It seems a common motif among virtually all religions is victimhood; that they have been or will eventually be persecuted for their beliefs.
Perhaps ironically-but probably not-Thomas Paine (who died after being ostracized for his irreligious opinions) turned the notion of religious persecution on its ear over 200 years ago:
“Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.”
I’d suggest that he was correct, religion is a form of persecution of skeptics and non believers done in god’s name and with the most holy (read “vile” or “evil”) intentions.
Having been raised in what I consider to be a fundamentalist cult, I feel I was victimized by religion from birth until I “saw the lightness of being areligious” at about the age 25.
However, is there any reason to think that religion’s ongoing persecution of doubters and disbelievers won’t take a more ominous turn if even more people become convinced that the US should be considered a once and forevermore Christian (i.e., tyrannical) Nation?
It’s not beyond plausible that the willingness to conform to the group, lent a vital survival advantage to species that evolved to live in societal groups.
There is some research that suggests this is innate in us, one study (from memory) had small “test” groups of a dozen people, they were asked to answer pretty simple questions. However only one of the group was being tested, and they didn’t know this, and the researchers found that when the other members of the group provided false or incorrect answers, that the single test would alter their answers from what they clearly believed to be correct, to match the increasingly incorrect answers of the group.
This might explain one reason why deviating from the beliefs and ideas of the majority, exposes that person to the ire of members of that group. This might oversimplify a complex interaction of course, but it is one reason why well established beliefs among majorities, might seem resistant to critical thinking, even to objective facts.
Religions might have been created in the first place to help societal cohesion, a belief that didn’t require validation at a human level, as it came form a perfect deity. Of course when the immutable truths derived from this deity start to fall foul of objective methods like science or logic for example, this creates a problem.
When religions held the whip hand, so to speak, it was an easier problem for religions to solve.
I disagree. I think religion was created to help explain things that ancient man couldn’t explain. Like thunder, where we came from, and, of course, death.
I remember that study. Looking at it now, doesn’t that imply that as society moves away from religion and towards the secular, that deviations from the norm will be more tolerated? Recent events seem to say otherwise.
Well, firstly not all societies are “moving away from religion and towards the secular”, in some parts of the world the opposite is true. I don’t see how secularism will necessarily change an innate and possibly evolved desire to conform?
I get that for whatever reason, wanting to be accepted is probably as instinctive as is the human desire for food and sexual gratification.
But what I find unsavory, despicable even, are those who try to take advantage of these propensities and attempt to capitalize upon them.
IOW, while religion claims the moral high ground, and insists it fights alongside the angels, it seems like a form of spiritual prostitution to me where the john is expected to pay with either his time or money (same thing, right?) for something which the cosmos apparently considers of no monetary value and gives away for free.
Or is that not a good thing to talk about in an atheist forum?
As far as I am aware no topic is off limits, as long it doesn’t violate the forum rules, but that doesn’t really address my question though.
For example, if this desire to conform is innate in us, then why wouldn’t it manifest itself in those who lack religious affiliation? We might replace religious dogma for another kind for example, without fully appreciating what we had done.
I certainly accept that many religions teach adherents when they are too young to resist, ot accept doctrine and dogma in an uncritical way. I seemed to enjoy challenging claims even as a child, it drives people around me nuts, but I was also lucky that the indoctrination I experienced was not a fanatical bent, so to speak. amny children in many parts of the world, are not so lucky.
I had no idea what it was until I looked it up. I believe that hypothetically that there is life out there, but I’m not interested in picking up a religious belief about it and making it my whole personality.
One of the problems with trying to describe human behavior is the exceptions - and in this case, it’s the contarians. I’m not claiming atheists are contarians, but I am claiming that atheists are motivated by something other than “follow the herd”.
Sometimes rationality trumps superstition. I’ve NEVER been religious, but I had no problem joining a monolithic entity, the USN. I’m not defective, I’m rational.
Sauce for the goose etc…and I did say if it is innate in us. Though I am aware of at least one piece of peer reviewed research that suggests it is. Removing subjective bias is never going to be infallible, that’s why we created methods like science, which are designed to remove as much subjectivity as possible. This suggests would also suggest such subjective bias is innate in us, else why design methods like science to remove it.
Nothing wrong with challenging ideas at all, but just because one lacks theistic belief, does not mean one is less subjective across the board, I’ve seen some atheists post here occasionally who were as closed minded as any visiting apologist, and of course when their ideas and claims were subjected to critical scrutiny, they didn’t like it anymore than visiting religious apologists do.
Religious people do NOT discriminate! They’re as likely to savagely attack other religious people for microscopic differences in dogma as they are to kill atheists for sleeping in on Sunday.
Well let’s be honest. They DO/HAVE suffered persecution.
To try and take that away from them will lose you credibility. Don’t do it.
The KEY is for everyone to understand that religions were persecuting each other!!! Why? Because they were in competition no different from Game of Thrones.
When we can all understand this key element then the burden of persecution becomes more complex. How are you mad at someone else persecuting you when you persecuted someone else on your rise to being the #1 religion? Much of the bible’s history (real or fictitious) centers around a militant theocracy that believed that people who believed in other gods were fair game to be conquered. And they would either raid them and steal from them or leave them alone if those people paid them off (same thing that the mafia did with “protecting” business owners). The problem is that believers rarely understand or are faced with their own religious history.
But they will understand if you give them a modern context.
Like… “Does Israel (modern) have a right to defend themselves?”
They will say yes. Very few people on earth would disagree.
Now change the opponent. Did Israel have a right to defend themselves against Christians who persecuted them for rejecting their shiny new Trinity doctrine? And while we’re on that topic, why did the Trinity doctrine need to be accepted at the edge of a sword?
So I say, if they want to be victims, let them. But teach them about their own history and make sure they aren’t hypocrites. Because Jesus doesn’t like hypocrites. So before they “throw stones” at someone else for persecution, they should consider their own. And if they can do that, successfully, and with full empathy for everyone who was murdered and enslaved because of their beliefs (including Africans who were deemed savage in part because of their polytheism which they also didn’t understand and took literally)… if they can accept that they created victims then I would stretch myself into knots to allow them their feelings of victimhood.
And claims that atheists persecuted them are horribly misinformed. If a government/dictator decides that a religion (especially a foreign religion that may collect money from his citizens) is a danger to his nation then I would consider his intentions to rid the country of it are well-meaning. Even if he identifies himself as an atheist, atheism is not an organized anything. It’s like someone being hungry and killing someone and then blaming everyone else who is also hungry for the crime. The problem is that Christians don’t really think of themselves as threats to governments so they think that if any government has a problem with them they must be motivated by evil. Christians don’t understand that when they believe that they are special… holy, righteous, etc. it automatically places them above other people. And when they place themselves in a superior position that in itself becomes a threat to society because they are liable to act in ways to assert their strength and power to dominate those who they deem inferior.
Am I wrong? Consider how, in the US, with the separation between church and state, Christians are voting to get their own in the highest positions of power to force their views on non-Christians. Those who understand power dynamics can see the threat even when others don’t.
If those religions will not leave then they are not complying with the law. The problem is they believe they have a superceding right to exist everywhere in the world although the reality is that global domination is baked into their message. But no one’s supposed to feel threatened by that? If these religions… inspire extremists… those extremists can operate within those nations to undermine their government and rule of law while even causing some people to turn against or even attack other citizens. When they don’t align with “us”… “we” call them “terrorists”. To them… they are freedom fighters but everyone wants freedom even if it is counterproductive to their own interests. People even vote against their own interests or participate in rigged voting systems (not talking about the US, but Russia) instead of collectively mobilizing to overthrow that corrupt government. There’s a careful balance between tyranny/oppression and preventing something that is inherently unhealthy, sabotaging, or seditious.
Yeshua (Jesus) was executed because of sedition; because it was a political movement against Rome. It really was. You can’t claim or have people claim you’re the messiah (next King of Israel) and imagine that’s simply a perfectly OK religious thing. It was not. That’s why ultimately, Rome had to put down their rebellion. And that’s why Rome took over and created Christianity so that they wouldn’t have to worry about Jesus or his rebels ever again. And it worked.
I like the hungry person analogy, I may plagiarise that at some point. Not one I’ve seen before.
In a recent discussion with an apologist, they blamed Stalin and the Soviet Union’s human rights abuses on atheism. A cliche of course, I asked him if he blamed Ted Bundy’s crimes on his lack of belief in mermaids, he became very reticent.
