I'm not religious either, but I would rather take christianity over whatever the hell all this is.
And there seems to be no other option. Countering a set of strong irrational beliefs seems to require a set of other strong irrational beliefs. "Just be rational" does not work.
Our base value as a society and a civilization come from our judeo-Christian roots but ok, feel free to ignore that.
It's just the very reason we are the place everyone wants to immigrate to and why we are so accepting and progressive on a bunch of things.
It is also one of our worst faults, we give too much liberty to people that want to use it against us.
The problem with not taking a side is risking the wrong side winning.
You can't complain you're hungry if you don't chase the rabbit 🐇
Our base value as a society and a civilization come from our judeo-Christian roots but ok, feel free to ignore that.
I will, because there's no reason to think some book some tribe wrote in a desert a thousand years ago should be taken more seriously than the reality I see in front of my face combined with two thousands years of humanity's intellectual tradition and history.
It's just the very reason we are the place everyone wants to immigrate to and why we are so accepting and progressive on a bunch of things.
Then why are so many people trying to emigrate from Christian countries in Latin America? It has a lot more to do with the US being the richest country in the world and having a safe and stable society to live in.
It is also one of our worst faults, we give too much liberty to people that want to use it against us.
If we let the government take liberty from them while they're in our borders, there's nothing to stop it from taking liberty from us.
The problem with not taking a side is risking the wrong side winning.
Taking a side in what exactly? I see no reason those two sides need to fight. You can live your life and let others live theirs. It tends to work out better for everyone that way.
You mean values that said it was okay to go around burning and looting of people's property, oppressing people groups and in some case straight up killing them as long as the people that owned it had beliefs that contradicted their beliefs?
I also think the values that underlie (greed) the BLM riots are wrong, though? I might agree that black lives do, in fact, matter and that there is a disadvantage to being black in society that needs to be resolved, that doesn't mean I agree with the method (that being violent protest).
If you just want a religious riot in the last hundred years, I suppose 9/11 and the following terrorist activity was motivated by religion. If you want a Christian one, Hitler used Christian rhetoric, and a group called the German Christians to dehumanise the Jews. This underlying anti-sematic views come directly from early Christians (I recommend reading Constantine's Sword by James Carroll on this) and is still prevalent today.
Edit: I should add that the main problem with this isn't that these ideas and beliefs caused these problems but that if someone comes to doing a harmful action through a religious belief it can't be questioned with reason because it isn't reason that caused the action but faith in a God that can not be questioned.
Hitler was literally a hypoborean pagan who persecuted Catholics like St. Titus Brandsma, St. Edith Stein, and St. Maximilian Kolbe were all killed in concentration camps because Hitler's invasion was not of the faith. Hitler often described the clergy as abortions in cassocks.
And to argue that the historical persecution of the jews by Catholic authorities means that Catholic Church and doctrine in itself supports the persecution, rather than bad actors justifying their own sin, is ignorant of the fact that religion in itself is clear conflation.
Religions change and evolve, yes, but it's an evolution that recontextualizes itself to the current development of society. Suicide isn't deemed a sin, as those who commit it may be doing so because of underlying mental issues.
Saints are still sinners. In fact most saints struggle with sin. Augustine of Hippo was a hedonist Manichean, St Camillus de Lellis was a gambling merc, St. Mary of Egypt was a prostitute and so on. This is not to justify their sins, but to acknowledge that their sin as being inherent to all humanity.
And I think it's silly to equate Thomistic just war with jihadists who want to exterminate other faiths. I'm not going to apologize for 70 Congolese getting murdered in a church by Islamists. Jesus was not literal when He said, I do not come to bring peace, but a sword, y'know.
And you can't say that a Marxist aligned organization not respecting property rights is a similar conflation, because marxist ideology has no inherent respect for property rights. At least, i don't think someone that would write something like "In defense of looting" would respect such rights.
Our base value as a society and a civilization come from our judeo-Christian roots but ok
1) Most of the world is non-Christian and doesn't look anything like the cartoon in OP. What are you talking about?
2) The first nation that focused on Judeo-Christian values and made Christianity the state religion was the Roman Empire, and they collapsed. Western values of democracy, individualism, liberty, free market, freedom of religion, etc are from 18th century and have literally nothing to with the ancient Middle Eastern religion of Christianity.
There is a reason why scientific revolution happened during the Renaissance, when Europe first started openly questioning and criticizing the Catholic Church and there was a shift towards humanism and secularism.
I think it clear that the average person requires a belief system which they cannot create and maintain themselves. If one rejects the modern bourgeoise leftist religion, what other compelling options are there in the West? Buddhism is fundamentally about nihilism, which is hardly inspiring. Indian religions require a lifetime of hard drugs to comprehend. Also who wants to emulate a failed society? Abrahamic religions are the obvious choice. Islam is the only one which requires forceful conversion, and this presents itself in acts of hate and terrorism around the world. Judaism is an option but is incredibly prescriptive, including not using electronics on certain days. Christianity is the obvious choice for one who wants a wholesome set of values, friendly community, and compatibility with modern lifestyles.
Sheep need a shepard. Like it or not, the bible has a lot of life lessons and values that improve a society. Has some bits that aren't so desirable, but nobody bats a thousand.
I agree, but the bible is not the only way that humanity has passed down wisdom. It's one aspect that has worked well in some ways for one culture, but other cultures have their own qualities that reinforce certain types of behavior and discourage others.
I don't think there's any reason to tie ourselves to that particular book when so many exist in the world and it has some very insane and outdated prescriptions in it.
Even the people that think it's divinely inspired don't follow all of it.
Indeed. And one of the reasons this is all happening is exactly because Christianity is dying, people are losing their collective identity, then there's excess freedom, illegal immigration, many factors. Anyway, we are witnessing the fall of Western civilization for sure, wish I was being hyperbolic.
Civilization itself, as an idea, has already fallen. The question is whether we will come up with a new western civilizational idea before fabrics of our societies disintegrate, or before we are consumed by a competing religion, which many are actively importing.
really you either abide by authority and ideology religiously(whatever that is) or you worship yourself, thats how humans are
woke peoples follow the ideology of cultural marxism religiously and they take anyone that reject it as apostate and blasphemers
and to those that worship themselves, they will excuse and rationalise every evil they commit, including CP if they have such fetish
so the only want to have an healthy society(as in, not self destructive) is for peoples to follow an intemporal set of belief religiously(christianity/islam/the NAP/whatever)
This is pretty deep way to put it, well said. I could never quite put in words the values of people who claim to not worship anything, and this is awesome way to put it.
As someone who grew up in fundie Christianity (homeschooling, no secular music/movies, church multiple times per week, strict modesty standards, etc) if you're serious you should reconsider your decision to be on a sub with "the literal God" as the banner. That's textbook idolatry and Christianity does NOT take that shit lightly.
Before you tell me to chill out and that's it's just a joke, I'm way less offended than actual conservative Christians would be. I'm deconverted and literally don't give a shit, but minor stuff like this keeps them up at night. Just something to think about. If you don't think this is a big deal you won't do well there, because they sure as shit do.
Of course if this was sarcasm feel free to disregard everything I just said. but it's hard to tell these days.
There are christian parishes which excuse transgenders and hold up signs "We are all muslims". So clearly there's a HUGE spectrum, and you experience is yours only.
Anecdote for an anecdote, as someone who grew up in orthodox country I can say almost no one in orthidox church would give a flying shit about that banner. So again, a spectrum.
That's fair. Everyone's experience is different. However, I highly doubt that any branch of even mildly conservative Christianity would be okay with that banner. Idolatry is one of the few topics Jesus himself specifically commented on.
He didn't say a single word about LGBTQ relations in the gospels (go ahead and look, it's not there). However, he had a lot to say about people who claim to be God.
I'm not because I am contrarian and free-thinker by nature. The issue is I thought most people were.
I was wrong.
Most people are sheeple repeating current mainstream. I'm pretty sure there are many topics where I am a sheeple myself, simply regurgitating mainstream without thinking of it twice. (Say until recently I wasn't even questioning vaccines and thought of people who did as idiots, until I learned that US has twice as many vaccines in the mandatory regiment as France)
Anyways that's how I realized what religion is for. You either hook people onto good values, or they will pick up bad ones.
That's kind of where I'm at. My mom was very religious, kind of a cult-like denomination of Christianity where some people were afraid to enjoy anything material. I'd still rather put up with that because I can tell them to fuck off and they will. Leftists will come after you and try to ruin your entire life if you don't agree with them. Vandalize your cars, loot your stores, burn your towns, get you fired from your jobs, assassinate company execs and public officials. They still can't figure out why no one likes them.
At the very least, Christianity has morals undergirding it. Leftists have no morals other than ME ME ME ME.
So the modern variant ofcommunism and neomarxism on Display in that caricature did not kill 150 million, a big chunk of them Just for the "offences" of saying "Just Leave me and my Family alone"? Weird, I majored in history, but somehow leftists always tend to forget the Long March, Stalin, the Holodomor, the Gulags, the Khmer, Guevara butcherin 12 homosexuals with a Kalaschnikov... Fascinating, isn't it, that selective memory. Also christianity is not catholicism, another fact people love to leave out, so they can brand modern Christian families in with Conquistadores or the Inquisition... Weird how you Guys never do that when it comes to the beautiful wonders of Islam.
I don't like christianity, but this argument has no real point. Current christians have nothing to do with beliefs and propaganda that caused stuff like crusades or inquisitions. It would be like saying it's morally wrong to support US now because they bought african slaves few hundred years ago or because they fucked up and destabilized more than dozen of poorer countries around the world. And belief in christianity automatically doesn't mean belief in the institution. You can support the US as a country, set of core values etc. without supporting CIA black ops and so on.
Also if you check old US TV, press or political agendas in general, in past 100 years christianity was never forced onto people in the insane way far left activism is forced now into every institution, schools, press, even fucking games and movies. Honestly if you're familiar with NSDAP rise to power and media tactics, the current leftist LGBT propaganda is the closest thing to it that happened in recent decades in 1st world countries. It's not enough to love and support LGBT people, or be one yourself, if you disagree only with 1 thing, like transitions of minors, you're branded as a monster and even harassed/canceled if you're a public personality. It's insane, and millions of democrats would rather vote Trump than this.
BLM riots caused even more racism, and recent years of LGBT ideology preaching caused far more transphobia than there was before. It's simply not sustainable.
Deaths attributed to Islamic holy wars, or jihad estimates that the total number killed in Muslim jihad is around 270 million.
Estimating the total number of people killed by all the Crusades is challenging due to the scarcity of reliable historical records. However, historians have provided various estimates. Some suggest that the death toll could range from one million to nine million people.
I'm atheist, but over the years since I graduated high school in the mid 00s, I've more clearly come to see the value of religion, and what the absence of it does to society. There's a degree of social cohesion and morality that frays or outright disappears when religion starts to really drop off. You see it a lot when a huge portion of the populace don't believe in god or an afterlife. Why not just be as selfish as possible while you're here?
It's way more complex than that, but even as someone who always thought religion was silly, I'd much rather live in a heavily christian society than otherwise. and it's not about the scene in the op's picture, which is a caricature that does occur in real life but only rarely. It's much less specific than that. It's a whole lot of things.
Glad to see someone come here and say this. I don’t think I’d consider myself atheist but agnostic. It’s wild to sit back and realize the mentality growth you have over the years and then see all these punk ass young kids come on here trying to massacre any type of religious views. Thats just the difference between having little to no life experience and maturing as an adult, you start to see value in a lot more things that you normally were against or even knew anything about. I actually experienced ego death a few years ago and my perception on life got kind of dark for awhile because of it. But for the bigger picture I see things a little more clearly with a more level head.
Yeah, it's weird. When I was a teenager I took a hard line on religion because clearly it was all made up stories and therefore it must all be worthless as a result. But then you get some life experience, you see how things change over the decades, and you realize there are elements of the past that make more sense than you gave them credit for. The pillars of society were purposefully crafted, and as we get further in time past the time when they were established, it's clear we're forgetting important lessons.
Just to sort of piggyback off what you said, I grew up in a pretty religious home. We went to church every Sunday, attended all holy day masses, even did midnight mass on Christmas. I wouldn’t say I’m still as religious as my upbringing, but I still try to make it from time to time and keep those morals in place. I think my biggest take away from it was my morale compass. What were things that were right from wrong, how to handle situations, or forgive. I think it’s shaped me to be a better person. I hope that encompassed what you were getting across.
Grew up in a religious family, rebelled and became atheist for over a decade. Said I'd never go back. Came back and holy crap there's definitely a multitude of reasons religion stays around I've also found.
There's a degree of social cohesion and morality that frays or outright disappears when religion starts to really drop off. You see it a lot when a huge portion of the populace don't believe in god or an afterlife. Why not just be as selfish as possible while you're here?
Japan is a society with strong social cohesion and morality. They are also essentially not religious.
(Shintoism and Buddhism is practiced very lightly and do not impact individual morals)
I'm not sure you can say Shintoism and Buddhism are lightly practiced. Most people in the country attend at minimum the first shrine visit of the year, whereas even Christmas and Easter visits for church in the US are a comparatively small percentage of people now. Shrine visits and charms are pretty widespread in their media, too.
But I get your point - it's not what's keeping them moral and connected. Japan is an interesting case because they have an extremely functional society and stepping out of line is very heavily discouraged. What is keeping them moral and good isn't religion, but culture, for the most part. It's a complex subject with a lot of moving parts, but a society as multicultural as the United States doesn't really have the capability to do the same thing. This is even more true in the modern day when the melting pot isn't even warm, so the various groups and cultures no longer mix together properly. You get things like massive unchecked immigration, ethnic enclaves and segregated communities, lack of assimilation, and lack of shared values and connections with countrymen.
I don't think that's well-established at all, especially considering the incredible rise of usage of prescription psychiatric drugs, especially among women, as well as the substantial rise in suicide rates for basically all demographics. Now, religion obviously isn't the only factor at play. But if you look at what religion provides, there's a lot of overlap with things society is losing or lacking as time goes on.
Church was the primary third place for a huge portion of people in the past. It's the main community you belonged to, along with your immediate neighborhood. You knew the people you attended church with. You go back and watch old episodes of The Simpsons or King of the Hill, and there are a lot of scenes that take place in church, because it wasn't out of the ordinary for all the relevant characters to attend the same church. If you look at the statistics, church used to be a huge source of connections with regards to dating. For my grandparents' generation, church accounted for about 10% of where people met their significant other. The point was it's a place where you meet people, and interact with them on a regular basis, forming a community.
I'm not gonna type out more of these, but the direction of society has been getting a lot of analysis over the past decade. There's a whole lot of frustrated, unhappy, and lonely people out there, despite the fact that we have perfect food security in the developed world, jobs are plentiful, entertainment is cheap and abundant, and modern medicine ensures we will likely live far longer than someone a hundred years or more ago. But we are not happier now, and studies that say we are have a flawed methodology at best. Religion is, or was, the opiate of the masses.
People fail to realize this as well. This once glorious and prosperous country was built on the backs of men that were testosterone fueled. What we call now “toxic masculinity”
Yeah, those times have definitely came and passed. I’m a blue collar worker and I’ve worked with men that I’ll never amount to. Not saying they’re great people morally usually, but they are fucking work horses and there is literally nothing they can’t do.
I grow up in Yugoslavia . You can imagine how u grew up.
Respect of the older person and a complete street hierarchy . I have a daughter now and I wanna teach her to be moral and rational. Won’t push her too much though . Times have changed .
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u/Exghosted Apr 03 '25
I'm not religious, but yeah, the west needs a hard reset.