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Religions tend to become the opposite of what they preach. The church of Jesus became an actual state for centuries. Buddhist monasteries founded on non-violen

• ristlane 3y ago
  I can’t speak to other religions, but Jesus did not speak against the state, or against statehood as such. Meanwhile the Catholic Church is the largest charitable organization in the world, despite all of its problems due to consisting of deeply flawed humans.
  • voytec 3y ago
    Catholic Church is also the largest organization in the world which openly protects pedophiles.
    • number6 3y ago
      I bet it is also a hedge fund
      • hutzlibu 3y ago
        Well, they have the official "Institute for the Works of Religion" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Works_of_Religion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Works_of_R... A proper bank, with historic ties to the Mafia.
    • ristlane 3y ago
      It was a disaster for the church and for humanity. Ireland used to be the most Catholic nation in the world; not anymore. Their faith was obliterated by the sex abuse scandal.
      • Lionga 3y ago
        Germany has many sex abuse scandal of the church and they still try to hide them. Pope Benedict himself helped to hide them. There is probably not a single country where the catholic church is not the best place for child sex abusers. Well maybe Islam, as it is having Mohammed, who raped a nine year old girl, as their "Son of God".
      • thr-nrg 3y ago
        Every religion in the West is losing adherents as quickly as 80 year olds are dying. Pederasty has nothing to do with it.
        • jl6 3y ago
          I think it's probably got something to do with it. Plenty of non-Catholic denominations and other faiths have had similar abuse scandals, and in the public consciousness the crimes of Catholic priests get filed under "why religion is bad" as much as "why Catholicism is bad".
          • thr-nrg 3y ago
            [flagged]
        • sokoloff 3y ago
          Well, it's certainly not helping with the recruiting of younger people into that particular religion... Today's 80 year olds in the church probably joined 60-75 years ago.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
      • hgsgm 3y ago
        Disaster for the victims, but taking down the unelected undemocratic Church is a silver lining.
      • lo_zamoyski 3y ago
        That's not really the cause. It is more like grease to ease the egress when someone already looking for the exit for other reasons needs an easy excuse. Ireland's Catholicism was already weakened by various ideological currents and social engineering that swept across the country, many facilitated by powerful, shall we say, American corporate interest and investment. Living the Catholic faith is demanding and utterly unappealing to those who've been made slaves to their deranged passions. Not so coincidentally, those who are slaves to their passions are easier to control. I leave the inference to be made here as an exercise for the reader. The British colonization of Ireland was brutal, but it was corporeal. The spiritual colonization today, materially prosperous and comfortable, destroys the soul.
    • shiftpgdn 3y ago
      Synagogues are giving the Catholics a run for their money. Ask yourself why the shorim are allowed to completely cover up all the abuse inside the orthodox community?
      • gataca 3y ago
        What? Comparing the size and scale of the Catholic church, and the centralized system of protecting known sex abusers, to a small fraction of a tiny religious group is absurd.
        • defrost 3y ago
          The jewish | christian schism is out of hand when the disagreement is over which has the more significant subgroup of sex pests and enablers.
        • shiftpgdn 3y ago
          There are over 5.9 million Orthodox in the USA alone. That's not some fringe religious group.
          • lo_zamoyski 3y ago
            Yes, but it also is besides the point. People gladly attack the Catholic Church and they do so with a kind of seething hatred or blind ignorance that allows them to assign to the Church a unique status in this regard. But the fact is that child abuse[0] is or was present in all institutions that deal with children, both religious and secular. In fact, the rate of abusive priests in the Church (estimated to be about 4%) is average or below the rates elsewhere, especially public schools where it is something like 10% among staff, last I checked. And I wonder if the parent above knows how protective these Jewish communities are of their own. They do not like to involve the state in their affairs. So none of this is unique or even extraordinarily present in the Catholic Church. [0] And by "child abuse", certainly in the Church, it is best described as a homosexual ephebophilia scandal. That is, 80% of abuse victims were post-pubescent teenage males.
          • gataca 3y ago
  • Isamu 3y ago
    Jesus didn’t speak against the state, but saw it as something different that didn’t interest him. He spoke more against religious authorities, and against the strict enforcement of harsh religious laws. I say this because lots of people seem to be claiming the opposite and pushing for more christian influence in governance
    • 2devnull 3y ago
      True but he was martyred by the state. This is the core of Christian faith. God was put to death by an unjust government. It was Christ’s threat to state power that earned the execution. And tax collectors, even the disciple Matthew, were widely considered sinners during his day. The orientation people have to government power is much different before and after Christ. Political liberalism, individual freedom and many other things we take for granted are the direct result Christianity. But yes, “render unto Caesar what’s Caesar’s”
      • Isamu 3y ago
        The Roman Governor famously found nothing wrong with Jesus, that is to say nothing threatening to Rome, and washed his hands symbolically to say Jesus is dying because of the demand of the crowd and the religious authorities. He was dangerous to religious order, not secular order.
      • jcranmer 3y ago
        > True but he was martyred by the state. This is the core of Christian faith. God was put to death by an unjust government. It was Christ’s threat to state power that earned the execution. Actually, the Gospels make clear that Pilate found Jesus not guilty, and it was only the threat of a riot by the priests if he didn't crucify Jesus that he crucified him. It's still ultimately the religious authorities who order his death, and in this case, the state is at best acting as a tool of the religious authorities rather than in its own secular authority.
  • Lionga 3y ago
    The Catholic Church is also responsible for more violence, "holy" wars, death and harm then Hitler, Mao Zedong, Stalin and whoever else you want to add to the list combined.
    • throwaway6734 3y ago
      No it's not
      • Lionga 3y ago
        The Inquisition alone killed an insane amount of people. At that is just a small part of the history of the catholic church.
        • throwaway6734 3y ago
          Please provide evidence for your claim. Edit: OP originally claimed that the inquisition killed 50 million people and then edited their response instead of providing evidence. That's better than nothing, but I think still illustrates that OP might have extreme biases when discussing the Catholic church.
          • Lionga 3y ago
            Do you also need some evidence that the earth is in fact not flat or the center of the universe as your beloved church claim for so long and also killed people for saying otherwise? Just google "inquisition" or the million other atrocious acts for the church. I don't wast my time doing the work for people who defend the most criminal organization in the world
            • jcranmer 3y ago
              As a general rule of thumb, "popular common knowledge" of the Medieval and Early Modern periods tends to be the complete opposite of the truth often enough that anyone who cites to popular knowledge for this period is very suspect in their use of sources. It really doesn't help when you start your citation to this by comparing it to flat earth--no educated person in the Middle Ages would believe it to be flat; even the standard textbooks of the day (e.g., Ptolemy, Aristotle) would give you several proofs of its spherical nature. It's even mentioned on Wikipedia's List of Common Misconceptions, which is a clear sign you should purge it from your list of comebacks.
  • analog31 3y ago
    The paradox seems to be between the charity of religious people and the cruelty of religious societies. I don't have a good explanation.
    • hgsgm 3y ago
      The paradox being resolved that religious people aren't highly charitable in general, but people in a social club are pressured into paying dues, and mentally ill people are easily duped into giving up their money.
  • ubermonkey 3y ago
    It kinda depends on how you define "charitable" though. Historically, churches treat money spent on themselves as "charity." There was an interesting discussion in Christianity Today a long while back about how, on the surface, it looks like Red state residents are more charitable than folks in Blue states -- but the difference was tithing to churches, which overwhelmingly consume those funds on operating their Sunday morning social club & related programming. If you factored out that aspect, the comparison flipped dramatically.
• mejutoco 3y ago
  I would rephrase this as: an institution most important goal is self-preservation. It is a bit the same as how a specific implementation can have security bugs, while an algorithm in abstract does not.
  • coliveira 3y ago
    There is a big difference: once a bug is found in an algorithm, it is removed. But in religions, once a problem is found, they will just threaten the people who found the problem and protect the perpetrators.
    • garbageoverflow 3y ago
      An exception being Microsoft, who is forced by the US government to keep bugs in their platforms :-)
• gregw2 3y ago
  I am not Mormon, but I am mystified why a Mormon would not understand why their church hoards money rather than giving it away. It makes complete sense to anyone who understands their peculiar doctrine. One of those peculiarities as a religion born in America is the prophecy that when the US Constitution is hanging by a thread, the Mormon Elders will be asked to step in and save it. Saving up a ton of money for that day is in complete alignment of what they (quietly) preach. There is a prepper mindset fairly deeply attached to Mormonism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Prophecy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Prophecy
  • crabkin 3y ago
    Having been a seminary class president, scout, priesthood holder, just not a missionary or really active member, born and raised in Utah, I will tell you one interesting contradiction about Mormons is the extent to which they disown their past and at the same time still have many ideas from that time circulating around in a particular way. I would think it's similar to say how some Catholics may be down with the whole thing right now and yet still aren't "up-to-date" with the Catholic church's official position on things, for instance post Vatican II. Some not all. I would doubt that this sort of prophesy is a genuine front-of-mind-concern today by the people running this operation at the church. Preparing for the second coming could be a more sincere answer coming from them, but if such an event were to occur I think it would make money worthless, so that doesn't make sense to me.
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      > I would doubt that this sort of prophesy is a genuine front-of-mind-concern today by the people running this operation at the church. The concern is keeping the tribe going, and doing whatever it takes to optimize the tribe’s performance. Holding contradictory thoughts is just an inconvenience that can easily be tolerated, or even serve a purpose to weed out those less committed to the tribe. Note that even within the tribe, there can be multiple tribes, for example those of the leaders and those of the followers, who might have different goals.
    • lo_zamoyski 3y ago
• MadSudaca 3y ago
  To me, the this is just a corollary of the fact that any human system is susceptible of becoming corrupt. Therefore, human systems should be created with a built-in self-destruct function, so that once they have lived past their initial purpose they collapse in the least harmful way possible so that then another newer and better system can take its place.
  • hgsgm 3y ago
    > then another newer and better system can take its place. That is a strong assumption not borne out by history. Destroying a system leaves chaos, and violent people thrive in chaos. Better systems come about by incremental reforms and forgiveness for the undeserving.
    • MadSudaca 3y ago
      It's funny because I'm basing my statement on history, all sort of human-made institutions become corrupted, endure for longer than they should, collapse when the situation becomes unsustainable, then a new system necessarily takes over. Meanwhile, people who have to go through this process reap the suffering that comes with it. What I'm advocating is an understanding of this process, and ensuring that systems get replaced before they collapse because our unwillingness to let them go. What I'm advocating is the opposite of chaos, it's controlled renewal. Incremental reform is rationally a much better alternative, but in practice it doesn't always work, again, systems want to perpetuate themselves over time, so the only way in which they change is by collapsing. Also, sometimes what you need is not incremental changes but paradigm shifts. Another aspect, is that this assumes that we can always design systems on a top-down fashion, I think sometimes it's better to have an evolutionary trial-and-error process.
• dmreedy 3y ago
  This feels like a pretty modern view of the role of religion in society. For the majority of history I think it would barely be fair to consider a religion's de jure or ab initio "intent" from its de facto actions. Since it is the line to God (in the theistic traditions at least), it is always the most accurate source of its own intents, especially pre-Luther (and really, pre mass literacy). I guess what I mean to say is I'm not sure any of those you listed had strong philosophical or textual convictions against the counterpoints you provide. And even if they did at given points, that's not enough to judge the overall shape into some particular direction of "corruption" If anything, I assert that religion is as much reflective of the society it serves, as it is causal. It is one of the primary engines of "True Things" for people, but it also needs to react to new "True Things" from other sources, and integrates them, to provide a more powerful explanatory framework. With some consideration for its own foundational priors and axioms, but even those become malleable given enough social pressure. So in that light how can we be surprised that modern American incarnations of "Christianity" embrace capitalism as the yardstick for Goodness?
• swayvil 3y ago
  It's a bad epistemology problem. Trying to reverse-engineer a Matrix-transcending vision from a bunch of stories. Lacking any empirical reference or experimental method. It's inevitably a mess. Imagine if we did the same with science. We'd be quoting Einstein's holy scripture and illuminating circuit diagrams.
  • hgsgm 3y ago
    > . We'd be quoting Einstein's holy scripture and illuminating circuit diagrams. We do both of those things, so that's not what the problem is. Problem would be reinterpreting phlogiston theory to show how corrext it still is.
• bedhead 3y ago
  Unprincipled hypocrisy seems to be a nearly universal feature of humanity, regardless of one's particular religion.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• lo_zamoyski 3y ago
  > Religions tend to become the opposite of what they preach. I'm not a fan of such generalizations, not least of all because the term "religion" is itself commonly thoughtlessly applied and vague. Every human being has a religion according to a technical reading of the term because every human being takes something as the highest good to which all others goods are subordinate and to which he offers some kind of worship. So the question isn't whether someone is religious, but what they are religious about, and then, how good and true their religion is, whether their religion is the best, whether it is the true religion, etc. (Shocking perhaps to the adherents of the blandness that is moralistic therapeutic deism.) > The church of Jesus became an actual state for centuries. The Church never became a state (though I'm not sure what this is insinuating about the alleged teachings of Jesus). Those with authority in the Church have historically had both ecclesiastical authority and secular authority, yes, and this continues to this day (the pope is the prime example as he is both the supreme pontiff and monarch of the Holy See, and historically, has been the monarch of, e.g., the Papal States). But so what? There is nothing in the teachings of Jesus that contradicts the notion of secular authority or that those in the Church might also have such authority. Indeed, it is in the teachings of Christ that we find the very distinction between and recognition of religious and secular authority and institutions in the first place (e.g., Matthew 22:21). The liberal notion of the separation of Church and State is just an exaggeration of this distinction (which is why liberalism is, quite literally, a Christian heresy). You cannot make sense of this distinction outside of the broader Christian tradition. This is probably one reason why American attempts to spread the Gospel of Liberal Democracy have generally been hamfisted failures in other civilizational contexts. In any case, the state is a natural institution according to the natural law and a necessary institution. Here's an interesting explanation of the significance of the Holy Roman Empire that you and others might find interesting[0]. [0] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/12/what-was-holy-roman-empire.html https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/12/what-was-holy-roman...