All religions, no exceptions. To kick things off with the lowest of low hanging fruit: your religion practices male genital mutilation.
But the abuse, manipulations and control go all the way through from patriarchal hierarchies to an “exacting regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility; strong social pressures and rewards for cooperation;”
Which is to say cult brainwashing techniques used by any religion from Judaism to Mormonism to Hinduism. From the Branch Davidians to the Sumerian high priesthood: humans have never ceased using the 0-days of the human mind to exploit and manipulate their fellow man.
Does that mean religions can only do evil? Of course not. I’m glad you get a sense of connection and peace from it.
But that connection and peace serves to perpetuate the primeval toxic hierarchy. You’ll raise your kids on it. Make sure they believe it from a young age. After all - “Train a child according to his way; even when he grows old, he will not turn away from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) You gotta get em young or they’ll never believe when they’re old.
You know that religious people have different beliefs and varying practices and varying relationships to institutions, right? Criticize specific institutions if you want, but don’t be an asshole.
Religious people are part of the religion but not the whole.
As demonstrated by my previous comment: it is the religion that is the problem, not people finding camaraderie or community therein. I’m glad the previous commenter finds solace but it is important to call out that mechanism is exploited by the religion itself to propagate.
You cannot fully separate a religion and the religious. Without the religious a religion has died.
It would be best if all religions died: the religious that keep them alive are good people who have been misled.
You think you’re punching up. You’re not. You’re conflating a vast group of people and their heterodox cultural practices with your imagined idea of them and labeling all of it bad, in a performatively condescending way that pretends to be altruistic. Other peoples’ relationship to their spirituality is not cool to be shitty about. ‘Get rid of all religion’ is vaguely genocidal and also would not even make a dent in the persistent human problem of abusive and manipulative groups existing.
I felt the critic was well thought-out and non divisive. They accurately described how religion and the religious are conjoined together at the hip.
If you need real world examples of religion being bad for humans, crack open any paper or look at any creditable news site. Gaza, multiple cleansing in Africa, West China, cults in Japan and South Korea, U.S. politics, India … It is not hard to find the root cause.
But you calling them an asshole was a good comeback.
I’m not ignorant. I just think specifically attacking someone for their religion is shitty. There are way better ways to combat abuses of power than laying it all at the feet of every single person of a certain faith. That is being an asshole in my book.