[ SECRET POST #2095 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2095 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #299.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[spicandspan89.livejournal.com]

Religion may be used as the justification for doing horrible things to other people, but that's not where the ideas for these things come from. That's from human nature.

Seriously, stop blaming religion. Is it flawed? Yes. But so are we, so there you go.

[(Anonymous)]

This. Plus, if you actually look at the core tenets of most religions they aren't bad things - and religions can, and do, do good things as well as bad ones.

Yes, people do use religion as justifications for horrible things they do - but people have been known to do that for causes that are completely unrelated to religion as well.

So, religion =/= The Root of All Evil

[Sorry for replying to comment like this - it wasn't aimed at you. I'm just..a little tired of the automatic 'OMG, RELIGION IS COMPLETELY EEEEEVIIIIIIL AND MUST BE TO BLAME!' response that most people in fandom [that I've run across] seem to have.]

[elephantinegrace]

Religious people don't kill people; assholes who think they're religious do.

SA

[(Anonymous)]

Personally I'd just say 'Assholes kill people'. I mean, we don't want to discriminate against the assholes who kill people and aren't religious, right? ;D

Re: SA

[elephantinegrace]

+1

And what does "SA" stand for? (I feel like every other comment I post is asking what X bit of internet shorthand means. Internet: I'm doing it wrong.)

Re: SA

[(Anonymous)]

XD It's all good - it took me ages to figure out too, honestly...and I'm *way* too stubborn to ask.

SA = Same anon, in this case, I'm the anon you replied to =3

[ariakas]

Religious people don't kill people

Yes, they do. As do non-religious people. Don't get all No True Scotsman up in here - religious people are as capable of killing as anybody else.

[(Anonymous)]

Er, I could be wrong...but I'm pretty sure they were implying that it's assholes [religious or otherwise] who kill people, not religion in and of itself.

[elephantinegrace]

Everyone's entitled to an opinion (my opinion, mwahahahaha.) Anyway, most religions I've come across have some sort of "don't commit violent acts" rule, and therefore people who disobey that rule aren't truly following that religion. (I'm not going to pretend to know what religion is, since I'm grew up in an atheist home and am atheist myself, but I'm pretty sure if you don't follow the laws, you can't call yourself a law-abiding citizen.) So, I'm pretty sure people who say they're religious and do cruel and idiotic things are cruel and idiotic, not religious.

[spicandspan89.livejournal.com]

No worries! I think you explained it better. :-)

[truxillogical]

I keep thinking of that comparison the Dalai Lama made recently about religion vs ethics:

Ethics are like water. You have to have it to survive. It's pure, it's good, and you can live just with that.

Religion is like tea. It's something added to the water. Different cultures make it different ways. Different people drink it different ways. Some people don't care for it at all. That's fine. You won't die without tea. You will die without water.

If you start with crap water, you're going to have crap tea.


It does kind of warm my heart to see so many people pointing out that people are kind of awful with or without religion (is that sad?), when usually you see the quote-unquote-edgy types talk about how religion is the worst thing ever and the cause of all strife and war.

[(Anonymous)]

*shrug* I don't think religion is the worst thing ever because of strife and war; those have been around long before religion. I think religion is the worst mistake we've ever made as people because the very structure of religion hampers free thought, discourages asking questions, and facilitates manipulation on a very large scale. It tries to keep people too confused, exhausted, and scared to step back and ask themselves why they even believe this crap. Any institution that expressly requires its participants to leave their brains at the door, I see as something inherently dangerous.

[truxillogical]

It tries to keep people too confused, exhausted, and scared to step back and ask themselves why they even believe this crap. Any institution that expressly requires its participants to leave their brains at the door, I see as something inherently dangerous.

And that's still a misrepresentation of religion. That's not at all what religion "tries" to do. Or, at least, not what faith does. Religion gets misrepresented, even to the religious, as something like that. It's a human folly, and an absolute crying shame, that the battle cry of the Religious Right and others like that is, "Ta heck with facts, Ah got my Bible (that I never read critically)!" But that attitude has far more to do with human power plays (the ignorant are easier to lead, and the ones at the top of that are rarely particularly good people, however "religious" they may identify themselves). I won't deny that religion, like any ideology, facilitates manipulation. But that's a thing that will happen with or without religion. It's pretty easy to get a group of people blindly and fanatically behind an idea without basing it on a faith in a deity. You would be amazed how many people don't want to have to apply critical thinking to any part of their lives.

But religion itself certainly doesn't "try to keep people confused." And it's more than a little irritating that there's a lump assumption that people always assume that religious folks never asked ourselves why we believe what we believe. Believe it or not, for a lot people, a good deal of critical thinking goes into faith, and the two are not actually as mutually exclusive as you might think.

Faith isn't sinister. Dogma can be. People in large groups usually are.

[insolentwitch]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

You know what? I blame Martin Luther. He's the one with the quote about reason being the enemy of faith, which is completely counter to Christianity before him.

[(Anonymous)]

Amen! Not to mention the fact that ALL (and I do mean ALL) the anti-Semitism present in professing christianism today came straight from the poison pen of Mad Monk Martin.

(Seriously, Protestants? THIS (this CATHOLIC I add---lot of Protestants ignore/forget/handwave that part) is your go-to guy? Might as well stick with the Antichrist you know.....)

[truxillogical]

One of my best friends is Lutheran and very proud of it, so I get to hear a lot about how awesome Luther was. And I'll admit, he did point out some serious Not Good Things that were going down in the Catholic church at the time. But yeah, not exactly a flawless beacon there, either.

IIRC, in that same time period, or a little bit afterwards, men studying to be priest were actually required to study sciences, especially earth sciences. There's a lovely church in England that's built around the whole concept that geology is a metaphor for humanity--that is (and it's been ages since Art History, so I'm paraphrasing what I remember) that as the human race itself ages, our minds and our ability to grasp the workings of the universe also advances, and this--to the minds of the priests at the time (or at the very least, to William Butterfield, the architect)--is part of God's plan, that mankind's knowledge of God becomes more complex and nuanced with every new discovery.

Er, the point being, more or less, that two thousand years ago, people really didn't have the science to grasp ideas like germs and evolution and so faith had to be expressed in terms that they understood, but that faith can evolve with human knowledge.

Anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

It's most definitely not a myth. Unless the first 19 years of my life I spent as a Catholic are a myth. But, you know, thanks for being a dismissive asshole and illustrating exactly why people who are bitter about their experiences with religion are completely justified in being so.

[(Anonymous)]

Just because your personal experience with religion was awful doesn't mean all religions are awful.

Any institution that expressly requires its participants to leave their brains at the door, I see as something inherently dangerous.

I agree with this. But because not all religions are the same, not all religions are dangerous.

[(Anonymous)]

THANK YOU

[(Anonymous)]

As someone who followed a major religion for many, many years, I can say it never discouraged questions,and never "expressly" (or implicitly) required anyone to leave any brains at the door. Discussion, debate, asking awkward questions was thr order of the day.

It's a popular secularist myth, no doubt, but speaking personally some of the most closeminded,, unquestioning, most stolidly certain of their own correctness people I have ever met were militant atheists. Not to mention mind bendingly smug.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow. I guess the first 19 years of my life was a secularist myth, then. Thanks, douchebag.

[ill_omened]

Do people seriously still drop this dumb one?

No, ideas effect how you act and behave, and the substance of those beliefs has relevance.

Yes other factors are likely more important, but that doesn't mean religion is entirely irrelevant here. There's no way you would extend this trend of thought to any other set of ideologies or beliefs, so why use it here?

[(Anonymous)]

No way? People do it *all the time* with politics.

[ill_omened]

Really? Not something I've nearly noticed as much.

Like you don't see people going 'imo it's not whether or not Adam Smith is right or not, it's whether he feels true to you!', or saying with or without a welfare state people will be dicks, so whether you vote for or against it doesn't matter.