In many places surveyed, 20% or more of all adults have left their childhood religious group. Christianity and Buddhism have had especially large losses. Pew Research Center.
Depends on the religion. But as a whole, what we thing of “religions”, are definitely a net negative with our knowledge of the world. We no longer need to rely on superstition to survive.
Some religions are more a way of life rather than a structured creator being system with strict rules and exclusionary politics. Religions like Christianity/Judaism/Islam are quite different from Shinto or Buddhism for instance.
There’s still some toxicity around Buddhism at least. Living in SEA I now know several people who are really turned off by the practices and beliefs of their family’s religion, Buddhism, from the way all troubles are explained away as karma to neurodiversity and Learning Differences being hidden because that would mean that person did something bad in their past life.
I used to think Buddhism specifically was the “good” religion that’s more like philosophy, but spending more time with people who grew up deep in Buddhism has made me see there’s really more to the community and it’s beliefs and practices than I thought.
No. I mean, first of all let’s start with the fact that both Winter solstice and Spring Equinox were so-called pagan holidays that Christianty subsumed. Right? Let’s start there.
Then let’s understand that those so-called pagan holidays were traditions based on earlier - much earlier - observances. And those observances were astronomical in origin.
The winter solstice is when the sun stops moving for three days - it rises in the same location whereas all the time before that it had been moving slightly every day.
After those three days it starts moving back. That’s the birth. Life is born again. We’re going to make it around the sun another time. That sort of thing.
Spring / Vernal equinox is when we make sure everyone has progeny. Rabbits. Flowers. Eggs. Chrisitanity decided to appropriate this one to mark Jesus’ ascent into heaven. Fine. But irrelevant. Because it has nothing to do with life on earth - very literally, it’s about leaving earth and going to heaven.
That’s why there’s such a disconnect about crucifixion and rabbits and eggs. They don’t have anything to do with each other because the church yoinked a pagan tradition to keep people from celebrating it outside the church.
That makes a lot of sense. Until you consider that around Winter solstice, Christians don’t celebrate the resurrection, yhey celebrate the birth. How do you explain that disconnect?
This explains some of the reasoning, although because it was 350 CE they can’t confirm anything with 100% certainty. Such is history.
What is certain to anyone who has studied it even a little bit is that the winter solstice was near-universally recognized by all cultures prior to the common era.
December 25 is very often the solstice, or close enough to it that it was selected by some as the annual celebration for their deity of choice. As the article notes, in Rome that was the birthday of Sol Invictus. It’s also the birthday of Saturn, Mithras, and depending on whether you believe some fourth-century Christian authors, also Horus.
So Pope Julius “chose” - note that no one is in any doubt the date was selected, it wasn’t like Jesus’ old birthday cards were found and everyone knew that was his actual birthday - Pope Julius chose Dec 25 as the annual celebration day for Jesus. That became known as his birthday. But it wasn’t. What it WAS was the winter solstice.
Its a problem with all of them. How can any christians be non pacifist when direct from christs mouth was the very direct command:
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”
I have had discussion and its ludicrous the other parts they engage in mental gymnastics to work around it. Its the same with the 4 noble truths and the 8 fold way. Its pretty obvious its about looking inward and delving into anyone elses life except to help them would be feeding into desire. Sihks have this whole thing about goofy practices of other religions and then have their own goofy practices. No idea how jainism gets corrupted or other faiths off the top of my head but im sure they are there.
There’s a lot of Buddhist teachings I agree with but do we really need all the supernatural baggage to teach people to be less materialistic and to be kind to each other?
I’ve found Zen Buddhist koans, essentially short stories to be contemplated over, to be deeply calming and insightful.
My favorite one is this.
"A man was walking through the jungle, when he spotted a tiger. The man immediately fled, but the tiger gave chase. Approaching a cliff, the man saw only one option… A hanging vine. He jumped off of the cliff and grabbed the vine, hanging on for dear life.
The tiger came to the edge of the cliff, snarling.
Just as the man thought he was in the clear, he noticed another tiger prowling below.
And then, if things weren’t difficult enough, the man then saw two mice above him (one black, one white) gnawing away at the vine.
In this state of impending doom, the man looked over his shoulder to the sight of a strawberry patch on a ledge, at arm’s length.
The man reached over, plucked a strawberry and ate it. It was the best damn strawberry he ever had."
Just because they aren’t theist doesn’t mean they don’t have horrible backwards teachings. Most people are good without religion. Religion creates situations where otherwise good people do evil, because they’re told it is actually good.
Most people are not good without religion, they are good because of civilization. If society breaks down, everyone is going to get real mean, real quick.
The most evil people in Nazi Germany were generally anti-religious.
I don’t know if evil is the right word. However, most people are self serving and will do “evil” things to enrich themselves. Whether that makes them evil is up for debate. As far as I can see, it’s a matter of human nature following the rules of game theory.
Even with civilisation or society, there’s always been a subset of people looking to exploit whatever facet of existence they can, whether it be religion, politics, crimes of opportunity, weaknesses in social systems, or even the justice systems that are supposedly meant to deal with those flaws.
And to add even more complexity, other people who aren’t pieces of shit looking to exploit others form emotional attachments to those who are and are fooled by their lies and will defend them. Others don’t have attachments but see parallels to themselves and worry that attempts to deal with the problematic ones will result in the same treatment being applied to them (and aren’t necessarily wrong because even justice trying to act in good faith can get it wrong).
It’s all a complex web of power struggles and religion is just one set of stands.
Hard disagree. Yes, when people are desperate they’re capable of horrible things, but most people won’t shoot a home intruder even if they went through the process of purchasing a gun for home defence and have someone break in. Everyone is capable of great evil, but they are not evil. Most people will choose to cooperate if they can.
Also, I’d say the most evil Nazis were religious. Their religion was Nazism though. They had a belief (that they were told was scientific, but wasn’t) that some people were better than others, and some groups actively needed to be removed to make the rest of us better in the future. It’s the same beliefs religions create, and it was also based in faith, just not of a god.
The most evil people in Nazi Germany were generally anti-religious.
Unless you’re excluding old Adolf from that list (which would be both interesting and telling), this is not correct. A lot of people forget about him though.
Just sounds like the usual “no true Christ-man” being resurrected whenever there’s some atrocity for the church to slink away from once it becomes unpopular.
Depends on the religion. But as a whole, what we thing of “religions”, are definitely a net negative with our knowledge of the world. We no longer need to rely on superstition to survive.
Some religions are more a way of life rather than a structured creator being system with strict rules and exclusionary politics. Religions like Christianity/Judaism/Islam are quite different from Shinto or Buddhism for instance.
There’s still some toxicity around Buddhism at least. Living in SEA I now know several people who are really turned off by the practices and beliefs of their family’s religion, Buddhism, from the way all troubles are explained away as karma to neurodiversity and Learning Differences being hidden because that would mean that person did something bad in their past life.
I used to think Buddhism specifically was the “good” religion that’s more like philosophy, but spending more time with people who grew up deep in Buddhism has made me see there’s really more to the community and it’s beliefs and practices than I thought.
Like all religion, it can be messed up and carried on.
Sort of like when the winter solstice turned into “dead and buried three days, then rose again” and a bunch of zombie religions are still around.
That’s for Spring (rebirth, Easter), not Winter.
Christmas is for Winter, it celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. It came from Saturnalia, probably the most important holiday of Roman society.
No. I mean, first of all let’s start with the fact that both Winter solstice and Spring Equinox were so-called pagan holidays that Christianty subsumed. Right? Let’s start there.
Then let’s understand that those so-called pagan holidays were traditions based on earlier - much earlier - observances. And those observances were astronomical in origin.
The winter solstice is when the sun stops moving for three days - it rises in the same location whereas all the time before that it had been moving slightly every day.
After those three days it starts moving back. That’s the birth. Life is born again. We’re going to make it around the sun another time. That sort of thing.
Spring / Vernal equinox is when we make sure everyone has progeny. Rabbits. Flowers. Eggs. Chrisitanity decided to appropriate this one to mark Jesus’ ascent into heaven. Fine. But irrelevant. Because it has nothing to do with life on earth - very literally, it’s about leaving earth and going to heaven.
That’s why there’s such a disconnect about crucifixion and rabbits and eggs. They don’t have anything to do with each other because the church yoinked a pagan tradition to keep people from celebrating it outside the church.
That makes a lot of sense. Until you consider that around Winter solstice, Christians don’t celebrate the resurrection, yhey celebrate the birth. How do you explain that disconnect?
This explains some of the reasoning, although because it was 350 CE they can’t confirm anything with 100% certainty. Such is history.
What is certain to anyone who has studied it even a little bit is that the winter solstice was near-universally recognized by all cultures prior to the common era.
December 25 is very often the solstice, or close enough to it that it was selected by some as the annual celebration for their deity of choice. As the article notes, in Rome that was the birthday of Sol Invictus. It’s also the birthday of Saturn, Mithras, and depending on whether you believe some fourth-century Christian authors, also Horus.
So Pope Julius “chose” - note that no one is in any doubt the date was selected, it wasn’t like Jesus’ old birthday cards were found and everyone knew that was his actual birthday - Pope Julius chose Dec 25 as the annual celebration day for Jesus. That became known as his birthday. But it wasn’t. What it WAS was the winter solstice.
Its a problem with all of them. How can any christians be non pacifist when direct from christs mouth was the very direct command:
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”
I have had discussion and its ludicrous the other parts they engage in mental gymnastics to work around it. Its the same with the 4 noble truths and the 8 fold way. Its pretty obvious its about looking inward and delving into anyone elses life except to help them would be feeding into desire. Sihks have this whole thing about goofy practices of other religions and then have their own goofy practices. No idea how jainism gets corrupted or other faiths off the top of my head but im sure they are there.
Because you don’t have to be a good person at all to get into heaven. Just repent. Simple.
There’s a lot of Buddhist teachings I agree with but do we really need all the supernatural baggage to teach people to be less materialistic and to be kind to each other?
I’ve found Zen Buddhist koans, essentially short stories to be contemplated over, to be deeply calming and insightful.
My favorite one is this.
"A man was walking through the jungle, when he spotted a tiger. The man immediately fled, but the tiger gave chase. Approaching a cliff, the man saw only one option… A hanging vine. He jumped off of the cliff and grabbed the vine, hanging on for dear life.
The tiger came to the edge of the cliff, snarling.
Just as the man thought he was in the clear, he noticed another tiger prowling below.
And then, if things weren’t difficult enough, the man then saw two mice above him (one black, one white) gnawing away at the vine.
In this state of impending doom, the man looked over his shoulder to the sight of a strawberry patch on a ledge, at arm’s length.
The man reached over, plucked a strawberry and ate it. It was the best damn strawberry he ever had."
Just because they aren’t theist doesn’t mean they don’t have horrible backwards teachings. Most people are good without religion. Religion creates situations where otherwise good people do evil, because they’re told it is actually good.
Most people are not good without religion, they are good because of civilization. If society breaks down, everyone is going to get real mean, real quick.
The most evil people in Nazi Germany were generally anti-religious.
I don’t know if evil is the right word. However, most people are self serving and will do “evil” things to enrich themselves. Whether that makes them evil is up for debate. As far as I can see, it’s a matter of human nature following the rules of game theory.
Even with civilisation or society, there’s always been a subset of people looking to exploit whatever facet of existence they can, whether it be religion, politics, crimes of opportunity, weaknesses in social systems, or even the justice systems that are supposedly meant to deal with those flaws.
And to add even more complexity, other people who aren’t pieces of shit looking to exploit others form emotional attachments to those who are and are fooled by their lies and will defend them. Others don’t have attachments but see parallels to themselves and worry that attempts to deal with the problematic ones will result in the same treatment being applied to them (and aren’t necessarily wrong because even justice trying to act in good faith can get it wrong).
It’s all a complex web of power struggles and religion is just one set of stands.
Hard disagree. Yes, when people are desperate they’re capable of horrible things, but most people won’t shoot a home intruder even if they went through the process of purchasing a gun for home defence and have someone break in. Everyone is capable of great evil, but they are not evil. Most people will choose to cooperate if they can.
Also, I’d say the most evil Nazis were religious. Their religion was Nazism though. They had a belief (that they were told was scientific, but wasn’t) that some people were better than others, and some groups actively needed to be removed to make the rest of us better in the future. It’s the same beliefs religions create, and it was also based in faith, just not of a god.
Unless you’re excluding old Adolf from that list (which would be both interesting and telling), this is not correct. A lot of people forget about him though.
Just sounds like the usual “no true Christ-man” being resurrected whenever there’s some atrocity for the church to slink away from once it becomes unpopular.