’
What did an avg. Christian do who works 9-5, barely makes up enough money to support his family and kids, to be a called a pedophile, just the fact that he prays to a god? I love lemmy but All civil discussion is lost when you go against the majority opinion, which ironically enough is the exact same thing that fascist right wingers do, but ofc it’s not the same thing
which ironically enough is the exact same thing that fascist right wingers do, but ofc it’s not the same thing
Middle Ground Fallacy. Just because two sides exist does not mean the truth is somewhere in the middle. There are issues where one side is objectively right. Supporting the side that is wrong does not make you a advocate for civility; it makes you wrong.
Now, could there be more polite discussion? Sure. Does that mean anti-theists should allow religion to further taint our politics, rights, and conversation? Absolutely not.
GTFO of here with this bullshit.
Are you legitimately calling antiracism and antifascism a “wrong” just so you can take this “enlightened centrist” approach? What the fuck. Again, extremism isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, it depends on what you’re being extremist about. Being extremely antiracist? Good. Being extremely racist? Extremely bad.
The average Christain who works 9-5, barely makes enough money to support his family and kids, is also homophobic, transphobic, racist, and sexist. It is the minority among religious people to take the correct approach.
I am not blaming religious people, but Religion itself.
What did an avg. Christian do who works 9-5, barely makes up enough money to support his family and kids, to be a called a pedophile, just the fact that he prays to a god?
That’s indeed very rude behavior towards your hypothetical person.
Both. Both. Definitely both.
“extremism” is what neoliberals invented to liken egalitarians with Nazis to make themselves look good.
Well that’s certainly a hot take!
We should be fighting both
Do people willing to live in climate extremes count as extremist? /S
i guess so
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
You can’t fight either directly. Fight stupdity and both go away.
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
