The bizzarre world of religion taken to the extreme

BuilderPlumber

First of all, I want to say I regard myself as Christian and as a person who respects all religions provided they are not abused and taken to the extreme. But religious extremism is something I can neither tolerate or truly understand.

Religion taken to the extreme (and no it need not just be a conventional one like Christianity or Islam but any set of beliefs) does more harm than good and shows more hate than love. Racism, sectarianism and other bigotry arises. But religion extremism is everywhere. Turn on the news and you see fanatic Muslims bombing and killing obo ISIS and fanatic American Christians justifying wars when they are in government or shooting innocent people when they are ordinary citizens. 80% of these mass shootings in America are religious based. Look at all the bible thumping preachers on satellite TV and churches like the Westboro Baptist church in America and it is easy to see where a state like Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale could get its inspiration. Thankfully, these hardline churches are very much in the minority for now with Westboro being denounced by other American Baptist churches for example. Closer to home, we saw what religious intolerance did in Northern Ireland. We often forget our wars on this island have been more Catholic v Protestant than Irish v English.

I have met people who hold very strict religious views and the current abortion referendum is one such example. Yes, there are hardliners on all sides in this. I have also met people who can only talk about churches and nothing else, and who leave one church/religion to go to another when they do not get what they perceive as enough attention. Religion or their interpretation of it takes over the lives of some people 100%. I had to stop talking to some people because as ALL they talked about was churches, church people and church events. Every Christian faith in Ireland from the wellknown to the not so wellknown suddenly became known to me with some of the lesser known ones of them having over the top names.

In films and TV series, an element of the religious nutcase always adds to things. The Force is the stated religion in Star Wars and used for evil by many. Each Bond villain while none are stated as conventionally religious have a fanatic devotion to playing god and rearranging things along their own lines. The same could be said about Mad Max villain Immortan Joe and Valhalla while The Toecutter was religiously devoted to a dead fellow biker. Indiana Jones villains have mostly been religious fanatics ranging from Nazis who wanted to dominate Christian and Jewish powers to Thugees to similarly devoted probably atheist Soviets who were obsessed by the power of aliens. The Handmaid's Tale brought to us a theocratic hypocrite state called Gilead where double standards exist and religious fanaticism and breaking the laws seem to go hand in hand for the rich.

Extremist religion then is a blight on the world and a ruiner of friendships. It is on the other hand the most important aspect of a lot of well loved films and TV shows.

Rubberchikken

Sorry. I so wanted to read it but i



Just




Cant...zzzzzz

freshpopcorn

Rubberchikken wrote: »

Sorry. I so wanted to read it but i



Just




Cant...zzzzzz

Think how a moderator might feels when they see s thread title that generally rings alarm bells!

DredFX

Clicked on this thinking there was some extreme religious bazaar in Ireland or something.

gozunda

Religions - people fighting over whose imaginary friend is the best ...

Omackeral

All religion is a pile of sh*te. It’ll be looked back upon and laughed at in years to come.

jaxxx

I don't have a problem with the idea/belief of a god or gods (OMG THE POSSIBLITY OF THERE BEING MORE THAN ONE GOD OR EVEN FEMALE GODS OMG THE BLASPHEMY!!!!). I do however have a problem with religion. Now I can already sense what you're thinking, "but Jaxxx that doesn't make sense". Well, to that I ask you one question.... why do Gods and religion have to be mutually exclusive? In my opinion they don't, and that branches from the true point of the very creation of religion in my opinion.... control. Think about it, forcing people in the masses to a certain way of thinking by creating illusions of existence in the afterlife. That is all religion is and ever was. That is why it was created, again in my opinion. Control, power, greed.

I could go on the explain the whole 'god/religion mutually exclusive bit' a bit more but it's 10 past 4 in the morning and I just canny be ars@d!

greencap

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

First of all, I want to say I regard myself as Christian and as a person who respects all religions provided they are not abused and taken to the extreme. But religious extremism is something I can neither tolerate or truly understand.

Religion taken to the extreme (and no it need not just be a conventional one like Christianity or Islam but any set of beliefs) does more harm than good and shows more hate than love. Racism, sectarianism and other bigotry arises. But religion extremism is everywhere. Turn on the news and you see fanatic Muslims bombing and killing obo ISIS and fanatic American Christians justifying wars when they are in government or shooting innocent people when they are ordinary citizens. 80% of these mass shootings in America are religious based. Look at all the bible thumping preachers on satellite TV and churches like the Westboro Baptist church in America and it is easy to see where a state like Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale could get its inspiration. Thankfully, these hardline churches are very much in the minority for now with Westboro being denounced by other American Baptist churches for example. Closer to home, we saw what religious intolerance did in Northern Ireland. We often forget our wars on this island have been more Catholic v Protestant than Irish v English.

I have met people who hold very strict religious views and the current abortion referendum is one such example. Yes, there are hardliners on all sides in this. I have also met people who can only talk about churches and nothing else, and who leave one church/religion to go to another when they do not get what they perceive as enough attention. Religion or their interpretation of it takes over the lives of some people 100%. I had to stop talking to some people because as ALL they talked about was churches, church people and church events. Every Christian faith in Ireland from the wellknown to the not so wellknown suddenly became known to me with some of the lesser known ones of them having over the top names.

In films and TV series, an element of the religious nutcase always adds to things. The Force is the stated religion in Star Wars and used for evil by many. Each Bond villain while none are stated as conventionally religious have a fanatic devotion to playing god and rearranging things along their own lines. The same could be said about Mad Max villain Immortan Joe and Valhalla while The Toecutter was religiously devoted to a dead fellow biker. Indiana Jones villains have mostly been religious fanatics ranging from Nazis who wanted to dominate Christian and Jewish powers to Thugees to similarly devoted probably atheist Soviets who were obsessed by the power of aliens. The Handmaid's Tale brought to us a theocratic hypocrite state called Gilead where double standards exist and religious fanaticism and breaking the laws seem to go hand in hand for the rich.

Extremist religion then is a blight on the world and a ruiner of friendships. It is on the other hand the most important aspect of a lot of well loved films and TV shows.

Yay for your words are unleven bread unto me.
And the bread which shall not be eaten.

For the lord has provided leven bread.
And the leven bread maketh me not toil.

jaxxx

greencap wrote: »

Yay for your words are unleven bread unto me.
And the bread which shall not be eaten.

For the lord has provided leven bread.
And the leven bread maketh me not toil.

Sile Na Gig

Most religions start out with good intentions but then insecurity sets in that leads people to need to put down the beliefs of others in order to feel better about themselves. Add the kind of corruption that power attracts into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster.

It’s always struck me as arrogant to be certain in a belief structure that we have no way of knowing is correct. Including atheism.

greencap

jaxxx wrote: »

No me gusta.

Es muy grande.

fash

Sile Na Gig wrote: »

Most religions start out with good intentions but then insecurity sets in that leads people to need to put down the beliefs of others in order to feel better about themselves.

B****ks they do - Scientology, Mormonism and Islam all started as cults made up by charlatans. And do you really think the Aztec religion requiring human sacrifice and torture on a mass scale involved good intentions?

donegaLroad

each to their own, just dont try and force it down each other's throat.

Therein lieth the problem.

Huexotzingo

:pac:

Its often mental illness disguised as religion, or some personality types that love rules, or it poor self-esteem and the rules and the chance to dominate others is their coping mechanism, particularly the chance to dominate their children or family.

Hector Bellend

Have a **** and a few pints

NIMAN

Omackeral wrote: »

All religion is a pile of sh*te. It’ll be looked back upon and laughed at in years to come.

No it won't.

Yes more people will look at it and laugh, but it will always be there and will always have billions of believers.

There ain't coming a time when the entire world is atheist.

Omackeral

Hector Bellend wrote: »

Have a **** and a few pints

And do it in that order, otherwise you might get droppy willy after the pints and it can be like negotiating wet spaghetti.

nozzferrahhtoo

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

Religion taken to the extreme (and no it need not just be a conventional one like Christianity or Islam but any set of beliefs) does more harm than good and shows more hate than love.

Generally I would agree with that statement but I would also admit of some exceptions to it rather than have it as a set in stone thing. To illustrate that imagine if I were to offer you three identical houses, your dream house. The only difference is that your neighbour in each case would be an extremeist:

1) Christian
2) Muslim
3) Jain

My suspicion is that you would take house number three. And I suspect we both know why you would choose that one. The if we both admit that I think we can say some religions are objectively worse than others and that extremism in a religion does not 100% automatically imply "more hate than love".

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

Turn on the news and you see

Turn on the news and you see exactly what the news think will keep people watching the news. And unfortunately the more morbid, shocking or sensational it is the more likely people are to watch it and tune in. A book called "The better angels of our nature" is worth reading in this regard. It talks about how by many measurable factors human society is simply getting better and better. But if you do a word search algorithm over the media over the same period of time news stories are getting more violent and morbid and morose.

That is not to suggest the problems you speak of are not there. Many are and many of us work hard on them. I work very hard against religion in many ways for example. But I simply would not suggest looking at your nearest news outlet to gauge those problems or our progress (or lack of it) on those themes.

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

I have also met people who can only talk about churches and nothing else, and who leave one church/religion to go to another when they do not get what they perceive as enough attention.

Indeed, there was an interesting study done in the US which suggested that citizens there on average change their religion more often than they change something like their Cell Phone Providers. And the reasons they give for changing religion are the most subjective and arbitrary of things.

One would suspect, when one is not religious, that the theists would be invested in a religion on the basis of whether it is true or not. But changing from one to a massively different one because "Well I was X and my new wife is Y, so I decided to change as going to two different churches on a Sunday was a bit of a logistical nightmare" really makes one wonder how important the tenets of any individual religion actually are to it's followers.

Chris_Heilong

Religion is just a political point of view mixed with tribalism much like the modern cults of today such as feminists.

It more like akin to those who believe in alternative medician and the like they are seeking something.

I have come across those who are very anti-religion but pro lots of wowo stuff and alternative medicine, it always makes me laugh because they never see the contradictions.

Grayson

fash wrote: »

B****ks they do - Scientology, Mormonism and Islam all started as cults made up by charlatans. And do you really think the Aztec religion requiring human sacrifice and torture on a mass scale involved good intentions?

You left out every single religion. None of them were actually started by a supernatural deity.

I have a problem with religion in general. A religion asks you to suspend your belief in ethical actions. The philosopher kierkegaard described it as the teleological suspension of the ethical. He used the story of Abraham and Isaac to illustrate it.
God tells Abraham one morning that he has to kill his son. Abraham leaves with his son, not telling his wife what he's doing. He's about to kill his son when God appears and tells him not to.
The important part of the story is that he was going to kill his son. He was about to stab an innocent boy to death because God told him to. It doesn't matter how evil that action is, he was going to do it.

And that's the problem with religion. The religion supplies the morals not the person. You are asked to follow all these rules because God says so.
Next thing you have people who believe that gay people are unnatural and gay sex is evil. You have people making decisions about sex and reproduction for others based on what religious books, many of which are thousands of years old, say.
And it's the same for pretty much every single religion. Every one of them expects you to give up your ethical autonomy for a mythical reward.

BrokenArrows

Its all down to what rules you follow in your religion.

If you followed everything in the bible you would certainly be in the extreme category.

Grayson

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

My suspicion is that you would take house number three. And I suspect we both know why you would choose that one. The if we both admit that I think we can say some religions are objectively worse than others and that extremism in a religion does not 100% automatically imply "more hate than love".

It's like the phrase religious fundamentalism. It's not necessarily bad. Well, not in the way we think of it. The Amish are religious fundamentalists.

Grayson

BrokenArrows wrote: »

Its all down to what rules you follow in your religion.

If you followed everything in the bible you would certainly be in the extreme category.

You'd have to be insane. There's no way you could be that forgiving and that vengeful at the same time.

jmayo

Omackeral wrote: »

All religion is a pile of sh*te. It’ll be looked back upon and laughed at in years to come.

It already is by some.
But you will most likely always find some that will buy into it.

One thing that always surprises me is how gullible some people are, particularly in places where they have had modern education and knowledge like in the US.
And I aint talking about some hillbillies in the deepest South or West Virginia believing in some far out baptist preacher, but people who have grown up in the likes of New York and California and then buy into the Scientology shyte and give over their lives sometimes for decades.

Some people are just more susceptible to buying any old cr** and have some need.

fash wrote: »

B****ks they do - Scientology, Mormonism and Islam all started as cults made up by charlatans. And do you really think the Aztec religion requiring human sacrifice and torture on a mass scale involved good intentions?

I am not religious but Buddhism looks as if it was more relaxed than most.
I think the Christians started out ok, but once it became Rome's official religion it basically started taking on the mantel of Rome and how it did things. It ended up being the continuation of the Roman Empire insome respects.

Omackeral wrote: »

And do it in that order, otherwise you might get droppy willy after the pints and it can be like negotiating wet spaghetti.

I think it would be frowned upon to it in the pub before drinking said pints though.

NIMAN

jmayo wrote: »

It already is by some.
But you will most likely always find some billions that will buy into it.

fyp