/spg/ - Spring Activities

>I just wish that religion could exist with all its beneficial qualities while being free of all the persecution and downsides that come along with it.

This is Baháʼí. Look into it you might be inspired.

I think that religion generally does make better people if the people actually read the bible and follow what it says. Yes there are some parts that are questionable like the death penalty for homosexuality and s*x outside of wedlock but nobody is going to advocate for that. At it's core the bible is about humility and compassion.

The issue is that most Christians, particularly the worst ones, have never read the bible and often they don't even care too. My brothers wife is a horrible person, she is covered in tattoos, she sleeped around a lot before marriage and only got married because she got pregnant, she lies all the time, she spat at and racially abused a taxi driver. She's just a horrible person.
It surprised me quite a bit when she first said she was Christian. She has not read the bible and I asked her about that and she just deflected it and said I can't say what's Christian and not because I was not raised Christian, which clearly her Christian upbringing was severely lacking if she has never even read the bible and does the things she does. My brother is separating from her at least. I had another encounter like that with another Christian when I was looking at share housing, he abused me and called me a bastard because I did not want to live with him because he smokes.

But at the same time, some of the coolest and nicest people I met where Christians, people like Chaplains and Priests or more middle class Christians. They read the bible and actually do follow that kind of mentality.

But also I think religion is important for giving people hope, that's why I don't argue with religious people and try to get them to throw away their religion. It's like telling a child that Santa does not exist, sure maybe he does not but if thinking he does makes them happy then who am I to get in the way of that?

>>2557
Honestly. At the end of the day, people are people, regardless of related identities

It's just interesting to read about, but overall it has been a blight on humanity.

Online discussion of religion is nostalgic. In like the late 2000s it was the default flame war before race

>>2558
It's actually interesting, I grew up thinking that, it's a pop fact. But when I actually looked it up there was no evidence for it and there was actually evidence for a Christian origin instead.

Saint Nicolas day was celebrated on the 6th of December and on this day it was celebrated by giving gifts to Children, but once the reformation came along any such veneration of saints was not going to happen. But it was still a popular tradition and they needed to find a replacement for it so they merged it with Christmas and created a non-saint figure to do the gift giving.

People just find similarities and use them to craft a narrative but this narrative falls apart if you actually look into it, after all, correlation is not causation.

So for example, Odin has a white beard Santa has a White beard, Odin rides a flying Horse while Santa rides flying reindeer. But no, early depictions of Santa didn't actually have a white beard, it wasn't until much later that our image of Sant converged to what it is today, likewise the first mention of him having reindeers is from a poem in 1821.

People compare the wild hunt to Christmas as well but the wild hunt was well, a hunt. It's not a time of celebration and it has different leaders in different cultures as well.

>>2569
>Siddartha
the buddha??? out of all possibilities, that one i expected the least

>>2570
Why? Buddhism, Cathlodox Christianity and Sufism seem to have had resurgences lately

Also I'm amazed hinduism hasnt gotten popular among white supremacists

>>2569
>>2570
Westerners I think are reluctant to try buddhism because there's friction between laypeople in the west that is visible online

>>2572
I'd assume it's too Asian for them.

>>2571
yeah but cathlodox has salvation, buddhism has nonexistence
compared to abrahamic, hindu, chinese folk, yuro paganism, flippin zoroastrianism, or even stuff from the americas and africa, i just cant see nirvana as attractive
>>2572
>>2574
i think its because the indo- part of indo-european has been dropped, even the more esoteric ones today prefer to focus on pre-christian yuro beliefs

>>2568
I’ve come to the belief that at least in the West, positioning science in opposition to religion is misguided. Especially when the religion in question is Christian. God created reality and there is insight or divinity to be found by studying God’s creations. Associating religion (Christianity) with the magic or the supernatural would be wrong. If something is supernatural or magic it can’t be a part of reality or it is distorting reality which would be saying it is not something from God or it is distorting God’s creation. Both of which imply some sort of potential sin or slight against God. Science is a process by which we can discern reality, figuring out what is true. A Christian has a vested interest in knowing what is true/reality as magic or the supernatural is generally something satanic. To put religion and science in opposition would be to misunderstand the role each plays, especially when the religion in question is Christian or generally Abrahamic.

It’s a bit political but I’ve recently come across a lecture series that kinda delves into this interplay, religion (faith in the lecture) and science have with each other and how they work to advance belief and understanding of reality, in opposition to what the lecturer calls “gnosis”; for the purposes of my post it is magic.
https://newdiscourses.com/2023/04/the-negation-of-the-real/

>>2555(OP)
Speaking personally, while I'm not exactly an atheist or even agnostic, I've never really followed any organized religion, nor did I gros up in an environment where it was really a thing, and I turned out okay I think. People who say religion gives people morals scare me. I would think you'd act moral because it's the right thing to do; that you need any justification beyond that is worrying to say the least.

From a historical perspective, it's kind of hard to say at this point. Religion of one kind or another has been humanity's modus operandi for the bulk of its existence, with secular societies only really showing up in the past couple of centuries. We don's have a big enough sample size to know how if it's for the better or not.

>>2581
What is considered to be the right thing to do is dependent on society and often religion. I'm not religious but I can see that religion could be used to make people behave properly if they are unable to do so themselves, which many people are not. Society can be used to do so as well, but society is only doing the opposite at this point. Though while this might be an unpopular opinion, technology could make up for it as well.

I think that we do have some historical basis to judge societies where morals were not tied to religion. Judaeo-Christian is a lot more moralistic than European Pagan religions and also has set rules to live by which the aforementioned do not really. Not only that but the gods of these stories often acted in immoral ways yet these immoral ways were not sanctioned by these societies and there were laws and norms that prohibited them. In Greece and Rome sex outside of marriage was illegal unless it was a man with a slave. But Greek gods often do such things, not only that but it's recognised that what they do is wrong. The story or Arachne is a good example of this.

>an indisputable authority
what a vile concept

>>2605
bet its a really fat hairy gross old man

>>2606
gonna start the first church of kimoi

>>2563
>People compare the wild hunt to Christmas
I think Christmas is Yule in disguise. In Swedish it's called "Jul" but it has same origin as Yule. But the name might have been just repurposed. Another thing I heard is that Christmas = Saturnalia but I'm not familiar with Ancient Roman religion or holidays.

>>2608
That's exactly the myth >>2565 busts. Christmas is from the fourth century at the latest, Yule only started to be associated with it some five hundred years later across the Germanic world and only has a handful of small elements left over. It doesn't have anything to do with Saturnalia either.

>>2608
End of year feasts are common in most cultures, pretty much whatever culture an early Christian was raised in would have had it's own end of year feast whether that be Yule or Saturnalia or even Hanukkah from the region where the religion itself originates. So they would never not have had an end of year feast regardless of where they were raised. It makes sense that this end of year feast would morph into a feast celebrating a different god and the names for things are often leftovers form pagan times, such as Easter in English or the days of the week.

But what I mean is that the things that we associate with Christmas and particularly with Santa Claus are distinct form those pagan times and often form so far afterwards that any link to pagan times would be impossible, like Reindeers in the 19th century.

Christmas is an open source project with lots of forks

>>2603
>>2604
I get that to an extent, it's part of why I don't feel comfortable identifying as an atheist, but at the same time, there's definitely broad commonalities in human behavior that show up regardless of religion. We are animals after all, and animals are adapted to act a certain way. Hell, I'd even argue that religion follows from values, not the other way around.

>>2611
Are you saying it's the vichan of religion?

>>2612
>religion follows from values
Of course, it's a formalization of existing values, but that formalization is important to keep everyone on the same page. There are practical considerations that are common between most societies that lead to similar values, but even that can vary importantly in the details. For instance, it's easy to say "murder is wrong" is a universal value, but if you look at it closely, killing is considered justified in some situations by just about everyone and those situations can be very different.

Also, an atheist is just someone who doesn't believe in god, that's it. It's not something you "identify" as, it's a label to get across to others that you're not part of any religious organization.

>>2614
hmmmmmmmmmmmm
doctrine, as a general code of conduct, doesn't have to be religious though
in the times before christ, we find well-codified and irreligious doctrine in the form of greco-roman epicureanism, competing against the much more faithful school of stoicism, and chinese legalism's methods which clashed strongly with confucianism's traditionalist values
neither of the two tried to derive their legitimacy from the divine but rather from man's own nature
epicureanism is a framework whose explanations go down to the literal atoms of the universe to build up a materialist philosophy while arguing that the gods did exist, but did not intervene in the lives of humans and so did not need to be feared or revered
the legalists were a more narrow administrative kind of folk that sought to tear down the old customs to build up a more efficient state, an endeavor in which they were EXTREMELY successful, for which they had to do away with venerable traditions to the point that they ordered opposing books to be burned
both have their issues, but so does organized religion, and they are pre-modern examples that show you can absolutely build up codes from nothing but an interpretation of nature (and that's putting aside that not all religion gives you a prescription on how to live)

>>2615
It doesn't have to be religious, but marrying your philosophical/moral movement with a mythological/historical tradition helps to legitimize it and make it palatable to the masses. Men and their ideas can be challenged and overthrown, God is absolute.

>>2612
Societies and religions act too differently for that to be true. In Japan for example, life was incredibly cheap and killing somebody who insulted you or to protect your honour on the spot without a second thought was considered to be the right thing to do.

Also primitive societies act horribly. Dawn raids into another village ending in village massacres and cannibalism are the norm throughout primitive societies. Including Europeans, there is plenty of archaeological evidence for that. Then there are the Maoris who were even worse, and it's not impossible that we used to act like them too.
Cannibalism was also still happening in China for quite a while as well.

>>2619
Those wars were about more than just religion, those religious movements were about more than just religion. Most religious wars are about more than just religion.

>>2621
To clarify, by primitive Europeans I don't mean 'barbarians' but Neolithic Europeans.

>>2581
>People who say religion gives people morals scare me.
I think it's prudent to remind yourself that most people are pretty stupid. Without religion, I wouldn't doubt that the people who say that kind of thing would indeed turn out for the worse.

Something that I'm not too fond of with religion is that you're supposed to treat life as if its purpose is to simply be lived in a 'normal' way and that at the end of the path just lies some kind of revelations event or death for all of us. That still seems so dour to me, and I'd much prefer to think about the miracle of life we have as being a sort of opportunity to achieve divine greatness on our own. That at some point our existence as a collective of intelligent species will spread ourselves throughout the universe gifting thought to the vast expanse of nothingness that lies beyond earth.

>>2632
It depends on the religion, but Abrahamic ones have the purpose of following God's plan. You may not know what that is, but you know your life is in service to something greater than yourself. Most people are, by definition, going to lead normal lives. It's much easier to believe that normal life is a part of something meaningful if it's part of a divine plan than if it's just part of humanity's collective meandering. And, of course, you'll actually get to see the end result if you get eternal life.

>>2577
Started watching the first video. Some reactions:
[of Gnosticism]
>That is a simulacrum of Christianity.
And is Christianity not a simulacrum of Judaism by the same token?

>death and rebirth
>that's called a cult initiation
This also sounds like a religion I know which he seems to think is a "faith" and not a "cult." In fact lots of things he says to criticize Gnosticism (and the people he claims are following it) also apply to this religion.

[scammers and people promoting the wrong politics say]
>oh you think you understand
scammers and demagogues
>but did you know there's more? and not only is there more, but they don't want you to know
that the west is being shaped by these secret religions

Overall, this talk sounds like the age-old Protestant spiel of "Catholics (he mentions a "fake Vatican"), rulers, and my political enemies are secretly pagans" with s/pagan/gnostic/. And the evidence for it is ultra-flimsy, mostly a bunch of "X shares some vague property with Y therefore X must be secretly Y" and "this guy used a word that is related to Gnosticism." I don't even like most of the political agendas he's trying to discredit, but he hasn't come close to convincing me they're part of a secret cult.

But [checking sources other than the video] apparently this guy doesn't even believe in God? Strange how he keeps praising faith throughout the talk. Well, looking at the conference he's giving the talk at, apparently he's trying to peddle his conspiracy theory to a group of self-described "Christian nationalists," so making himself sound like a Protestant is a good strategy. And from this book he's written, he seems to endorse running around in sheep's clothing:
https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Wrong-About-James-Lindsay/dp/1634310365
>He demonstrates that whenever people say they believe in “God,” they are really telling us that they have certain psychological and social needs that they do not know how to meet. Lindsay then provides more productive avenues of discussion and action. Once nonbelievers understand this simple point, and drop the very label of atheist, will they be able to change the way we all think about, talk about, and act upon the troublesome notion called “God.”
Of course this doesn't make him wrong, but it does make him a bit of an ass.

>>2621
>In Japan for example, life was incredibly cheap and killing somebody who insulted you or to protect your honour on the spot without a second thought was considered to be the right thing to do.
Isn't that fairly generic human behavior in the absence of an effective government? I don't think religion makes much of a difference there.

>>2647
It's also the same guy who hoaxed a bunch of academic journals with bullshit papers like "The conceptual penis as a social construct":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
So it's possible this whole thing is another hoax, this time on the religious right. If this were the case, all the criticisms that go equally well against Christianity may have been intended.

Can someone explain to why China and Korea, one officially atheist and the other mostly consisting of irreligion ban porn
Well, aside from the DPRK, apparently the prudishness from Joseon Korea carried on there

Speaking of China, it will be interesting to see how with changing demographics how Chinese folk and Islam will change western political discourse. I guess it's already started with Falun Gong owning high profile papers

>>2651
And by Chinese Folk I dont mean Chinese people I mean Folk Religion

>>2648
Japan had an effective government, that government treated life no better.
There is this case in the Hagakure where a samurai is visiting a city and needs to use the toilet so he goes to a nearby house and asks to come inside to use theirs. The husband was away but the wife let him come and use it, both would be executed for this.
The man because he had undressed himself in the home of a woman whose husband was out and the woman because she had let that happen. They knew nothing malicious had occurred but rules are rules.

>>2651
It's probably based on the same kind of things that lead to internet addiction camps and limiting playtime for video games.
They have an idea about what the model citizen should be and they want to enforce that and restrict anything they fell goes against it.

>>2651
I think that with changing demographics those sorts of things will fall by the wayside as the political leaning they appeal to is falling more out of favor as time goes on. At least, that's how I perceive it in the US. Can't say I know how this will affect any Euro countries.

>>2650
Why do you think wanting to ban porn is a fundamentally religious thing?

>>2657
Well, before I saw the pattern of the Chinese, both communist and nationalist trying to reduce vice addiction, I couldnt think of a reason a country like (South) Korea would do so

>>2621
all religious wars are about more than just religion, but this doesn't mean religion has a passive role in it
on the one hand, we can't say that the genocide of the albigensian crusade wasn't linked to them being heretics, it was not the single cause but still an important factor
on the other, if millions can die in spite of sharing a ton of religious elements as it happened with the wars of reformation, then the degree of authority conferred by religion becomes questionable, again because of these splits and wars having other motives that can override piety, so god would not be absolute

the spanish crown believed they had the right to conquer the world and spread catholicism as a means of establishing the united kingdom of god on earth to bring about universal salvation, and as part of their efforts established many universities across their empire
it's why the philippines are 90% christian to this day, ~80% for mexico too
but these universities were not charity, they existed to help maintain orthodoxy while native cultures were suppressed and their resources extracted
it is simultaneously because of catholicism that the new laws were issued, so it's not an either/or, but what i'm saying is that i don't see religion as inherently stable, humanitarian, or beneficial

Does anyone else think its funny there is a serious discussion about religion right above a thread about a cartoon wasp

>>2660
a FAT and DESPICABLE cartoon wasp that absolutely deserved it

>>2659
Followers of God are not God. Killing and defeating them does not diminish God's authority. Eventually, all will face His judgement. He may chose to let His people suffer a temporary setback in service to a larger plan. Sure, if you don't believe in him then wiping out his followers is the same as defeating him, but to those who believe, there is no power on Earth that can challenge the rules He has set. You can take a picture of a Divine Emperor to show everyone he's a silly little manlet, you can't convince a believer that God is not the be-all-end-all of morality and existence.

The native peoples were being exploited for material purposes from the start. The Church's decision that they were ensouled human beings capable and deserving of salvation was absolutely a stabilizing and humanitarian force by imposing a duty to protect and educate on the Spaniards who had previously enjoyed a free hand in the region. If anything, your point would be better served pointing out the barbaric practices of the religions that were pushed out by those universities.

>>2660
One of the things I've always liked about imageboards is how the mass of knowledge floating around with undefined borders leads to serious discussion of unexpected topics to pop up in random threads.

>>2663
>you can't convince a believer that God is not the be-all-end-all of morality and existence.
you can though
just ask any apostate

could the christian anon jump on rizon
i have a few questions about grace and sainthood

>>2659
The leaders of the Cathars in the war were mostly not Cathars but Catholic nobles. But the religious aspect was really a fight against the authority of the Vatican. So yes, it has a religious basis but only in the sense that they essentially just wanted independence from the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church refused to allow that.

The Reformation was caused by states and people pushing back against Catholic authority. While the religions are similar you could see how a protestant foot soldier could fight the war believing that the Vatican was twisting and destroying true Christianity and likewise that a Catholic soldier might see it as being a war against heretics who were straying from the true church(as they believe the Catholic Church is the one and only Church and was founded by Saint Paul).

I would argue that it's the wars with no religious element at all that are the most Religiously problematic. There is no way to justify wars between Catholics that have no religious element. If they are good Christians they should not do that.
But people have always been good at twisting things and making things up to justify why they can do something.

The Church did some good things like >>2663 mentions with them deciding that the American natives were human and had souls. They also did establish the truce of God, tried to ban jousting and tournaments and did other things with humanitarian intentions.
But, they also were a state and were just as bad as everybody else when it came to fighting wars against fellow Catholics.

>>2666
yeah, yeah, i'm not arguing at all that the catholic church is evil or anything like that, i do respect christianity and understand that its universalism did a lot of good
in particular i'm fond of the jesuits and their efforts to preserve native languages
what i'm trying to say is that is religion is not an absolute basis to morality, because people disregard it regularly, and even those who believe the same things can get into fights with each other over the correct interpretation
or may contribute a non-trivial degree towards the motivation to do things we consider immoral, and that while there are many reasons behind these terrible events and propagandists sometimes try to simply chalk it up to fanaticism, its negative effects should still not be ignored
darius adopting the laws of leviticus and executing gays was definitely a bad thing, and has had awful consequences
to me, religion is a subset of ideology, which is not the best take out there but that's how i see it, so a framework such as epicureanism can provide an answer all the same as any religion can without invoking supernatural elements (even though i'm not an epicurean myself)

>>2665
I find it hard to believe there's a christian anon on a spermer den like kissu

>>2668
what about a muslim anon would you believe that one

>>2668
>Isaiah 66:11
>That you may nurse and be satisfied with her comforting breasts,
>That you may suck and be delighted with her bountiful bosom.”

I disagree that this is a 'spermer' den as well.

>>2670
For what it's worth I type out spermer

I agree that this is a spermer den.

>>2651
I've started seeing people from western countries use phrases like "Mandate of Heaven"
>>2669
In SEA Islam (with the notable exception of Brunei) feels like Southern European christianity, its given respect and is part of the culture but most aren't that observant.

>>2647
The most important thing i took away from the presentation was that there is a difference to how a "cult" and a "faith" understand truth. Both a "faith" and "cult" hold at least some unfounded or illogical thing to be truth. For a "cult", it is knowledge about reality. For a "faith", it is a belief in a metaphysical concept. By definition science cannot be used to understand anything metaphysical while it is perfectly suited to understand reality.
The idea that while both are based on unfounded assumptions, one deals with strictly the metaphysical and the other is about reality. Magic as something that operates by distorting reality is automatically relegated to being a "cult" thing. With science being used by "faith"/religion/The Church to discover the truth of reality so that magic from "cults" can be removed.

>This also sounds like a religion I know which he seems to think is a "faith" and not a "cult." In fact lots of things he says to criticize Gnosticism (and the people he claims are following it) also apply to this religion.
> the age-old Protestant spiel of "Catholics (he mentions a "fake Vatican")
Unfortunately the video is the first, of three videos. From what I understand in them, the response would be that there are indeed "cult"-ish elements in Christianity. James Lindsey makes the case that "gnostic cults" parasitize other systems and use said system's own language to disguise itself. An example given most often is Jewish Kabbalist, it's hard for the average Jew to consider Kabbalists as being "gnostics". But from someone on the outside it is plainly clear that it is "gnostic". It be similarly easy for Protestants to easily identify and call out the "gnostics" in "The fake Vatican" while Catholics only see it as "The Vatican". Extrapolating this, it is hard for an academic in feminism to recognize and callout the problems with "sjw/woke/modern"-feminists that are behaving as "gnostic cultists". While for someone not in that discipline or academy it is easy for them to recognize that there is a "cultish" element in the latter group and it is distinct from the former.

>apparently this guy doesn't even believe in God? Strange how he keeps praising faith throughout the talk.
Belief in God and "faith" as he talks about aren't the same thing. For example, an atheist has "faith" that all of reality wasn't merely constructed seconds ago, with his memories being perfectly created to make him think that he and reality has existed for years.

>>2693
Weird comic.

>>2693
The issue is the belief that the "material reality" Adam and Eve live in isn't the real one, unlike the Pleroma is. It's essentially the same arguement that the world was created last Thursday and all your memories otherwise were created then too. A variation of you can't trust your lying eyes but you can trust the thing with magical insight that reality isn't real/has some extra property you didn't know about. The green panels are all about having "gnosis" on some truth of the physical reality.

>>2695
Is the Christian belief that the finality of death isn't real a cult belief, and if not, why not?

>>2696
It’s not a belief about physical reality, no. “Life after death” is a belief about the metaphysical truth of what happens to your metaphysical self after you die physically.

>>2697
Why is life after death metaphysical rather than physical? By the way, many Christians believe the resurrection is physical.

>>2698
In fact, as far as I can tell, this is the view of the majority of Christian religious leaders, and the idea that people are only resurrected "metaphysically" (in another world perhaps?) is some sort of heresy. Certainly it is the Christian belief that Christ was resurrected physically in this world.

>>2698
I’m not sure I have answer to that question. Thinking about the difference between the two beliefs I’m not sure they can be equivalently compared. One is a belief about the how/what “reality” is. One is a belief about an event that occurs sometime in the future of “reality”. You can only compare the two if you take the perspective that “reality”, is all that is and will be. And I’m not sure that the future of the physical “reality”/the material world is a part of the physical “reality”/the material world, until the future becomes the past.

>>2691
Cult and faith are the same.

>>2700
That seems to hinge on the old presentism vs eternalism debate. But certainly the claim that Christ was resurrected counts as a physical claim.

>>2702
It is a physical claim but the belief in Christ’s resurrection isn’t an unfounded one or one taken without any evidence. There are technically eyewitness accounts of it.

Cult and faith being different words may just be might be English being English that has both French and Germanic roots. No, it isnt actually (they're both French!) after doing quick research but it's worth noting its not inherently derogatory¹ and the difference is a modern thing


1: The veneration, devotion, and religious rites given to a deity (especially in a historical polytheistic context), or (in a Christian context) to a saint.
the cult of Apollo
the cult of Mary

Cult and faith are different things, and both come from Latin.
Fidem, fides, fido, fidelis, they're all about trust, loyalty, and the like. Specifically, trust without evidence, but covering far more than just religion. On the other hand, cultus seems to have been used by the Romans to mean cult-ivation, the practices used to actively worship a deity. By extension, a group of people and their religious activities. Down here, one of our biggest ministries is called the:
>Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Internacional y Culto
Which is translated as:
>Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship
And article 2 of the constitution is about upholding the "culto católico apostólico romano", Catholicism.

Having faith on something beyond the physical makes perfect sense.

>>2691
>Unfortunately the video is the first, of three videos. From what I understand in them, the response would be that there are indeed "cult"-ish elements in Christianity. James Lindsey makes the case that "gnostic cults" parasitize other systems and use said system's own language to disguise itself. An example given most often is Jewish Kabbalist, it's hard for the average Jew to consider Kabbalists as being "gnostics". But from someone on the outside it is plainly clear that it is "gnostic". It be similarly easy for Protestants to easily identify and call out the "gnostics" in "The fake Vatican" while Catholics only see it as "The Vatican". Extrapolating this, it is hard for an academic in feminism to recognize and callout the problems with "sjw/woke/modern"-feminists that are behaving as "gnostic cultists". While for someone not in that discipline or academy it is easy for them to recognize that there is a "cultish" element in the latter group and it is distinct from the former.
>Jewish
>Catholics
>feminists
Anonymous, is there something you'd like to tell us about your inclinations?