In your opinion which is the gentlest religion

[delilabell]

I mean as in kindest / gentlest?
I was looking at janism and the Quakers and thought they both seem so "nice".
So which would you say is the gentlest religion and why?

Agreed, I was a Buddhist for some years but couldn't take the sexism. I'm a lot happier being a pagan.
@Dumpsterfire @Devonbabs if you're the two from the Spiritualism thread with new names, give it a rest! A fundy christian and a gnostic occultist christian are never going to agree. Don't spoil threads for others.

The sexism put me off Buddhism as well.

What gives you any right to tell anyone on a public forum what they can and can’t discuss!!! Do you have control issues generally.? You might want to address those first. Totally bizarre!!!

This is weird and funny to me! Why tag Devon? They said they weren’t going to engage and hasn’t posted for days now. You’re actually dragging them back into this 🤣🤭

I agree! Besides, I thought it was Sorciere1 switching up the usernames!

I would have thought that her rather broad and eclectic beliefs would have meant she would have welcomed wide discussion rather than closed it down - but hey ho!!!

Oh look we agreed lol. Stick that @Sorciere1 lol

I don't think the Jain approach is really quite about kindness as we think of it.

Kindness almost seems to be a social fad at the moment, but it is really quite shallow. Just being "nice". You don't have to be around long before you realize that what is nice often just means what is easy. Same with kind, people mean easy.

Reality is there are choices, and the easy think is not always the best thing for people.

As far as I understand it, the Jain POV, similar to the Buddhist POV, comes out of a specific understanding of reality and especially material reality. So the question isn't so much, are you wanting to be kind, but, do you think the way they think the physical word works is accurate.

It's like humanism. People think it sounds all cozy, but what are the basis for its beliefs about the dignity of humans, or about reason?

I don't think there is a perfect religion. The gurus preached against casteism but caste is still an issue for Sikhs, and there's also the Khalistan separatists. Jews (I am one!) have the violent wing of the settler movement, and some of the more extreme Haredi groups. Buddhists have the Sri Lankan civil war. I could go on.

Almost any belief can be used to oppress if it's taken too seriously or in the wrong direction. Science and rationalism have been, and still are, used to justify ableism and eugenics.

Well quite. The trouble with sny belief system, and I include science in that is that it involves humans, and there are some really fucked up humans.

Science is not a belief system though.

It's a bit like saying mathematics is responsible for gun death as bullets come in packs of 10/12/24.

Science has no dogma.

Religion is dangerous- because it makes good people do bad things.

Neo-Paganism, following a Witchcraft Path. Particularly sole hedge or kitchen witches. My path is Traditional Witchcraft, which usually tends to be familial, but probably most non-witches these days have heard of Wicca, or Wiccan Witchcraft. Both Traditional and Wiccan witches usually belong to a Coven, but I have neither the inclination or desire to explain the basic "rules" of either one of those two Coven based traditions.

In my experience no Witch will call themselves a "White Witch" - which has nothing to do with the colour of one's skin, as all with good hearts and a very strong passion for following a Neo-Pagan Path - understands that we cannot be kind to all individual people, as kindness will not stop a person who is a paedophile, from being a paedophile. Therefore once all the police authorities and Courts of the land have failed to stop someone like a paedophile from doing the darkest of deeds, then we will step in.

However, except for extreme examples like the one I gave above, we have a rule to say after a ritual along the lines of:
"... and it harm none". Two of the most important aspects regarding Neo-Paganism (IMO anyway) is that we are not a Proselytising Religion, and to go along with that we do not have a rule book to follow, no Bible, and no Quran, or any other type of* *text that we must follow. I think that over the last century plus+, we probably took over the phrase "and it harm none" because of a certain
Aleister Crowley who among many other writings wrote:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"
To this day there are still opposing views on what he meant by that "Law", but most Neo-Pagans don't want to be connected to AC, he really was not someone that most of us would want to mix with...

Now for my apologies to @delilabell I did not intend to write such a long, and probably to most, a boring post - I should probably have started my own thread - but I don't know how I could have described Witchcraft as a mainly benign and kind religion without mentioning all that I have, and even now I haven't explained about our love of nature, and of nearly all of the creatures on this Planet, including the vast majority of human beings. I need to add that most of the followers of Buddha do seem to be very good and kind people too.

Edited to correct spelling mistakes.

PlayingDevilsAdvocateisinteresting there is a long running and active thread on these boards you may find some like minded people- full of witches, wiccan, pagans, the curious.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/philosophy_religion_spirituality/5009222-any-witches-here-part-20?page=15&reply=137069793

@TempestTost Kindness almost seems to be a social fad at the moment, but it is really quite shallow. Just being "nice". You don't have to be around long before you realize that what is nice often just means what is easy. Same with kind, people mean easy.

I don't agree with that. Being kind is an active choice. It's not the same as "easy". Being selfish is easy because you just do what you want regardless of the impact on other people. Being kind requires empathy, thoughtfulness and action.

I used to take my car to a lovely Sikh garage guy - have never been so ripped off in my life... 🙁

Anyway. Allow me to suggest The Quivering Brethren! 😄

As led by the Rev Amos Starkadder?

They are clearly not fairy tales so you were not telling the truth.

You used the phrase you did as a clear and intentional denigration and put down.

And now you lack the integrity to admit this.

PP nailed it. You are clearly not gentle and kind.

( I’m an atheist too btw. I just don’t think that means I have to be a dick about those who don’t share this view).

No you didn’t.

It’s an off shoot of Islam and pretty homophobic.

Wicca or paganism are probably your best bets OP.

All the established major religions have pretty shoddy attitudes to women and same sex attracted people.

I’ve known people of many religions, but if I compare the humanists to those people, the humanists I’ve met were the least kind of all ( with one exception). They were sneery and arrogant.

Terry Pratchett was a humanist and he was very humble and down to earth, not sneery or arrogant at all.

Maybe he's the one @slantedroof roof knew.

This makes it sound like you think it’s ok to publicly state untrue and sneering comments about people, as long as you don’t do it to their face. That’s still neither a kind nor gentle personality.

So what you took from my post is I was claiming all humanists are like that? I was quite clear I was talking from personal experience and my experience is humanists I knew contained an exceptionally high number of sneery, arrogant people ( as did the Skeptics). This wasn’t a coincidence. It attracted people who liked to think they were smarter than people who were religious and thought the best way to show this was sneering about religious people. You know, the sort of person who’d pop up to say things like ‘made up fairy tales’.

I'm sorry you've met so many morons, I was just letting you know that not all humanists are like that. There are some decent ones out there.