(April 18, 2016 at 4:06 pm)Alex K Wrote:(April 18, 2016 at 4:04 pm)abaris Wrote: As I always keep saying, I wouldn't trust catholics with minors, but with the codes to a nuclear facility. With evangelicals, not so much.
So true. The Catholic leadership are several unpleasant things, but they are not crazy maniacs.
Not now they are not crazy, no, but the book itself was written in a very tribal time where loyalty was much more blind.
Time and real human empathy and western secular law has put a leash on religion, in spite of religion. The god of Abraham is a very bat shit insane character, not a real character, but a fictional character. You have to consider what life was like back then for ALL religions in antiquity.
Even in polytheism, you still had local tribal kingships, where you had the ruling/warrior class and everyone else, and the mortality rate was much higher so loyalty from an evolutionary standpoint was much more understandable. Even prior to any set boarders or the first written religions, life was much more rough and dependent on "kill or be killed".
You combine our species ignorance with god claims, the religions set up social and local and tribal pecking orders which in turn lead humans to create these "protect the tribe at all costs" constructs.
My mom certainly would not burn me or torture me, but the Church long before our modern understanding of science used the bible to do very horrible things to humans. And even today the Catholic League in America is just as right wing as any Evangelical Baptist.
But especially with all three monotheistic Abraham religions, they still stem from the same Yahweh character, whom was taken from the tribal polytheism of the Canaanites.
The Church has a leash on it now, but even with that leash, it still sticks its nose into global social issues and speaks with a forked tongue, and has only recently backed off issues of abortion and condom use. But it is still targeting more poor countries because less educated societies are easier pickings to gain converts.
Now does that make all Catholics as individuals evil? No of course not. And as with all religions regardless, we should always treat individuals as such. But, increasingly I grow weary of the argument "At least", well yea, at least they don't........ Sure, but while there is no such thing as a utopia, and you cant rid the world of any religion, this comparing less or more, isn't a proper way of framing the argument.
I think a better argument to make than "At least", would be "Lets treat everyone as individuals and value at the same time the ability to question any and all religious claims".
