To think it’s unwise to lose the idea of God(s) in society?

[Digita]

To think it’s unwise to lose the idea of God(s) in society?

Whenever I hear people arguing why faith in any sort of higher being is 'stupid' or 'delusional' I wonder if they've thought through the wider implications of a godless society. It might not be all that it's cracked up to be... the idea of higher beings might be invented but invented for a reason too. Is there a need for a philosophical concept of something more for accountability, law and order?

“Society needs reasons for people to tell the truth even when it is to their disadvantage.” Why swear on a Bible? The Courts have kept swearing an oath on religious texts because there’s still a psychological, moral force behind it.

"Co-operation is a key component in human interaction and also, according to new research from the University of British Columbia, the spread of civilisation. Not because for any altruistic reason, though; instead it might be directly down to a fear of a vengeful god." Fear of punitive gods linked to rise of human civilisation’

‘A new study published in the journal, Nature, tests the theory that communities are fair and cooperate with outsiders because of the fear of divine retribution.’ ‘Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality’

Wasn't there an earlier version of the Bible where Jesus killed some kid for bumping into him, and he also slayed some dragons?
I guess they quietly edited that out once people started asking questions.

@Tumbleweed101

I've never really understood what folks mean by spirituality.

I've just looked it up!

Why do you think we have the need to believe there is something greater than ourselves, that there's some big meaning?

I don't get it. But it's obvious a big need in many people, otherwise religion surely would never have been as successful as it is.

The follow events had nothing to do with religion:-

The Holocaust – between 4 and 17 million deaths (racial motivation)

Wow. Did someone seriously just say that the Holocaust had 'nothing to do with religion'? Of course, religion wasn't the only factor, but to say it had nothing to do with it is astonishing.

You know if it was a simple message of god is watching so you have to be good, I'd happily let them get on with it.

It's fairly obvious who benefits from all this, and it ain't women.

@ErrolTheDragon

" The follow events had nothing to do with religion:-

The Holocaust – between 4 and 17 million deaths (racial motivation)

Wow. Did someone seriously just say that the Holocaust had 'nothing to do with religion'? Of course, religion wasn't the only factor, but to say it had nothing to do with it is astonishing."

Wow, I'm utterly gobsmacked at that too. The naivety of not understanding the history of Christian anti semitism that provided the background to the Holocaust is staggering. Any study in the Holocaust usually starts with the history of Christian anti semitism, because quite simply, you cannot understand the racist tropes the Nazis bought into without understanding where these tropes came from or what stereotypes they were tapping into. And trust me, I've studied the Holocaust a lot (including my undergraduate dissertation and at Yad Vashem, with some amazing world leading scholars, like Yehuda Bauer)

Some of the early gospels (I think you're referring to to Infancy Gospel of Thomas) which didn't make it into the canon had some fairly odd stories and divergent theology.
Different sects of Christianity have different books in their canons, of course - one persons 'gospel' is another's 'apocrypha'.

In a sense this is straying from the subject of this thread, but considerations of evidence, reliability, impartiality and integrity are quite fundamental to it I think.

Paul the man who in the midst of a male dominated society said, ‘In the Messiah there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free’ and the man who included women among his ministry team. And where is there persecution of Jews by the early church? Learn some history?

Interesting you are completely at home talking about abuses committed by organised religion but not talking about Jesus. But he always was a bad fit into people’s preconceptions.

tbh Malie is clearly a bit of a christian zealot (it is an evangelistic religion so i do get why they go on about it and try to convert people, annoying as it is) so I'm disregarding a lot of the feeling behind their posts.

It is gobsmackingly vulgar to write that about the Holocaust though. Shocking.

Also listing atrocities that had "nothing" to do with religion is a bit daft when it is clear from a lot of them that they come from feelings of Other, and some of that definitely has to do religion. Not to say that the religious angle isn't exploited by unscrupulous leaders for their own nefarious purposes.

And where is there persecution of Jews by the early church?

I was more thinking about the church once it had got itself organised. Learn some history? (Or maybe don't try shifting the goalposts to what suits you).

@Malie there's no need to be so snippy all the time.

Lots of folks have explained why they believe or don't believe in what they do, and folks have been respectful of that.

I understand you might feel attacked but you're not helping yourself by being so defensive.

So, why do you believe what you do?

Interesting you are completely at home talking about abuses committed by organised religion but not talking about Jesus. But he always was a bad fit into people’s preconceptions.

Personally? I have nothing against the jesus described in the gospels. He and i have pretty much alligned ideas about the distribution of wealth and resources. I don't even think he was as anti-women as the church went after reading all that stuff from Paul about how women should be silent. What with his friendship with Mary Magdelene and all that. Curing lepers and all? socialised medicine. Turning water in to wine: champagne socialist? (as I've previously said, socialists have no issue with champagne, as long as workers also have access to it)

So no. I don't have a problem with Jesus. I DO have a massive problem with Othering. And since we're talking about religion, i am perfectly happy to talk about how one religion or another persecutes unbelievers. Some religions are more happy than others to sit alongside other religions. But there is often a scapegoat and the 20th century showed us how that can work out when taken to another extreme.

Stalin didn't kill millions of people due to religious zealotry, for sure. Well, to be honest the fact that he was a meglomaniac who believed that only he was right is a kind of religious fervour. to paraphrase Shrek (the film) those deaths were a sacrifice he was prepared to make. His goal, of course, was to drag Russia kicking and screaming into the modern age. He should have paid more attention to what Marx, Engels and Trotsky actually said rather than going off half-cocked though. Mao, by the way, did the same thing.

Brefugee · Yesterday 07:12

It seems strange that so many posters are keen to berate both religion(s) and anyone who chooses to follow one.
If we choose to believe in "an imaginary sky fairy", "an invisible friend" why not leave us to our "delusions" instead of having 13 pages of posts about it ??

I think the late, great Chris Hitchens summed this up well.

Interesting you label me a ‘Chriatianzealot’ when there are so many ‘secular zealots’ on this thread😀 The lack of self awareness is pretty predictable though. I don’t believe that I ever said that atrocities had nothing to do with religion as when one reads the history of things like the Inquisition or the Crusades ((both sides) there were plenty. There were also 100 million deaths through people trying to propagate a secular region in the name of a guy called Marx which apparently people are offended to be reminded of. What I did say of course is that these atrocities had nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ himself.

He should have paid more attention to those who were less murderous than himself. Then we might only have had 50 million deaths?

@DillonPanthersTexas

That's a fabulous clip.

Love him (his brother not so much).

@Malie there you go again with your obsession with Marx. The hypocrisy is astounding!

When Christians/other religions commit atrocities by abusing the teachings of their god for their own ends, that's nothing to do with the god or those teachings.

When communists commit atrocities by abusing the teachings of Karl Marx for their own ends, that's 100% Marx's fault.

You can't have it both ways.

He should have paid more attention to those who were less murderous than himself. Then we might only have had 50 million deaths?

That's Stalin's responsibility. Nor Karl Marx's. By the same token, Mao is responsible for Mao's atrocities. Not Karl Marx.

Lenin believed in revolution - and considering what they revolted against, it is not surprising it was bloodthirsty. He wasn't a complete meglomaniac though, which is why Stalin managed to elbow him out and take over

This. If you look at the regime the revolution replaced you can see why soviet communism developed in the way it did. Siberian exile, secret police, lack of solid democratic infrastructure…all products of Tsarism, which was autocracy of a different flavour. Russia as a country is very, very different to the countries of Western Europe. it spent centuries as a Mongol vassal state, and the era of the Tsars was absolutist. While the Enlightenment was taking off in the west, Russians were serfs. There is no real history of democracy that wasn’t crushed as soon as attempts to implement it were made (Novgorod, meet the full fury of Tsar Ivan). Of course the Soviet Union developed in accordance with it’s frame of reference.

Stalin didn’t elbow Lenin out of the way, though. Lenin was ailing and had a series of strokes. By the time Stalin was rude to Nadezhda Krupskaya and Lenin realised the scale of his ambition, it was too late, he was incapacitated and dying. He wrote a letter denouncing Stalin, which Stalin destroyed. Stalin was essentially a bureaucrat that was able to consolidate power quietly from his position of general Secretary. His background (Georgian, peasant, not an intellectual firebrand in the vein of Trotsky) meant that he was underestimated by Lenin and Trotsky, who never looked upon him as an equal or as a valid contender to Lenin’s proverbial crown. He was a dependable workhorse for the revolution in their eyes, and a pen pusher. Whereas Trotsky was the quintessential brainy intellectual, Stalin was practical, and cunning. I’d argue that he was actually smarter than Trotsky tbh, and not simply because he outmanoeuvred him.

It’s actually incredibly difficult to put a true number on the number of deaths Stalin is responsible for. Estimates range from 6 million to 100 million, but based on what I’ve read from historians in recent years it seems the number is more likely to be around the 10 million mark.

@whumpthereitis an astute analysis of why Russia doesn't 'do' democracy.

And let's be really clear about this for the benefit of a certain poster on this thread: those deaths under stalin were down to the choices Stalin made. Not Marx. Not atheism.

What are we agreed on? Whether religious or not, power corrupts. And I'm not seeing much evidence through the various aspects of history discussed that believing/knowing you're being watched and that the result of offending the watcher may be retribution (rather than necessarily justice) doesn't make for happy, peaceful societies.

its perfectly possible to appreciate the philosophy of Jesus and decry what has been done in it’s name. Same applies to that of Marx, ironically. Look how many denominations of Christianity there are, and then look at how many offshoots there are from Marxism. People take a philosophy and twist it to suit their own ends. That’s not religion or secularism, that’s human nature. We’re not actually a ‘nice’ species, really, although we struggle with reconciling that darkness with what we believe ourselves to be (hello, Jung). Although there are certainly ‘good’ facets to human nature, there are also ones capable of justifying, and committing, horrific violence on a mass scale.

Going back to the point anyway, you can also appreciate Jesus without ‘buying into’ belief in any supernatural elements.

incidentally, whilst I’m not religious, that doesn’t make me a Marxist. I’m not one, by any stretch of the imagination. My father was born in the Soviet Union, and I was born in Yugoslavia, so I do have a decent idea as to the reality of those systems.

Russia is a strange country, identity wise. It’s not the east, and it’s not the west. It’s Eurasia, so it’s both. It’s recognisable and yet completely alien to those looking in. That said, figuring out Russian identity is a favourite pastime of Russians themselves.

Marxism in Russia developed the way it did because of where it did. Similarly, you had Maoism in China, and Titoism in Yugoslavia. All fashioned in the shape of the environment they were enacted in.

"its perfectly possible to appreciate the philosophy of Jesus and decry what has been done in it’s name."

Is that possible though? Sorry to be nerdy, but most scholars agree we don't actually know what Jesus actually said or taught. So much of what is attributed to Jesus is often what his followers wanted to say, that we can't reliably disentangle Jesus' actual thoughts and teachings from the Christians / followers who has spread the Christian message from the gospel writers, through to today. Christians have always projected their beliefs onto the teachings of Jesus. Unraveling this is what makes theology so fascinating.

This is a fairly clear, if somewhat basic explanation (it is aimed at A level students). About 14 mins in is the relevant bit vimeo.com/showcase/7155624/video/420574966

I’d argue that he was actually smarter than Trotsky tbh, and not simply because he outmanoeuvred him

well of course i simplified with how Stalin actually came to power (we'd be here all day) but i agree with your assessment of Trotsky who was really just a thinker caught up in it all (IMO). Lenin is a little more difficult for me to get on with, i don't think he realised what they were about to unleash.

Way back in the days when i was studying this stuff someone told me that the Russians as a people like to be oppressed and that's why they went from absolute monarchy to absolute meglomaniac - but i don't think it is as simple as that. I agree that they really didn't have much chance to try anything else and that made even a "simple" revolution and rebuilding so diifficult. Add both world wars into the mix and it's a recipie for disaster.

I'm also not a Marxist. I don't believe the cult of personality is useful at all in any respect.

What I did say of course is that these atrocities had nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ himself.

you can believe that if you like. But you aren't correct. It is (fallible) men's (yes, men, women didn't have much of a say generally, although queens were around we can argue all day about how much actual power they had and how much came from those surrounding them) interpretations of the bible* that led to things like the crusades and the spanish inquisition. Not to mention witch burning which is a whole other misogynistic bag of hate.

It is all very well to keep saying "but Jesus was a peaceful chap" - I'm sure he was. Religious leaders, however are a whole other kettle of fish. And you know this.

*other religious works are available