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Thread: Persecution of Religions

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    Persecution of Religions

    Last Saturday, another shooter went into a Synagogue and opened fire on Jews. I don't know about you, but I feel like every time I turn around lately, it's another church, another mosque, another synagogue being set on fire, or shot up, or bombed. Sure it's happened in the past, but not with this kind of frequency. When you add to this the governments who are outlawing certain religions, and torturing their practitioners and throwing them into jail (such as in China), you have to wonder...

    Even those who don't advocate violence get caught up in anti-religious rhetoric. They say silly things such as religion being blamed for war (most wars are fought over land and resources). We have politicians of the left who, for example, find "Christian" too embarrassing to mention -- Clinton and Obama both used euphemisms in speaking of the Sri Lanka bombing rather than bring themselves to say the word Christian.

    Tell me, when did religion become such a wickedness? When did the world declare war on it? When did tolerance go out the window?

    I am disturbed by all this.

























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    When fake ass Christians decided to be intolerant and ignorant; trying to force “religious freedom” (ONLY for themselves) upon the rest of us that want progress and better lives.

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    Please tell me you're not one of those people who think not saying "Merry Christmas" at stores is an act of persecution. I spent my four high school years putting up with evangelicals who think Christianity is supposed to be the official religion of the United States. It's the rabid evangelicals that give Christianity a bad name, similar to how Al-Quaeda and ISIS give Islam a bad name. And I mean the evangelicals that use the Bible to justify their hate, think allowing gay people to have rights promotes all things "morally unwholesome", think treating all Americans as equal is literally communism, etc. All while sticking up for a madman like President Trump, no less, because he tells them what they want to hear. American Christians actually have it easy compared to, say, parts of the Middle East, where refusing to subscribe to the official religion is considered worthy of the death penalty. Not to mention that in places like North Korea, religion may be considered a bit of an inconvenience to leaders who want to be worshipped like gods. And contrary to what Fox News wants you to believe, not all attacks on churches are motivated by religion (or lack thereof); the 2015 church shooting in South Carolina, for example, was racially motivated. And I think antisemitism in general has more to do with race than with religion.


    By the way, a quick Google search tells me that nearly half of Americans are Protestant. If you count Catholicism as a version of Christianity, then the majority of Americans are Christian! The "persecution" comes from the Constitution allowing people to freely subscribe to other religions, or no religion at all. The Christian politicians who are not ultra-right evangelicals are generally quiet about their religious views because they don't think they should be playing favorites with religions (Obama and Hillary are both Christians, by the way). Much of what is perceived as "persecution" in America comes mainly from some hardcore evangelicals taking offense to a vocal minority disagreeing with them, while religion is "demonized" because of people throughout history using it to justify violence and hate.

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    So I am a Christian and I work in ministry. Here are a few thoughts I have on the idea of religious persecution because I see this get brought up a lot. I can't really speak on the experiences of other faiths, but I can talk as a Christian in the Bible Belt where a LOT of people wax on about being persecuted for Jesus.

    1. A lot of the attacks on houses of worship in the US are not directed so much at their faith as they are their race/nationality/ethnicity. For instance, a large portion of the Christian churches who have been victimized by bombings, arson and shootings are specifically black churches. There's a long history of brutal violence directed at black churches by white nationalist groups and individuals. Jewish people have been persecuted for years by the same groups. Muslims on the other hand, get of seem to get it at both ends, both from a general fearmongering about what the majority Muslims actually practice as well as a general distrust of a religion mostly made up of POC. Attacking a mosque, church or synagogue is more about attacking a gathering where they can instill the most terror in people who aren't white or protestant. Obviously that's not true in 100% of the cases, but in a large majority of times it is. It's a mistake to claim otherwise, because it ignores the real problem which is not that society isn't tolerant enough of religion, but that society still mostly doesn't tolerate people who aren't white protestants.

    2. I don't really think that American Christians can claim in good faith that they are routinely persecuted for their beliefs. We are, at least culturally, the majority. Now, I would argue that a good number of people who claim to be Christians in the US don't give a crap about the religion at all, but rather they admire the trappings of cultural Christendom and feel a kinship with it because it is so heavily culturally enforced as the norm. Nonetheless it is the majority influence on the culture as far as religion is concerned in the US and has been for a long time. My religion is literally my job, which means that I get a lot of questions and debates from others, but I can honestly say that nobody has tried to harm me or threaten me for my faith. I know that the local Muslim leaders in my city have had a VERY different experience than I have.

    3. While persecution of Christians does happen in some areas of the world, keep in mind that in countries where Christian practices are heavily monitored, regulated or even persecuted by the government or individuals that often times they are not the only faith getting that treatment. Christians like to use China as an example of modern-day persecution, but the problem is that Christianity is not the only religion that is heavily regulated in China. So it's a terrible example of modern-day persecution that is specific to Christians.

    4. Disagreement and enforcing the rights of others to the disagreement of religious folks is not persecution. Christianity survived Nero, it can handle Twitter debates with other religions & baking cakes for gay couples. Seriously, this idea that your right to practice your faith is being trampled because somebody disagrees with you or forces you to acknowledge the rights and humanity of somebody else is just...well...a lie.

    5. Christians don't really have any room to talk about persecution, frankly. I'm not sure I need to explain the history of that.

    So yeah, just some things to consider.
    Last edited by eachpassingphase; 05-01-2019 at 09:42 PM. Reason: Spelling nonsense

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    I gotta say, I've been a little worried about this, too.
    And I'm not talking about the "merry christmas" bullshit. I identify as christian, but, I'm DAMN sure not a right wing evangelical. The "war on christmas" bullshit is laughable, especially when you get down to the fact that Christmas draws HEAVILY from pagan festivals like Sol Invictus. And, I certainly don't feel "persecuted" by things like people saying " happy holidays, " in an attempt to be more inclusive. I think it's a GOOD thing.

    I'm talking about the serious shit.
    Damn near 900 churches have been vandalized in France in the past couple of years.
    And then, of course, the violence: the mosque shooting, the synagogue shootings, the church bombings: this shit terrifies me. It's like there's been some sort of quickening.

    I'm afraid that we're going to see this escalate. I think we'll see attacks on mosques as revenge for the recent church bombings, and, then, more attacks on churches and mosques, creating a rapidly intensifying cycle of violence.

    I think we're gonna hit a point where places of worship need armed guards. I fucking HATE it that people are being fucking KILLED at their places of worship.
    And, I think this is just the beginning.

    Normal, tolerant folk are going to die, in increasing numbers, at the hands of extremists and fringe secterians.

    Also, we have idiotic "christians" who aren't bothered by Muslims being killed - I've run into a few of those.

    One thing that really gets me is that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, all come from the same place. They're all abrahamic monotheism.

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    I think that part of the problem is that it's become much more socially acceptable to "other" someone or a group.

    Part of that comes from it being easy to find those who will agree your view of some group as the "other" to start treating poorly, start to demonize and then in extreme cases act violently towards. "Other"ing a particular group can be used to justify attacks or other poor treatment.

    Religion has always been something that has frequently lead to "other"ing, sometimes by the members of the religion and sometimes by those outside of it. I don't think it's because we're turning against religion more, so much as we're just "other"ing different groups and religion is an easy way to identify a group of "others".

    I think that the change is being caused less by people turning against religion, and more by our increased societal tendency towards "other"ing different groups to find someone to fight against. Somehow the internet has reduced peoples tolerance for differences and increased their appetite for finding a group to blame for their problems.

    What's the difference between a buddhist and a non-buddhist? The non-buddhist thinks there's a difference.

    I think it's important to remember that we're all human and we all have more in common than we have differences. We're all capable of "other"ing a group. We'd all like to be able to explain the problems of the world in simple terms. We're all capable of seeing a different group as less than our group, but in reality we are all humans, and our problems aren't caused by some "other", they're caused by people who are more like us than they are different from us.

    Inside all of us, if we allow ourselves to see a different group as "other" than us, it can lead to some horrible extreme actions. If we try to remember that the person who we're "other"ing is just another human being experiencing the world in a different way, it can help us feel more kindly towards them.

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    It's all religious absurdism in my opinion. To me, faith and spirituality are private things that you keep between yourself and your gods or whatever you feel connected to. The mistake people made with faith was letting charlatans take it over and turn it into a business. And yes, religion is a business. They all have the same pitches. "Your life sucks. You don't have it. You need it. Now you've got it. Uh oh. Those people don't have it/are using a faulty religion. Better show them the light!" Every one of these terrorists (Christian, Muslim, etc.) have been indoctrinated to believe that they have the god given right to use force against those who believe differently instead of letting people be. It became about territory and conquest and power, not about connection and faith and understanding. Faith and spirituality CAN be beautiful things, but organized religion is ugly and vile no matter who it is. We are better off without it. The sooner we realize that we don't need religions and places of worship to feel connected to our gods (whoever and whatever they may be), the sooner the bloodshed and hatred stops.

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    Good points, @BRoswell

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    Except the people who are burning black churches or shooting up Jews in Synagogues aren’t doing it in the name of Christianity; we don’t even know if the shooters are Christians. We only know that they are White Nationalists and the shootings are hate crimes. As mentioned above, the shootings and bombings aren’t about religion; they’re about hating the “tribe” or the “others” inside; the “captives” inside are like shooting fish in a barrel - easy targets.

    In the case of the bombing of Christians in Sri Lanka, that is thought to be in retribution for the Mosque shooting in New Zealand (a White Nationalist hate crime). Hate begets hate.

    According to the FBI, the biggest rising threat to national security in the United States is rising White Nationalism and hate crimes; against blacks, gays, Jews, Muslims, etc. Anything that the White Nationalists consider a threat. They’re being radicalized online, the hate is spreading like a cancer.

    More than half of hate crimes, about 3 out of every 5, targeted a person’s race or ethnicity, while about 1 out of 5 targeted their religion. Of the more than 7,000 incidents reported last year, 2,013 targeted black Americans, while 938 targeted Jewish Americans. Incidents targeting people for their sexual orientation accounted for 1,130 hate crimes, according to the FBI.
    To White Nationalists, Jews are both an ethnicity AND a religion (that they want to get rid of).

    This happened on April 27th:




    Yet, a lot of the right thinks this is all Fake News.

    The situation in France is due to France being a highly secular country, which is difficult for a country like the U.S. to grok. France has radical secularism.

    See this, which explains: https://www.newsweek.com/spate-attac...statue-1370800

    But they’re not KILLING anyone. Spreading poop on a Catholic Church is a LOT different than shooting and killing a bunch of people in a Synagogue.

    “War on Christmas” is code speak for “Hate Jews” (for saying Happy Holidays).
    Last edited by allegro; 05-04-2019 at 09:48 AM.

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    This topic makes me want to watch 'God Told Me To'. Larry Cohen's psychological horror movie about how people are killing each other because God told them to. It's a surreal take on religious extremism and cultism.

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    The "Easter worshipper" thing was disturbing. The American left-wing is just disgusting. That's why disgusting people like Donald Trump get elected.

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    White Supremacy is being fueled by Trump, but it’s not new (it’s really old) and it was certainly not “created” by anything except extreme conservative nationalism. It’s called “Unite the Right” against Jews, blacks, gays, Muslims, Catholics, etc.

    This will help you understand the KKK in the United States.

    The 20th to 21st century Klan actually formed after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction period. Then it was entirely contained within the South, mostly in the rural South. It [was] all men. There were violent attacks on people who were engaged, or [wanted] to be engaged, in the Reconstruction state, [including] freed blacks, southern reconstructionists, politicians and northerners who move to the South. That collapses for a variety of reasons in the 1870s.

    Then, the Klan is reborn in the teens, but becomes really big in the early 1920s. And that is the second Klan. That is probably the biggest organized outburst of white supremacy in American history, encompassing millions of members or more. ... And that's not in the South, [it's] primarily in the North. It's not marginal. It runs people for office. It has a middle class base. They have an electoral campaign. They are very active in the communities. And they have women's Klans, who are very active and very effective in some of the communities. That dissolves into mostly scandals around the late '20s.

    Then there's some fascist activity around the wars — pro-German, some Nazi activity in the United States — not sizable, but obviously extremely troubling.

    The Klan and white supremacy reemerge in a bigger and more organized way around the desegregation and civil rights movement — again, mostly in the South, and back to that Southern model: vicious, violent, defensive, Jim Crow and white rights in the South.

    And then it kind of ebbs. After a while, it kind of comes back again in the late '80s and the early 21st Century as another era. And then there's kind of a network of white supremacism that encompasses the Klan, which is more peripheral by this time. Also Neo-Nazi influence is coming as white power skinheads, racist music, and also neo-Nazi groups. The Klans tend to be super nationalist, but these neo-Nazi groups have a big international agenda.

    Then the last wave is where we are now, which is the Internet appears. The movement has been in every other era as movement of people in physical space like in meetings, rallies, protests and demonstrations and so forth. It becomes primarily a virtual world, and as you can see, has its own consequences — many consequences. It's much harder to track. And then there are these blurred lines between all these various groups that get jumbled together as the alt-right and people who come from the more traditional neo-Nazi world. We're in a very different world now.
    In the 1920s, synagogues were targeted by the KKK. Can you run through other examples of violence like this?

    People will say the '20s Klan was not as violent as other Klans. But that's really because its violence took a different form. So there, the threat that the Klan manufactured was the threat of being swapped — all the positions of society being taken by the others — so immigrants, Catholics, Jews and so forth. So the violence was things like, for example, I studied deeply the state of Indiana where the Klan was very strong — pushing Catholics school teachers out of their jobs in public schools and getting them fired, running Jewish merchants out of town, creating boycott campaigns, whispering campaigns about somebody's business that would cause it to collapse. So it's a different kind of violence but it's really targeted as expelling from the communities those who are different than the white, native-born Protestants who were the members of the Klan. So it takes different forms in different times. It's not always the violence that we think about now, like shootings.

    When did we start seeing the violence that we see today?

    Well, the violence that we see today is not that dissimilar from the violence of the Klan in the '50s and '60s, where there was, kind of, the violence of terrorism. So there's two kinds of violence in white supremacy. There's the "go out and beat up people on the street" violence — that's kind of the skinhead violence. And then there's the sort of strategic violence. You know, the violence that's really meant to send a message to a big audience, so that the message is dispersed and the victims are way beyond the people who are actually injured.

    You see that in the '50s, '60s in the South, and you see it now.
    Adherents of white nationalist groups believe that white identity should be the organizing principle of the countries that make up Western civilization. White nationalists advocate for policies to reverse changing demographics and the loss of an absolute, white majority. Ending non-white immigration, both legal and illegal, is an urgent priority — frequently elevated over other racist projects, such as ending multiculturalism and miscegenation — for white nationalists seeking to preserve white, racial hegemony.

    White nationalists seek to return to an America that predates the implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Both landmark pieces of legislation are cited as the harbingers of white dispossession and so-called “white genocide” — the idea that whites in the United States are being systematically replaced and destroyed.

    In addition to their obsession with declining white birth rates, these themes comprise some of the most powerful propaganda that animates and drives the white nationalist movement. Adherents frequently cite Pat Buchanan’s 2001 book, The Death of the West, which argues that these declining white birth rates and an “immigrant invasion” will transform the United States into a third world nation by 2050, as the text responsible for their awakening, or “red pill.”

    White nationalists also frequently cite American Renaissance, a pseudo-academic organization dedicated to spreading the myth of black criminality, scientific racism and eugenic theories. Its annual conference, a multi-day symposium with a suit-and-tie dress code, is a typical early stop for new white nationalists.

    Although it isn’t ubiquitous, there is a current of antisemitism in the modern day white nationalist movement. Jews are common scapegoats for the perceived cultural and political grievances of white nationalists. White nationalist and antisemitic literature and conferences also have frequent author and speaker overlap. Kevin MacDonald, the author of The Culture of Critique — a trilogy of books alleging a Jewish control of culture and politics with evolutionary psychology — is a frequent guest in white nationalist media and at events. His writing is frequently cited as what introduces white nationalists to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy
    Last edited by allegro; 05-06-2019 at 04:40 PM.

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    or, like, don't feed the troll.

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    Quote Originally Posted by bobbie solo View Post
    or, like, don't feed the troll.
    The dude made one post. ONE POST that has led to a moderate amount of mostly polite discussion. And then there's you, contributing nothing. Who's really the troll here?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Swykk View Post
    When fake ass Christians decided to be intolerant and ignorant; trying to force “religious freedom” (ONLY for themselves) upon the rest of us that want progress and better lives.
    Were those "fake ass Christians" who got bombed in Sri Lanka? Were those "fake ass Christians" who had their historic churches destroyed by ISIS, and who died, or were forcibly converted, forced to marry Muslim men, or forced into exile? Were those hundred of girls "fake as Christians" who were kidnapped by the Boko Haram, beaten, forced to convert, and married to Muslim men? Were those "fake ass Christians" who had their churches burned down in Louisiana? Are those "fake ass Christians" who have their churches vandalized (including set on fire) at the rate of three per day in France?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick_Nicholas View Post
    Please tell me you're not one of those people who think not saying "Merry Christmas" at stores is an act of persecution. I spent my four high school years putting up with evangelicals who think Christianity is supposed to be the official religion of the United States. It's the rabid evangelicals that give Christianity a bad name, similar to how Al-Quaeda and ISIS give Islam a bad name. And I mean the evangelicals that use the Bible to justify their hate, think allowing gay people to have rights promotes all things "morally unwholesome", think treating all Americans as equal is literally communism, etc. All while sticking up for a madman like President Trump, no less, because he tells them what they want to hear. American Christians actually have it easy compared to, say, parts of the Middle East, where refusing to subscribe to the official religion is considered worthy of the death penalty. Not to mention that in places like North Korea, religion may be considered a bit of an inconvenience to leaders who want to be worshipped like gods. And contrary to what Fox News wants you to believe, not all attacks on churches are motivated by religion (or lack thereof); the 2015 church shooting in South Carolina, for example, was racially motivated. And I think antisemitism in general has more to do with race than with religion.


    By the way, a quick Google search tells me that nearly half of Americans are Protestant. If you count Catholicism as a version of Christianity, then the majority of Americans are Christian! The "persecution" comes from the Constitution allowing people to freely subscribe to other religions, or no religion at all. The Christian politicians who are not ultra-right evangelicals are generally quiet about their religious views because they don't think they should be playing favorites with religions (Obama and Hillary are both Christians, by the way). Much of what is perceived as "persecution" in America comes mainly from some hardcore evangelicals taking offense to a vocal minority disagreeing with them, while religion is "demonized" because of people throughout history using it to justify violence and hate.
    I'm an old Jew. I'm usually not all that sympathetic to a religion that has, as part of its scriptures, Jews supposedly saying of their God, "Let his blood be upon us and our children."

    But I don't find evangelicals being like ISIS and Al Qaeda. Surely you jest. None of them try to blow me up. Nor do traddy Catholics. You don't have nuns wearing explosive vests getting on busses and shouting "Hail Mary full of grace" before they detonate.

    Simply put, I live in a country where I can practice my Jewish faith. The anti-Semitism that I put up with doesn't really affect that. Indeed, when the worst happens, such as these synagogue shootings, the entire nation rallies around us -- even the Muslims.

    I suggest you get a thicker skin.

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    I feel you, @Cat Mom .

    But, there is ONE detail of the Christchurch shootings that has a Christians vs Muslims vibe to it, and that's the part where dude had the dates and such, of historical battles between Christians and Muslims, written on his guns.

    So, yeah, I think it IS in the name of Jesus, but, white nationalist jesus.

    And, I would draw a parallel between militant racist Christian groups like Christian Identity, and Jihadist groups.

    The motivation may be slightly different, but, they're both violent fringe movements with ties to religions.

    "Violence begets violence:" that's what stands out to me the most, in what you said.

    And, that's my fear: I think that there will be bloody response to the Easter bombings, and then a violent response to THAT response, and it could escalate, and go on and on.

    Edit: sorry. "Hate begets hate." I read it as " violence begets violence, " for some reason.
    Last edited by elevenism; 05-06-2019 at 08:45 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by elevenism View Post
    I think we're gonna hit a point where places of worship need armed guards. I fucking HATE it that people are being fucking KILLED at their places of worship.
    My synagogue is currently discussing armed security. We hate that we have to do it. Firstly because it is extreme. And secondly because we are not made of money and it will definitely mean canceling some of our other programs. But do we have another choice?

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    Quote Originally Posted by BRoswell View Post
    It's all religious absurdism in my opinion. To me, faith and spirituality are private things that you keep between yourself and your gods or whatever you feel connected to.
    Which is exactly the sort of anti-religious bigotry we've come to expect from too many non-religious. You seek to amputate our religious beings, so that we don't actually live it in our day to day lives.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cat Mom View Post
    Except the people who are burning black churches or shooting up Jews in Synagogues aren’t doing it in the name of Christianity
    Actually, the shooter at the Chabad synagogue in Poway very much did it in the name of Christianity. His manifesto spoke in great detail about how his Christian faith had shaped his racist views. Indeed, the one thing his pastor was most disturbed about, was how fully he seemed to grasp the Reform Christian theology of salvation -- he seemed to be as genuine a Christian as you can get (just a heretical, sinful one).

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    As bleak as what @BRoswell said is, a lot of it is true.

    I would say that organized religion, for all the good effects it can have, is also fucking DANGEROUS, because of a few people.

    There's a verse in the old testament that says something to the effect of "if you find a town where a different God is worshipped, then, you must kill everyone there, and kill all their animals, and burn the town."

    Here's another thing. The Christians of TODAY aren't usually killing people, @Jaguar , but think of the crusades and the inquisition. ANd, I think part of the reasons that Muslims ARE, is because Islam is a much newer religion. I think that, in another 500 years, there won't be hardly any Muslims who take the violent shit in the Koran, (like that verse in the bible,) so literally. Christianity and Judaism have had time to mellow. Islam hasn't had nearly as much time.
    @Jaguar , we always have at least one person armed at my church. We rotate who it is: the sheriff, a cop, one dude with a concealed carry permit. Could you guys do it like that?
    Last edited by elevenism; 05-06-2019 at 08:56 PM.

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    Ugh... people do bad stuff to people, and they justify it with what they have at hand.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jinsai View Post
    Ugh... people do bad stuff to people, and they justify it with what they have at hand.
    Yeah...this is true, to a degree. Perhaps religious extremists would have killed people for some other reason.

    But, I truly believe that some of these people WOULDN'T commit violent acts, if it weren't for religion.

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    Quote Originally Posted by elevenism View Post
    Yeah...this is true, to a degree. Perhaps religious extremists would have killed people for some other reason.

    But, I truly believe that some of these people WOULDN'T commit violent acts, if it weren't for religion.
    The biggest mistake, generally, when dealing with senseless acts, is to accept seeing it pinned on something unrelated but equally senseless, like supernatural beliefs. It's a red herring. It's an easy trick. At this point, most of the time, religion's just coded language. Most of the time, I feel like when people are talking about their deeply held convictions, it's blatant doublespeak.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jaguar View Post
    Actually, the shooter at the Chabad synagogue in Poway very much did it in the name of Christianity. His manifesto spoke in great detail about how his Christian faith had shaped his racist views. Indeed, the one thing his pastor was most disturbed about, was how fully he seemed to grasp the Reform Christian theology of salvation -- he seemed to be as genuine a Christian as you can get (just a heretical, sinful one).
    Sorry, I wasn’t familiar with the Poway shooter. (I was HIGHLY impressed with the Rabbi in that situation, though, wow, very inspiring.). Yes, this shooter is disturbing. There appears to be controversy as to anti-Semitism in evangelicalism:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/relig...lical-pastors/

    It’s true that many Christians blame all Jews for killing Jesus (discounting the fact that Jesus was a Jew). All this “pro Israel” crap from the right isn’t because they care about Jews; it’s only because the Bible tells them to protect Jews in Israel (where Jesus was born) so Jesus will come back.

    But these White Nationalists are using the Bible to explain hatred they already have.

    They are getting radicalized by 8chan.

    People who shoot up or bomb innocent people due to their religion, race or ethnicity are TERRORISTS.
    Last edited by allegro; 05-06-2019 at 10:28 PM.

  26. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jinsai View Post
    The biggest mistake, generally, when dealing with senseless acts, is to accept seeing it pinned on something unrelated but equally senseless, like supernatural beliefs. It's a red herring. It's an easy trick. At this point, most of the time, religion's just coded language. Most of the time, I feel like when people are talking about their deeply held convictions, it's blatant doublespeak.
    AH.
    Dude, yes.
    This elaboration makes me totally see what you mean.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jaguar View Post
    My synagogue is currently discussing armed security. We hate that we have to do it. Firstly because it is extreme. And secondly because we are not made of money and it will definitely mean canceling some of our other programs. But do we have another choice?
    Up until fairly recently, we worked out at the gym at the JCC up the street (we quit because we built a gym in the basement LOL). In Chicago, there were several bomb threats to the JCC’s here last year. We all got emails, but the community refused to let it stop them. There’s no way to totally prevent bombs. I just can’t understand all of this awful violence.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jaguar View Post
    Which is exactly the sort of anti-religious bigotry we've come to expect from too many non-religious. You seek to amputate our religious beings, so that we don't actually live it in our day to day lives.
    It's bigoted to say that faith should be something that is kept private and special instead of being thrown around like a great deal on a used car? I reject that completely, and I don't care who that offends. Too many people want to feel like they're part of a club, not in touch with their gods. That's what religion is. (Religion, not faith. Read my words carefully.) It's a series of clubs designed to make humans feel good about themselves. It's all about narcissism, not about a higher power, and certainly not about being in touch with that higher power. That's why all these religions have figureheads. Pastors, rabbis, clerics. It's all about giving humans something to focus on, because the concept of a higher power is something that's beyond our basic comprehension. We've watered down the concept of gods and the vast powers of our universe so that it's easily digestible and available in your local bookstore. People can follow whatever religion they want, but religions are not special to me, and I'm not going to treat them as such. I am respectful to a point, but only to a point. I do not believe that religion should govern our lives, or that we should live in fear of them.

    Like I said, faith and belief can be beautiful things, but they've been co-opted by organizations that wish to twist them into weapons, which is an utterly tragic (and very human) thing to do. My belief is that religion will either destroy us, or we will somehow move past it and arrive somewhere more enlightened. The former seems more likely, but I would like to hold out hope for the latter, no matter how foolish it may be.
    Last edited by BRoswell; 05-06-2019 at 10:26 PM.

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    I wish I hadn’t temporarily taken this dude off ignore to read his responses because I’ll never get that time back and sustained damage to my eyes from rolling them so hard.

    The people with more more patience than me already broke it down for you—terrorists will always try to justify their actions. 8chan and the trash Trump administration are riling up morons.

    But keep doing your tired process:

    01 Whataboutism

    02 Calling those of us that don’t give a fuck about what religion you practice bigots because we don’t want your religion to be our rules nor do we want to hear about it 24/7; especially this false narrative about Christians being oppressed in the US.

    03 Blather, Bitch, And Repeat
    Last edited by Swykk; 05-07-2019 at 06:17 AM.

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    @Jaguar who are you?

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