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I used to think society would, at some point, grow up and leave religion behind. But lately, it just feels like a far 'lower' form of religion is just taking o

• nailer 12y ago
  Orthodox folk - Christians, Jews, and Muslims - generally believe that secular folk aren't religious at all. I know a whole bunch of Christians who's idea of god is 'life and family' and, despite attending church and believing that Jesus was real, don't believe in an all-powerful creator with human characteristics. Secularism is now so secular that the only religious people you hear about are the orthodox ones.
• Lewton 12y ago
  Winning, how?
• MrGando 12y ago
  I think the French people and most of the world has reacted in an admirable way after this attacks. Showing no fear and Charlie, showing that they are going to keep up, doing what they do, because it's right. The world has to be very careful with how many governments are going to use this attacks as an opportunity to empower mass surveillance and other policies that will affect general people privacy. Still, I'm happy about how the French people have handled this horrible situation.
• olavk 12y ago
  Western Christianity certainly haven't left violence behind. Just take the christian terrorist Anders Brevik who killed 80 people in Norway.
  • fafner 12y ago
    Breivik isn't a Christian terrorist. He described himself as not being overly religious. He is also very critical of modern (I think that's what's meant by Western here) Christianity, both in the Church of Norway and Catholicism.
    • mcv 12y ago
      I've read somewhere that the Charlie Hebdo attackers weren't actually very religious either. Didn't visit mosques or read the Quran, but felt separated from society, and looking for some meaning to their life, some way to have impact, they found this. The article claimed they had more in common with Breivik and the Unabomber, or maybe even the Sandy Hook shooter and similar lone gunmen. It wouldn't surprise me if the same is true for many extremists. ISIS also apparently gets a surprising number of recruits from Europe. People not fitting in looking for a place where they can be appreciated.
    • olavk 12y ago
      Muslim terrorists in general are also in opposition to mainstream Islam. They are extremists, just as Breivik is an extremist.
      • fafner 12y ago
        Wahhabism and other extremist versions of Islam have a significant following. Polls regularly indicate support or acceptance towards extremist views within Muslim communities. It's therefore not as simple.
  • Kiro 12y ago
    I don't think one Christian terrorist is enough to say that Western Christianity "certainly" is violent. I wouldn't even say that about Islam even though I think Islam has some problems with violence that Western Christianity doesn't have.
    • olavk 12y ago
      I'm not saying western Christianity in general is violent! Certainly Breivik is a lone extremist with absolutely no support by any mainstream church. But it doesn't change the fact that he was a christian and what he considered christian values (in his own eccentric interpretation) is part of what he believed he fought for. That makes him a christian terrorist, unless you apply some kind of "no true scotscman" filter, which could just as well be used to argue that no muslim terrorists are actually muslim terrorists. Another example would be the IRA.
      • Kiro 12y ago
        You're right and I agree that he was a Christian terrorist in that sense. I was mostly commenting the use of "certainly".
• JonnieCache 12y ago
  The religious instinct hasn't gone from the secular western world, it's just been re-expressed in different more modern ways, variously consumerism, string theory, celebrity, and so on. I'm pretty sure personally that it's built into our biology. In the words of Charlie Brooker: "Imagine! Nothing to kill or die for! And no religion too! It's amazing, literally no one's ever had that thought before. Okay, so there's always the possibility that the same part of the brain that handles fuzzy spiritual feelings is the same part that handles love and sorrow and pity and joy; the same part that makes us create songs and jokes and books and art and brightly coloured computer games in which an animated weasel collects starfish in a fountain; so once we wipe it out we might all be left scampering around the planet like thick, bipedal, cultureless mice - rutting, foraging, scratching behind our ears and doing very little else. But look on the bright side. No more religious conflict AND no more novelty ringtones. Two almighty evils erased for the price of one. Bargain."
  • gbog 12y ago
    I'd like to point out that Far East cultures (China and Japan) do not have the same religious instincts. For them an almighty human-like God who wrote a sacred book is not conceivable. I don't think they can understand what religion and faith represent in the lives of Christian, Jews and Muslims. And unsurprisingly, religious wars have been quite marginal in this part of the world. One could also trace this important cultural difference to the figure of Confucius, who was not atheist, but refused to speak about what he called the Sky.
    • JonnieCache 12y ago
      A very good point. I would argue that these cultures are simply expressing these religious instincts in ways that don't look like abrahamic religions, in the same way that football or rock music don't look like abrahamic religions either. Also, once you blur out the technical theological details, is Confucius not effectively treated as a prophet? (This is a genuine question.)
      • jpgvm 12y ago
• Simp 12y ago
  Western christianity didn't leave all violence behind, see for example anti-abortion violence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence#United_S...
  • fafner 12y ago
    I think neals meant "modern" Christianity, as in what has become of Christianity thanks to the age of reason. This excludes some Western (especially US) branches of Christianity.
    • thret 12y ago
      Christianity was pacifist from the beginning. Jesus was all about non-violence: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. - Matthew 5:38-39 ESV
      • cottonseed 12y ago
        I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. This was also my understanding. I highly recommend Mark Kurlansky's Nonviolence: History of a Dangerous Idea, which discusses non-violence in the history of early Christianity: http://www.amazon.com/Nonviolence-History-Dangerous-Mark-Kurlansky-ebook/dp/B0017SWRTQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421167288&sr=8-1&keywords=history+dangerous+idea+kurlansky http://www.amazon.com/Nonviolence-History-Dangerous-Mark-Kur...
  • bkmartin 12y ago
    Violent acts against those who disagree with you is not a Christian principal and goes directly against the teaching of our faith. Period. Anyone who supports or performs acts of violence as you are referencing are sinning and blaspheming when using a reference to God for their actions. No excuses, those are evil acts.
    • 12y ago
• jordanpg 12y ago
  Coverage of these events, with or without anti-Muslim sentiment, almost never takes the point of view that it is the fact that people are brought up to really believe that there are invisible, magic beings in the ether who care about the state of affairs on earth that is at least in part the root cause here. And that is a terrible shame because not drawing attention to that fact is a tacit endorsement of extremist beliefs, as Harris, Hitchens, et al. have pointed out many times. You can't have it both ways. You either believe there are invisible, magic beings or you don't. There is no "tolerance" in between. If you think they exist, then you can hardly be surprised when someone takes this ludicrous proposition and bends it to their own political, social, or economic goals -- because you can bend it any way you want, by definition, since it's all made up. I don't think it is at all obvious that if there were not implicit endorsement of religious beliefs of all kind all over earth, that it wasn't OK for grown-ups to walk around saying they actually believe this nonsense, that this violence would manifest itself in some other way. It's important to at least consider the possibility that religion itself is the problem here.
  • jpgvm 12y ago
    I wish Hitchens was still with us. People should read his books - especially God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. RIP, we miss your tact, witty jabs and awesome accent.
  • kaybe 12y ago
    If you go deeper, most of culture is made up. There are no states, and there are no companies, not without people making them up. It is what makes us cooperate and ultimatively function as a society. Some beliefs are (to some people at least) more obviously, hm, hard to falsify, but they're all beliefs in something. I'm not trying to make a real point for the argument here, just pointing out that things might be deeper and more complicated than obvious on the first layer. It's up to us to decide which ideas we want to use, or it should be, but they're all ideas. (I might have read idea on lesswrong or similar some time ago and am still digesting. Thus, I'm very open for arguments and ideas here.)
  • theorique 12y ago
    You can't have it both ways. You either believe there are invisible, magic beings or you don't. Well, yes and no. A lot of people (most?) kinda-sorta believe, but have doubts about the weirdness of some of the more unlikely and/or extreme beliefs. The vast people don't have enough faith to strap on a suicide vest or behead someone, even in Islam. For most "believers", religion is a consolation when you think about Grandma in heaven or a way to be socially connected to your community.
• fit2rule 12y ago
  Don't think for a moment that Western Christianity has 'left the violence behind' - its just being exported over the horizon to the Middle East, as modern crusades, beyond the view of the modern consumer. The difference between Christian terrorism and Islamic terrorism is that in the former, mass organizations exist to hide the results of Christian-fundamentalist violence, whereas in the latter the only chance they have is to expose their violence to the world.
• 7952 12y ago
  Christians society has not left violence behind, we are just less likely to rationalise it with religion. Although it is not unheard of; just listen to some of the nonesense that George Bush spouted. But is is very naive to believe that violence wouldn't exist if we were all atheists and identified as skeptics. Humans have an intrinsic capacity for violence. History is littered with examples of groups attacking someone for rape, murder and plunder and then describing it as "gods work". Probably the desire to murder and rape came before the sanctification. Why should we care what the excuse is?
• jkot 12y ago
  What society has to do with this? Two terrorists are not society. If anything 'leaving all violence' behind is responsible. It could look very differently if those victims could defend themselves.
• tim333 12y ago
  >Now the violent ones are winning. Not so much in Europe. In the middle east the extremists have been winning though. The guys doing the Hedbo killings were largely inspired by Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Salman Rushdie was arguing that the goings on are not really about the west but power struggles in the Islamic world, somewhat plausibly I think. I dare say the west may have played a significant role in destabilising the middle east with the various wars we've sponsored there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvgdPAEu8vA&feature=youtu.be&t=3m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvgdPAEu8vA&feature=youtu.be...