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No major world religion I’m aware of is all that friendly to anyone who disagrees with the answer once ‘given’. Which doesn’t go well with ‘critical’. Some wil

by lazide 2y ago

No major world religion I’m aware of is all that friendly to anyone who disagrees with the answer once ‘given’. Which doesn’t go well with ‘critical’. Some will flat out kill you for disagreeing, in fact.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
LinuxBender 2y ago
I am not an expert in this area but I think one has to go further back in time before religions were weaponized, censored, intentionally mistranslated, edited and otherwise tainted by kings and emperors. One example might be Gnosticism [1] not the modern version. There are probably better examples from earlier times of antiquity but again I am not an expert in this area. I would wager someone here may be knowledgeable in this area. Perhaps some religions around the time period of the Mycenaean period or other periods where people may have partaken in mind expanding substances as a matter of religious or cult practice? Or perhaps theories around psychedelic drugs used in the Eleusinian Mysteries? [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
- lazide 2y ago
  Uh, when ‘further back’ has religion not been weaponized? Every major religion in recorded history, and all the ones I’m aware of from prehistory, have some history of violence. Even Buddhism. This is one of those ‘false ideal past’ things.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Buddhism has ongoing violence, today, if you count the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
  - LinuxBender 2y ago
    I should have been more clear. When I say weaponized I meant to manipulate societies and control peoples traditions, compliance with governments and less to do with wars, crusades, jihads and the like. This seems to fluctuate throughout history but then again I am not an expert on this topic. Dominance of the patriarchy vs the sacred feminine and such... I am probably still being too vague.
    - lazide 2y ago
      What do you think religion is exactly? At least organized religion. You can draw lines of causation back and forth between those two (or three) big things pretty much arbitrarily depending on the specific circumstances.
- o11c 2y ago
  The problem with Gnosticism is that it was highly prone to people inventing their own fanfiction that completely contradicted the canonical source material (and a warning against this exact thing is in the source itself). Of course, this doesn't stop the same from applying to "mainstream" denominations too.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    Around 2002, I asked a Dominican friar if it was true that The Matrix films were promoting Gnosticism. He said that I could find Gnosticism just about anywhere, if I looked closely enough. Pair that with Modernism, and you've got a recipe for some slippery definitions of "truth".
    - o11c 2y ago
      If you define it literally, you can easily find "Gnosticism" (personal knowledge/revelation) in the Bible itself (e.g. Mt 11, Mt 16, Lk 2, Jn 16, 2 Tim 3, all of Rev). But we generally agree to only label it as Gnosticism if it doesn't pass the consistency trial (2 Pet 1, 1 Jn 4), and especially if it outright fails it.
  - debit-freak 2y ago
    How is that a problem? Even within christianity the bible is not considered "true" or "absolute" or "the word of god" or "sacred" outside of niche literalist communities. If you're chasing coherence with texts written by humans you're likely to end up bitter and confused (or openly exploitative) rather than benefitting. EDIT: Especially in the context of christianity, the importance of faith/belief cannot be overstated. Even the very act of looking for proof that you're doing the right thing can arguably undermine the entire point of the "religion". cf John 3:16—"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." NB, as awkward as I am to quoting the bible, I am an atheist. I'm just saying this doesn't need to be a barrier to understanding other people.
    - o11c 2y ago
detourdog 2y ago
Maybe but I’m not sure it has to do with religion. This type of behavior is generally only a sub-group of any believers.
- lazide 2y ago
  Have you even met religious people?! I’m not saying everyone is violent. But the core tenet of every religion I’m aware of is believing in it without meaningfully diverting from its core tenets. That’s pretty fundamental. Otherwise, pretty much every religion says they aren’t a part of it anymore. Sometimes that has serious consequences for them. Several of the large religions have ‘you can’t leave’ clauses, either de facto or de jure. And if the core tenets get ‘influenced’ to violence, then that is what also happens.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    I’m really afraid that everything you mention is pretty general and not my experience.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Care to be specific then?
      - detourdog 2y ago
        I can only speak for one religion it has authorities that are well studied and can be consulted. These authorities are only as influential as the congregation that supports them. The story goes that the Egyptian hieroglyph for the Israelites is the translated to the land without a ruler. The idea was that they self organized around texts.
  - Nathanba 2y ago
    Religion is just a form of trained education, you see the same type of belief in people who were educated in schools. People who go through such targetted training are inherently going to believe that the training had some kind of purpose and made it unnecessary to reevaluate it every single time it's brought up. After all what's the point of training if you have to question it all day. This is why you see so many people in society fairly blindly parrotting "I believe in science!" and you think they mean: oh you believe in the scientific method, truth above all else, etc. But no, they mean that they were trained to believe in this particular thing that the tribe thinks is important and they kinda got the gist of it during training.
debit-freak 2y ago
> No major world religion I’m aware of is all that friendly to anyone who disagrees with the answer once ‘given’ Eastern worldviews (tao, buddhism—particularly zen buddhism) are inherently contradictory. Regarding these your perspective is simply nonsensical. Most worldviews have contradictory aspects that require inward judgement rather than just looking to a given bureaucracy to determine value; it's very rare for opinion to have any meaning at all outside of the christianity and islam. Of course, this comes back to what you consider a "religion". If you're looking for something like the catholic church where belief in a specific worldview is necessary for salvation of the soul it's a pretty natural to be dismissive of anything other than what you already believe in as you presume that other people even care what your opinion is (metaphysics, worldview, belief-system, whatever you want to call it) when likely your opinion is entirely beside the point.
- lazide 2y ago
  How does zen buddhism rank on the ‘major world religion’ scale? Or (by followers) Taoist/Daoists? Though in both cases, would the unacceptable idea not be ‘there is one objective view of reality’, and anyone holding such a view highly unlikely to be considered an adherent?
  - debit-freak 2y ago
    > How does zen buddhism rank on the ‘major world religion’ scale? Or (by followers) Taoist/Daoists? Well if you're just going off "popularity" then yea, you're going to end up with a lot of dogmatic belief that is the result of millennia of use by states. That's a big part of how ideas consistently spread and are maintained over time. That doesn't strike me as very useful and you're likely to offend a lot of people if you treat this understanding as accurate. But the closest parallel in the east—namely, confucianism—is almost entirely secular, which is a strong sign that you're actually talking about the dangers of authority. Arguably belief in "market forces" as a rational form of resource distribution today form another such secular religion worldwide, and indeed when you watch political figures discuss macroeconomic forces the effect is largely similar to the Pontifex Maximus slaughtering a bird and inspecting its liver to understand the future. > there is one objective view of reality Yes, this is fundamentally contrary to the Tao (or Dao if you prefer). It's also very rare for most animist beliefs to have anything like this sort of understanding of the sort. I don't know as much about Buddhism or Hinduism, by I understand this is also trivially incompatible with that from my layman's chair. For the most part humans just need to agree insofar as we have to in order to form a society. It seems like what you're actually complaining about are the effects of Abrahamic religions and their historical relation to state authority, which very much emphasize the importance of believing certain historical events are true. That's actually quite rare by enumeration of what people refer to as "religion", "faith", "spirituality", etc.

by lazide 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

LinuxBender 2y ago

I am not an expert in this area but I think one has to go further back in time before religions were weaponized, censored, intentionally mistranslated, edited and otherwise tainted by kings and emperors. One example might be Gnosticism [1] not the modern version. There are probably better examples from earlier times of antiquity but again I am not an expert in this area. I would wager someone here may be knowledgeable in this area. Perhaps some religions around the time period of the Mycenaean period or other periods where people may have partaken in mind expanding substances as a matter of religious or cult practice? Or perhaps theories around psychedelic drugs used in the Eleusinian Mysteries? [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

lazide 2y ago
Uh, when ‘further back’ has religion not been weaponized? Every major religion in recorded history, and all the ones I’m aware of from prehistory, have some history of violence. Even Buddhism. This is one of those ‘false ideal past’ things.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Buddhism has ongoing violence, today, if you count the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
- LinuxBender 2y ago
  I should have been more clear. When I say weaponized I meant to manipulate societies and control peoples traditions, compliance with governments and less to do with wars, crusades, jihads and the like. This seems to fluctuate throughout history but then again I am not an expert on this topic. Dominance of the patriarchy vs the sacred feminine and such... I am probably still being too vague.
  - lazide 2y ago
    What do you think religion is exactly? At least organized religion. You can draw lines of causation back and forth between those two (or three) big things pretty much arbitrarily depending on the specific circumstances.
o11c 2y ago
The problem with Gnosticism is that it was highly prone to people inventing their own fanfiction that completely contradicted the canonical source material (and a warning against this exact thing is in the source itself). Of course, this doesn't stop the same from applying to "mainstream" denominations too.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  Around 2002, I asked a Dominican friar if it was true that The Matrix films were promoting Gnosticism. He said that I could find Gnosticism just about anywhere, if I looked closely enough. Pair that with Modernism, and you've got a recipe for some slippery definitions of "truth".
  - o11c 2y ago
    If you define it literally, you can easily find "Gnosticism" (personal knowledge/revelation) in the Bible itself (e.g. Mt 11, Mt 16, Lk 2, Jn 16, 2 Tim 3, all of Rev). But we generally agree to only label it as Gnosticism if it doesn't pass the consistency trial (2 Pet 1, 1 Jn 4), and especially if it outright fails it.
- debit-freak 2y ago
  How is that a problem? Even within christianity the bible is not considered "true" or "absolute" or "the word of god" or "sacred" outside of niche literalist communities. If you're chasing coherence with texts written by humans you're likely to end up bitter and confused (or openly exploitative) rather than benefitting. EDIT: Especially in the context of christianity, the importance of faith/belief cannot be overstated. Even the very act of looking for proof that you're doing the right thing can arguably undermine the entire point of the "religion". cf John 3:16—"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." NB, as awkward as I am to quoting the bible, I am an atheist. I'm just saying this doesn't need to be a barrier to understanding other people.
  - o11c 2y ago

detourdog 2y ago

Maybe but I’m not sure it has to do with religion. This type of behavior is generally only a sub-group of any believers.

lazide 2y ago
Have you even met religious people?! I’m not saying everyone is violent. But the core tenet of every religion I’m aware of is believing in it without meaningfully diverting from its core tenets. That’s pretty fundamental. Otherwise, pretty much every religion says they aren’t a part of it anymore. Sometimes that has serious consequences for them. Several of the large religions have ‘you can’t leave’ clauses, either de facto or de jure. And if the core tenets get ‘influenced’ to violence, then that is what also happens.
- detourdog 2y ago
  I’m really afraid that everything you mention is pretty general and not my experience.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Care to be specific then?
    - detourdog 2y ago
      I can only speak for one religion it has authorities that are well studied and can be consulted. These authorities are only as influential as the congregation that supports them. The story goes that the Egyptian hieroglyph for the Israelites is the translated to the land without a ruler. The idea was that they self organized around texts.
- Nathanba 2y ago
  Religion is just a form of trained education, you see the same type of belief in people who were educated in schools. People who go through such targetted training are inherently going to believe that the training had some kind of purpose and made it unnecessary to reevaluate it every single time it's brought up. After all what's the point of training if you have to question it all day. This is why you see so many people in society fairly blindly parrotting "I believe in science!" and you think they mean: oh you believe in the scientific method, truth above all else, etc. But no, they mean that they were trained to believe in this particular thing that the tribe thinks is important and they kinda got the gist of it during training.

debit-freak 2y ago

> No major world religion I’m aware of is all that friendly to anyone who disagrees with the answer once ‘given’ Eastern worldviews (tao, buddhism—particularly zen buddhism) are inherently contradictory. Regarding these your perspective is simply nonsensical. Most worldviews have contradictory aspects that require inward judgement rather than just looking to a given bureaucracy to determine value; it's very rare for opinion to have any meaning at all outside of the christianity and islam. Of course, this comes back to what you consider a "religion". If you're looking for something like the catholic church where belief in a specific worldview is necessary for salvation of the soul it's a pretty natural to be dismissive of anything other than what you already believe in as you presume that other people even care what your opinion is (metaphysics, worldview, belief-system, whatever you want to call it) when likely your opinion is entirely beside the point.

lazide 2y ago
How does zen buddhism rank on the ‘major world religion’ scale? Or (by followers) Taoist/Daoists? Though in both cases, would the unacceptable idea not be ‘there is one objective view of reality’, and anyone holding such a view highly unlikely to be considered an adherent?
- debit-freak 2y ago
  > How does zen buddhism rank on the ‘major world religion’ scale? Or (by followers) Taoist/Daoists? Well if you're just going off "popularity" then yea, you're going to end up with a lot of dogmatic belief that is the result of millennia of use by states. That's a big part of how ideas consistently spread and are maintained over time. That doesn't strike me as very useful and you're likely to offend a lot of people if you treat this understanding as accurate. But the closest parallel in the east—namely, confucianism—is almost entirely secular, which is a strong sign that you're actually talking about the dangers of authority. Arguably belief in "market forces" as a rational form of resource distribution today form another such secular religion worldwide, and indeed when you watch political figures discuss macroeconomic forces the effect is largely similar to the Pontifex Maximus slaughtering a bird and inspecting its liver to understand the future. > there is one objective view of reality Yes, this is fundamentally contrary to the Tao (or Dao if you prefer). It's also very rare for most animist beliefs to have anything like this sort of understanding of the sort. I don't know as much about Buddhism or Hinduism, by I understand this is also trivially incompatible with that from my layman's chair. For the most part humans just need to agree insofar as we have to in order to form a society. It seems like what you're actually complaining about are the effects of Abrahamic religions and their historical relation to state authority, which very much emphasize the importance of believing certain historical events are true. That's actually quite rare by enumeration of what people refer to as "religion", "faith", "spirituality", etc.