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The most heinous aspect of religion
May 12, 2012 at 4:27 pm
No, I'm not going to pretend to know which part is the worst. This is a moral situation and as I've come to understand morality tends to be a bit subjective. Rather, this is a thread to get peoples' opinions on the matter. Opinions hopefully with some perspective as to why you feel that way.
Now...feel free to disagree with me but to me the most disgusting and heinous part of religion is not the murder, the bigotry, the sexual repression...though that is all fairly disgusting. No, to me, the most disgusting aspect of religion is the way it targets weakness. Not just the weak of mind or will or intellect. No. It targets the weakest in all its forms. It targets those at their weakest emotionally; when a loved one has just died or a great tragedy otherwise has befallen them or someone they knew, religion is there, galloping...no, charging in to pin...SPEAR a giant cross or star or crescent-and-star or whatnot onto your forehead, accompanied by sickly sweet, simpering words, meant to coax the grieving and despairing into surrendering their logic and reason in exchange for a little comfort...a little FALSE comfort. It convinces people they are weak, that there is a higher authority that they MUST submit to and that without it they are nothing, lost and damned, blind, deaf and dumb and roasting in flames; it strips people of their strength, of their ability to hold conviction in their own capabilities and potential.
It did it to me, once. It convinced me I was weak. And it convinced me that god was all I needed but when you ask questions and get no answers you are left feeling even emptier and more hollow than ever before. It turned me to drugs. And even today I still struggle to overthrow the indoctrinating influence, an influence that continues to cripple my way of thinking of things.
For that...the most heinous aspect of religion, to me, is its subversive ways.
So what, my fellow freethinkers and, yes, even local theists, do you find to be the worst aspect of religion? You can name specific religions, or all of them in a general sense, it doesn't matter to me.
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RE: The most heinous aspect of religion
May 12, 2012 at 4:43 pm
i have tons of examples of what sucks about it, but one of the main ones that sticks out is preying on the weakened. an ex of mine wanted me to go to her church when i moved to philly. i went just because i never really denied an invite of anyone of my friends or family. i didn't mind going back then, but i never felt anything and sometimes even end up feeling bad because in my head i'm ridiculing some of them who really look to be hoping to have prayers answered.
well at her church, they had fold out wooden chairs (about 20 of them) and no heat in the building. you could hear water dripping from pipes but they did have lights. the congregation was not enough to fill the 20 chairs and they usually walked there, b/c they had no cars. the reverend and his wife both come in 500 series mercedes and cadillac dts, respectively. they singled out people who didn't put anything in the offering plate - "i see, sister mary isn't feeling it today!" that was completely wrong. maybe she was feeling it but didn't have money.
the bigger churches with full lighting and concert band and 2 led screens - same thing. instead of singling out people who didn't contribute (because there were 3 services a day with 500 people each), they instead passed the plate 3 times per service. the accountants blasted people who put $1 in, saying "the light bill is $6000/month alone, what are these people thinking with a dollar?".
yeah, no thanks! i'm good.
they can land a rover on mars, yet they still have to stick a human finger up my ass to do a prostate exam?! - ricky gervais
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RE: The most heinous aspect of religion
May 12, 2012 at 4:50 pm
Wow...they fucking did THAT shit? Are you serious?? Unbelievable. They guilt trip people all the fucking time. That's all religion is; one big colossal fucking guilt trip.
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RE: The most heinous aspect of religion
May 12, 2012 at 4:53 pm
People like that should be shot on site no judge or jury just straight to execution. praying on the week is the most disgusting of all crimes and should be illegal .
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful" - Edward Gibbon (Offen misattributed to Lucius Annaeus Seneca or Seneca the Younger) (Thanks to apophenia for the correction)
'I am driven by two main philosophies:
Know more about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you' - Neil deGrasse Tyson
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RE: The most heinous aspect of religion
May 12, 2012 at 4:53 pm
It's not really the most heinous, but one that upset me at the thought.
Edgardo Mortara, was secretly baptised by a Jewish families christian servant. Hearing about it, the Catholic Church ordered the Police to remove the child from the custody of his parents to be raised catholic.
Fucking servant pours some water on a small childs head.. and you have the right to forcibly remove their child from custody.
Makes me feel ill at the thought ever time.
Self-authenticating private evidence is useless, because it is indistinguishable from the illusion of it. ― Kel, Kelosophy Blog
If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo. That show was so cool because every time there’s a church with a ghoul, or a ghost in a school. They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The f**king janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide. Throughout history every mystery. Ever solved has turned out to be. Not Magic. ― Tim Minchin, Storm
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RE: The most heinous aspect of religion
May 12, 2012 at 4:54 pm
Dogma, probably. It's not exclusive to religion and not all religions (and their respective sub-sects) have them, although most formulations of the Abrahamic faiths fall apart without it - not because they're not true (maybe they are), but because there's no real reason to believe them in the first place. Still, as I said it's not exclusive to religion.
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RE: The most heinous aspect of religion
May 12, 2012 at 4:56 pm
The suppression of women...the one thing that all the angry desert god religions have in common.
Proof positive that it was all concocted by men with little dicks.
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RE: The most heinous aspect of religion
May 12, 2012 at 5:14 pm
(May 12, 2012 at 4:56 pm)Minimalist Wrote: The suppression of women...the one thing that all the angry desert god religions have in common.
Proof positive that it was all concocted by men with little dicks.
Lol Ahhh that is a good one to point out. The barbaric primate yawp of dragging the woman around by their hair...espoused to this day by the depths of our antiquity via religion.
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RE: The most heinous aspect of religion
May 12, 2012 at 6:53 pm
I think that the worst bit is the discrimination - people through no fault of their own are being persecuted because some nameless Israeli or Arab put his bigoted ideas to paper.
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RE: The most heinous aspect of religion
May 14, 2012 at 9:29 pm
Yeah, that's the thing people forget; religious oppression and indoctrination starts at home.
"Sisters, you know only the north; I have traveled in the south lands. There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did--not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan't feel. That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to."
-Ruta Skadi, The Subtle Knife
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