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Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey
- jleyank 5y agoPlease consider belief in $GOD as different from $RELIGION. Consider one the theory and the other the implementation, and the latter seems to cause way more difficulties, particularly with respect to the hardware.
- vmception 5y agoThe theory of $GOD is based on a whim, feeling, and the use of psychedelics by self-appointed (or self-anointed) clerics who recognize a shared human condition of wanting a purpose The openness to an explanation occupies a register in the brain, in a first come first serve basis, and stays there.
- uulu 5y ago> Please consider belief in $GOD as ... Hmm ... isn't God a value, not a variable?
- goldenkey 5y agoGod is an X. https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/everything-is-an-x-pattern/ https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/everything-is-an-x-patter...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jleyank 5y ago$GOD is both an environmental variable, set upon system initialization and the value contained in the $GOD environmental variable. It is the Alpha and Omega, set first upon startup and cleared last upon shutdown. Unfortunately, it's up to the user's shell to interpret it.
- akvadrako 5y agoGod is an global constant of undefinable type.
- tremon 5y agoTo me, the former is a personal spiritual bond while the latter is an imposed social bond. And the further that social bond moves away from the individual experience, the more dimly I tend to view both the religion and its followers.
- Pasorrijer 5y agoAs a Canadian who spends a considerable amount of time travelling to the US, the difference is fairly striking. Religion enters almost every conversation I have in the US in some way. Whereas in Canada, religion almost never comes up. If it does, it's generally a discussion on the merits where I'm talking more about history and culture. It's fascinating how two places, so geographically close can be so culturally different in this one topic.
- anm89 5y agoI feel like you might be reversing the causality a bit and bringing religion into things because of that perception. I can't remember the last time I discussed religion with anybody in public as an American. Admittedly I live in a bubble that means that I'm not interacting with any fundamentalists or evangelicals but if you are coming from Canada you are probably in that some bubble.
- DFHippie 5y agoI'm with you. I don't recognize the OP's description of US culture at all in the community where I live. Granted, I'm in Vermont, which is not at all typical, but it is also right next to Canada. I lived in Buffalo, also right next to Canada, and any public conversation about religion was scarce there as well. Perhaps the OP flies regularly to Arkansas?
- jleyank 5y agoRed state/blue state difference applies to religion. So much so that religion drives the politics of red states more so that money or even "them". Although they somehow bend religion to separate Christians into good ones and bad ones just fine.
- olyjohn 5y agoI don't get it either. Half of my family is Canadian. I've crossed the border my whole life... The only thing I can figure, is maybe they come to the US and don't get away from the border cities? They tend to be small and quite rural. I feel like those kinds of towns tend to be a bit more religious.
- mgh2 5y ago"Perception is reality". People get easily manipulated by the media on everything, it can't be helped.
- jleyank 5y ago
- powerslacker 5y agoThe differences between those 'last few prophets' are major. You could say the same thing about Mormonism. Further, Jews, Muslims, and Christians are not monoliths in and of themselves. There are vast divides within those groups. I do wish we would all get along better though. Despite the differences between the various Abrahamic faiths, we have far similar values with each other than with atheists.
- liminal 5y agoThere's lots of interesting nuance in the actual survey report: https://angusreid.org/canada-religion-interfaith-holy-week/ https://angusreid.org/canada-religion-interfaith-holy-week/ Edit: Towards the bottom of the report is a matrix showing how the various religious groups feel about each other (net positive/negative). Some takeaways: * Jews and Hindus are the only groups that think positively about all the others * Catholics and Evangelicals are negative on the Jews * Evangelicals are negative on everyone else If evangelicals are negative about everyone else, it makes sense that everyone else might be less enthusiastic about them too
- dmix 5y agoIt seems like you mixed up the columns, it's reversed... > * Jews and Hindus are the only groups that think positively about all the others Jewish people were negative on (mostly) Ev. Christians and Catholics Hindus were negative on Catholics, Protestants, Ev Christians, and (mostly) Islam. > * Catholics and Evangelicals are negative on the Jews No group was majority negative on Jews > * Evangelicals are negative on everyone else Evangelicals were negative only on Islam, Sikhs, and (mostly) Atheists
- LegitShady 5y agoThat table is interesting. The gulf between jewish view of evangelicals (+35) to evangelicals view of jews (-45) is interesting, but there are other situations similar like protestants like evangelicals (+55) while evangelicals are a little cooler to protestants (-10). edit: it seems someone is saying the columns and rows are reversed from how I read it. I don't see where that's indicated, although that makes sense if you look at the evangelical row and how most groups dislike them, which was a reported result. Poorly labelled table.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoJews for Jesus was started in the 70s and maintains a $25M a year tax-free income through donations from Baptist and Evangelical sources. They make their rounds through the various churches every few years asking for money, and so Evangelicals have frowned upon the idea that the Jews have their own covenant with God. The Vatican, on the other hand, has stated in the past that Judaism and Christianity have incompatible beliefs and thus Catholics should not try to convert Jews.
- throwawayfear 5y ago
- t_mann 5y agotl;dr: two thirds of Canadians report believing in a higher power in some way. If you slice the data in enough ways you'll find a few that will make headlines like this.
- motohagiography 5y agoI was about to snark that this was done by a polling firm who works for political parties whose main opposition are also faith based, but as a finding to say 2/3 of people can be appealed to based on their faith in something, that's an important and valuable number. The people who believe nothing are indeed in a minority, and they are also in power, so the tone of the article was likely to make believers of any faith feel isolated instead of reminding them that they are a majority.
- t_mann 5y agoI don't wanna take any sides here, I just point out when someone reports their data in a questionable way.
- motohagiography 5y agoWasn't my intent to suggest your comment had. Re-reading, I may have unfairly levered it into something more partisan than it seemed as well. Harder to maintain charity in Canada lately.
- belfalas 5y agoMeanwhile the Buddhists are unattached about being left out of the survey. They don't mind.
- goldenkey 5y agoBuddhism isn't a religion insomuch as it is a philosphy.
- forum_ghost 5y agoit most certainly is an actual religion/theology and a rather dark one, too. e.g. "your life sucks today for reasons beyond your control? well, you must've deserved it in the previous life, scumbag"
- goldenkey 5y agoThat's something you'd get from Buddhism for Dummies if you just assumed Reincarnation and Karma were simplistic concepts with only one definition. The reality is that these are metaphysical concepts and Buddhism is often conveyed via metaphor or analogy. Your interpretation is a rather naive one, and "deserve" is a loaded word.
- neonate 5y agoReading Mahasi Sayadaw on the hell realms cured me of that idea.
- sofixa 5y agoThat's what i thought too, before visiting a majority Buddhist country and i was shocked at the lavish temples, the amount of temples, full sized and miniature versions everywhere, the amount of clerics, the indoctrination of children ( they start the journey to be a monk at a very young age, iirc 8), how much it seemed to matter to the locals ( stuff like people stopping to pray at a mini-temple before a journey, buses being lavishly decorated with religious symbols, etc), including their donations "for good luck" while the country was on the verge of bankruptcy and going through an economic decline. Funnily, in a majority Christian city in the same country everything was the same, just directed at a different diety.
- avighnay 5y agoI have come to view religions as organisms in an eco-system. The behavior is very analogous. The goal for both is survival and propagation. As within an eco-system, organisms evolve and adopt survival strategies. Religions do the same too. Organisms evolve due to genetic aberration, Religions evolve due to social aberration. In any eco-system, the young organisms are known to adopt harsher survival strategies, in religions you find the younger religions (Abrahamic, at this point of time in history), adopt strategies of violence and coercion. The more tougher to get out of a religion is directly proportional to how young it is. The principles are hard wired for survival, hence more emphasis on mandatory daily/weekly rituals for all in the religion, unlike in older ones where rituals in general are more often than not a domain of the priests. The older religions on the other hand are less virulent and more susceptible to younger challengers. Some organisms in nature beat this challenger possibility by adopting a more distributed structure, there by surviving in spite of assault from challengers. Young religions on the other hand prefer a centralized control structure which helps in keeping the line discipline. As within an eco-system, strategies of some organisms might be damaging to the eco-system as a whole. When it comes to religion, the ecological balance can be obtained only when damaging survival strategies are identified and discarded by the said organism, in other words it just needs to grow up...
- Brian_K_White 5y agoIt is funny to observe that even a religion is itself the product of, and subject to, and actively conducting evolution exactly the same as biology. All evelotion is is the axiom or truism "That which works, works." That statement can't be denied or escaped, and regardless what your mystical feelings are about how unbelievable it is that an eyeball just evolved by itself because that would be magic and magic is impossible but gods are magic that is possible or maybe gods aren't magic...I'm so confused...anyway no matter what you think about all that, there is no way around such a basic statement. You can't not-believe it. And everything else ultimately flows from that. You can avoid considering it and imagine that there is some unknown other stuff between that and evolution and eyeballs, but you can't actually produce that unknown other stuff if you are ever forced to consider it. And so it is with any self-oganizing self-modifying system, including organized religions and religious ideas. You are right that they evolve strategies to perpetuate themselves. That which works, works. If someone had a religious idea to only accept seekers but keep themselves secret and never advertise, not even to their own offspring, that religion would cease to exist within a generation. Anyone still in it after that would have to be in some new religion resulting from a mutation that it's ok to bring in at least some new people by some means or other.