Militant atheism

[ad hoc]

It's fundamentally a clusterfuck. And the worst of it hasn't even happened yet

[Patrick Thistle]

What ad hoc said. It would have been a clusterfuck, whatever, because it was an economic, political, social.and cultural suicide action fueled by nonsense, lies and hate.

[Patrick Thistle]

I don’t think it’s that simple. Even if it were, Christian ideas about faith cannot be extrapolated to other traditions.

OK, but you identify as a Christian so it just amused me that you claimed believing something regardless of evidence isn't an aspect of religion, given that "faith is the conviction of things not seen".

I mean, you may well believe that it's just about turning up on a Sunday. I really have no idea what you actually believe. I know whatever I bring up isn't it.

[Hot Pepsi]

I think that’s conflating the bad faith, bad actors who pushed for it with all the regular people who fell for it.

Some people, no doubt, genuinely believed it would bring more money to the NHS and what not. The brexiters wouldn’t have made up stuff like that id there weren’t s bunch of persuadables who’d buy it.

Sure, I suspect at least a third of the country would rather watch the world burn than allow immigrants to feed their kids.

[Hot Pepsi]

OK, but you identify as a Christian so it just amused me that you claimed believing something regardless of evidence isn't an aspect of religion, given that "faith is the conviction of things not seen".

I mean, you may well believe that it's just about turning up on a Sunday. I really have no idea what you actually believe. I know whatever I bring up isn't it.

Paul said that in Hebrews, but you can’t generalize that to all religion in all traditions. He was one guy in one context.

I don’t think many or all buddhists or hindus, for example, would think about faith in quite the same way. I’m not really sure, but they’ve managed to get along for a while without Paul. But Hinduism and Buddhism, despite what you may have read, are religion. At least for some people.

In my understanding, Hindus, Buddhists and, in some circles, Jews and Muslims, are more like 76ers fans: they trust The Process more than a particular outcome.

I find that Christians do that too, but few would ever admit that. They claim certainty they don’t really have in the outcome and say shit like “everything happens for a reason.” Jesus didn’t say that.

Nevertheless, we all need conviction of things not seen.

The future is not written. Nobody knows what is going to happen. Nobody is really in charge. We’re all going to die fairly soon. Everything is always turning to shit. Everything has always been turning to shit. It certainly was in Paul’s time.

A lot of people think faith is certainty in something without evidence. But I don’t think it is and I don’t think Paul really did either.

Faith is getting on with it without certainty. Lou Reed thought so too, it seems. But he was a dick, so that doesn’t help.

[Patrick Thistle]

I've never read anything that denies Hinduism and Buddhism are religions. I have read there are many expressions of both and every religion has its "fundamentalists" with all the problems that brings.

[G-Man]

Buddhism is sometimes presented as a lifestyle philosophy that can be subscribed to parallel with other forms of theism (or, I suppose, non-theism). I know too little about it to have any opinions on the validity of that idea.

[Lang Spoon]

Buddhist fundamentalism is now a thing though, with really horrible consequences in Sri Lanka.

[ad hoc]

Buddhist fundamentalism is now a thing though, with really horrible consequences in Sri Lanka.

And in Myanmar

[Hot Pepsi]

I've never read anything that denies Hinduism and Buddhism are religions. I have read there are many expressions of both and every religion has its "fundamentalists" with all the problems that brings.

I'm surprised. Maybe not so much with Hinduism - don't hear a lot about them here one way or the other - but "Buddhism is more of a philosophy than a religion" is a common trope. Americans tend to think that because Buddhism is more explicitly about the process - right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samahdi (I always thought a few of those could be combined) - but does not care too much about God or gods.

We tend to assume, wrongly, that religion is about worshipping a deity. Part of that is just that the religion that most Americans see around them looks like that, but part of that is because conservatives want to somehow impose "prayer in school" and shit like that and yet somehow claim it's fine for "all faiths." Lately they haven't been pretending that as much.



Fundamentalist definitely describes a certain type of person that shows up in every religious tradition I've heard of, including - or perhaps, especially - in religions that don't call themselves religions - nationalism, "objectivism," fascism, nihilism, Marxism, etc.

If I know one thing for sure, it's that those people are - in the aggregate, at least - a menace to the planet.

I also generally believe that fundamentalists of different traditions are really, for all practical purposes, the same, even though they hate each other. They may claim different Gods or sacred texts or ideologies, but what they really care about most is claiming authority, power, and certainty. In that way, they deserve each other.

But that's also why religion for these people is almost always political more than spiritual, in which case we cannot safely ignore them because they're always plotting violence to some degree or another.



*I'm not sure "fundamentalist" is literally the right word to describe all the people in different traditions who get that label. As I understand it, it comes from a 19th century American Christian movement to say which things were "non-negotiable." That turned out to be very reactionary and, frankly, backwards, in my view, as it does in other religions. But we all have non-negotiable values and lines we will not cross. Our reasoning for sticking to those might be better, I suppose, but they're still fundamental to how we go about living, are they not?

[Lang Spoon]

Buddhism pretty much immediately started accumlating bodhisattvas, spirits and demons and eleborate theology, and lots of appropriation from whatever was believed by the proselitized cultures, at least in some of the schools.

Tibetan buddhism say and whatever someone g8ven the name of the Buddha may have believed or taught dont have much in common at all. Fairly astringent teaching on ethics alone is unlikely to have spread across Asian elites or given any comfort to the poor.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I think that this fundamentalist sort of thing is just a particular personality type that has existed for as long as there has been any form of society. Its most obvious in religions just because they've been going on in broadly their current form for a very long time, and people have been writing that stuff down.

I mean we don't know a lot about daily life in most areas, of the world say 2000 years ago, but we know about the zealots, and the pharisees and we know a lot about the moral ambiguities of the temple priestly class. You don't have to be the world's foremost forensic anthropologist or sherlock fucking Holmes to see these patterns played out all around us in society today, and if I knew enough about the bible, I would at this point go and find a bit of the gospels where Jesus was talking shit about the pharisees, strike through the word pharisee and replace it with 'centrist dad' with hilarious results

[Patrick Thistle]

12 Then came his disciples, and said unto him, "Knowest thou that the Centrist Dads were offended, after they heard this saying?"
13 But Jesus answered and said, "Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.
14 Let the Centrist Dads alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."

[Hot Pepsi]

Buddhism pretty much immediately started accumlating bodhisattvas, spirits and demons and eleborate theology, and lots of appropriation from whatever was believed by the proselitized cultures, at least in some of the schools.

Tibetan buddhism say and whatever someone g8ven the name of the Buddha may have believed or taught dont have much in common at all. Fairly astringent teaching on ethics alone is unlikely to have spread across Asian elites or given any comfort to the poor.

But, as I understand it, in the 20th and 21st centuries, at least, not many Buddhists are too worried about whether any of those stories of spirits, demons, etc. are literally historically true.

Whereas, lots of Christians, Muslims and Jews are very worried about what actually happened and whether or not angels and demons are real and whether the stories they read actually happened the way the story says it did, etc. Maybe a lot of Hindus are too, I'm not sure. Not sure about the Shintos or other animist types.

I'm ok with myths not being historical, but I know a lot of people can't accept that.



Christianity, of course, also immediately started accumulating all kinds of stories and characters and so forth, comingling with the local folklore and mythology everywhere it spread. That is why, for example, why the Virgin Mary is such a big deal in Catholicism.

Same with all the other saints and relics and worry about demons and witches and stuff like the Holy Grail etc (although that came along late). It all just kind of got absorbed into the tradition and, for the most part, the Church was fine with that because the Church itself was also the product of that sort of making-it-up-as-we-go approach. Yes, in the story Jesus said Peter is the rock the church will be built on, but he didn't say anything about building a city within Rome or anything about bishops or pointy hats or any number of other things we associate with the ROC.

Of course, when the reformation came along, a lot of the Protestants thought letting in all of these "non-Christian" bits was what had corrupted the "pure" Biblical message, so they wanted to burn it all down - purify it - and get back to just following the Bible. Fuckers thought Christmas was too "papist."

That sort of "It's got to be Biblical, or it isn't true" shit still pervades Protestantism, especially fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (even though Evangelicalism is loaded with shit that is in direct contradiction to the Bible, of course. They're flexible that way).

That's also why they - and shitheads like Sam Harris - think they can just read the Koran in English and declare that they know what Islam is really all about. Based on their limited experience of Christianity, they think that's just how religion works and they extrapolate it. But that isn't how Islam works for actual Muslims (well, maybe for some of them).

Having grown up in the Protestant scene, I am biased toward thinking that it's better to just have fewer characters, side plots, McGuffins, and assorted Dungeons & Dragons shit and just focus on one main character and his arc.

But I see the appeal of all the other stuff. It can be instructive too and I'm not very uncomfortable with this closed canon business. It's why I don't know if I really belong any more.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

12 Then came his disciples, and said unto him, "Knowest thou that the Centrist Dads were offended, after they heard this saying?"
13 But Jesus answered and said, "Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.
14 Let the Centrist Dads alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."

Exactly!