Religion
Related: About this forumEvangelical Christianity over past 200 + years implies Jesus and Creator is a racist. Thoughts?
To my mind, the whole evangelical Christianity concept as applied to people of color in such places as Asia, Australia. the Pacific Islands and the continent of Africa, in particular, the idea that they must be converted. is racist and implies that the Creator and Jesus are racist. After all, they skipped those parts of the world, no Savior went to them, no Savior gave them a shot at being converted to Christianity and relied instead on humans to do it. How does one explain how an entire continent (Australia) was never visited by white missionaries prior to the early 1700s. Why did the deities isolate these brown people for 40,000 years and rely on the development of the technology of sailing ships, navigation instruments (based on clocks)? What happened to the souls of these brown people for all those years? Did these deities just not care?
LakeArenal
(29,799 posts)Holding the 6000 year old grudge for a woman eating fruit.
Major Nikon
(36,900 posts)LakeArenal
(29,799 posts)The fruit of knowledge no less.
Moostache
(10,163 posts)Farmer-Rick
(11,401 posts)Most religions were invented by old men thousands of years ago when female slavery was the norm. That's how polygamy evolved.
Most religions were invented to explain their little chunk of society, in their little part of the world. So, they tend to be very racist.
But the filthy rich in the US have used religion to keep the masses from rising up and taking back their national wealth. It works.
The Magistrate
(96,043 posts)The whole history of Christian thought is an attempt to salvage disappointed expectations and the ignorance of Scripture's authors. Initial devotees were among that portion of humanity which clustered around the great pond of the Mediterranean Sea, and had scant idea there was much of anything elsewhere. Just as something had to be tortured out of the tales and prophecies to carry people over the fact that the world did not end while people who heard the Christ preach still lived, as he is said to have proclaimed, so did discovery of the greater world, from unknown continents to the earth's orbiting the sun, require some doctrinal sleight of hand to smooth over the awkwardness. So it became the job of the believer to acquaint all those not yet informed of the business, so all would have the choice of accepting or rejecting their belief before the End came. Remember the root deity is said to have selected not one race, but one mere nation, as especial favorites, who were to be priests to the rest in the fullness of time. Given such an initial premise, national, ethnic, and racial hierarchies are only to be expected....
Major Nikon
(36,900 posts)The official version isn't so forgiving and still leaves one with the indelible mark of racism on the totally made up holy poltergeist. Not that it really matters as the True Believers will simply claim the magic man works in mysterious ways or we mortals can't possibly understand His will (which presents the other question of why do they pretend they do).
ExtremelyWokeMatt
(161 posts)Im not convinced deities or entities had involvement in every bit of minutia, if there even are any (I havent found any at any rate
not that my experience encompasses all of lived reality of course). It does provide a cover story for a local civilization to explain their exploitation of the other though. No thanks to Saul/Paul of Tarsus, to name one militant bastard of an evangelizer (going to nip that sidebar rant in the bud though).
Its a sometimes extremely unfortunate trait in the universe that living beings gravitate around certain nuclei and repel others, or are repelled by them
often aggressively. Probably purely coincidental, physics being the root of it all. And misunderstandings/accidents/misfirings in complex circuitry. We wouldnt have tragedies otherwise. Hence the phrase the banality of evil.
I mean
think of the fact that eons of complex energetic interaction somehow resulted in a spray-tanned man in the White House eating too much KFC while reading Mein Kampf and farting into the Oval Office furniture cushions while blaming it on his sons
Like seriously what in the actual fuck. Pisses me off to no end.
Karadeniz
(23,417 posts)gospels' outer narrative.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Everyone seems to believe in a god who shares their views on pretty much everything. Racist Christians believe in a racist Jesus. Capitalist Christians believe in capitalist Jesus. Socialist Christians believe in socialist Jesus. So on, so forth.
The reality of the matter is this Jesus guy -- to the extent that he actually existed -- lived in the first century CE in a fairly remote corner of the Roman Empire. It would tough to imagine his opinions on modern-day politics would mirror our own to a significant degree.
Major Nikon
(36,900 posts)But really by the time you get to that point, the critical thinking ship has long since sailed to distant waters.