7 ms·

Great comic and there's a documentary about that place. Very messed up that's it's a whole child abuse industry.

nekusar 11mo ago
Might take a karma hit for this, but whatever. Its the truth. Christians are more concerned about *causing* extreme child abuse, and then turning around and claiming its to "save them", so the abuse isnt reallllly abuse. Most of these camps cited are christian. And the people running them? Dogmatic christian fundamentalists. And these are the same types that run "pray the gay away" camps too. And my inflammatory, albeit true comment also goes right back to the heart of the article: "Reformatories were institutions where girls and young women who refused to conform to the Franco regime's Catholic values were detained - single mothers, girls with boyfriends, lesbians. Girls who'd been sexually assaulted were incarcerated, assuming the blame for their own abuse. Orphans and abandoned girls might also find themselves living behind convent walls." Extremist Roman Catholic "values", demonization and imprisonment of 'unruly women', anti-LGBTQ. Same damned thing, again and again. When are we going to actually look at these issues dispassionately and realize that religion itself is the problem?
- HiPhish 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - slumberlust 11mo ago
    It's possible to be moral without religion. Your assertion stands stronger with tribalism than religion.
  - AlexandrB 11mo ago
    Most non-religious people aren't in cults.
  - justin66 11mo ago
    > Humans are always religious, no exception. You should get out more.
    - rayiner 11mo ago
      It’s true. The supposedly “secular people” I know are always prattling about “human dignity” and stuff that sounds very religious. They don’t think of humans as walking meat like a non-religious person would.
      - wtfwhateven 11mo ago
        Are you being satirical?
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      - justin66 11mo ago
        > stuff that sounds very religious Sounds very religious? Oh well then, you've clearly put some serious thought into this. > They don’t think of humans as walking meat like a non-religious person would. What a truly weird thing to write.
      - diego_moita 11mo ago
        > “human dignity” and stuff that sounds very religious. Even bonobo monkeys and elephants understand empathy for others. Should we then assume that monkeys and elephants are very religious, too? > like a non-religious person would. Oh, I see you took a lot of care in trying to understand what a "non-religious person" is. Are all church people this smart, too? /s
        rayiner 11mo ago
        > Even bonobo monkeys and elephants understand empathy for others. Empathy is an emotion. Emotions are real. You can see emotions in brain scans. But anger, desire for revenge, disgust, in-group affinity, etc., are also real emotions! It's rational to use people's emotions to guide what society should do. But most putatively secular people disagree with that approach! They're constantly telling people to put aside their emotions in favor of supposed universal principles that sound suspiciously similar to religious beliefs.
  - fhdkweig 11mo ago
    Atheism doesn't turn into worship of anything. That's the point of atheism. It is clear to me that you have never met an atheist.
    - vacuity 11mo ago
      Not directly, but people find ways to believe in a manner analogous to religious beliefs. Faith doesn't have to be directed only at traditional theist objects. Religious or not, people can believe things by faith and by logic. To give an example, science is not a replacement for philosophy, nor is it implemented perfectly, but some people elevate it far beyond its means to answer certain inquiries. That is irrationality, or faith.
      - diego_moita 11mo ago
        > science is not a replacement for philosophy, nor is it implemented perfectly, Yes, but it is far better than a fraud. Therefore it is the best we have to understand the world. And fairy tales invented by illiterate people thousands of years ago aren't a path to understand the world. They're a fraud, plain and simple.
        vacuity 11mo ago
        I think you're being uncharitable towards religion. While I agree that a belief such as "the Earth was made 6000 years ago" is ridiculous, a belief like "God wants us to love our neighbors" is not. I think "good beliefs" (a very loaded term, mind you) get rediscovered constantly, in religious and nonreligious contexts alike. These are beliefs attained through philosophical inquiry. The beliefs provided by science are complementary.
        diego_moita 11mo ago
        > I think you're being uncharitable towards religion. You are correct. I am, deliberately, "being uncharitable towards religion". I had far too much Catholicism in my upbringing to be respectful of any religion. If you want to know what I mean by Catholicism read the story linked by the title post, about Catholic parents in Catholic Spain. My story wasn't that bad but I saw a lot of that prejudice, arrogance and intolerance. It isn't surprising that in 50 years the country of Spain went from majorly Catholic to majorly agnostic. > a belief like "God wants us to love our neighbors" is not. You don't need "God wants" in that. Empathy doesn't need "God". Unlike what church people think, non-religious people have empathy and decency, too. Human beings are social animals, doing empathy is a common trait that doesn't need "divine" justification.
  - robotshmobot 11mo ago
    The absolute projection of “it’s like this for me therefore it must be true for you” is astounding here
    - Supermancho 11mo ago
      This is an observation of history, not a one-person-projection. The amount of kneejerk denial is surprising.
  - nekusar 11mo ago
    > Whenever you try to remove religion the void fills up with something, and that something is demonic. I've heard that exact type of comparison before, and it's from those fundamentalist christians. You find out quickly, that "everything is the devil or demonic" that wasn't written down in a bronze-age book and interpreted and translated the snot out of, over a game of telephone played over 2000 years. Most of which was done by illiterates. Better yet, lets look at what the opposite of this demonic is - judeo-christian values. 1 Samuel 15:3 "Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe [kill and dedicate to YHWH] all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!" That god sounds like a petty tribal warlord. Really? Genocide? Even kill the infants and animals?!? And this is what's being accepted as good and holy? And when Saul (king) spared the Amalekite king and some animals, even that benevolence was rewarded with destroying Saul. Petty. Tribal. Warlord. And yeah, I've actually read the Torah and New Testament and Koran. I know what I disagree in, and I see how our culture are still afflicted by all this historical religious baggage.
    - graemep 11mo ago
      So, you can find a few isolated quotes in a series of documents written over thousands of years that support the idea that religion is the problem. Have you read these works considering historical and cultural context? Can you find anything in the New testament that supports this? Do you know about the history of how Christianity shaped European culture? There are excellent books on the subjects (Dominion by Tom Holland is brilliant on the lats of these).
      - nekusar 11mo ago
        I work in IT, but I also do stuff in historical studies. I dont want to dox myself, cause I just want to chat here anonymously. In the Americas and Europe, Christianity is the fundamentalist scourge. We all know of Israel, of fundamentalist Judaism. Middle East? You guessed it, 4 of the 5 major sects of Islam are fundamentalist. And moving further East, we see extreme caste-ism and Fundamentalist Hinduism. China rooted out Fundamentalist Buddhism with Tibet. In 1953, 700,000 of an estimated total population of 1,250,000 were serfs - effectively enslaved peoples on the land attached to the land-lord. Usually a lama, or a priest in Buddhism. This is a case where an oppressive fundamentalist religion was rooted out, and almost a million people were freed. Im also well aware of all the damage Christianity and Islam did through the millennia in Europe. The priesthood collectively held back science, arts, literature, and countless other things because of "demons, devils, satan". And that only got worse with Dante's Inferno, which somehow got collapsed as bible stories, but really is a fanfiction. We also see fundamentalist christian hatred flood everywhere with <GASP> more anti-woman sentiment with Witch Trials held basically everywhere. Even had executions up in Holmavik Iceland, to of which a museum was made to commemorate their witch trials. And everyone knows of Salem Massachusetts. Estimates of 30-60000 women were executed in these sham trials, and was predominantly women targeted here. Perhaps it was too narrow to just blame christians, although the USA is a "christian nation" and what I'm most exposed against my will. No, the problem is fanaticism and fundamentalism. Its one thing to say "My religion says I cant do (action)." and a whole different thing to say "My religion says YOU cant do (action)". All the fundamentalists demand both.
  - diego_moita 11mo ago
    > Humans are always religious, no exception. I'm absolutely not religious. So, therefore, am I not human?
- LexiMax 11mo ago
  > When are we going to actually look at these issues dispassionately and realize that religion itself is the problem? Because it's not. I've been interrogating this sort of question for most of my life. I am a queer agnostic who grew up in a religious part of the South and saw shades of this kind of abuse firsthand, mostly around queerness. At first, I did blame religion, but with the benefit of hindsight, I realized something. In the context of queerness, almost nobody I ran into growing up hated queer people because they heard their preacher say so and thought it must be true. They hated them because they were massively insecure. They were terrified of being labeled gay. They were terrified of guys hitting on them. They were terrified of hitting on a woman who turned out to have been born as a man. Religion isn't the problem. Instead, religion gives these sorts of insecure people a trump card that requires very little interrogation. However, if these folks weren't Christian or weren't even religious, I have no doubt that the underlying insecurities would remain, and simply manifest in a different way. Once I realized this, it was actually a massive weight lifted off my shoulders. In particular, I was no longer confused as to why my friend groups that were majority Christian continued to be nice to me and treated me with respect, despite me being a atheist queer at the time. It opened the door to connecting with them on a deeper level of understanding, as well as leading to me dabbling with my own forms of non-Christian spirituality. So yeah, religion isn't the problem. It's merely a mechanism that allows shitty people to be shitty.
  - usefulcat 11mo ago
    Agreed. I've long thought that it's much more the case that a person's religion is a function of their values, not the other way around. Or, put another way, if a person's religion conflicts with their values (including prejudices), which one is more likely to give first?
    - LexiMax 11mo ago
      You don't have to wonder. I have been hearing about several recent church schisms over certain folks thinking the church had become too accepting. This is literally an example of individuals choosing their religion based on their own values. Folks on one side of the schism might criticize folks on the other side of the schism for not being true Christians, but it's ultimately a dispute over "Thou shalt not lie with another man," versus "Love thy neighbor."
- dang 11mo ago
  > Christians are more concerned about *causing* extreme child abuse > religion itself is the problem Religious flamewar isn't allowed here, so please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html --- Edit: It also looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological/political/religious battle. That's not allowed here (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for more explanation), and we ban accounts that do it. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
  - nekusar 11mo ago
    So we're supposed to simultaneously discuss the article (General Franco's extremist Catholic task forces), but not identify the religious tropes behind this? I read the article, and discussing the article. And as hackers, im curious as how to fix the problems.
    - dang 11mo ago
      You can discuss things like that without denouncing entire groups of people and without inflammatory rhetoric. It's not hard to understand where the line is if you've reviewed https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and genuinely want to use HN as intended.
      - LexiMax 11mo ago
        [flagged]
    - DontForgetMe 11mo ago
      I mean, of all the many, many talking points from the article 'This particular religious / cultural group is a global problem and must be eradicated, and (all of? Seems like it meant all of) its many billions of members are enthusiastic supporters or perpetrators of child abuse' is not one that leapt out to most people. And even if it did, they didn't say it here. This is not the place for religious ideology. I passionately hate my neighbours who listen to music really loudly in their garden all the time, but I don't call for their eradication on public fora unless there's a really, really specific relevance (like here, for example) and I also don't campaign against them on GitHub, my local supermarket, local government meetings, or other places where people are trying to do other things. There are places for me to rant about my neighbours. There are entire discussions about noisy neighbours, my vicinity, local customs and manners etc. If I wanted to rant about them, those would be the place to do it. But I don't, because I wouldn't actually gain anything from it. I'm not going to single handedly change the law on nuisance, and all a hate campaign could achieve would be, well, more hate. I want solutions, or quiet, and I won't achieve either of those by telling random strangers how terrible my neighbours are. I'm sure you can think of the easiest solution to the hypothetical neighbour problem. It's not ideological and doesn't involve changing the hearts and minds of hundreds of people, none of whom are currently concerned about my neighbours. It might look like I'm trivialising your point, but I promise, I'm not. Noisy neighbours, or an itchy foot, or even a literal broken fingernail, are a more immediate problem than 'we must rid the world of Christians', unless they are currently holding you hostage. And the reason I'm bothering to write such a long-ass reply at all is because there is currently far too much intolerance and ethno-religious hatred being propogated and spread around the world. We know where this leads. It always leads the same way, there is no possibility of a happy ending. We have tried 'that religion is the problem, let's persecute them' repeatedly and we end up in the sort of fascist dystopia we were reminded of literal moments ago in the article. It's not ok to do it to Jews or Muslims, which means it's not ok to do it to Christians. And it's not ok to let people spread those messages in bad faith, which means I've got to call out those spreading the same message in presumed good faith. My neighbours are just annoying me, I can deal with that. Christians are just kinda weird but whatever, we've all got our foibles. Racists, dogmatics and puritans can believe whatever they want, I just won't listen to it. And I invite you to step away from the brewing culture war too. It's more fun discussing tech and stuff.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]

Might take a karma hit for this, but whatever. Its the truth. Christians are more concerned about *causing* extreme child abuse, and then turning around and claiming its to "save them", so the abuse isnt reallllly abuse. Most of these camps cited are christian. And the people running them? Dogmatic christian fundamentalists. And these are the same types that run "pray the gay away" camps too. And my inflammatory, albeit true comment also goes right back to the heart of the article: "Reformatories were institutions where girls and young women who refused to conform to the Franco regime's Catholic values were detained - single mothers, girls with boyfriends, lesbians. Girls who'd been sexually assaulted were incarcerated, assuming the blame for their own abuse. Orphans and abandoned girls might also find themselves living behind convent walls." Extremist Roman Catholic "values", demonization and imprisonment of 'unruly women', anti-LGBTQ. Same damned thing, again and again. When are we going to actually look at these issues dispassionately and realize that religion itself is the problem?

HiPhish 11mo ago
[flagged]
- slumberlust 11mo ago
  It's possible to be moral without religion. Your assertion stands stronger with tribalism than religion.
- AlexandrB 11mo ago
  Most non-religious people aren't in cults.
- justin66 11mo ago
  > Humans are always religious, no exception. You should get out more.
  - rayiner 11mo ago
    It’s true. The supposedly “secular people” I know are always prattling about “human dignity” and stuff that sounds very religious. They don’t think of humans as walking meat like a non-religious person would.
    - wtfwhateven 11mo ago
      Are you being satirical?
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - justin66 11mo ago
      > stuff that sounds very religious Sounds very religious? Oh well then, you've clearly put some serious thought into this. > They don’t think of humans as walking meat like a non-religious person would. What a truly weird thing to write.
    - diego_moita 11mo ago
      > “human dignity” and stuff that sounds very religious. Even bonobo monkeys and elephants understand empathy for others. Should we then assume that monkeys and elephants are very religious, too? > like a non-religious person would. Oh, I see you took a lot of care in trying to understand what a "non-religious person" is. Are all church people this smart, too? /s
      - rayiner 11mo ago
        > Even bonobo monkeys and elephants understand empathy for others. Empathy is an emotion. Emotions are real. You can see emotions in brain scans. But anger, desire for revenge, disgust, in-group affinity, etc., are also real emotions! It's rational to use people's emotions to guide what society should do. But most putatively secular people disagree with that approach! They're constantly telling people to put aside their emotions in favor of supposed universal principles that sound suspiciously similar to religious beliefs.
- fhdkweig 11mo ago
  Atheism doesn't turn into worship of anything. That's the point of atheism. It is clear to me that you have never met an atheist.
  - vacuity 11mo ago
    Not directly, but people find ways to believe in a manner analogous to religious beliefs. Faith doesn't have to be directed only at traditional theist objects. Religious or not, people can believe things by faith and by logic. To give an example, science is not a replacement for philosophy, nor is it implemented perfectly, but some people elevate it far beyond its means to answer certain inquiries. That is irrationality, or faith.
    - diego_moita 11mo ago
      > science is not a replacement for philosophy, nor is it implemented perfectly, Yes, but it is far better than a fraud. Therefore it is the best we have to understand the world. And fairy tales invented by illiterate people thousands of years ago aren't a path to understand the world. They're a fraud, plain and simple.
      - vacuity 11mo ago
        I think you're being uncharitable towards religion. While I agree that a belief such as "the Earth was made 6000 years ago" is ridiculous, a belief like "God wants us to love our neighbors" is not. I think "good beliefs" (a very loaded term, mind you) get rediscovered constantly, in religious and nonreligious contexts alike. These are beliefs attained through philosophical inquiry. The beliefs provided by science are complementary.
        diego_moita 11mo ago
        > I think you're being uncharitable towards religion. You are correct. I am, deliberately, "being uncharitable towards religion". I had far too much Catholicism in my upbringing to be respectful of any religion. If you want to know what I mean by Catholicism read the story linked by the title post, about Catholic parents in Catholic Spain. My story wasn't that bad but I saw a lot of that prejudice, arrogance and intolerance. It isn't surprising that in 50 years the country of Spain went from majorly Catholic to majorly agnostic. > a belief like "God wants us to love our neighbors" is not. You don't need "God wants" in that. Empathy doesn't need "God". Unlike what church people think, non-religious people have empathy and decency, too. Human beings are social animals, doing empathy is a common trait that doesn't need "divine" justification.
- robotshmobot 11mo ago
  The absolute projection of “it’s like this for me therefore it must be true for you” is astounding here
  - Supermancho 11mo ago
    This is an observation of history, not a one-person-projection. The amount of kneejerk denial is surprising.
- nekusar 11mo ago
  > Whenever you try to remove religion the void fills up with something, and that something is demonic. I've heard that exact type of comparison before, and it's from those fundamentalist christians. You find out quickly, that "everything is the devil or demonic" that wasn't written down in a bronze-age book and interpreted and translated the snot out of, over a game of telephone played over 2000 years. Most of which was done by illiterates. Better yet, lets look at what the opposite of this demonic is - judeo-christian values. 1 Samuel 15:3 "Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe [kill and dedicate to YHWH] all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!" That god sounds like a petty tribal warlord. Really? Genocide? Even kill the infants and animals?!? And this is what's being accepted as good and holy? And when Saul (king) spared the Amalekite king and some animals, even that benevolence was rewarded with destroying Saul. Petty. Tribal. Warlord. And yeah, I've actually read the Torah and New Testament and Koran. I know what I disagree in, and I see how our culture are still afflicted by all this historical religious baggage.
  - graemep 11mo ago
    So, you can find a few isolated quotes in a series of documents written over thousands of years that support the idea that religion is the problem. Have you read these works considering historical and cultural context? Can you find anything in the New testament that supports this? Do you know about the history of how Christianity shaped European culture? There are excellent books on the subjects (Dominion by Tom Holland is brilliant on the lats of these).
    - nekusar 11mo ago
      I work in IT, but I also do stuff in historical studies. I dont want to dox myself, cause I just want to chat here anonymously. In the Americas and Europe, Christianity is the fundamentalist scourge. We all know of Israel, of fundamentalist Judaism. Middle East? You guessed it, 4 of the 5 major sects of Islam are fundamentalist. And moving further East, we see extreme caste-ism and Fundamentalist Hinduism. China rooted out Fundamentalist Buddhism with Tibet. In 1953, 700,000 of an estimated total population of 1,250,000 were serfs - effectively enslaved peoples on the land attached to the land-lord. Usually a lama, or a priest in Buddhism. This is a case where an oppressive fundamentalist religion was rooted out, and almost a million people were freed. Im also well aware of all the damage Christianity and Islam did through the millennia in Europe. The priesthood collectively held back science, arts, literature, and countless other things because of "demons, devils, satan". And that only got worse with Dante's Inferno, which somehow got collapsed as bible stories, but really is a fanfiction. We also see fundamentalist christian hatred flood everywhere with <GASP> more anti-woman sentiment with Witch Trials held basically everywhere. Even had executions up in Holmavik Iceland, to of which a museum was made to commemorate their witch trials. And everyone knows of Salem Massachusetts. Estimates of 30-60000 women were executed in these sham trials, and was predominantly women targeted here. Perhaps it was too narrow to just blame christians, although the USA is a "christian nation" and what I'm most exposed against my will. No, the problem is fanaticism and fundamentalism. Its one thing to say "My religion says I cant do (action)." and a whole different thing to say "My religion says YOU cant do (action)". All the fundamentalists demand both.
- diego_moita 11mo ago
  > Humans are always religious, no exception. I'm absolutely not religious. So, therefore, am I not human?
LexiMax 11mo ago
> When are we going to actually look at these issues dispassionately and realize that religion itself is the problem? Because it's not. I've been interrogating this sort of question for most of my life. I am a queer agnostic who grew up in a religious part of the South and saw shades of this kind of abuse firsthand, mostly around queerness. At first, I did blame religion, but with the benefit of hindsight, I realized something. In the context of queerness, almost nobody I ran into growing up hated queer people because they heard their preacher say so and thought it must be true. They hated them because they were massively insecure. They were terrified of being labeled gay. They were terrified of guys hitting on them. They were terrified of hitting on a woman who turned out to have been born as a man. Religion isn't the problem. Instead, religion gives these sorts of insecure people a trump card that requires very little interrogation. However, if these folks weren't Christian or weren't even religious, I have no doubt that the underlying insecurities would remain, and simply manifest in a different way. Once I realized this, it was actually a massive weight lifted off my shoulders. In particular, I was no longer confused as to why my friend groups that were majority Christian continued to be nice to me and treated me with respect, despite me being a atheist queer at the time. It opened the door to connecting with them on a deeper level of understanding, as well as leading to me dabbling with my own forms of non-Christian spirituality. So yeah, religion isn't the problem. It's merely a mechanism that allows shitty people to be shitty.
- usefulcat 11mo ago
  Agreed. I've long thought that it's much more the case that a person's religion is a function of their values, not the other way around. Or, put another way, if a person's religion conflicts with their values (including prejudices), which one is more likely to give first?
  - LexiMax 11mo ago
    You don't have to wonder. I have been hearing about several recent church schisms over certain folks thinking the church had become too accepting. This is literally an example of individuals choosing their religion based on their own values. Folks on one side of the schism might criticize folks on the other side of the schism for not being true Christians, but it's ultimately a dispute over "Thou shalt not lie with another man," versus "Love thy neighbor."
dang 11mo ago
> Christians are more concerned about *causing* extreme child abuse > religion itself is the problem Religious flamewar isn't allowed here, so please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html --- Edit: It also looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological/political/religious battle. That's not allowed here (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for more explanation), and we ban accounts that do it. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
- nekusar 11mo ago
  So we're supposed to simultaneously discuss the article (General Franco's extremist Catholic task forces), but not identify the religious tropes behind this? I read the article, and discussing the article. And as hackers, im curious as how to fix the problems.
  - dang 11mo ago
    You can discuss things like that without denouncing entire groups of people and without inflammatory rhetoric. It's not hard to understand where the line is if you've reviewed https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and genuinely want to use HN as intended.
    - LexiMax 11mo ago
      [flagged]
  - DontForgetMe 11mo ago
    I mean, of all the many, many talking points from the article 'This particular religious / cultural group is a global problem and must be eradicated, and (all of? Seems like it meant all of) its many billions of members are enthusiastic supporters or perpetrators of child abuse' is not one that leapt out to most people. And even if it did, they didn't say it here. This is not the place for religious ideology. I passionately hate my neighbours who listen to music really loudly in their garden all the time, but I don't call for their eradication on public fora unless there's a really, really specific relevance (like here, for example) and I also don't campaign against them on GitHub, my local supermarket, local government meetings, or other places where people are trying to do other things. There are places for me to rant about my neighbours. There are entire discussions about noisy neighbours, my vicinity, local customs and manners etc. If I wanted to rant about them, those would be the place to do it. But I don't, because I wouldn't actually gain anything from it. I'm not going to single handedly change the law on nuisance, and all a hate campaign could achieve would be, well, more hate. I want solutions, or quiet, and I won't achieve either of those by telling random strangers how terrible my neighbours are. I'm sure you can think of the easiest solution to the hypothetical neighbour problem. It's not ideological and doesn't involve changing the hearts and minds of hundreds of people, none of whom are currently concerned about my neighbours. It might look like I'm trivialising your point, but I promise, I'm not. Noisy neighbours, or an itchy foot, or even a literal broken fingernail, are a more immediate problem than 'we must rid the world of Christians', unless they are currently holding you hostage. And the reason I'm bothering to write such a long-ass reply at all is because there is currently far too much intolerance and ethno-religious hatred being propogated and spread around the world. We know where this leads. It always leads the same way, there is no possibility of a happy ending. We have tried 'that religion is the problem, let's persecute them' repeatedly and we end up in the sort of fascist dystopia we were reminded of literal moments ago in the article. It's not ok to do it to Jews or Muslims, which means it's not ok to do it to Christians. And it's not ok to let people spread those messages in bad faith, which means I've got to call out those spreading the same message in presumed good faith. My neighbours are just annoying me, I can deal with that. Christians are just kinda weird but whatever, we've all got our foibles. Racists, dogmatics and puritans can believe whatever they want, I just won't listen to it. And I invite you to step away from the brewing culture war too. It's more fun discussing tech and stuff.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]