Religions - Search/Destroy

Yes, yes, yes (whatever the whatever is).

I suggest reading Philip Pullman's wonderful recent His Dark Materials trilogy. It's marketed at kids, and one central theme is that religion, even if it is all true (as it is in this fantasy world), is still a very bad thing.

-- Jean Bouchard (jeanb@cwk.imag.net), March 17, 2002.

Is it acceptable to say of a Religion that you think it's a load of rubbish, or has had very bad social effects, or whatever?

I think, in Ireland for example it would be really easy to say this, and I hear it all the time, having done about 3 weeks of seminars about Religion in Sociology. But UNUSUALLY FOR ME(ahem) I'd blame the society in general which accomodated a Catholic Church which operated the way it did.

I think it's pretty absurd when you have all these fucking arty types blaming religion for wars and things. I mean give humans some credit! We could have and always would have found something else to cause wars over.

fair point, I reckon atheists like Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Genghis Khan & Pol Pot have racked up much higher body counts than any religious fanatic, and not just because there was more people they could kill.

my basic point in this thread: you often hear people talk about Islam as though it is some kind of especially "bad" religion - generally illiberal, sexist, homophobic, etc. What I'm asking is firstly, can we talk about religions like that, attempting to say that some are nicer than others? Secondly, are the kind of points people make against Islam in any way justifiable, or are they comments that could be made against all religions?

Nixon was a Quaker.

I was just thinking about those books today because I'm reading the Aeneid and in Book VI it unexpectedly gets interesting because Aeneas goes into the underworld. T are definite differences between the Aeneid and The Amber Spyglass but I think Pullman must have drawn a lot from it because of the similarity in style between the scenes in both books. And this is the only interesting part of the Aeneid and I'm very excited! Er, thank you.

In answer to your questions, sure it's acceptable, but saying that is the same as belonging to one religion and saying all others are wrong. If I was religious that's probably what I'd think, so I'm not saying thinking you're Absolutely Right is bad, but that IS what you're doing.

I'm not particularly religious myself, so I can't say destroy them, in all honesty. If it comforts you, it's all good.

However, I think that the mentalists find them too easy to hide behind. For example, Islam isn't worse than any other. Right now, it's cool to say that it causes terrorists to wage war. By most accounts, it is a peaceful one. It's not Islam that caused events like 11th September to happen; it was the 19 men themselves.

but anyway, religion... maybe we could do this like in Duel. which is the worse religion, Islam or Asatru?

yeah, but that's a rip off of when Odyseus goes to the underworld.

I think this is a cruel misrepresentation of Islam. on what basis do you make this comment?

Destroy: Southern Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Wahhabism, The Nation of Islam, Hollywood kabbalists, Scientology, and most, not all, fundamentalist interpretations.

I wonder is there some way of merging the Church of England with Shia?