What is the worst religion in existence?

[Belacqua]

Dr. Cornel West:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DEbcjXLj7k&t=5s


To me this sounds neither transactional nor barbaric. Quite the opposite.

Reminded me of the hymn lyric, "Nothing in my hand I bring / Only to the Cross I cling."...and wondering what it means to have the Man of Sorrows as the central image of worship.

I've always thought that this is one of the main reasons Christianity has been so successful. The idea that God shares an individual's suffering seems very powerful to me, and must be very meaningful for a lot of people.

Cornel West is a fortunate individual, but he knows what it means to be black in America. I suspect that God as Man of Sorrows is particularly powerful among those groups who have been oppressed. I remember seeing very bloody Jesus statues in Mexico, for example. Probably the poorer the village the bloodier the Jesus. 

I've been reading about medieval saints who intentionally increased their suffering, as a religious devotion. Of course it seems insane to modern Americans. It goes against everything we know, to think that suffering is a kind of victory, and what the world calls failure is better than success. It's been an interesting challenge to imagine these people's mindset -- something so different from what we normally hear that it's fascinating to learn. 

The idea of kenosis is unique to Christianity, I think. Though the value of sacrificing certain goods for a higher goal is surely a key point of most religions. It makes "prosperity gospel" impossible, though.

[Jehanne]

I've always thought that this is one of the main reasons Christianity has been so successful. The idea that God shares an individual's suffering seems very powerful to me, and must be very meaningful for a lot of people.

Cornel West is a fortunate individual, but he knows what it means to be black in America. I suspect that God as Man of Sorrows is particularly powerful among those groups who have been oppressed. I remember seeing very bloody Jesus statues in Mexico, for example. Probably the poorer the village the bloodier the Jesus. 

I've been reading about medieval saints who intentionally increased their suffering, as a religious devotion.

Why not in Japan? Was has Christianity not made inroads there? As for the medieval Saints, is not mental illness an explanation for their behavior?

[Anomalocaris]

Christianity is powerful for similar reasons as why mass psychosis are powerful, entrapment is powerful, lies that have been given a ring of truth through frequency of repetition are powerful,  logical fallacies are powerful, deceit is powerful, ruthless manipulativeness is  powerful, flattery is powerful, intimidation is powerful, targeted empty promises are powerful,  theft of credit and glory are powerful, guilt trips are powerful, blame shifting are powerful, intellectually vapid tear jerking is powerful, ruthless self aggrandizement is powerful.

In other words it is powerful for the exactly the reasons why wickedness and the will to deceive and harm exists and has the power to prevail in this world, and not one single other reason.

Belaqua for all his posturing, worship this power, even if he occasional professed to have not have bought into factual truthfulness of alibis and justifications.  But he clearly doesn’t care.  For him christianity had those power and having the powers makes it good.   

The mere Power to have shaped the thinking of many makes what is said by the powerful as good as if they were true. Better, even.

[Rev. Rye]

This video from The Vile Eye reminded me of this thread:




And after some thinking and wondering how to answer that question, I figured that the best answer is American Conservative White Evangelical Christianity. You could probably make arguments for some other religions, like how Fundamentalist Islam is exceptionally brutal and backwards by Western Standards, or how Jehovah's Witnesses have an alarming attitude towards child abuse that makes the Roman Catholic Church seem positively proactive, or how Scientology's the sort of religion where you have to pay the Church the equivalent of a small house to find out that their creation story is just mediocre sci-fi.

But given that they latched onto the Republican Party during a crucial time, one where we were becoming aware of the effects of global warming and they had an incalculable role in convincing one of the biggest CO2 Emitters on the planet to do nothing, and still are, even as we've either reached the point of no return or are dangerously close to reaching it, I think they've earned the title.

Being a willing accomplice in successfully killing the world is probably a high bar.

[Hi600]

I've always thought that this is one of the main reasons Christianity has been so successful. The idea that God shares an individual's suffering seems very powerful to me, and must be very meaningful for a lot of people.

Cornel West is a fortunate individual, but he knows what it means to be black in America. I suspect that God as Man of Sorrows is particularly powerful among those groups who have been oppressed. I remember seeing very bloody Jesus statues in Mexico, for example. Probably the poorer the village the bloodier the Jesus. 

I've been reading about medieval saints who intentionally increased their suffering, as a religious devotion.

Why not in Japan? Was has Christianity not made inroads there? As for the medieval Saints, is not mental illness an explanation for their behavior?

Christianity gained a very big following in Japan in the 1500s. Then the Japanese nailed the missionaries to crosses and completely closed off their country for hundreds of years.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'd have to say that Islam is the worst. Worshipping a prophet that is supposed to have married a 9 year old (who he started raping at 6 IIRC) is the absolute lowest of the low. No other religion is that bad.

I have to rank Judaism as worse than Christianity, if only because Judaism gave birth to Christianity as Islam.

I find Buddhism and Hinduism to be somewhat less bad than all three of the Abrahamic religions.

The reality of the matter is that Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha are all fictional characters who didn't exist at all, but the fictional stories about the Buddha are less bad than the fictional stories about Jesus, which are less bad than the fictional stories about Abraham, which are less bad than the fictional stories about Muhammad.

The ones people believe in. Equally worst.

[HappySkeptic]

Buddha ran a religious school and died at an old age, so I'm pretty sure that not only did he exist, but that some of his original teachings remain. The question is, what is original. I see articles that claim that the mythologized life of Buddha is part of the reason for the religion's spread. I have to wonder if it is actually possible to create a religion without a mythology as its back-story.

[The End of Atheism]

The reality of the matter is that Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha are all fictional characters who didn't exist at all,

Stop bastardizing us please.

[Anomalocaris]

yours is already a bastard religion. it doesn’t need to be bastardized

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Administrator Notice
Thread closed.

Boru