What’s amazing is that people have time to mind other people’s business.
Its always jarring to see bigots disgrace just the Quran and Islam.
I’d argue fundamentalist Christians and Christian Zionists follow a nearly identical ideology and commit nearly identical atrocities as any radical Islamic Jihadist.
I’d argue fundamentalist Christians and Christian Zionists follow a nearly identical ideology
Literally identical bibliography up to a point. The Bible is a sacred text within Islam as well (although not in any condition an American evangelical could stomach reading, on account of it not being in English).
It’s the interpretation that drives a wedge between them. Muslims recognize Jesus as a prophet, but reject the Nicean Creed (just like Jews).
commit nearly identical atrocities
The idea that religion causes atrocities requires a particular blindness to cataclysmic violence during secular eras. It’s not religion that’s getting Dems and Repubs alike to sponsor the Israeli genocide of Palestine, for instance. This is entirely rooted in the geopolitics of the oil trade through the Suez Canal.
Fear, bigotry, misinformation, and the mass hysteria of modern warfare are fully decoupled from secular traditions. Atheists like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have been as zealous in their advocacy of this barbarism as dogmatic Catholics and Muslims, like Pope Francis and Salman al-Dayah have been advocates for peace.
The idea that you can eliminate war through apostasy went out the window 60 years ago, during the height of the Soviet Era. War has an entirely materialist causation.
Well Islam is an offshoot of Christianity, so it makes sense that they’re basically the same thing.
I’ve always said both Christianity and Islam are my enemy. Both science denying, sexist, power hungry institutions with a penchant for fucking kids. The only difference, in the West, is that Christianity was made to bend the knee a long time ago. I think Islam still needs that lesson.
Regardless, fuck them both. Sky daddy worshipping death cults.
Both science denying, sexist, power hungry institutions with a penchant for fucking kids.
Religious institutions have been at the foundation of modern scientific scholarship for centuries. Meanwhile, merely avoiding a formal religious indoctrination does nothing to improve your education or steer you clear of superstition.
And there’s no shortage of apostate child fuckers. Epstein’s island had academics and influencers of every stripe.
Christianity was made to bend the knee a long time ago
To the secular financial system, where all the child fucking happens.
The only difference, in the West, is that Christianity was made to bend the knee a long time ago
My dude, are you seeing what’s happening in the US? What types of people are most passionately supporting Israel?
Shit, are you seeing the rampant rise of the far right accross Europe and Australia and some of their biggest backers?
That shit ain’t happening because of Muslims. The Christian Jihadists are back and are making serious gains.
Tehran in the 1970s would have been a beautiful way to show how modern lifestyles and islamic culture could co-exist, much in the same way that Christianity was treated in the West all the way up to 2015.
Ah well, I guess there’s still Istanbul, and I guess the West can still potentially pull themselves away from the right-wing christian fundamentalism they’re currently embracing
Tehran in the 1970s would have been a beautiful way to show how modern lifestyles and islamic culture could co-exist
Celebrating the Shah’s Iran for it’s secularism is a bit like celebrating Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for it’s capitalism.
Yeah this worries me a lot at the minute. There’s a concerted effort to push christianity back in front of the levers of power and it disgusts me. I mean, have you ever tried to read the bible? It’s complete nonsense (nonce-sense?).
You’ll grow up from that phase.
Not sure, I’m nearly 40. Felt this way since I was old enough to have an opinion. But I hear that sentiment a lot, as religious people think being a cultist is a default position… its not. Kids are just indoctrinated.
I’m an atheist but I realized like 5 years ago that sweeping generalisations are problematic and often the result of being indoctrinated, religiously or through social media.
A lot of them would have you imprisoned if they had your way. It’s become painfully obvious to me, especially with everything happening with the yank christofascists, that there are a lot of religious wackos out there kept in check by secularism. They’d had you under the boot heel in a second if they could.
I never understood the base level of acceptance theism has when they keep doing evil things, every time they get power. Religion isn’t your friend.
Tbf the problem was always race rather than religion.
Well yeah. Hate directed towards Muslims is 99% hate against brown people in a thinly veiled disguise.
You can at least draw a picture of Jesus without being murdered.
-
You can draw a picture of Mohammed without being murdered. Do it now. I promise you you’ll be fine.
-
There never has existed any rules in Christianity about drawing Jesus in any way being a no no. Shitty comparison.
-
The fundamentalist Christians of the USA disappeared someone because they had a meme of fat JD Vance. The same people who turn around and tell the country God is king and Christians are facing genocide from a nonexistent communist deep state. Same ones who fully support Israel’s genocide in Palestine and emperial war to make Greater Israel so the Christian version of the apocalypse can begin.
So no, the world isn’t safe from radical Christians. We’re actually more in danger now than we have been in quite some time.
Didn’t say it was. But I can think of a few dead cartoonist that might have a different view.
Both relgion need to go. But seeing people Islam because they hate christans more pisses me off.
I’m not defending Islam.
I’m saying we’re fooling ourselves if we’re suggesting that radical Christians aren’t a colossal threat just as radical Muslims are.
In many ways, they’re actually a greater threat to the West because they hold power here. Muslims generally don’t, in comparison.
And again, I invite you to see the source of so many of Israel’s weapons they use to commit genocide and illegally attack their neighbors.
Its widely Christian Zionists in America.
I get that. But I feel like people want to pretend that Islam is better are being willfully ignorant
Also thar picture is from the Afghanistan war.
There is no need to compare bigoted religions. However, if you want to do so Islam comes out as the more bigot and violent hands down. Look at the punishment for apostasy or homosexuality as an example.
Sure, it is a minority religion in the west, thankfully, so it is less of a problem compared to Christianity from a selfish, west centric view. However from a general perspective of how religion is used to oppress and control other people Islam is pretty much where Christianity was 3 centuries ago.
Yes, many people hate Islam because they want their bigoted religion not to be threatened, or because Islam is practiced by people too brown for their racism, but this doesn’t mean that every time someone criticizes Islam for the many, many reasons that it deserves to be criticized, people need to jump to defend it.
What is even more shocking is that this regularly happens in communities where using the wrong pronoun is considered a capital sin, but somehow defending a bigoted religion that in some cases leads to the hanging of homosexuals is fine, as long as it’s a reflex to other bigotry (real or perceived).
-
Lol the best part is that she forces them to learn something.
Burning a Quran because you hate Muslims is bigoted but burning a Quran (or any holy text) because the priestly class is how the ruling class maintains control over the working class in almost every society and religion is tool of oppression is a chad move.
The bacon thing is a dead giveaway that this is bigotry.
And burning a Qur’an because it’s old and you need to dispose of it is just the way Muslims use to do it.
Everything that I’ve ever read has been that Qurans are kept essentially forever or buried in some traditions. Like, verses from the Quran in other publications will be printed specifically not in Arabic so the magazine or newspaper can be discarded at the end.
Yes, you shouldn’t just discard it, specially if it is the Qur’an (100% arabic without any additions), because that is considered the word of god. But even for those it is considered the respectful way to either burn or bury them.
Any book that also contains translations or tafsir (comments for context) is not even considered to be the Qur’an, and the rules about only touching them while pure don’t apply. Some might still treat it the same way, because it’s important to them though.
Personally I don’t think they actually did burn the Quran I think they just got a picture, otherwise they’ve gone out and bought a purchased with their own money, how many times are they going to do that.
Also, most of them don’t look like the kind of person that would waste bacon grease.
That’s some good quality hair gel been put to waste.
I think you may be overestimating the intelligence levels of people who do this shit. They will spend stupid amounts of money on troll acts.
True, but the fact that the photo is actually a decent photo is evidence against.
Especially if they’re content creators trying for subscribers
These are the people who smashed Keurig machines and burned items that they owned.
Good god i love how lefty lemmy can be sometimes lol
both are bigotry actually. Theology is a discipline, almost as old as mathematics. It predates classes to begin with. EDIT: edited a word.
Nothing really predates classes. Classes existed since the first civilizations on Earth. You might be claiming it predates capitalism and that’s definitely true but the ruling/working class divide is much older than capitalism.
I tried to discuss with ChatGPT and he suggested:
The San (Bushmen) of southern Africa believed in a creator deity and spirits of the dead.
Does this work as a counter example ?
Having a belief system is different from having a religion. Organized religion likely came about out of the need to legitimize power structures (otherwise, why the hell would the populace, which outnumber the ruling class, not fight back against their injustices?)
You are right that the San seem to have a classless (or, as wikipedia describes it, egalitarian) society. So it works as a counter-example to my claim that “nothing predates classes”.
Theology is a discipline, almost as old as mathematics. It predates classes to begin with.
BULLSHIT.
The theocrat was the original ‘high class’. The priests have been grifting the commons since day one. All knowing, all loving, all powerful god, WHO SOMEHOW NEEDS TEN PERCENT OF MY EARNINGS?
theology is a discipline of grift and deceiving the masses.
WHO SOMEHOW NEEDS TEN PERCENT OF MY EARNINGS?
zakat is actually 2.5% of your hoarded (for a whole year) money that exceeds 87.48 grams of gold, given to the poor. Shouldn’t that actually be a means to elimination of class ?
Doesn’t sound particularly progressive. 87g of gold is like $10k and it’s a flat rate. Empirically there are plenty of Muslim billionaires anyway, so it ain’t working. Would be interesting to tot up billionaires per capita by religion but I don’t think it would be particularly meaningful because the US skews everything, and how “practicing” someone is of their religion is impossible to measure.
Just the normalizaton of this practice is good ngl.
If a billionaire donates 2.5% of his money out of their goodwill they get bunch of supporters and tax breaks and people forget allegation on how they raped someone and so on.
Meanwhile even kings, who could do whatever the fuck at the time, were expected donate at least 2.5% in 600s.
More progressive taxing can not only be justified in hindsight of modern capitalism, but can become commonplace and expected too.
Also unrelated but not a single king quit being royalty because they had to donate 2.5% of their ownings so that “taxing the billionaires would unmotivate people to start business” was absolute bs for a good 1400 years lmao.
Under an Islamic rule, the Muslim is forced to do this donation. And Muslim billionaires are not all of a sudden all pious because they have this label. Islamic law doesn’t eliminate the need to study politics and sociology you know. Many Muslim scholars, claimed that it could in fact end the poverty in the Islamic world if really all obliged muslims paid their zakat (which is a requirement for Islam, not like a side quest, and should be enforced legally), among them Dr. Abd Al-Rahman bin Hamood Al-Sumait a humanitarian. This might appeal to you?: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jun/22/zakat-requires-muslims-to-donate-25-of-their-wealth-could-this-end-poverty
“Doesn’t eliminate the need to study sociology”. Well, quite.
give money to the poor any day. giving it to a church, temple, mosque etc., is just ignoring the truly needy.
They ask you, [O Muhammad], what they should spend. Say, “Whatever you spend of good is [to be] for parents and relatives and orphans and the needy and the traveler. And whatever you do of good - indeed, Allah is Knowing of it.” 1
I know right?
just like christians and the good samaritan - they know it’s part of their core beliefs but… ¯_ (ツ)_/¯ they choose to keep giving money to anyone but the ones who truly need it.
why is it so hard for believers to actually hew to the values their beliefs are built around? so strange… it’s like, they believe in an all powerful deity but somehow think he won’t notice them ignoring the needy?
and it’s not all believers. goodness knows. but so many…
Are you using “Tu Quoque” here? basing on a “Hasty Generalization” I assume ?
If you’re basing on Saudi Arabia or UAE, please notice that you’re basing on a country that is pro Israel, meaning literally invaded.
Huh seems like you need that to be the truth 🤷♂️
How exactly is it a science? A philosophical persuit? Most definitely and a very serious one at that. But a science? Not sure how the scientific method applies
ngl, I had to google to realize that English word “science” doesn’t encapsulate things like mathematics, law, literature…ect. I used a literal translation here, mah bad. I should’ve said discipline or study here. Thanks for pointing it.
Unfortunately, this happens in English alot. Well have five words to discuss a concept, but all slightly differently and they’re not interchangeable
haven’t you ever heard of christian science? it’s not science either, by scientific standards, but believers LOVE to muddy the waters and cast their FAITH as something tangible, provable, worthy of science.
It’s all a distraction, again, from actual science.
provable
yes, theologians argue that logic is enough to prove the existence of God: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument
If you refute logic/reason cuz you only like science that you experiment on, then you’re too caught in the material buddy. Remember that math doesn’t seem to follow the scientific method either you know ? Please don’t tell me you refute it too.I notice that the word I know in my language kalam is a little different from theology, but theology is the closest translation I have.
Mathematics is all about developing logical tools. Basically things like “if we start with this assumption, then you can make this conclusion”. After you’ve developed all of these tools, then you can look at the universe around you and apply those tools to your observations in order to come to new conclusions about that same universe. There necessarily needs to be that input that ties it back to reality. Mathematics on its own doesn’t tell us anything about reality.
idk, it seems to have described so much about the universe with so few input. And can just study itself like in “Gödel’s incompleteness theorems” to give constraints on what you aspire to achieve with it. I’d call math/logic/reason fairly strong by themselves.
with so few input
Yes, few inputs. Not none.
I’d call math/logic/reason fairly strong by themselves.
What does strong mean in this context? It’s a very useful tool. No one is denying that. It just doesn’t tell us anything about the universe without input from that same universe.
theologians argue that logic is enough to prove the existence of God
they have to. science keeps painting ‘god’ into a smaller and smaller corner every day.
Remember that math doesn’t seem to follow the scientific method either you know
LOLOLOL
it’s repeatedly provable, stood the test of time, like the scientific method, it’s consistency and reproducibility weigh much more than philosophy stack exchange k thnks.
this really isn’t a discussion I’m interested in continuing.
they have to. science keeps painting ‘god’ into a smaller and smaller corner every day.
I feel like I know who you’re quoting, and I remember encountering: https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-debate-hawkings-idea-that-the-universe-had-no-beginning-20190606/
to quote the part that appeals to me:In their 2017 paper (opens a new tab), published in Physical Review Letters, Turok and his co-authors approached Hartle and Hawking’s no-boundary proposal with new mathematical techniques that, in their view, make its predictions much more concrete than before. “We discovered that it just failed miserably,” Turok said. “It was just not possible quantum mechanically for a universe to start in the way they imagined.” The trio checked their math and queried their underlying assumptions before going public, but “unfortunately,” Turok said, “it just seemed to be inescapable that the Hartle-Hawking proposal was a disaster.”
Ngl I am a muslim and was thaught it’s valid form of disposing Quran but I still would find it immoral to burn books due to context of Nazis.
tossing it to trash would be disrespectful you know. If someone needs it when you don’t, you can donate it to them.
Donating to a library would be best option definetely.
Libraries are underrated, no matter the society you look at. I remember a post from reddit that mentioned that it can help you if your life is being targeted or something like that.
I don’t know who this woman is but I love her. Calmly disassembling this douchnozzle’s attempt at desecration.
I’m reminded of a case here in the UK a few years back where bigots left something like 200 bacon sandwiches on the doorstep of a mosque. The next day the mosque released a statement to the press thanking the unknown people for their kind donation and that the local non-Muslim homeless population had very much appreciated the sandwiches that the people at the mosque had distributed to them.
I don’t. I feel like this is a dog whistle for Muslims to take action. Preformative at best, violent at worst.
What?
Wait, is it true that you have to burn a Quran if you’re going to dispose of it? I’d like to know the reasoning behind that, I bet it’s interesting. Or is she just trolling the troll?
The US flag code requires burning. Cremation is a thing. Burning is a respectful way to dispose of things in a lot of cultures.
Burial is also considered acceptable, AFAIK
Flag is a pretty good comparison. Burning is the recommended disposal method, but people want to ban it and/or get very upset when it’s burned
In my country (eu) it’s illegal to burn the national flag. It’s also illegal to burn a picture of the king (offence to the crown), and making a post like this but with a bible would be considered ‘offence to the religious sentiments’ (this is only for catholics, the feelings of other believers be damned).
It’s still wild to me that in 2025 democracies allow themselves to have royalty. What a farce!
There was an extremely funny incident in the UK in the run up to the Brexit referendum in which a seething pro-Brexiter tried to burn an EU flag only to be thwarted by the fact that EU regulations made sure the flag was fireproof
Yeah, there are a lot of reasons that I oppose laws against burning or defacing things as part of a protest by default and those are some examples of why.
If done as part of an implicit threat, like buring with chants about committing violence it should count as part of the threating message, but not by itself as a symbol of defiance or to just cause offense.
SCOTUS has previously ruled that burning the American flag is protected speech, but I believe they have upheld (or just not heard cases against) state laws that burning crosses is hate speech or threatening speech (which are not protected.)
Yes, SCOTUS has consistently ruled that threats of violence are different than protesting.
Burning a cross on someone’s lawn is an implicit threat of future violence because that is the only historical use of burning crosses on someone’s lawn. Burning a flag in a public space is saying you disagree with the government, which is a protest.
Burning a cross in America is not a message that you hate Christians. It’s deeply associated with the racist organization the ku klux klan and their extrajudicial murders of black people.
So yeah you can do the thing associated with being mad at a country but not the thing associated with “get your melinated skin in line as per our beliefs or we kill your entire family”
Catholic monarchy… Spain?
Ding ding!
¿Compatriota?
It’s because there’s a specific way you’re supposed to burn the flag for disposal. It’s a whole ceremony.
It does strike me as being more respectful than just tossing it in the garbage.
They used to reuse books too, so it prevents someone from coming along and covering up the word of God with homicidal rabbits
You called?
🤣
Where is Rayman when you need em…
Burial, a body of running water or burning appear to be the proper ways of disposal of a damaged or old Quran.
It seems notable that two of those three are also how many societies dispose of human bodies. As I understand it Islam is generally against cremation of humans, but at least from my outside perspective it seems like the usage of cremation by pre-Islamic societies in the region could still lead to it being seen as respectful even if it’s no longer held as suitable for humans
That said it’s also kind of the exact opposite of Zoroastrian funerary practice so I dunno
So I can just fling it in a creek?
No, you have to do some additional steps like wrapping it in additional material or putting flowers or something that involves throwing even more stuff into the creek to show you care.
If you only throw one thing it is littering. If you throw a bunch of stuff in a predetermined way it is being respectful.
There was one historical context where it was disposed that way under supervision of prophet’s old friends and religious leaders.
I do also remember my religious studies teacher saying it’s permitted as “just throwing to dump is more disrespectful,” however you MUST not have bad intentions.
Also not all Muslims took religious studies in middleschool curricilum and a lot of topics are debatable so people will get mad regardless. All muslims won’t simply be “cool with it.”
Hope this helps!
It does help, thanks a lot!
Interesting fact: any paper containing the word “allah” can’t be thrown away or disposed of using any other method than burning. That’s why Quran has to be burned.
This is done to prevent the text from coming into contact with “Nagasat” (impurities), which include but aren’t limited to: human waste, sperm, mensural blood, most bodily fluids in general, dog saliva, spirits/drinkable alcohol, swine meat/fat/anything, decomposing garbage, etc.
I think I got most of them but I’m not 100% sure.
Now, if your name actually contains the word, then you’re stuck here with me having to burn receipts and whatnot for your entire life.
What happens if someone writes blasphemies against Allah, citing him by name, on a piece of paper? Does that still merit all the pomp and ceremony, or can it be thrown in the bin?
Stupid thought exercise
What about different media
-
Stone. Can a just send a Muslim I don’t like huge cement blocks with the word allah edged into them and they will have to keep them as there is no save way to discard them
-
Digital. The servers of sh.itjust.works now contain the word allah. Does the word come into contact with the pictures of dog shit that are also saved on the server. Is it OK to delete the servers or will they need to be burned down as well
- What if someone shouts “Allah!” very loudly through a speaker and the vibrating air, which is now carrying the word “Allah”, touches the butts of two gay men having gay sex gayly. Has the perspn who shouted committed a sin by not acoustically isolating the sacred name from gay tushies?
Ya’ll are just describing why religion always fails at it’s purported task of making a better populace. When rituals and ceremony take over from the psudo-philosophy and self-reflection, you get BS pointless rules like these that then go on to harm all other aspects of the religion.
-
Can you cut the paper in half so that you no longer have a piece of paper with the word “Allah” on it?
You probably could but not everyone will
does that mean that if any book, mentions allah, even in as a passing mention, has to be disposed by cremation? or that rule only applies to specific religious texts?
Anything. Like if someone wrote my name and phone number on a piece of paper they have to burn it when they’re done with it.
so if a pulp fiction novel mentioned allah somewhere, does it has to be treated specially?
I’m so very disappointed that our Muslim cousins have been lead towards such arrogance as to call our god Allah. It’s disrespectful and intolerant behaviour, and unchristlike.
I know you’re trolling, but for anyone else curious: the word “Allah” means god.
We have two words for deity: “Elah” (often in polytheistic contexts), and “Allah” (in the Abrahamic monotheistic sense)
Both words mean “god”. The word Allah is more specific in that it implies monotheism. It has no plural form. Semantically it means “the one true deity”.
The closest analogues are the Hebrew Yahweh/Jehovah.
Arabian Christians use the same word (Allah) to refer to god in their prayer and literature. Their word for Jesus is يسوع (transliteration: Yasoo’a), although the last letter (Ain ع) can’t be pronounced in English.
We have two words for deity: “Elah” (often in polytheistic contexts), and “Allah” (in the Abrahamic monotheistic sense)
Both words mean “god”. The word Allah is more specific in that it implies monotheism. It has no plural form. Semantically it means “the one true deity”.
tl;dr Elah means god, Allah means God
Yes
And that’s what’s so arrogant and intolerant about the word allah. Every time it’s used, it’s a declaration that only one god exists. How can you love your neighbours if you attack their beliefs every time you pray? You can’t. Jesus wouldn’t want us saying such thoughtlessly mean-spirited things. He’d want Arabic speakers to say Elah instead.
I was curious as well so I looked it up. Cornell does list burning as an acceptable method of disposing the Koran. Other methods include burial (but at a respectful place), sinking it in a river, and shredding.
She is pretending the Muslims are ok with it and he is just being silly and juvenile and no one cares, but in reality Muslims have already rioted and murdered several people for it.
I think even the Bible can be burned.
Hold on, I’ll go test.
A few religions require burning of sacred texts and objects as the method of disposing of them. Its prevalent in Hinduism and Buddhism.
Bigots are cringe
Religion is also cringe
Male supremacists are also cringe.
People get really upset about burning it as a form of desecration
In Islamic law, believers must not damage the Quran and must perform a ritual washing before touching it.[1] Conversely, intentional damage to copies is considered blasphemous in Islam. It is a point of controversy whether non-Muslims should be made to follow Islamic law,[2] and a sensitive topic in international relations how it should be handled when Muslims demand adherence to Islamic Quranic practices by nonbelievers
In 2010, Christian pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center, a church in Gainesville, Florida, provoked condemnation from Muslims after announcing plans to burn a Quran on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.[15] He later cancelled the plans;[16] however, on March 20, 2011, he oversaw the burning of a Quran. In response, Muslims in Afghanistan rioted and 12 people were killed.[17]
On March 19, 2015, Farkhunda Malikzada, a 27-year-old Afghan woman, was publicly beaten and killed by a mob of hundreds of people in Kabul.[23][24] Farkhunda had previously been arguing with a mullah named Zainuddin, in front of a mosque where she worked as a religious teacher,[25] about his practice of selling charms at the Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque, the Shrine of the King of Two Swords,[26] a religious shrine in Kabul.[27] During this argument, Zainuddin reportedly falsely accused her of burning the Quran. Police investigations revealed that she had not burned anything.[25] A number of prominent public officials turned to Facebook immediately after the death to endorse the murder.[28] After it was revealed that she did not burn the Quran, the public reaction in Afghanistan turned to shock and anger.[29][30] Her murder led to 49 arrests
Since 2020, the Danish party Stram Kurs and the party leader Rasmus Paludan have planned or orchestrated Quran burnings in multiple Swedish cities. This has resulted in numerous riots in Swedish cities against both planned and realized desecrations, notably the 2020 Sweden riots and 2022 Sweden riots
On June 28, 2023, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden burned a copy of the Quran and played football with the copy, outside Stockholm’s central mosque. The Swedish police had granted a permit for the demonstration, after a Swedish court ruling that allowed it on the grounds of freedom of expression. The incident led to international protests.
However, he was assassinated the day before the verdicts was due to be released, possibly due to his Quran burning activities
On July 20, 2023, hundreds of protesters stormed the Swedish embassy in Baghdad in response to a planned Quran burning in Stockholm, prompting Iraqi authorities to expel the Swedish ambassador and recall their chargé d’affaires.
On 13 February 2025 Hamit Coşkun was attacked by Moussa Kadri with a knife for burning the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London.
In March 2013, the al-Qaeda English-language magazine Inspire published a poster stating “Wanted dead or alive for crimes against Islam” with a prominent image of Terry Jones, known for public Quran burning events.[65] Iran’s news agency, IRIB, reported on April 8, 2013, that Terry Jones planned another Quran burning event on September 11, 2013. On April 11, IRIB published statements from an Iranian MP who said the West must stop the event and warned that “the blasphemous move will spark an uncontrollable wave of outrage among over 1.6 billion people across the globe who follow Islam.” In Pakistan, protesters set the American flag and effigy of the US pastor Terry Jones on fire, condemning the 9/11 plan, according to an April 14, 2013 article in The Nation.
Thank you for showing the difference between the magical land of the internet and the real world.
Pretending to be cool about burning the Qur’an is just pretending to be civilized for westerners. We had a dude burn one in the UK and someone came out with a knife to attack him, and that was like last month. Only western countries permit protest like this.
Protest like what? The burning or the stabbing?
I think you mean this one
On 13 February 2025 Hamit Coşkun was attacked by Moussa Kadri with a knife for burning the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London.
Why was the dude burning a Qur’an?
Who cares? Stabbing people for high emissions in the ULEZ is a bit excessive
You know why he was doing it. Why be so coy?
I don’t really care why, stabbing someone for it is lunatic behaviour.
The 51-year-old wrote posts on social media detailing his plan and saying it was to “protest the Islamist government” of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom he claimed “has made Turkey a base for radical Islamists and is trying to establish a Sharia regime”, the court heard.
Why was he burning a Qur’an rather than holding a sign? Don’t be coy.
Coy? I’m just sharing what I found about the protester. I don’t know any more than that. If you know more, as you seem to imply, you could share it
Why was he burning a Qur’an rather than holding a sign?
I think you double posted
There’s no need to pretend to be civilized for Westerners. Most are familiar with the barbarism of their modern colonial history. If anything, Western and civilized are quite contradictory.
It was Westerners that used their religious book to justify enslaving 12.5 million people and treated them as chattel. I can’t think of a more profound lack humanity in modern human history. Actually the next few that come to mind are also Western atrocities.
Not good for the environment at all. The only acceptable way to dispose of any book or paper is through recycling. Destrying holy books is very juvenile anyways.
It was done to make sure mistakes of Quran’s printing couldn’t be reused by others.
That image looks machine generated… also not good for the environment.
So he should have eaten the book with some bacon.
I think the lesson is: the friends we made were on the way to the bookburning. Or maybe: life is like a box of burned books? IDK.
Eh, all religion is just cancer.
It is, but the manner in which this woman destroyed this douche was art.
why is it that people say “all religions are bad” whenever a post involving islam shows up, but not when there’s a Christmas post, or is a picture of Easter bunnies…
nice dogwhistle you got in there
People shit on Christianity all the time and it’s not like anyone at least here bats an eye. But when it’s Islam it’s “all religions are bad”. People are a bit more careful with Islam lol
Yep, they are afraid of violent fundamentalists but also of liberals trying to cancel them…
I guess it’s in part because it’s hard to distinguish if the negative attitude toward Islam is racism or just against the religion. Christianity is viewed as white – at least that’s the impression I get – so that distinction doesn’t exist. It is interesting to see how the two are handled so differently
no comment about “all religions are cancer”
because Christianity is treated like normal rather than a religion
Because Christmas is a holiday and Islam is a religion? Christmas wasn’t even Christian until it was coopted by the Catholic Church. Many atheists celebrate it cause it’s more of a cultural holiday too. What an incredibly silly and disingenuous comparison.
it’s always so funny, when people try to explain that Christ mass is not a Christian thing.
just because it has influences from cultures it engulfed it doesn’t mean that the holiday meant to celebrate Christ isnt Christian.
Whoa you got me by ignoring every point 🤡
I call bullshit on atheists celebrating Christmas.
If you celebrate it you’re Christian, feel free to call yourself cultural Christian or atheist Christian. but celebrating Christmas is a Christian thing.
I don’t believe in God and still celebrate my Jewish holidays, and I call myself an atheist jew, a common thing in Judaism.
I mean… the Japanese who as a nation are mostly non-Christian and don’t know much about it beyond pop culture, celebrate Christmas. I mean it’s a couple’s holiday there, but they do all the superficial things around it. Plenty of non-Christians celebrate Christmas the way that many people celebrate Halloween. It’s just a fun little tradition cooped because a dominant culture enjoys it and doesn’t care too much if you don’t adhere to the heart, but just the ritual of it.
There are plenty of people who don’t know the first thing about what Christmas actually is that celebrate it.
and I call myself an atheist jew, a common thing in Judaism.
I don’t think it makes sense to equivocate Jewish identity with Christianity, because Christianity is a universal religion, not an ethnic religion. Atheists I know who celebrate Christian holidays don’t consider themselves Christian, Christianity is considered to be about the belief system, not the culture surrounding it. Any remaining Christian influence is treated more like a cultural tradition than a religious event. The way Christmas is celebrated in the ones I’ve been to, you could simply change the name and it would then be a completely secular feast. It’s derived from (not influenced by!) a pagan event, so most of its core features aren’t even related to Christianity in the first place, not even the date. Christianity is surprisingly arbitrary in Christmas.
Like you mentioned, Christian atheism appears to be an established concept in other countries, along with similar concepts like lapsed Catholics. I only personally know one person like this, who identifies as a Lutherian but not believing in a higher power, and other people I’ve mentioned it to consider that to be odd and contradictory.
that’s some bullshit.
Christians declares themselves the default and therefore everything they do is “normal” rather than a Christian thing.
Well what people are always going on about the paedophiles in the church. It’s like the first thing anyone ever comments whenever Christianity ever comes up.
Your just been selectively death when it comes to criticism.
example:
no one mentions anything about pedos or"religions are cancer"
even though Christianity and Christian lore is the main focus of that post
You know damn well an Easter bunny is not comparable to burning a Quran. And plenty of people will say the same if you burn a Bible too
you missed my issue.
I noticed that every post tangentially related to islam has comments condemning all religions, yet those comments are usually absent when the post is tangentially related to Christianity like a post about easter or Christmas.
IE, bringing up a Dawkins like atheism only when taking about a specific group, is just a lazy form of racism
I’d struggle to call the op tangentially related. It’s not like they’re simply posting something based on a corporate take on Ramadan the way an Easter bunny is for Christians. Oop specifically wanted to anger her, and did a hilariously poor job because of his ignorance
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I’m disappointed you think that. I firmly believe there’s a religion for everyone on this planet. And that hatred of religion as a concept can easily lead to dismissing foreign cultures’ spiritual practices.
Why would you center your life around something that neither you, not any single person in the past 2000+ years has been able to verify or prove in even the most basic fashion?
Don’t you care about believing true things?
. And that hatred of religion as a concept can easily lead to dismissing foreign cultures’ spiritual practices
Yes, I’m going to dismiss foreign culture religion, just like I dismiss my culture’s religions. They’re not special just because they’re not from here, it’s still the same humans
Worshipping people 2 thousand years dead is stupid.
And if you found out the natives of the land you live on were teaching religion to their children, would you support the government kidnapping the children and putting them with white families to learn science and writing and “civilised manners”? That’s the kind of actual historical event I’m concerned about happening when religious knowledge is valued less than white people’s idea of academic knowledge.
It’s like you’re incapable of going a single comment without at least one logical fallacy.
Religious knowledge is explicitly less valuable than academic knowledge.
I’m not talking about christian, white people’s idea of manners and civilization. That is still awful. Instead of kidnapping, that’s what public schools should be for, teaching reading, writing, and science.
Those kidnappings were genocide. I advocate for religion to be suppressed, especially the sexist and racist ones(but not only), not for all forms of culture and tradition to be suppressed.
Well I will describe a religious belief I hold to you, and I’m eager to hear what you think of it.
Burning fossil fuels is a sin. We’re not supposed to dig them out of the ground and burn them. When fossil fuels are burned, they react and turn to greenhouse gases, which warm the planet and bring natural disasters. And because Elohim is a god of great wrath, the disasters do not just harm those who sinned, but everyone, and disproportionately the poorest who don’t have the resources to survive natural disaster. To find peace with the world around us, we must stop fossil fuel emissions and sacrifice our billionaires to Elohim upon a ritual pyre.
A great example on why religious knowledge is less valuable than scientific knowledge. The belief that the issues are that simple and blocks understanding of why it happens and how to prevent similar situations from recurring.
More however, the god parts have no value. If you insert science into religion, it’s still science. The science information should be extracted from the religious knowledge, and the less valuable religious parts discarded.
If you insert science into religion, it’s still science
And all religions have science in them. Pacific Islanders know things about wayfaring and wave dynamics that physicists are just now discovering. Colonisers in Australia spoiled the environment by disregarding indigenous conservation practices. Buddhists have been teaching western psychologists about the uses of meditation for the past two decades. The Haudenosaunee taught Karl Marx’s friends about communism. Muslims were avoiding dangerous meats before germ theory was invented. For hundreds of years, westerners have dismissed religious knowledge and said oopsie when they later learned there was science inside the religion. I caution you not to make the same mistake.
dismissing foreign cultures’ spiritual practices
if those spiritual practices are being used to oppress, as is often the case, then good. We should disregard them. There are cultures who believe that sexually abusing young men is just, because they need to consume “the spirit of life” through another man’s semen in order to produce offspring. Should we be respecting those practices?
People are allowed to believe in whatever nonsense they like in the comfort of their own homes, but the second that shit spills out into the real world, it almost universally becomes a problem.
I beg you to take a moment to understand and empathise with your neighbours. The Haudenosaunee, the Koori, the Maya, have done nothing to harm you.
Oh damn, well you better drop the mic after that one 🙄
deleted by creator
I agree with you completely, Christianity is a disease on society. I am not a Christian. I consider Christianity to be a blatant heresy against our lord and saviour, Jesus Christ. I, like Jesus, believe in the principles of Judaism. You might say I’m part of the Jesus-worshipping Jewish cult. Paul is the inventor of Christianity, and his innovation was to twist Judaism to fit with Roman ideals. Elohim is the god to the oppressed, and Paul thought he could make Him god to the oppressors. It’s a paradox.
I am deeply opposed to Roman ideology. Did you know the Nazis considered themselves to be Romans? And now we have a Fourth Reich of the Roman Empire gathering strength in the west. All very Christian, of course. So I tell you truly that I think as poorly of Christianity as you do, because I am a follower of Christ.
Give me a fucking break.
And why should everyone have a religion?
Religion is just believing without evidence. And with that “logic” you can make up anything and get people to believe in it. That is how every cult starts. A religion is just a long lasting cult. It is nothing more than a bit for control over people like you.
No wonder that the majority of religious people believe in the religion they were taught when they couldn’t think critically yet.
Look at their profile. You’re falling for a troll lol
Religion is just believing without evidence.
There are plenty of things that require belief without evidence that aren’t religion (conspiracy theories, pseudoscience). There are also religions that rely on science for answers, and so they do require evidence.
There are plenty of things that require belief without evidence that aren’t religion (conspiracy theories, pseudoscience)
Well I’m sold
Yeah I’m totally flummoxed because I’m atheist so obviously I believe in the healing power of crystals. I don’t know what the scientific religion been alluded to is, but I’m assuming it’s Scientology, the fact that they think that shows you everything you need to know about them.
That’s not the stellar arguement you think it is. Believing in aliens is also nonsense.
That’s my point.
I’m afraid I don’t have time to answer all your hastily listed arguments with a well thought out response, so I’ll just pick one. You said religion is belief without evidence, but that’s faith. Religion is actually organised belief or worship. There are many religions that don’t require any faith to believe in.
For example many Buddhists don’t believe in any of the parts of the religion they consider supernatural, and instead focus on the philosophy and life advice, which is still religious in nature because of its organisation.
Worshippers of the Antichrist, Donald Trump, also don’t tend to believe without apparent evidence. The evidence they do believe in is all lies, but what they’re doing still isn’t faith. Being lied to with bad evidence isn’t faith.
And as a third example, the religion of Mammon, the worship of money, can be practiced entirely unknowingly and without the slightest suggestion of false belief. It’s clearly true that money runs the world, and many people worship money and capitalism because of its obvious and true power over us.
And I think if you don’t choose a religion consciously, then like many worshippers of Mammon, you may end up joining a system of organised worship unconsciously. The Lemmy developers are in a religion without knowing, it’s that easy.
It doesn’t matter how organised the belief is or how established the belief is, it’s still belief without evidence. I have no idea why you brought Trump up he has no bearing on this conversation whatsoever since his supporters don’t believe in him, they can see him right there in front of them. You don’t need to believe in things that demonstrably exist.
The Lemmy developers are Marxists, that’s a political opinion not a belief (for what it’s worth they would probably claim to be Christian). Do you seriously think it is impossible to hold opinions about any particular matter without them being religiously based, if so how does my preferred brand of peanut butter relate to religious dogma?
I’m sorry that the education system has failed you so.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belief
-
a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing. e.g. I believe in president Trump’s leadership
-
something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion : something believed. e.g. Donald Trump is truly one of the presidents of all time
-
conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence. e.g. *President Trump sure does exist, alright, I looked at the evidence and I believe he’s real.
Trump’s worshippers fit all three definitions for belief in Trump, even if you and I wish they wouldn’t fit the first.
I’m sorry you’ve been lead to believe that belief is only for things that aren’t true. I hope one day you learn how to believe in true things like staplers and giraffes.
Your condescending attitude not withstanding I’ll address your point.
We are talking about religious belief, no one religiously believes in Trump, now you can use the word to describe his supporters if you want, but it’s a corruption of the idea (and before you start “corruption” here refers to redefining a words original concept). They like him a lot, that’s it. You can’t believe in Trump any more than you can believe in potatoes.
As for the education system having failed me, I think we’re operating far beyond anything the education system ever bothered to tackle.
Now if we could stop talking about Trump that would be great, because despite the fact you think you’re being clever, he’s completely irrelevant to the concept of religion. Just like most people who are losing the arguement you have reframed it to talk about a different subject matter to try and make me argue a point which is miles away from the original talking point.
-
You do realise that atheism is not a religious position right? Atheist people don’t hate God despite what various Bible bashes try to claim, atheists don’t believe in God. It hard to hate someone that you don’t believe exists.
Equally atheists don’t hate religion as a concept, they just don’t find any of it to be convincing.
There’s a difference between atheism and anti-theism that a lot of people (both religious and non-religious) seem to miss.
I do understand that. Theism and atheism are pretty much perpendicular to the issue of religion. There are many theistic religions, many atheistic religions, many irreligious theistic beliefs, and many irreligious atheistic beliefs. Though fewer irreligious people on both sides of the theism debate than I think most are willing to admit. For example any atheist who watches Andrew Tate’s videos is not, I think, an atheist or irreligious.
For example any atheist who watches Andrew Tate’s videos is not, I think, an atheist or irreligious.
It’s like you’re just inventing your own definitions of words on the fly.
What THE FUCK does Andrew Tate have to do with atheism?
Can you help me with a christlike waffle recipe?
There are plenty of people who don’t have a religion, and they seem to be just fine. I personally don’t think that I need religion, but since it seems to make my life better, I’m glad that I have it.
Watch out, we’re dealing with a badass.
Under what circumstances would anyone need to dispose of a book?
When someone dies and it’s part of their estate sale, and nobody wants to buy the book, and bookstores & thrift stores don’t want to receive it as donation?
When the christian-fascist regime gets re-elected in 2028 and ICE starts searching peoples houses as every book besides trump-signed bibles are against the law.
perhaps if the book degrades to an unusable state
Not in the case of books treated as timeless, but we do print a lot of contemporary stuff that is designed to become irrelevant. School books, manuals, law books, phonebooks etc. It traditionally was and still is a convinient form of sharing a lot of information. Computers with dynamically changing content are there to replace it now, but they are yet to do so, and there are good reasons for it.
You just reminded me about 30 years ago when I used to be mormon, we didn’t know it at the time, but all the church leadership from the higher-ups were encouraging everyone to purchase new scriptures and get rid of our old ones. Turns out they had changed a lot of the text to erase past “doctrinal” concepts/faux pas 😳 . Sketchy. Of course they didn’t tell us they changed anything in the scriptures but scholars over the years dug it up and did the comparisons.
I think the last time I saw a phonebook was over 10 years ago.
What is so biggoted about hating on religion? Religion is a choice, a choice to be irresposnible and ignore evidence.
In this case she’s not hating on religion in general but on a specific religion while ignoring the other two major God of Abraham religions (Judaism and Christianity) that broadly share the same beliefs. If I talk shit, its about the whole Judeo-Christo-Islam.
As far as teachings go Islam and Christianity are like 80% same. They are not hating the religion they are hating the race and you can tell.
Btw race means more than skin color before anyone tries to justify it using that.
Because hating the religion is a thin excuse for racism. And being of a certain race is not a choice.
Because when they say “Muslim”, they aren’t talking about a white person, even though there are white Muslims.
Indeed the person and the religion should be separated. I hate Islam, but not most Muslims. Christianity, but not most Christians. And so on. The religions and their zealots are capable of great evil, whereas the people usually either were born into a religious family, or they were just looking for hope in dark times. Of course I find it best to keep it all to yourself anyway, unless talking with people you know will understand you
I don’t have a problem with religious folks who are reasonable about their religion. The problem is that so many of them are not.
I actually can’t give a crap about a person’s race. Like I’m thoroughly against the Gaza genocide. I don’t care if other people associate religion with race, I don’t have to fall in line with anyone really. Actually, not falling in line is the entire point.
Race, gender, and quite a few things aren’t a choice. I have some tolerance for heavily indoctrinated people, but I don’t know how to deprogram them, and I’m quite irritated that states are intentionally spreading religion.
It taints everything, and ruins lives. My parents right now are ignoring signs of diseases because “if god wants to take you, he will take you”. I can’t even begin to describe how furious this makes me feel. Also, disregarding the possibility that I may not be neurotypical.
It makes me wish we would just get nuked.
Well said.
Being of a certain race does make you a certain religion.
To be fair. Most people don’t choose religion. Most religious people were abused as children and are kept hostage by the cult. Leaving would mean stigma from their cult family members and in some captured countries, society as a whole. Religion is something forced upon you through abuse.
I was an Ortodox Cristian. I live with fundamentalist Ortodox Cristians, and I am at fault for how radical they are, because I believed it 100%. But I’m not one anymore, too many things made it fucking obvious that you have to be delusional to believe it. Eventually, if you are reasonable at all, you will realize.
EDIT: To be ironically one of the voices of reason, yes, most people can’t just break out, I understand.
They need to be deprogrammed.
Hate the things that religion stands for but hating the concept is just sort of a waste of time. It’s like saying you hate evil, it sounds good but when you think about it it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s much more useful to hate evil people after all you can action that.
I do hate evil, obviously, and would rather have it eradicated.
I think it’s more about how you do it
Hating on religion is bigoted because there are and were great men and women both religious and atheist. Also there are and were horrible people both religious and atheist. There is ton of evidence for both claims, which you clearly choose to ignore. There are and were even people who are and were champions of both science and religion and who are more scientifically prepared than you would be in your whole life, yet still religious. I for example do not have a religion, but I do have a phd in mathematics and I do have faith and I think I am pretty good at arguing rationally.
And then there is also the problem that fighting against something and hating that something is two different things. You also chose to hate on what you think you are fighting. I would anytime choose to fight someone making as bigoted claims as you, however in most instances – and for certainly in this instance – I am doing it without hating on the other, in this case you.
Yes, you are rational, no thanks to religion. Maybe there’s a reason I hate on it, as it directly impacts my life and the world around it? Like the current evangelical cult being used to justify utterly oppressing America? And America is trying to spread that oppression to us. Like backstabbing Ukraine by cutting off Starlink.
If it were not making my life so much worse, I would not be hating it with such an intensity.
As for you, I can’t possibly imagine what this faith is, or why you would have it. Why choose faith?
I can empathize and sympathize with your situation. The evangelical cult based craziness in the US is truly astonishingly horrible. If you are from Ukraine, then I fully understand that you haven’t got the luxury of being patient towards enemies. I am from Hungary, and to what it is worth, I am 100% supporting Ukraine, sent money to the Hungarians fighting in the Ukrainian army as well.
On the philosophical level I still think that hating on all religions because people can use religion for horrible causes is analogous to hating on technology and science because people can construct horrible weapons using those.
As for the faith part: it is very hard to talk about it while being true to it, even when talking to close friends. So I choose to not talk about it more closely on public forums.
That last part is a key issue. I will can it then.
I love your comment, very rational argument that moves the discussion forward into more sophisticated territory. (Hopefully) respectful disagreement incoming.
"Bigot: : a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices
especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
So technically, bigot could describe anyone who treats members of a group with intolerance. For example, I am bigoted towards Nazis. This example demonstrates that “bigot” does not intrinsically equal “bad”. It is probably a good thing to be bigoted towards Nazis. Given this definition, I don’t think there’s any way to claim these stances aren’t bigoted towards religion, but the real question is whether that bigotry is a good thing or not. That sounds obviously wrong, but only because we’re so used to hearing “bigot” as a synonym for bad. Given this definition I would proudly say, for instance, that I am bigoted against racists or sexists. And in a similar vein, if someone does a lot of good charity work in their city, and let’s say they’ve even been a factual net positive for their city, but they’re also deeply racist and sexist, I think it’s fair for me to say “I hate them”, even though they’ve done other good things. If I say “racism and sexism are evil”, then I’m not really “ignoring evidence” of this guy being a good benefactor to his city. I’m correctly disentangling an irrelevant aspect (his social benevolence) from the relevant aspect (the intrinsic goodness or badness of being racist+sexist). Yes, there are racists who have done good things, good acts, good science even, etc etc. But that is not necessarily relevant to whether racism itself is good. It is obvious to most people that when the racist guy happens to benefit his city, say with a big charitable donation to the museum (and even all races of people in the city may benefit), that he did a good thing despite his racism and not because of it. This “despiteness” is hard to establish though, and I understand that this line of thinking easily leads to unfalsifiable claims, where every good thing done by a religious person gets attributed to non-religious causes and vice versa for bad things.
But in the case of the racist, it seems clear, doesn’t it? All the good acts done by racists aren’t really fair to count as evidence for “racism is a good thing”. And to your point, all the bad acts done by racists aren’t fair to count as evidence for “racism is a bad thing”. If a racist cuts me off while driving without using their turn signal, I can’t be like “this proves that racism is bad”. We need to establish a causal link. My comment is getting long already, but to me it seems pretty clear that most of the good things done by religious people are things they likely would have done otherwise, since both atheists and religious people alike do plenty of good things, and the same sorts of good things. But there’s a whole class of bad things (usually genocidal type things, but also human abuses, etc) that seem to almost exclusively exist under religious justifications.
You think that nazism is always bad and you can deduce that when a nazi does something good they do it ‘despite’ being nazi. Then you claim the same for religious people. Do you really think the two cases are the same? I will now list a bunch or religious people who mean a great deal to me, and whose work can not be disengaged from being religious: Ferdinand Ebner, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenczweig, Franz Kafka, Jakob Böhme, Endre Ady, Béla Tábor, and I could go on and on. I could not mention one single nazi who means a great deal to me and for somewhat respectable but still somewhat racist people I can always disengage their racism from why they are important to me. So clearly for me the two cases are not paralell. I wonder if you are truly sure that they are parallel for you.
I accept your proposition to make bigoted a technical word. I am too intolerant towards nazis. And I am also intolerant towards various forms of religious zeals.
I think the biggest trickiness of this whole topic comes from the fact that it is indeed not so black and white. To clarify my stance, I cannot deny that there are people who did good acts in a way that can only be attributed to religion, and that they would not have done without religion. We have the following qualities: (good person, bad person) and how they’re done (independently of religion/lack of religion, because of religion, because of lack of religion), and thus 6 total classes of people to investigate.
Just to quickly clarify an ambiguity here, I guess we could have more classes for “good ONLY because of religion” vs “good because of religion in reality, but hypothetically we expect they would have been good without it”. But for the sake of simplicity it seems like we can lump that second type in with the “independently of religion” quality.
Definitely anyone who argues that the class of “Good Person Only Because Of Religion” is empty is being totally insane. There’s a hefty amount of people in this category. I don’t know all the people you listed, but I’m fine saying for sake of argument that they are all in it - although I imagine you’d agree some of them may have been good people and some things even if religion didn’t exist? But I’d like to go in whatever direction you think makes your argument strongest.
Likewise, anyone who argues that the “Bad Person Only Because Of Lack Of Religion” category is empty is also being really biased. I’m sure there are plenty of people who have committed atrocities because “God doesn’t exist so I can do whatever I can get away with”, etc.
I think what’s at stake here is, firstly, the relative sizes of these classes, and secondly, whether their relative size is a historical coincidence or an intrinsic result of something about religiosity.
If the stakes are right, I’m not really sure how to proceed “rigorously”. It’s really a job for sociological studies, since there are enough humans that we could both list individual examples for a very long time - I’m sure we both agree that all 6 classes of people I described have at least a million members alive even just right now. It seems like the best we can do is make persuasive type arguments.
I can think of a few directions of arguments to make, so forgive me in advance if I’m scatterbrained. I’ll just write an idea of one:
Your examples of Good Because Of Religion people are outstanding, “great” people. Such people are not representative of the population as a whole. Perhaps for very outstanding people, religion is more likely to be beneficial. But when we look at how “the masses” (to use an elitist term) use religion to justify things, I usually see it for much more petty things like controlling one’s children, as a justification for condemning groups they just don’t like, as a justification for violence, etc. The role religion plays in the current American social situation is undoubtedly an example of this, and the same goes for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and much of the perpetual conflict in the Middle East in general. I am not aware of similar situations in the world right now that are not largely based on religious zealotry. Even from historical concepts, it seems religion is often used as a tool to manufacture mass consent for these things.
Which evidence?
All evidence, considering it’s based on BELIEF, and not the scientific method. Such as a wall killing a 200k+ army, when such an army would have been impossible in ancient times, and such a wall impossibly huge. The sheer bigoted bullshit that makes you a bad person just for believing in it.
ALL irrational beliefs are a plague on humanity, not just religion!
All evidence, considering it’s based on BELIEF, and not the scientific method.
Would you believe something if it were demonstrated through the scientific method?
Such as a wall killing a 200k+ army, when such an army would have been impossible in ancient times, and such a wall impossibly huge.
I don’t think that a wall could kill an army, regardless of the size of the wall or the army. This is because walls are inanimate objects. I feel like you’re leaving something out of this story.
ALL irrational beliefs are a plague on humanity, not just religion!
Religion isn’t a belief. It’s a social construct. It includes beliefs, and those beliefs may be rational or irrational.
You don’t HAVE TO believe anything proven by the scientific method. That’s literally the entire point of the process.
It had something to do with the Ark of the covenant or something. It just does not make sense to me, and the stakes of actually following through with abrahamic religions are dire. We are talking about gambling away your entire material existence, which you only get one of, on something better that probably does not exist. Regardless, I’m not having this battle with every single person again, I will just wait for AI to advance, which will pretty much deconstruct everything we do with ease soon. It just needs significantly larger context window probably.
