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.
You’re religious so you’re being defensive and fighting for reasons to keep your beliefs. You don’t want to believe that you participate in a larger organization that harms humanity. That means you’re a good person.
The religion you participate in still harms people. It doesn’t matter what religion it is.
Good people trying to do good things participate in evil organizations that perpetrate harm.
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.
“I just think specifically attacking someone for their religion is shitty.”
I think physically attacking someone because of your religion or them not buying into your religion is worse. Religions took the whole “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me” ass backwards.
We are watching a native group of people being cleansed from the earth because of a book. If I murdered 40,000 people because of Santa Clause, I would be the most wanted criminal. However, we praise them and say it is " God’s will."
Fuck you and the imaginary shit you believe. Butt hurt because they pointed out a very accurate fact. Even the Abrahamic religious have a story about how everyone cooperating was against “God” in the tale of the Tower of Babel.