The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

Oh, but religion will affect politics. They doesn't make it in any way acceptable for religious groups to be persecuted in any way.

It's just a fact of life: anything that gets big enough will become a political concern, it's how the game generally works.

Speaking as a religious person, people should be allowed to say and think what they feel. The New Atheist and Skeptic movement certainly have every right to share their beliefs freely as well as why they feel it.

It's just some of their most prominent members were smug assholes with the worst having a very European/American sense of cultural superiority as well as Tautological Templar bits (I'm a rational person, ergo every one of my beliefs is right).

It happens to the best of ideas.

One rationalist associate of mine said there were many valid reasons to criticize Mother Theresa, the Catholic Church, and her care. However, he had an issue with the optics of the way Christopher Hitchens did because, "At the end of the day, he walked into the hospital, yelled about its care, and then flew away in his private jet while shaking his head about those filthy poor people living in squalor. Leaving behind the people dedicating their lives to helping people-albeit badly trained."

Antitheists (atheists who outright wish to stop religion) are something of an irony-a lot of the evils of religion come from having a very similar attitude that they have: Smug superiority and tribalism. That's why it's not too surprising New Atheists tend to adopt scientific racism and the like. The brand is different, but it's still the same product.

That'd actually be my second counter-argument, too-spirituality is largely branding. One can fairly easily make secular ideologies that promote the same sorts of cruelties that are associated with religious fundementalism. Indeed, New Atheism is one of them.

One thing I'll note is that many of the traditions and texts of religion moderate against the abuses of religion. Consider for example 'slave bibles' that had sections that moderated against slavery or slaves and master being equal cut out of it. I think that they quite rightly feared the use of the authoritative texts to moderate against the abuses of slavery.

This is something that I don't really feel exists to the same extent in secular ideologies such as new atheism.

Well, democracy is a secular ideology, and it certainly exists there. Generally speaking, I think it's very important to guard against using religious faith to justify political policies, regardless of which faith it is, or which policy.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a religion divorced from politics. As a system of behavior for a large group of people it’s an inherently politicized thing.

Dont conflate there being an intersection between religious beliefs and political beliefs on the one hand, and using religious doctrine as a way to promote specific policies that benefit one constituency at the expense of another. The red flag is any tendency to claim God's approval for treating "them" differently than we treat "us".

It seems VERY unlikely to have a religion that doesn't inform the sort of society you'd like to live in ... and having ideas about the sort of society you'd like to live in is the very essence of politics. In other words, any principled attempt to keep a citizen's religion out of politics is kind of a mug's game.

"... ... and having ideas about the sort of society you'd like to live in is the very essence of politics."

Hmm, have to disagree there. The distribution of power is the very essence of politics.

Either way, how that power is distributed will depend on what ideas people hold on what society they want to live in.

Who are you guys arguing with?

Have you guys ever noticed how so many different ancient mythologies have a creation myth where some monster or primordial deity is slain to create the foundations of the world? In Norse mythology, it was a giant; in Babylonian mythology, it was a giant sea-serpent - and in Aztec mythology, it was a giant sea monster called Cipactli. Wondering why its such a common trope

Snakes were bad news for early people?

That or older Deities started as animals with snakes being pretty high up for the above reason, and as the gods became more humanoid they replaced the old head snake?

One of the first stories to get batted about while flint-knapping? <shrugs>

Yeah it is an interesting recurring theme. Everything being interconnected (part of one organism), creation coming from destruction...

I wonder how many mythologies have creation myths that dont involve giant monsters?

Well there is the Greek one, then the Japanese... monsters come in later in those unless you count Tartarus, the cyclopes and the hundred handed ones.

In Greek Mythology it was the gods' parents.

Eh... at most grandparents or uncles. The Titans were pretty much god-shaped/humanoid, but there can be a case made about some of the primordials like Nyx or Tartarus and the cyclopes and the hekatonkheires/hundred handed ones. Though they aren't killed to create the world out of the carcass.

Well, in Greek Myth the protegenoi are different being than either the Titans or the Olympians, closer to what we would refer today as Eldritch Abomination.

That aside, I always interpreted that "Giant monster slayed = humanity exist" as a metaphor for how humanity subjugated nature in order to give birth to civilization.

Did you know that Tenchi Muyo meant Heaven And Earth and No Need respectively?

It's actually a curious thing about the Abrahamic religions how the only giants that appear in the Genesis required that humanity existed beforehand if we compare it to classical mythology. One can even stretch it to mean that humanity cannot subjugate nature and will always be at its mercy like in the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra or the Plagues of Egypt.

For what it's worth, there is some Early-Installment Weirdness with Abrahamic religion. In very early Abrahamic religion (before Genesis was written) there was some myth about Yahweh killing and Eldritch Abomination called Leviathan, and the world being its corpse IIRC. The old myth is alluded to in Job (likely the oldest book of the bible) in a Badass Boast along the lines of "Cthulhu is my bitch!" by Yahweh, though very few consider it 'canon' anymore.

Perhaps there is a tendency within monotheism to regard nature as a manifestation of God and/or the Devil, and therefore too powerful to overcome.

Or maybe that humanity can only subjugate nature with the help of God? I mean, if you believe God gave humanity knowledge, such an interpretation is not a stretch.