07-08-2023, 01:52 PM
(07-08-2023, 12:11 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: I'm a non-believer, but I also don't hate anyone who believes. I find religion interesting and I do like to try to understand the context/original intentions behind the scripture in the Bible. However, what I do hate is when people assert that the Bible needs to be used to legislate other peoples lives or they cherry-pick the Bible to find a reason to justify their disdain towards other people. That is the group of people that I get upset with.
Religion is a strange thing.
I believe that respect for neighbors, tolerance, personal accountability, and a general faith in things that are good will all improve your day-to-day life significantly.
I also believe that finding a group of people with similar views is a good way to be accountable to agreed upon beliefs. This can occur through organic social pressure or through not-so-organic dogmatic rules that are enforced a bit more literally.
People need a compass, and for most, religion is a decent baseline.
The problem comes with, you guessed it: people. People will always act in their own interests at any time they think there's nobody looking. Perception of a dedication to benevolent rules needs to be maintained, but only when one is being perceived. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When a religion establishes it's deity, or it's god, the god is rarely seen by anyone other than the leaders, icons, or salesmen. Everyone else just has to have faith and follow all the rules until they are good enough for the god to reveal himself or you just die. It worked for Tom Cruise once he paid enough money. In the end, even thing a believer has ever been told about god came out of another person's mouth. If they say otherwise, they are liars or hallucinating.
Admit it or not, but you're a talking monkey just like the rest of us (not you specifically), and everything you've ever seen or been told about god came from another talking monkey. What's worse, we don't live super long, so you're hearing all of this from other morons who haven't seen all that much more than you have in the grand scheme of things, meaning that they're relying on the same word of mouth that you are for most of their testimony.
America is founded on individualism, which flies directly in the face of religion. In this country, your goal is to separate people from their money by hook or by crook, shame them for being non-rich, then brag about it to your simp followers. Sure, there's a compulsory appearance of charity to maintain, but it's mostly about greed on a malignant level. Too often religion, mainly Christianity, has been used as the launderer of all things gained in the name of greed at the expense of the many. It keeps the millions and millions who have jack shit from killing the dozens and dozens who have obscene amounts of everything.
An aside, I would say that religion as the control method is eroding a bit. It's less prevalent, even though it's still significant. I feel like social media and the cult of celebrity for the sake of celebrity is quickly supplanting it. The former PC movement has also evolved into a much more belligerent entity with the "woke" garbage that the right loves to freak out about while simultaneously perpetuating it through culture war masturbation. Even so, as an avid agnostic and person who despises most organized religion, I think we might have been better off with religion as the main control of the not-rich. it was less stupid and required a bit more effort than Youtube short and Tic Tocs.
