(April 19, 2016 at 4:13 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(April 19, 2016 at 3:55 pm)Brian37 Wrote: All religions have the potential to do everything you pointed out. But the "vulture" is not the empathy our species evolved with, even theists are capable of that. The "vulture" is what religion as an idea can do to human thought that can lead to very cruel things. Our species evolutionary empathy is what got more Christians to cherry pick and ignore the once taken literal parts of the bible. So don't underestimate our evolutionary empathy, even if it is held hostage and distorted by religion, it is in our genes.
Don't single out Christianity. The bible is a weapon as much as the Quran and OT. But throughout human history all religions as ideas can become volcanos even if they are seemingly dormant right now. The best weapon against religion leading to harm, isn't the idea that you can force it out of existence, but the best weapon against any group think is to insist nobody's label or book is scrutiny free. In the real world not even atheists can have a perfect utopia.
Our species will never be 100% delusion free, the best we can do is manage it better to a more civil degree. Treat every holy book as a weapon, a potential volcano, but in doing that, don't lose your own sense of humanity in the process of responding to religious transgressions.
I am, of course, aware that this isn't a christian problem, which is why I took care to say that there are vultures in christianity, rather than that christians are vultures, but I was attempting to make an emotive point to illustrate just how disgusting this co-opting of the suffering of others really is, which would have been dulled by endless stipulations, had I been concerned that someone might take me too literally and leap to an overly exaggerated conclusion. But by the same token, you never see a muslim saying Darwin converted to islam on his deathbed.
The problem is that the vultures tend to float to the top in modern, evangelical christianity, or at least enjoy material reward for appealing to the confirmation biases of the congregation, rather than what's strictly truthful. The power structure of fundie protestant churches is set up in such a way that one can get ahead by Othering dissenters and then picking clean the Others that result for rhetorical ammunition, and those who point out how mean-spirited and untrue this is get accused of "muzzling the oxen," and told to get back in line. There's this culture there now where simply expecting the church representatives to speak truthfully and respectfully, as opposed to simply stating those things that would be comforting to the believers if true, is seen as divisive, rather than a minimum expectation for someone talking about reality. And yes, I know this is a person problem and not a christian one, but that doesn't absolve the church for configuring its power structure to take advantage of that; if large swathes of an organization are systemically arranged to extract material gain from the suffering and biases of others, it doesn't matter that they're preying on a deeper instinct, they are still doing the preying.
Haven't seen a Muslim do that yet, but please remember, conspiracies can crop up anywhere at any time. I do see Muslims however, do the same thing Christians do, justify violence and call it "self defense", but even Jews do that. Religion in all it's forms are group think, but they are in reality a comic book reflection of our evolutionary grouping. Even rival chimp troops will gang together to protect their territory. Lionesses also collectively protect the cubs.
But the God of all three religions one should remember, are literary characters written in tribal kingships, so all of the literary devices are certainly designed to extract resources from the masses, because back then, the layperson's duty was to the king, even in polytheism most lives were centered around the upkeep of royalty.
No it is not a Christian or person problem, it is group think which is what religions are. But political and even business ideology can get to the religious level and might as well depending, be called a religion too. Ideologies lead to forming groups and that does lead to cooperation, but at the same time it also causes "Otherisms" which can and does get our species to the point of treating the "other" as a sub species.
Don't back away from your criticism of Christianity, that is fine, it still amounts to basing morality on superstition and tribalism and those bad ideas do lead to harm to others. I think Penn says it the best, "Don't hate the faithful, hate faith itself, fuck faith". And that is what religion depends on, faith.
Yep, I agree our right does have a tendency to prey to the worst and for the past 40 years they have been successful, but the good thing is our younger generations are not buying into old white Christian bigotry of the cold war era.
