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.
Myanmar.
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
“I know there have been Buddhist terror groups but…” the joke writes itself 😂
In ancient China, Buddhist organizations also had a history of annexing land, oppressing people, and competing with secular governments.
“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
That’s the leather flag they’re flying
Heh. Got me!
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.
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).
But... Islam is older than Christianity...?
Muhammad died in 632 C.E
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.
1
There are still certain forms of Christianity, that are equally as bad as "radical Islam".
Yes, following the famous doctrine of atheism.
I'll remind you the only thing tying atheists together is the lack of belief in god(s). Besides that, nothing has anything to do with atheism
And this community. But aside from those two things, nothing else.
Religion is not the enemy, church is the enemy. Church wants to be accepted as the only path to salvation. The enemy is church, or whatever name it is called.
There is one difference:
The Spanish Inquisition killed less people in 300 years than Islamism every single day.
Guess you didn't expect the Spanish Inquistion?
Are you forgetting the genocide commited by the ultra orthodox Spanish in South America? Have you ever been to Buenos Aires? Super long flight only to end up in the whitest European city ever. Oh and also, what about the total killings until today just by US made mines and shrapnel in Southeast Asia? Doesn't even come close to whatever number you had in mind for "Islamism".
Since when is the US the Church? Oh, wait...
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.
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.
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.
Anyone got her IG?
TiedUpAndWet
No they are not.
Christianity has a Pope which can adjust Christianity to modern Times.
Islam has an outdated Book from an outdated Time that will always be the same and has to be accepted as the absolute Truth forever.
One can adjust, the other cannot. They are not the same.
Christianity has a Pope which can adjust Christianity to modern Times.
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Catholicism has a Pope.
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The current Pope is just barely progressive and he gets endless pushback from the cardinals, bishops, and even laypeople.
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All the other flavors of Christian have other opinions.
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Islam is in a very similar situation.
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Both suck ass and should go away.
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I mean, the post clearly states "was". So even without commenting on the accuracy of your post I can clearly see you missed the point
look at the Post Title please
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
