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Public support. Religion is just a cult with public support.
A quote I saw on Reddit a while back “the only difference between a cult and a religion is the number of people”.
It’s brainwashed billions of people and stolen trillions of $$. An incredibly successful cult. Purely rotten in the core.
When we go down to the scale of individual, a religion can be a positive way of life/thinking that can give positive meaning to someone’s life.
Not every person who’s a believer is automatically evil.
Absolutely, I was raised Lutheran and volunteered a lot with my youth group, we did massive repairs and overhauls to people’s houses. They felt great. I’m now an atheist, but that doesn’t mean I hate religion, it’s just that the Abrahamic religions suck and are full of hate at its core. The problem happens when people take the scripture to heart and then twist it into what they want. That’s what’s evil.
I am “with” the church since I got the same religion my parents got when I was born. I haven’t left the church and I still pay the church tax, but that’s it. I’m not religious myself.
I don’t know religious people, there are none in my social circle. I don’t know religious people’s practices.
I know that fanatics can be found in many fields of life, not just religion, and I know that things can get messy in the bigger scale and that money and power are involved.
I don’t have anything against religions either. I’m against acts that hurt people though. If a religion is the reason someone causes pain in others, that’s not okay.
Not every person who’s a believer is automatically evil.
Maybe not, but they are financially supporting what is often an evil organization.
Pretty sure the founders are dead, too
I don’t really like this article, it dismisses the power a cult leader can have over it’s people and blames the victims. I would say that if the author was starved, increasingly abused in a systematic way, and all sources of support taken away, I bet he would be an enthusiastic follower for at least a little bit of time. If you go in willingly because you have hope that something will help, that doesn’t mean you asked to be abused. A very smug article.
That picture of Pam from The Office, “They’re the same picture”
Definition wise, a cult is merely a religion. Christianity is technically a cult.
Colloquially it’s a con to take control of people who join. If they try to keep you from talking to others outside the group, keep you somewhere without allowing you to leave, and/or gaslight you into thinking you’re better off with letting their leaders make decisions for you: it’s a cult.
Hmm, sounds a lot like scientology
Yes, scientology is a cult.
I’m an atheist and tend to agree but I do give credit to history. Religion did help making people behave better during a time law and order did not really have that far of a reach.
This statement makes no sense at all. Name a time and place in history in which law and order did not exist but religion did and explain how religion made people behave “better,” and how you know the religion did a better job of it than if the religion had not been present.
You think the kings in medevial Europe could police every small village? Of course religion did not do a better job than modern society but some (many?) people do selfish/awful things if not watched but suddenly behave once they are (or think they are in case of an all-seeing god).
You’ve heard of terms like mayor, sheriff, reeve, bailiff, baron, count, duke, right? The whole reason feudalism was invented was to solve the issue of governing large territories. Government from the local level all the way up to the level of monarch absolutely did exist in the middle ages.
Don’t spread false “facts” that support religious talking points. Religion has enough support on its own without needing to rely on atheists promoting its lies.
You’re both having entirely the wrong conversation. Similarly to science in those periods, it is nearly impossible to split the two. It is also unimportant.
Religion was often the motivation for scientific theories or study. Many of the early scientists investigated the natural world because they viewed it as a way to understand god/gods. Religion was fundamental to early science, but importantly, it is not a necessary feature of religion. Take astrology for instance, it was both a religious or supernatural exploration and also a somewhat scientific one. Astronomy was later taken out of it while ditching the baggage. To say that we should always have just had astronomy is like saying we always should’ve just had the iPhone. It took progress to get there. Religion was part of that progress until it wasn’t.
Same thing here. Morality is discoverable and reasonable. Early religion WAS morality. It’s like if I say to my toddler that Santa watches to see if they’re naughty. We don’t need to do that. But if I say that a story of Santa didn’t contribute to their morality as an adult, I’d be lying to myself.
All this to say, early morality and religion are inseparable. People followed the rulers that you spoke of because they claimed to be religiously appointed. It contributed to order. Is it necessary? We now know that it isn’t. But that’s why it doesn’t matter. It was used back then and it was effective because for better and for worse, it helped cooperation within a population.
That doesn’t address anything that I said, and you’ve just added even more of the same utterly false religious talking points into the mix that I was objecting to in the original post. The point I initially objected to was OP’s absurd claim that there was a time when law and order didn’t exist, but religion made people better.
To address what you said; early religion was not morality. Morality and religion are two entirely different things, despite religious peoples’ insistence that they are the same. Religion is and always has been just another form of authority. It has its own rules and laws, just like political authority does. None of it has anything to do with morality. Morality is intrinsic to the human species, and where morality and religion intersect, it is because religion has co-opted morality and then claimed credit for and authority over it.
Do you mean “cult” or “Cult”? Are we talking the generic group of people with a shared belief system or the often-associated scam?
Now put those two together…
