bady 59 points 3 years ago

I am an atheist and I believe the world would be much better without religions. Having said that, I don't conisder it as a scam in itslef. Instead they must have been something evolved over the time due to our ignorance, fear and helplessness. The very same factors that still keep them going.

But hell yeah, people are exploited in the name of religion. I'm from India, one of the largest so called democracies, currently under the governance of a fascist hindutva party that thrives on polarizing people in the name of religion.

BTW I was actually looking for specific instances of scams carefully plotted by known people, companies or even countries instead of broad answers like religion.

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givesomefucks 28 points 3 years ago

Religion was needed, but at some point logic and critical thinking should have been enough.

The issue is the wealthiest benefit when the masses don't have the tools to use that. They want people who won't question rules and blindly follow them.

Humans are just animals, we're not born with those abilities, we need to be taught.

So we see education outright cut or forced to focus on rote memorization rather than the process to understand and figure shit out on our own.

We should be past religion as a species, but it's not automatic, we have to continually teach the next generation to think for themselves

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bitsplease 24 points 3 years ago

Having said that, I don’t conisder it as a scam in itslef

I think the more correct thing to say is that Organized Religion is a scam. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being religious (provided you don't force those views on others), but organized religion always winds up rotten at the top - and it's not surprising. Organized religion is one of the most powerful tools for controlling people, even if it wasn't (though it might have been) intended to be that way at the beginning. A king/president/dictator can threaten the lives of their subjects, but only a holy man can threaten their immortal soul (from the perspective of the devotee anyways).

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theshatterstone54 3 points 3 years ago

Now that's a take I completely stand behind and agree with. I couldn't have put it better myself. That said, some religions were not made with the intent of controlling others. I don't think Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism were made with the intent to control people. We can argue about Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as they were made for control by their founders, and what they intended for these movements after their deaths we do not know (or at least I don't, maybe someone out there does).

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richieadler 1 point 3 years ago

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being religious (provided you don’t force those views on others)

Hum. That's like saying "there's nothing wrong with being convinced that 2+2=5". There's something intrinsically mistaken about it, and I don't think it's defensible.

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ewe 12 points 3 years ago

Just imagine what could have been done in the last 300 years if every dollar that was donated to churches went to some other cause, or back into the pockets of the masses. There is an immense amount of wealth that is trapped in the collective real estate, bank accounts, etc owned by churches. I'm not even talking about megachurches or the mormon's giant stack of cash, just mom'n'pop little parishes that are everywhere across the US.

If ALL that money was still kicking around in the economy and in the pockets of people to spend on real things, building real businesses, etc...we'd be way better off.

Always makes me sad when I visit my in-laws who live in a particularly bible thumpy area and you go and there are spots there where churches outnumber normal businesses. It seems like it's just a huge drain on the local economy devoting that much money into propping up churches of various kinds...

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colforge 11 points 3 years ago

There’s a church across the street from my home in a small rural town in Oklahoma. It sits completely empty except for about 90 minutes from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM when about 6 cars pull up into the parking lot and maybe 15 people saunter in for Sunday service after ringing a loud bell announcing to the whole neighborhood. None of these attendees live in the neighborhood I might add.

There are literally dozens of other churches just like it throughout the town. It blows my mind that a religion that claims to be about spreading the love of their savior and saving as many people as possible from literal damnation would let a resource like that go unused. They could have volunteers there every day of the week helping to improve the community and help people in need but they couldn’t care less.

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applejacks -1 points 3 years ago

Churches do an immense amount of charity work and helping their communities.

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kylua 4 points 3 years ago

Sometimes I mull over what state we'd be in as a society if instead of celebrating a man's deeds we had been celebrating nature and the environment that hosts us since the beginning.

I can't help but think there would be a lot less damage to the environment and less greed.

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ZodiacSF1969 1 point 3 years ago

BTW I was actually looking for specific instances of scams carefully plotted by known people, companies or even countries instead of broad answers like religion.

Lesson for next time, use the text part of your post to define what you are asking or are interested in hearing. Otherwise you get everyone giving glib answers that suck like the above.

BTW, I'm reading Smartest Guys In The Room, the book about Enron, you might be interested in looking up that company. They used very complex financial instruments to deceive shareholders and Wall Street and boost their stock price. Bunch of assholes, some of the shit they pulled was obscene.

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bady 1 point 3 years ago

Lesson for next time, use the text part of your post to define what you are asking or are interested in hearing.

Right, I should've seen it coming. But as long as the discussions are healthy, instead of mudslinging, I'm kind of okay with it.

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spiderman 1 point 3 years ago

thrives on polarizing people in the name of religion

things have been like this for a long time, irrespective of the parties. but this has been going too far for the past two decades, especially after the current prime minister started his period.

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bady 0 points 3 years ago

True that.

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