The bad side of Religion

[TheKlown]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSXwWZ2SFw4

Old video and I know people's opinions have changed dramatically now adays but this wasn't too long ago. This was only about 30 years ago that people were attacking art. They were saying Cartoon Character heroes and idols were the devils work and so on. Which makes no sense because the good guys in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney characters, Simpsons all tried to do the right thing by defeating evil. The people part of Isis think with this mentality even tho the people part of Isis are Muslims. All religions are related to some degree so there's some Christian psychopaths that are most likely apart of Isis even if Isis is dominantly Muslim. Groups like Isis take Religion to the extremist, but these guys probably would be part of Isis today with the mentality they have in this video in my personal opinion.

[pacmandrugs]

It's a problem with all fundamentalism; where skeptical mindsets welcome challenging theories and facts, as this leads to discovery, strictly faith based world views don't accept the possibility that a challenging viewpoint could even possibly be correct. This phenomena leads to aggressively dismissing any other ideas, as they would have to be 'lies' by definition.

Another common trait of the more fundamentalist worldviews is a tendency to equate all other ideas as being direct opposites to their own; this is why many hardcore Christians see all other views as satanic/demonic. No matter how innocent the idea, if it doesn't directly correlate with some variation of Christianity, then Satanism is the only other thing it could be, as far as that kind of person is concerned.

To a fundamentalist, all ideas are discretely grouped as either 'good' or 'evil', with no in-between steps. It's this black-and-white view that makes them sound so crazy.

I would like to point out, these people obviously hadn't even seen TMNT. They said they were like jedi's and had magic powers and stuff. Not only are they crazy, but they're liars, too.

[Camarohusky]

At 2/19/15 10:10 AM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: Not all fundamentals are bad. Fundamentalist Buddhists would probably require themselves to live cloistered from the world in a cave or in the stereotypical distant mountaintop summit.

The Tokyo subway attack back in the 1990s was heavily influenced by Buddhism.

I fear Islam, but I'm not phobic, for my fear is fully rational.

A rational fear based on irrational thoughts is still irrational.

[Ghoti]

At 2/19/15 10:10 AM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: I fear Islam, but I'm not phobic, for my fear is fully rational.

Meh.

The Old Testament is full of merciless genocide.

Plus there are pacifist Islamic sects.

And there's Turkey, which is almost totally Islamic and does, like, nothing.

Then there's the history of violence and colonialism executed in the name of Christianity (three crusades and a Holocaust) and what you get is a big ol' stinking pot of ambiguity.

But hey I mean as a white (Christian?) male maybe you should be afraid of Islam. I think it makes more sense to be afraid of, like, drunk drivers and heart disease, though. And religious extremists in general. I don't think the IT guy with the turban should make you go pee-pee uncontrollably.

Interesting what you say about Mohammad. Not even joking. Still it looks like you could say the same thing about, like, God, for Judaism. He tells Saul to kill women and children, which Israel, you know, does.

Everyone should be atheist.

[DoctorStrongbad]

More wars have been fought over religion than any other idea. Religion has a mjor dark side.

[Ranger2]

At 2/19/15 09:53 PM, DoctorStrongbad wrote: More wars have been fought over religion than any other idea. Religion has a mjor dark side.

Religion is more often than not rhetoric than anything else. Nobody fights wars purely for religion. They fight for control of resources and security. Compare religion to democracy. Did the Allies fight WWII for democracy? The USSR certainly didn't, and the British wanted to maintain their empire, so nope. The US may have liked the idea of fighting for democracy, but the reality was that our economy and sovereignty were threatened, so we fought back.

[Camarohusky]

At 2/19/15 09:53 PM, DoctorStrongbad wrote: More wars have been fought over religion than any other idea. Religion has a mjor dark side.

Naw. Religion has never been the true reason for any wars. Religion has merely been used to bring the ignorant masses on board. All wars that have been so called holy wars have had actual secular purposes behind them.

Religion is not a good reason to go to war for the leaders of men. War is costly, both politically and financially. A war, even a victorious war, can topple an empire. Fighting a war over something ingtabgible like religion is pure madness. Wars are fought for many reasons, but religion has extremely rarely been one of them. The most common reasons involve land, resources, international prestige, and blood fueds.

What religion is good for is creating numerous reasons for your subjects to follow you into your secular conflict. It creates a damn good "us vs them" dichotomy. The holy servants are battling the evil heretical infidels! It also provides a good fake urgency for conflict. "The evil Christians are out to destroy our Muslim way of life!" (or vice verse for the far right "we're not ISIS, we just like to do everything ISIS does" types.)

Religion has a shit ton of skeletons in its closet, but if you're looking for the skeleton of religious wars, all you'll find are the fishy bones of what once was a red herring.

[JJMAJR]

At 2/23/15 12:53 AM, Ranger2 wrote: Religion is more often than not rhetoric than anything else. Nobody fights wars purely for religion. They fight for control of resources and security. Compare religion to democracy. Did the Allies fight WWII for democracy? The USSR certainly didn't, and the British wanted to maintain their empire, so nope. The US may have liked the idea of fighting for democracy, but the reality was that our economy and sovereignty were threatened, so we fought back.

On the "compare religion vs democracy" debate, you forgot to mention the Cold War. The majority of NATO's motivations were focused on protecting the democratic countries from attack, but there were a bunch of proxy wars and crises that developed because of the fact that NATO feared Communist proliferation.