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Drowning Bear has a good point
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
"There's no hate like a Christian's love."
Missionaries would often find themselves at a loss of words when debating religious philosophy with those Native Americans.
As if Christians would "help the poor"?!? Where do people get these ideas? Supply Side Jesus would never do that!
He ain't wrong
For all the shit people happily dump on Christians, I think its easy to forget that American missionaries were part of a settler colonial project intended to steal land and strip mine it for valuable minerals. Like, no shit these people were assholes.
You jettison the Christianity, thinking you're going to purge the rot from the human heart. But all you end up with is a Sam Harris or a Christopher Hitchens. Congratulations, now you've invented secular reasons to bomb brown people, steal their land, and strip mine it for valuable minerals.
People so often lose the forest for the tree. They see a guy with an oversized cross and a silly hat, then tell themselves "Their religion made them think these awful things". But ditching the swag does nothing to peal off the bigotry underneath. Hating on LGBTQ folks, recoiling at people of a different color or weight or gender or age, and greedily exploiting bigotries to plunder a community of its valuables at gunpoint... these aren't religious impulses. They're distinctly human impulses.
At the same time, the innate human desire to bound with other people, to help them in their time of need, to make friendships and build productive communities and celebrate special occasions and even venerate historical idols... these aren't products of religion either. But they are transmitted as ideas through religion iconography and ritual.
You can look past the religious pastiche and see the good and the ill of people.
Religion is politics... and it always has been.
The left has been dropping the ball on this since Marx and Bakunin. And, unfortunately, I don't see that changing any time soon.
I see your point, but I still think it's valuable to criticise Christians who act in a deeply unChristian manner. It's not necessary to jettison Christianity entirely to do this, and indeed, I think that doing so would be losing the forest for the trees.
You're right that the potential to do great harm is a human trait, rather than specifically a religious one. However, pointing out the hypocrisy of Christian settler colonialism is one of the ways we can assert that it's not the Christianity that's the problem (even if it may be used as an excuse)
it’s valuable to criticise Christians who act in a deeply unChristian manner
It's hard to talk about being "unChristian" when you're describing a faith with this many schisms. Most Christians can't agree on what qualifies as "Being Christian". So an outsider looking in, with only a superficial understanding of the high notes of one particular sect, is going to have an even worse time of it.
However, pointing out the hypocrisy of Christian settler colonialism is one of the ways we can assert that it’s not the Christianity that’s the problem
I mean, I can point you to Mormonism as a sort-of twisted web of problems. On the one end, you've got some clearly made up bullshit. On another, you've got one sect of people believing made up bullshit conducting pogroms against another. And then that ousted sect runs off into the American Southwest to do pogroms on American Natives in turn.
And all this echoes the original flight of Protestants from the Old World of Europe in the wake of the 30 Years War. It's easy to say "Well, obviously, the problem is religion". But the problem isn't any one sect of Christianity, or Christianity as a whole, or even religion as a whole. It is an effort by powerful people to force the their weaker neighbors to conform.
The cycle of heterodoxy and homogenity - the Hegelian Cycle of change - is what drives conflict between tribes of people and determines their behaviors over time. Reconciling conflicts between tribes must require some degree of rational coexistence. It can't just be a new pogrom against the old crowd in the name of historical wrongdoing.
I don't even know why people are surprised. There is this whole lie that has been perpetuated that the people who settled America were running from religious persecution. It was the dead opposite. They didn't think that England was persecuting enough. What a complete and utter shock that America decided to turn out to be bat shit fuck insane in every part of its history.
I get what you're saying, but I think the idea behind it is taking away excuses. People use religion as an excuse to do shitty things, and get away with it because followers agree with the religious reason. But take away that structure, and now you have one less tool in the toolbox to indoctrinate with, leading to an overall lower retention rate. People will still be shitty, but I think it will be harder to justify to the general public and, as a result, less tolerated overall.
The core thought of Harris and hitchens was still christian. They ejected the magic stories, but not the fundamental christian modes of thought.
Religion is more than fairytale; it's also letting the priest rape your kids
It's a problem you encounter with a lot of atheists who haven't actually read about other philosophies and ideas. It's like that second wave feminism thing where you want equality so you can wear daddy's boot and step on the same necks he did (except yours).
The core thought of Harris and hitchens was still christian.
You can't "No True Atheist" your way out of this. Both men were outspoken apostates.
Religion is more than fairytale; it’s also letting the priest rape your kids
Do you think the folks on the Lolita Express were all priests?
It’s like that second wave feminism thing where you want equality so you can wear daddy’s boot and step on the same necks he did
Jesus fucking Christ, dude. You're going to pile anti-Feminism on top of your already bad take?
That's the thing, proud apostates, still operating on Christianity. Príests didnt invent pedophilia, they're just committed to it.
He would have changed his opinion had he read the rest of it. "I thought OUR gods were messed up."
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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