Abortion and Population

[Fake Messiah]

1) Using religion as a "justification" is, from the Russian perspective, a very minor thing. This war is much more about "Make Russia Great Again" followed by the false allegations of Ukrainian naziism. Calling this a "religious" war is misleading.

I didn't call it a religious war (altough maybe it is) but that Putin uses religion. And even in non religious wars, religion almost always plays a part and makes it worse.

I also would not say that religion plays a very minor thing in the Putin's war. Here is an article that I pasted some months ago:

Russia’s apparent reversion to warlordism has been abetted by a strain of Russian religious fundamentalism that openly celebrates death. Some Russian clergy have been telling their congregations that they can “become themselves” only through the act of killing. The “special military operation” in Ukraine, they are told, is a struggle for “all of God’s creation.” As one of Putin’s chief propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov, said in a New Year’s message on Russian television:

“Life is highly overrated. Why fear what is inevitable? Especially when we’re going to heaven. Death is the end of one earthly path and the beginning of another. Don’t let fear of death influence decisions. It’s only worth living for something you can die for, that’s the way it should be ... We are fighting against satanists. This is a holy war, and we have to win.”

Likewise, Magomed Khitanaev, a Chechen theologian and Russian army commander, portrays Ukraine as a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah: “We’re asking: Oh, Ukrainians, why did you permit gay parades in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa? Why did you permit it? Why didn’t you come out against them, against your government that was overtaken by fascists? Without shame before God, people, they are openly, manifestly spreading their filth.”

[...]

According to Evans, this earlier Vladimir Solovyov called for, “a universal theocracy under a Russian czar, to hasten humanity’s ‘long and difficult passage from beast-mankind to God-mankind.’” Once accomplished, adherents to the faith would “become immortal spiritual beings – only Christ has reached this stage so far, but all humanity will soon follow.” While Solovyov believed that this evolution could be advanced with magic, Fedorov himself advocated scientific means. But both ultimately “agreed that humanity would be saved by Russian theocracy.”

As we watch ideological madness play out in Russia, we must be mindful of its roots in Russian Orthodoxy.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commen...ek-2023-02

[Ahriman]

I didn't ask to be saved, I'm not fighting in any kind of war, these people need to go fuck themselves.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I didn't call it a religious war (altough maybe it is) but that Putin uses religion. And even in non religious wars, religion almost always plays a part and makes it worse.

Yes, you did:

What actually affects the human population negatively is religious thinking. First, we have religious wars that kill countless people even now in Palestine and in Ukraine where Putin is on a holy mission to destroy the devil and sin.

This is a fundamentally incorrect reading of the matter. This war would continue even if every single Ukrainian converted to Muscovite Orthodoxy tomorrow -- because it is both a land-grab and a punishment for rejecting, by revolution, Putin's fixing of the 2014 election. Calling it a "religious war" is a massive, and incorrect, oversimplification. Religion here is being used as a rationalization for the ultra devout. That doesn't make this a "religious war".

---

I also would not say that religion plays a very minor thing in the Putin's war. Here is an article that I pasted some months ago:

Russia’s apparent reversion to warlordism has been abetted by a strain of Russian religious fundamentalism that openly celebrates death. Some Russian clergy have been telling their congregations that they can “become themselves” only through the act of killing. The “special military operation” in Ukraine, they are told, is a struggle for “all of God’s creation.” As one of Putin’s chief propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov, said in a New Year’s message on Russian television:

“Life is highly overrated. Why fear what is inevitable? Especially when we’re going to heaven. Death is the end of one earthly path and the beginning of another. Don’t let fear of death influence decisions. It’s only worth living for something you can die for, that’s the way it should be ... We are fighting against satanists. This is a holy war, and we have to win.”

Likewise, Magomed Khitanaev, a Chechen theologian and Russian army commander, portrays Ukraine as a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah: “We’re asking: Oh, Ukrainians, why did you permit gay parades in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa? Why did you permit it? Why didn’t you come out against them, against your government that was overtaken by fascists? Without shame before God, people, they are openly, manifestly spreading their filth.”

[...]

According to Evans, this earlier Vladimir Solovyov called for, “a universal theocracy under a Russian czar, to hasten humanity’s ‘long and difficult passage from beast-mankind to God-mankind.’” Once accomplished, adherents to the faith would “become immortal spiritual beings – only Christ has reached this stage so far, but all humanity will soon follow.” While Solovyov believed that this evolution could be advanced with magic, Fedorov himself advocated scientific means. But both ultimately “agreed that humanity would be saved by Russian theocracy.”

As we watch ideological madness play out in Russia, we must be mindful of its roots in Russian Orthodoxy.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commen...ek-2023-02

---

Well, we could have a debate of quotes if you like. I've been following this war on a daily basis since it began. The appeal to religion by a few guys is not how this war is being presented to the Russian public -- nor is religion Putin's motivation for conquest, meaning that this is not a religious war.

You're entitled to your opinions, but facts are facts.

[Fake Messiah]

Yes, you did:

Ok, I was ambivalent at the time I wrote it, but later I did note that I am not sure it was or wasn't, but that religion plays a part.

This war would continue even if every single Ukrainian converted to Muscovite Orthodoxy tomorrow -- because it is both a land-grab and a punishment for rejecting, by revolution, Putin's fixing of the 2014 election.

If every single Ukrainian converted to Muscovite Orthodoxy tomorrow then there would be no war since they would all agree with Putin since the Church is on his side. They would become Russians.

It's a land grab but religious wars are also (sometimes) about land grab. I was reading the article on Wikipedia about Religious Wars and some consider the Yugoslav wars in the early 1990s to be religious wars which were similar to the war in Ukraine since it was about Serbia trying to take lands in Croatia and Bosnia, but it also involved religion.

Now this shows that religious war is sometimes hard to define, but I would not say that necessarily wrong to call the war in Ukraine a religious war, especially if Putin is trying to establish Tsarist Russia. Tsar is supposedly chosen by god and his land was given to him by god.

[no one]

god just gave me all 50 U. S. states, where do I redeem?

[Silver]

According to the bible, it is the devil who offers you ownership of the land. God just wants you to wander around like a lost hobo for forty years.

Therefore, modern land owners are devil worshippers.

[Ahriman]

It is clear that at least 95 percent of the world's population should not be having children. But I can't support something as immoral as abortion. Most people should either be sterilized, or convinced that they should not be having children.

[Silver]

One man's immorality tends to be a woman's enlightenment.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But by definition abortion reduces the fertility rate

Um.......... not quite right. Fertility is the ability to create viable gametes and conceive. I think you mean birth rate.

No, no, no, the Chick Tract had it right!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Funny this should come up just as I'm reading Saturn's Race.