All religions have equal claim to this. And they’re all fucking bullshit made up by patriarchal assholes who were so terrified of losing their absolute power, they would kill anyone who would challenge it. For millennia.
Lmao, Christianity emerged as a religion of disempowered Jews, what absolute power? Absolutism did not even exist in antiquity/middle ages.
I think this might be
fucking bullshit made up by
patriarchalassholeslol, wow
See? This is exactly the type of crazy, self-serving bullshit that I’m talking about.
There is no such thing as invisible sky wizards that grant wishes. Picking and choosing who, in particular, your invisible sky wizard serves only reinforces my point that it’s a bunch of self-serving bullshit pulling out of some patriarch’s ass just so that they can reinforce their own invented power whenever rational and reasonable people tell them that they are, quite obviously, full of shit...
Thanks for proving my point
Edit: but, hey, if you can submit any verifiable evidence, and or proof that even one of the countless claims of religion over the past, several millennia are actually real, then go ahead and do that, and I might reconsider.
But, considering that not a single claim that religion has ever made ever can ever be verified or proven, I rest my case that it is all ridiculous and absurd, bullshit.
'Christianity' and 'the Roman Catholic Church' are two very different things. Christianity had very little traction in the world until a certain Roman Emperor saw his empire in decline, realized that military power alone would not keep it strong. What he needed was a borderless, stateless religious empire, with this mythical God as his power source, so he appropriated the Christian religion, made himself the leader (Pope) of it, and used religion, not military power, to control the people. To this day, the Roman Empire and the power of the Roman Emperor to rule all mankind continues under the guise of the Holly Roman Catholic Church. It has very little to do with Jesus Christ, and everything to do with the perpetuation of the dominance of the Roman Empire and the dictatorial authority of the Roman Emperor.
Jesus, the hardline Orthodox Jew from first century Galilee would not recognize “Christianity” only a few decades after his death, let alone the current iterations, and he would be appalled that gentiles had created an entirely new religion out of the worship of his idol. I would attribute this more to Paul than Constantine. Christianity could rightly be called the religion of Paul, a man who never met Jesus, rather than the religion of Jesus himself.
I am not convinced Paul had much to do with it. Fact is, the congregations Paul wrote to seemed to be very well established. Paul just kept them informed and in line. It was arguably John the Baptist that set up the infrastructure of the religious order that Jesus appropriated. In point of fact, it is contentious as to who died first, Jesus or John the Baptist. History is written by the winning side, and Jesus just happened to be on the winning side. It could just as easily have been 'Baptistianity'.
Christianity spread first in Europe, and in general, by offering the toiling classes something to look forward to besides suffering. For a bit charlemagne tried to spread it at the tip of a sword but that was more the exception then the rule.
It spread through the America's partly through violent colonization but also for the above reasons and the natives desire to assimilate into the new ruling class.
It spread and continues to spread through sub saharan Africa mostly due to heavy evangelical prosthelyzation from the west. By the time of African colonization the Europeans were directing there violence towards securing resources, not securing converts, even though that was the excuse they often gave.
Christianity may not be true but it is an attractive world view. Yes you may suffer the cruelty of others on earth but that is temporary, at the end of it all you will spend eternity in paradise and your torturers will be sent to hell. There's a reason Marx called it the opiates of the masses, and the promises of opium don't need to be true to sell.
imagine having faith in a dude who shamed his bro for trying to de-arrest him
maybe you should have done a drill with the gang um, once? instead of lecturing constantly at Judas to the point he wanted you got
JC is the most "loser who died at 33 for obvious reasons" kind of guy even in the version of the story that they control
grant me SATAN and satan grant me a gang who doesn't do hierarchical trash
"those who live by the sword" yeah go read how you guys died and tell me if sword would have been worse
loser ass cult
Why Christianity became the superpower religion it did is quite debatable. But it probably wasn't through all that much violence. The violence happened later.
Isn’t their secret sauce that you’re obliged to proselytize, otherwise the souls of the filthy heretics will be unsaved and will burn forever in your fantasy fire world?
It’s a religion that aggressively displaces other religions.
Sure, but other religions do this too?
According to the article I linked, it seems to be due, in part, to aggressive proselytizing. But also possibly due to (in no particular order): Christians having more pro-social values than alternative belief systems at the time, those pro-social values resulting in better plague survivability, or their pro-natalist stances. There are all sorts of possibilities, and it is quite interesting. But Christians before the time of Christian Rome were certainly not out conquoring other people - at least not at scale. They weren't that powerful.
Did Buddhism become a major religion by the quality of its truth? I am doubtful ...
Your doubts are well-founded. Buddhist religious violence is very much a real thing.
Right, but my understanding is that historically Buddhism did not spread through violence. My point was more that religion can spread for reasons that aren't either violence or truth.
And Buddhist violence is mostly a result of British colonialism and the rise of nationalism, rather than something about the religion itself (whereas Christianity more directly encourages violence, especially against heathens, Muslims, etc.).
I disagree with the whole premise of this post as well, but yeah the early history of the spread of Buddhism actually does contain a lot of this. The emperor Ashoka, who ruled most of India at one point, spread Buddhism across his empire by force, which was a major factor early on in its trajectory. Buddhism and Christianity actually have pretty similar early histories, complete with councils to determine doctrine, early spread among lower classes, and eventual adoption as state religions of powerful states. Even today there is still a lot of sectarian violence committed by Buddhists, particularly in the Myanmar/Burma civil war.
A lot of atheists in the west think of Buddhism as being more of a moral philosophy than a religion but that's not really true. Buddhism has gods and demons and heavens and hells, and rules one has to follow. It is often said that Buddhism doesn't believe in "God" but this is kind of misleading because there are definitely beings pretty much everyone would agree are gods even if they are technically mortal or are seen differently, such as the Buddhas.
Ashoka converted to Buddhism because of his experiences with war, and only did so after conflicts ended. I'm not sure this would really count as spreading Buddhism with violence, but I get that it's a bit like violence which resulted in an emperor taking power who later converted to Buddhism, so Buddhism is getting second-hand benefits from the violence that was committed before (though not to spread Buddhism directly, the way colonialism spread Christianity through violence directly).
And yes, I think the contemporary sectarian violence is a good example of Buddhist violence, though I'm not as familiar with historical examples.
And yes again, Westerners have a poor concept of Buddhism, it's a religion like any other - it was a sect of Hinduism, and has its own complicated cosmology and beliefs that are broadly incompatible with science. There are Buddhist modernist apologists (see: What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula) who argue that the historical Buddha did teach a belief system that is compatible with contemporary Western beliefs, but this relies on cherry-picking and ignoring the majority of what Buddhism actually is in the world, i.e. it fabricates a new kind of Buddhism from a narrow selection of scripture. It's mostly a response to colonialism and a form of assimilation that tries to take the upper hand, and a rather successful one in that it has played a role in Buddhism being uncritically adopted in the West, especially by psychologists, scientists, and industry (like Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, which claims to be secular while promoting Buddhist soteriological goals).
Can you imagine if a "secularized" version of Christian prayer was being promoted to treat insomnia, depression, stress, etc., that is essentially what's going on currently.
If anyone is interested in learning more:
- The Making of Buddhist Modernism by David McMahan
- Why I Am Not a Buddhist by Evan Thompson
- The Birth of Insight by Erik Braun
Christianity became a major religion by first generating mass appeal among the lowest class and then winning the support of key figures within the highest class. The class contradiction of the proletariat and aristocracy was (somewhat) reconciled through articles of religious faith that promised egalitarian utopianism to those that played nicely within their respective rolls.
The meme is overly simplistic, as it neglects the prevailing systems of violence predating Christianity. Systems which Christianity promised relief from - first by way of its evangalized utopianism and then by its capacity for resolving contradictions between classes which expanded the military and economic power of its adherents.
Later iterations of Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, and more baroque cult faiths like Scientology have repeated this pattern while the earlier iterations stagnate and calcify around a permanent gentry class. It isn't the Truth or the Violence that gives these religions its rapidly growing pool of adherents, but the promise of upward mobility and economic expansionism.
These faiths fail when alternative social structures outperform them. One religion replaces another when the growing congregants create more opportunities to join the prelate class and rise above one's inherited role in society. Capitalist institutions supplant church institutions when more people can join these large multinational management structures than can join the religious ministries (and church institutions infiltrate capitalist structures when religious denomination dictates one's managerial ceiling). Socialist institutions replace capitalist ones when state bureaucracies outperform private enterprises and party politics expands to encompass more of the proletariat.
"Truth" only matters in so far as individuals can realize a better standard of living. "Violence" only matters when participants can harvest their higher standards of living at their neighbors' expense. But the root of success in all these institutions is the speed and efficiency through which they incorporate more unaligned people into more (perceived) prosperous conditions.
"Proletariat"
While I do not endorse the Marxist view of history, I have to say that there was no proletariat in antiquity according to Historical Materialism. Slave societies had slaves, not the proletariat.
Sometimes words like this take on a more general meaning, like how "bourgeois" is used sometimes to imply association with the economic elite rather than specifically a middle class between peasants and aristocracy ... it's not necessarily wrong to classify slaves or the lower classes as "proletariat" in a general sense for the same reason, the term is just being used in a more generic way.
Slave societies had slaves, not the proletariat.
Fair enough.
Point being, Christianity spread first and fastest among Middle Eastern slave populations. The violence inflicted on slave Christians was the same violence that had been inflicted on pagan and monotheist minorities in ages past. Christians were simply better at organizing into opposition, which freaked out the Pagans, which heightened the divide between wealthy masters and increasingly rebellious slaves, which fueled civil wars and ultimately toppled the smaller insular, sclerotic military cults ruling Rome up to that point.
Along the way, Christian social networks became a ladder by which the lower classes could climb into higher station. And Constantine claiming the imperial crown was the apex of this early Christian revolution.
I honestly don't think this is true, I think it's the savior part that made it successful.
Say you're a shitty person by stealing, lying, slept with married women and being a con man. If you can repent in your older years and all is forgiven by god, that releases the guilt.
In my mind, guilt is the emotion of control for most major religions. If you give rules that if you break are super "wrong," but actually human nature (like sex), you will be able to control the masses. The religion alone can release the guilt that the religion made up.
That is a modern scenario where picking one's religion may not result in death. Go back just a little over 100 years and you're going to run into relgion not being an option one gets to make their own decisions about.
I am certainly no historian, but even I know that for thousands of years there have been many atrocities made in the name of religion.
- Christianity’s own parable of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth
- The 100-year war
- Assimilation of Pagan rituals and values into Christianity as a means to encourage Pagans to become Christians
- Indulgences being sold by the Catholic Church
- The current war between Israel and Palestine
- The reversal of Roe v Wade (abortion rights) that now allows laws being passed that make even natural miscarriages illegal and potentially punishable by death
- Clergy (not just Catholic) who abuse children, and the institutions enabling said abuse by covering up the abuses
- The people behind He Gets Us
Religion is a pandemic that has held back humanity from achieving their potential.
I'm not fighting with you, I agree with all of that. I just think the core of how people stay in religion and proselytize from their own free will, are guilt and forgiveness. There are ups and downs for every culture, religion, country. Also, anything that develops power gets taken over by the greeds, and all of the things you've mentioned are a result of that.
see also Pure Land Buddishm
It'sh an eashtern religion with a Sean Connery twisht.
That's super interesting, I've never heard of it described as that term even though it seems to be the most popular version.
The most distinctive feature of East Asian Pure Land traditions is that it offers ordinary people (even the unlearned and the unethical) hope that they may attain the stage of non-retrogression and eventually Buddhahood, no matter how bad their karma may be
Humans are a herd animal. It is in our genetics, our genes, our nature, to follow a pack leader. Religion was the method of establishing this pack leader well before we had any notion of 'nation' or 'statehood' or 'ethnic identity'. All religions are founded in their basic concept based on this natural human herd instinct. And like any herd, the leadership is always determined by some violent confrontation between leadership contenders to determine which person will be the alpha, or dominant, leader. Unfortunately, humans tend to forget that we are animals in our nature, and behave just like all other animals, except that we are just a bit more intelligent than many other species and a lot more aggressively competitive.
So with this in mind, humans were bound by nature to have religion, and to be lead by a religious leader (before we invented statehood, after the Peace of Westphalia). Basically, the only choice humans had was 'what religion'? it is a matter of which religion was the most aggressive, and after that factor, the most appealing. The 'savior' part made it 'appealing', but 'aggression' was still the major factor. Christianly may have been appealing before Constantine, but it was not aggressive until he brought the military power of the Roman Empire behind it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great_and_Christianity
Uh... Christianity spread a lot nonviolently though? Also a lot violently, but there's a reason Constantine (it was Constantine right?) converted and it's not because he was threatened with violence.
it's not because he was threatened with violence.
no, it's because he dreamed of it.
Constantine 'converted' because his empire was crumbling militarily, and so he switched to using 'religion' instead of 'statehood' to protect the Roman Empire.
It did at first, but like you said, Constantine was a huge shift.
The scientific tradition was also exported to the rest of the world from Europe(and parts of Asia, I suppose) via colonialism, I do not see anyone complaining about that.
what a strange troll.
Is that why we use Indian numerals?
I am not dismissing the achievements of other civilisations, but this is hardly a counterargument.
India is, indeed, the only place on earth where a rationalistic tradition emerged similar to the Greek philosophical tradition, and they did achieve quite a lot in maths as well I believe, but their intellectual tradition did not achieve what the western intellectual tradition did. This is just a fact.
Modern science is a result of two thousand years of intellectual work, during which a rich variety of conceptual tools was formed on the basis of which science emerged. It did so out of a rationalistic tradition, that has been developed by Europeans, other Mediterranean peoples and Arabs, but the centre of which was western Europe.
Not by the quality of its truth but by the quantity of its violence.
Very true, but don't disregard the quality of its truth. I'd say that most of the claims of miracles were used to justify the violence. And both can be dropped in favor of the core truth.
When you roll into the middle east and say believe or die. It's a pretty easy choice.
Rape your women, enslave your children and kill adult males. All with superior weapons and tech. An easy choice to throw on the cross and say I believe.
Uh... That's literally not what happened though? Christianity had already spread a lot by the time Constantine declared Rome Christian.
...That’s literally not what happened though...
But you are close. Constantine had been dead for a few decades by the time Theodosius I and his boys put out the Edict of Thessalonica. You may be thinking of the Edict of Milan which made Christianity legal.
For a modern comparison, Edict of Milan in 313 is like a when a state decriminalizes marijuana and Edict of Thessalonica in 380 is like when one makes it legal for recreational use and sale. Don't think about it too much or it breaks down but one's a much bigger step.
