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What is worse, racism or rape?

I think the OP title should be 'What is worse, rape or using someone's rape as political fodder?'


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I disagree that confusing obedience for morality is the foundation of Abrahamic religions.

There are surely numerous foundations, but this is a big one. Look through the bible and you will see this theme come up fore than pretty much anything else:

- Adam and Eve were forbidden the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, so they couldn't have known it was "bad" to disobey God, but they are punished for it.

- Abraham is told to do something immoral (murder his child) as an obedience test to God. A moral ending to that story would be Abraham standing up to God and saying he refuses to kill Isaac because murder is wrong, and God complimenting him and saying he passed the test. But that is not how the story goes.

- The Ten Commandments are as much if not more about obeying than about being a good person, and the first on the list is obedience.

- Lot's wife is turned to a pillar of salt because she looked back, disobeying God, not because she did anything actually blameworthy.

- The book of Judges is all about ceasing obedience to God and being punished for it.

- Job is a story in which God wrecks a man's life just to see how abusive he can be and yet still be revered and worshiped and obeyed.

This was clearly a book written by a priest class who wanted to keep the people obedient and slave-minded.

Islam takes it even further, as the very meaning of Islam is to surrender your will to Allah. It is a glorification of being a slave to God and being in obedience to God.

Obedience is not morality, and obedience is what these religions push. And that is why it so easily causes and catalyzes atrocity, bigotry, and hatred.
 
This was clearly a book written by a priest class who wanted to keep the people obedient and slave-minded.
No, because until relatively recently, most followers of Christian religions couldn't actually read the Bible. Or anything at all, for that matter; reading and writing were not universal skills at the time and were actually pretty rare and valuable.

The scriptures weren't meant or intended for mass consumption. They were intended to keep the PRIESTHOOD consistent and on-message, and the priesthood was the effective political power of Judea. The Torah wasn't a spiritual guide book so much as it was the constitution of their government. It's not a "slave mentality" at all, in a lot of cases it's LITERAL slavery imposed by the priests who also happen to be in charge of everything.

What's interesting is, the obvious contradictions between different parts of the Torah are actually built in deliberately over the years and decades as one political party tried to undermine the power of the others. There's a fantastically elaborate interplay between the priesthood and the prophets over both political, familial and spiritual life. The priests favored power of the central government and obedience, the prophets favored individual liberty and ruthlessness towards foreigners (at a time when the priests were both trying really hard to not piss off the Assyrian Empire while also consolidating their wealth and political power at the expense of the poor).

Privately and individually, if people didn't like part of the law, they just didn't follow it; in fact, a fantastic amount of scripture is actually devoted to this very subject, with the priests and prophets alike bitching about how so many people totally ignore the law. The Jews didn't even fully embrace monotheism until after the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD and they suddenly had a very pressing need for ideological and cultural unity. The only thing forcing them to obey their laws was the priesthood and the judges acting as their enforcers, so the people did exactly what they could get away with as often as they wanted to. That much hasn't changed in 3000 years: if the people don't like part of scripture, they just ignore it.

Islam takes it even further, as the very meaning of Islam is to surrender your will to Allah. It is a glorification of being a slave to God and being in obedience to God.
And it's still very much the same: if a Muslim doesn't like some part of scripture or if it disagrees with his nature, he'll usually just ignore it.

Obedience is not morality, and obedience is what these religions push.
And yet obedience is strictly voluntary, especially in the case of organized religions, for the simple fact that God doesn't have any actual power and can't force people to do anything they don't already want to do. This is why huge numbers of believers of every religion manage to ignore the mountains and mountains of complete nonsense their religion tells them to do because "Why the fuck would I want to do that?" is just as easy to say as "Why the fuck would God want me to do that?"

And that is why it so easily causes and catalyzes atrocity, bigotry, and hatred.

It doesn't, though. If a Muslim wants to shoot random people on a public bus, he'll do it. He'll find a justification for it, somehow, because human nature requires that we convince ourselves every day that our actions are, in some way, justified or at least justifiable. In the end, his basic proclivities towards violence will win out no matter what religion he claims as his own; the only thing in changes is what slogans he shouts when he decides to pull the trigger.
 
I think the OP title should be 'What is worse, rape or using someone's rape as political fodder?'

bingo
Yep.

- - - Updated - - -

No, because until relatively recently, most followers of Christian religions couldn't actually read the Bible. Or anything at all, for that matter; reading and writing were not universal skills at the time and were actually pretty rare and valuable.

The scriptures weren't meant or intended for mass consumption. They were intended to keep the PRIESTHOOD consistent and on-message, and the priesthood was the effective political power of Judea. The Torah wasn't a spiritual guide book so much as it was the constitution of their government. It's not a "slave mentality" at all, in a lot of cases it's LITERAL slavery imposed by the priests who also happen to be in charge of everything.

What's interesting is, the obvious contradictions between different parts of the Torah are actually built in deliberately over the years and decades as one political party tried to undermine the power of the others. There's a fantastically elaborate interplay between the priesthood and the prophets over both political, familial and spiritual life. The priests favored power of the central government and obedience, the prophets favored individual liberty and ruthlessness towards foreigners (at a time when the priests were both trying really hard to not piss off the Assyrian Empire while also consolidating their wealth and political power at the expense of the poor).

Privately and individually, if people didn't like part of the law, they just didn't follow it; in fact, a fantastic amount of scripture is actually devoted to this very subject, with the priests and prophets alike bitching about how so many people totally ignore the law. The Jews didn't even fully embrace monotheism until after the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD and they suddenly had a very pressing need for ideological and cultural unity. The only thing forcing them to obey their laws was the priesthood and the judges acting as their enforcers, so the people did exactly what they could get away with as often as they wanted to. That much hasn't changed in 3000 years: if the people don't like part of scripture, they just ignore it.

Islam takes it even further, as the very meaning of Islam is to surrender your will to Allah. It is a glorification of being a slave to God and being in obedience to God.
And it's still very much the same: if a Muslim doesn't like some part of scripture or if it disagrees with his nature, he'll usually just ignore it.

Obedience is not morality, and obedience is what these religions push.
And yet obedience is strictly voluntary, especially in the case of organized religions, for the simple fact that God doesn't have any actual power and can't force people to do anything they don't already want to do. This is why huge numbers of believers of every religion manage to ignore the mountains and mountains of complete nonsense their religion tells them to do because "Why the fuck would I want to do that?" is just as easy to say as "Why the fuck would God want me to do that?"

And that is why it so easily causes and catalyzes atrocity, bigotry, and hatred.

It doesn't, though. If a Muslim wants to shoot random people on a public bus, he'll do it. He'll find a justification for it, somehow, because human nature requires that we convince ourselves every day that our actions are, in some way, justified or at least justifiable. In the end, his basic proclivities towards violence will win out no matter what religion he claims as his own; the only thing in changes is what slogans he shouts when he decides to pull the trigger.

Fantastic informative post.
 
No, because until relatively recently, most followers of Christian religions couldn't actually read the Bible. Or anything at all, for that matter; reading and writing were not universal skills at the time and were actually pretty rare and valuable.

The scriptures weren't meant or intended for mass consumption. They were intended to keep the PRIESTHOOD consistent and on-message, and the priesthood was the effective political power of Judea. The Torah wasn't a spiritual guide book so much as it was the constitution of their government. It's not a "slave mentality" at all, in a lot of cases it's LITERAL slavery imposed by the priests who also happen to be in charge of everything.

What's interesting is, the obvious contradictions between different parts of the Torah are actually built in deliberately over the years and decades as one political party tried to undermine the power of the others. There's a fantastically elaborate interplay between the priesthood and the prophets over both political, familial and spiritual life. The priests favored power of the central government and obedience, the prophets favored individual liberty and ruthlessness towards foreigners (at a time when the priests were both trying really hard to not piss off the Assyrian Empire while also consolidating their wealth and political power at the expense of the poor).

Privately and individually, if people didn't like part of the law, they just didn't follow it; in fact, a fantastic amount of scripture is actually devoted to this very subject, with the priests and prophets alike bitching about how so many people totally ignore the law. The Jews didn't even fully embrace monotheism until after the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD and they suddenly had a very pressing need for ideological and cultural unity. The only thing forcing them to obey their laws was the priesthood and the judges acting as their enforcers, so the people did exactly what they could get away with as often as they wanted to. That much hasn't changed in 3000 years: if the people don't like part of scripture, they just ignore it.

Islam takes it even further, as the very meaning of Islam is to surrender your will to Allah. It is a glorification of being a slave to God and being in obedience to God.
And it's still very much the same: if a Muslim doesn't like some part of scripture or if it disagrees with his nature, he'll usually just ignore it.

Obedience is not morality, and obedience is what these religions push.
And yet obedience is strictly voluntary, especially in the case of organized religions, for the simple fact that God doesn't have any actual power and can't force people to do anything they don't already want to do. This is why huge numbers of believers of every religion manage to ignore the mountains and mountains of complete nonsense their religion tells them to do because "Why the fuck would I want to do that?" is just as easy to say as "Why the fuck would God want me to do that?"

And that is why it so easily causes and catalyzes atrocity, bigotry, and hatred.

It doesn't, though. If a Muslim wants to shoot random people on a public bus, he'll do it. He'll find a justification for it, somehow, because human nature requires that we convince ourselves every day that our actions are, in some way, justified or at least justifiable. In the end, his basic proclivities towards violence will win out no matter what religion he claims as his own; the only thing in changes is what slogans he shouts when he decides to pull the trigger.

Excellent post. One note though. There's was no difference between Jewish priests and prophets until well into Roman times. The Jewish court had a guild of prophets. There was so many prophets that you need to register to "ply your trade" in the capital. Outside the capital you could do your thing.

A prophet was a term that covered soothsayers and even stage magicians. Getting messages from the gods/God, ie like Jesus, was no big deal in Judea. People like Jesus could be found under any rock. Even being a "son of God" was no big deal. Anybody being baptised by John the baptist became adopted by God, and therefore a son of God. There is references in the Torah about the annoying abundance of prophets.

Bart Ehrman makes the case that the project to create a singular and universal Torah is the point when Judaism started becoming a tool for social control, of the way you mention. This project was ongoing during the first century BC. Before that there were many contradictory Torahs.

What is interesting is that between 62 to 37 BC Rome exploited Jewish political instability and strife to assert control. They did so with the excuse of helping a neighbour and bring about stability. It's interesting that these both events took place at the same time.

The rabbi was a concept within the Pharisaic movement. This was a fringe movement, or small movement lacking power, up until the fall of Masada 70 AD, after which they took over Jewish religious life, and still define what Judaism is.

A rabbi is a completely different type of role than the earlier Jewish priest or prophet. The Jewish priest, when inside the temple of David, and saying the correct incantations and due ritual, could talk to God directly. And that was the only way to talk to God. The Pharisaic movement claimed that any Jew could talk directly with God. This was super handy after the Romans had demolished the temple of David.

A rabbi doesn't have any more magical powers than anybody. What they had was learning and were consulted for that reason alone. Their authority came from having a superior education and mind, and nothing else. A rabbi is a lot weaker tool of power than a Jewish priest.

Today of course there are no Jewish priest. The older form of Judaism is completely dead today.

This was a long way of saying that Jewish kings seemed to struggle with controlling the priests and keeping them on point. The Christian priest clearly sprung from the earlier, (and now dead) Jewish priests. The early Christian church had the same problem of being awash with conflicting and contradictory Bibles. That wasn't sorted until the council of Nicea ca 300 AD.
 
No, the bad parts of religion is not really about oppressing other groups, it is moreso about oppressing the flock. Getting free money (or labor) free sex (adults and children). Think Jim Jones.

Religion is contradictory. Religion can be used for a tool for imperialism and peace, for fascism against the members by the leaders and being charitable to them.

The exact same is true of unlimited access to handguns and fully automatic rifles. Yet no reasonable person denies that they (and religion) have an overwhelmingly net negative causal impact on the prevalence and severity of unjust and immoral homicides.

In fact, the same is true of Trump as US President. His powers in general and his sway with the alt-right could be used to lessen their bigotries and make them more reasonable. But any isolated use of it in that way would be accidental and completely outweighed by the harmful use that is inherent to Trump himself, just as it is with Abrahamic religion due to the God of Abraham being the most pro authoritarian, intolerant, and bigoted concept ever imagined. No modernization of that concept can overcome those inherent qualities unless the changes were so complete and fundamental that it no longer was a God or tied to anything that would be accurately called a religion.
 
Why do people believe in the scriptures?
The evidence shows it has minimal to do with their appeal to pre-existing bigotries as your argument presumes. Most people believe in them because their parents threatened, coerced, and beat it into them with help from much of the rest of their community. This was aided by an innate human desire to conform to others even without coercion, regardless of the content. That start believing as children, then continue as adults because the social costs are too high to change and b/c of innate human tendencies that make beliefs (no matter their content) resistant to change.

All of this definitively implies that belief in the bigotries of the scriptures is primarily NOT the product of already holding those bigotries. The bigoted content of those beliefs and therefore more of an influence on future psychological development, belief formation, and action than it is a byproduct of those things.

Do you really think that if we remove all religion that there would be no more bigotry or sexism?
This highlights the false-dichotomy and strawman behind your entire argument. No one has said or implied that religion is the sole causal factor, but merely that it is a significant causal factor, especially when it is not surrounded by a secular context which does not merely change by weakens religious belief at both the collective and individual level and thus lessens its harms.

And religion is not required.

Virtually nothing is required for bigotry, and yet it is still most certainly causally influenced by countless things. Almost none of the causes of complex human cognition and action are "neccessary" or "sufficient". So, it is a strawman to point that out as though it implies that it isn't a cause at all.

There is no THE problem. There are many problems. A lot factors create and catalyze bigotry, and religion is a huge one.


Bigotry comes first. Always.

Which is as useless as saying "Uranium comes first. Always. Therefore, Nuclear Weapons do not and cannot cause anything that wasn't already there. "
 
...belief in the bigotries of the scriptures is primarily NOT the product of already holding those bigotries.

Right - as you indicated but didn't say, it's the product of PARENTS holding to those bigotries.
 
This highlights the false-dichotomy and strawman behind your entire argument. No one has said or implied that religion is the sole causal factor, but merely that it is a significant causal factor, especially when it is not surrounded by a secular context which does not merely change by weakens religious belief at both the collective and individual level and thus lessens its harms.
The argument is that religion is simply an excuse for bigotry that would have occurred in the absence of religion. Hence your entire response is based on a misunderstanding and is completely off point.
 
This highlights the false-dichotomy and strawman behind your entire argument. No one has said or implied that religion is the sole causal factor, but merely that it is a significant causal factor, especially when it is not surrounded by a secular context which does not merely change by weakens religious belief at both the collective and individual level and thus lessens its harms.
The argument is that religion is simply an excuse for bigotry that would have occurred in the absence of religion. Hence your entire response is based on a misunderstanding and is completely off point.
Bullshit.

Religion in many cases creates, unifies, and leads bigotry and hatred. Why else would a group of Semites almost universally dislike another group of Semites?
 
The argument is that religion is simply an excuse for bigotry that would have occurred in the absence of religion. Hence your entire response is based on a misunderstanding and is completely off point.
Bullshit.

Religion in many cases creates, unifies, and leads bigotry and hatred. Why else would a group of Semites almost universally dislike another group of Semites?

Still unifies. I think a function of religion is to create a bigger in-group than just your family. Which isn't all bad.

But a bigger in-group will of course lead to a sharper divide between in and out group.
 
Bullshit.

Religion in many cases creates, unifies, and leads bigotry and hatred. Why else would a group of Semites almost universally dislike another group of Semites?

Still unifies. I think a function of religion is to create a bigger in-group than just your family. Which isn't all bad.

But a bigger in-group will of course lead to a sharper divide between in and out group.

Of course religion isn't ALL bad. There are some positive aspects but to claim that religions do not promote bigotry would require a blindness to what is happening (and what has happened) in the world.
 
The argument is that religion is simply an excuse for bigotry that would have occurred in the absence of religion. Hence your entire response is based on a misunderstanding and is completely off point.
Bullshit.

Religion in many cases creates, unifies, and leads bigotry and hatred.
That is extremely simplistic "thinking". God did not create bigotry within any religion because there is no God: people created that bigotry. Religion evolves based on the people their circumstances and experiences. Religion is an organizing mechanism. There is nothing inherent in religion that requires bigotry. If it were not "religion" that evolved to promote bigotry, it would have been something else.
 
Still unifies. I think a function of religion is to create a bigger in-group than just your family. Which isn't all bad.

But a bigger in-group will of course lead to a sharper divide between in and out group.

Of course religion isn't ALL bad. There are some positive aspects but to claim that religions do not promote bigotry would require a blindness to what is happening (and what has happened) in the world.

I saw a study on generosity. When a group of people were manipulated to feel more generous religious people would become more generous, but only targeted towards people sharing the same faith. If they had nobody of the same faith around they would become less generous than non-religious.

I think that study confirmed and explained most of value about religion.

Btw, everybody thinks they're more generous than they really are. Yes, including you:)
 
Of course religion isn't ALL bad. There are some positive aspects but to claim that religions do not promote bigotry would require a blindness to what is happening (and what has happened) in the world.
..............

Btw, everybody thinks they're more generous than they really are. Yes, including you:)

Not at all... I know and revel in the knowledge that I am a fucking miserly tightwad. :D
 
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