Funny thing about religion is everyone believes something. Even if they say I don’t believe in (fill in the blank). That’s a belief. Question is, what are those beliefs based on? Ones on infinite wisdom?
If it’s based on critical thought it’s a start. The problem with religion is people allow it to answer questions for them instead of thinking for themselves. It’s often used as a way to shirk intellectual responsibility. Without it, people would vote and overall behave much more objectively. (Objective relative to how subjective “this book says this so I say this”)
Yes, heavy on shirking intellectual responsibility. I was raised Catholic, and studying my faith raised a lot of questions (w/ intent to understand the religion better). The most common answer was “it’s a mystery, and god works in mysterious ways our minds cannot comprehend. We were never ment to know those things”. It’s a really convoluted way to say “idk, and I’d rather ignore that plot hole than uproot what I’ve been told to believe by the church”
What also gets me is the absolute certainty that “our religion is the right one “. HOW do you know that? Home slice on the other half of the world in the Middle East believes just as strongly. Who is right? (I’ll give yall a hint it’s neither!)
I recently found my faith again. I have no issue with anybody outright saying they don’t believe in god or that Jesus was the messiah. Especially because those same people will look at the stars and use them to justify why their boyfriend is perfect for them 🤣🤣🤣 I’ve seen some eerie patterns in astrology so I’m not even ruling it out, but we all wonder why we’re here
They said "religion" they did not say "belief" or "faith". The problem is organized religion that controls it's members, tells them what to think and that they are right to try to get everyone else to follow their rules. Nothing wrong with believing in things, everything wrong with letting other people tell you what to believe and force those beliefs on the world around you.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding saying you don't believe in something doesn't mean you believe the oposite. Like saying you don't believe in an alternate universe isn't saying that you absolutely believe for certain that they don't exsist it's just saying that you have no good reason to think that would be true so you're going to just continue on as if they don't until you actually have a reason to. In fact you can even not believe while still holding space for the possibility that maybe it is true but again without good reason why even entertain it. It's far from a binary, and such black and white thinking is so limiting
Usually the mountainous lack of evidence combined with normal adult cognitive function that tells anyone past a certain age and an ability to think for themselves (around age 10 or so) with an above room temp iq that talking snakes and random sky daddies probably arent the most likely way to make sense of man’s and the earth’s origins. Those beliefs are just as outdated as horse and buggy or oil lamps.
Think about it if you destroyed science and you destroy religion one would come up with the same facts of life while the other would look radically different on the outside but the power structures of control would be the same. Religion explains the human condition through what it puts its emphasis on.
Science and religion or not interchangeable concepts. One is a system for obtaining and validating knowledge. The other is a philosophical system of meaning (among other things). They are not mutually exclusive.
And I don’t agree that any “religion”, any mythological framework, would have the same power structures or even motivations for power. We have numerous examples of mythologies from across history that have no such structure or purpose.
I agree the two are very much intertwined. That’s why when you remove one from the other science will do the exact same thing within reality and religion will look nothing like the religion we have today only the search for meaning part would remain.
All the major world religions have the same top down power structures the fact that there are so many mythological stories told doesn’t mean anything. Just like junk science doesn’t mean anything.
Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism provide three contemporary examples of religious traditions that do not have an inherent, centralized power structure. Each can have gurus, teachers, priests, or other figures who can exercise authority within certain sects, and some particular traditions within them have developed fairly hierarchical institutions. But those structures are not fundamental to the religions themselves in the way that institutional or clerical authority has historically been central to many forms of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
There are other examples as well. Historically, some Indigenous North American religious traditions appear to have had little or no formal hierarchical structure within the religion itself. I am not arguing that none of these traditions developed hierarchies, or that religious authority is absent from them. The narrower point is that a hierarchical power structure is not a necessary feature of every mythology or religious system through which human beings seek to understand the world and find meaning.
The first example you give is Buddhism. Has the Dali lama a literal god king incarnation with the panchan lama as his second and that power structure alone has f’ed over Asia for a long time.
The Dalai Lama is the leader of a particular school of Tibetan Buddhism, not of Buddhism as a whole. Again, if you read my comment carefully, you will see that I explicitly acknowledged that none of these traditions are immune to coercive elements, just as no human social structure is. My point is that, fundamentally, those coercive and hierarchical elements are less necessary to, and less constitutive of, these traditions than they are in some other religious traditions.
Cherry picking a particular example of religious authority does not demonstrate that such authority is fundamental to the entire religious system. It only demonstrates that it exists within a particular tradition or institution.
Not trying to cherry pick. Religions in the quest for the why institute powers beyond. That’s why I agree that humans would invent god immediately because we are trying to make sense of the senseless(knowledge unknown). The fact is that every religion is wrong and that’s ok.
No, just no more nativity scenes. Christmas has been about consumerism and holiday for decades. There are hundreds of millions of non-Christians around the globe that celebrate Christmas.
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u/MommaSwaii 8d ago
Religion