relatedworlds:

preludes-and-prufrock:

ih8religion:

1. Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes. Then she’s yours. - (Deuteronomy 21:11-13)
2. Find a prostitute and marry her. - (Hosea 1:1-3)
3. Find a man with seven daughters, and impress him by watering…

lol

But guys, come on. Hating this isn’t hating religion. Hating this is hating an archaic document of myths, faiths and customs. Even most Christians throughout history reject the majority of the Old Testament as exactly that, which is why the focus on the old testament is usually restricted to parables like the book of Job that serve as illuminations for the messages of the New Testament. there has always been a tension between the vengeful God of the Old Testament and the forgiving trinity-God of the New Testament. The tension still exists today, despite many reform-orientated denominations always focusing on the New Testament, but all I’m saying is that even in medieval times people viewed these things as outdated. Indeed, the whole purpose of the New Testament and the religious reformer of Jesus was to shift the emphasis and to override a huge amount of these beliefs.

And that aside, this only applies to those that focus entirely on the ‘Scripture’ ( as in capital S, the only book and the direct unflinching word of God), which yet again, was a notion even occasionally in doubt in St.Augustine’s era in the 400s, and is an extremist view nowadays that is not common of the majority of Christians.

Hate the extremist blinkered minority who take his crap literally and trot it out like it’s relevant. Don’t hate religion. Because religion is rarely about this. The same mentality of devotion to the ridiculously archaic word as legitimate is seen in politics, literature, and psychology for example. It’s the warped dregs left behind by the scholastic movement and apparently ignorant of the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

I get tired of people seeing this crap and instantly going: yup. Religion.

This isn’t religion. This is history.

/my two cents.

You see, we are all happy that a good part of the religious crowd does not actually believe this bullshit, but that doesn’t change the fact that that’s cherry picking. If you (generic you) believe that your religion is the right one because the book it’s based on was written by God, you are saying that your god wrote THE WHOLE BOOK, not just the parts you have decided to live by. You are not saying, “Hell, he didn’t write the Leviticus for sure! And all those parts about witch hunting… definitely not God!” Because, how can you possibly say that? How can you know it? If you’re accepting that the Bible was written by God, you’re accepting that the whole book was written by God, even though you decide not to run around killing witches.

When you say “Hate the extremist blinkered minority who take his crap literally and trot it out like it’s relevant,” what you are actually saying is: “the problem is that they’re not following the right parts of the book. They’re misunderstanding its real meaning! God doesn’t want you to follow the whole thing, how can you not know that.” Which is not how it works at all. The great majority of religious people believe that religion is what gives them morals and helps them decide what’s right and what’s wrong - but suddenly they need to have morals to decide what morals they have to cherry pick from the Bible?! It doesn’t make any sense. All those things are actually in the Bible. Some people choose to follow X and other Y, but both things are in there. I mean, if all the Christians who have called other Christians “not really a Christian” were to vanish, there’d be no Christians left. You’re right, “the Bible is an archaic document of myths, faiths and customs” - so WHAT is Christianity based on exactly? Why is it all right to have “an archaic document of myths, faiths and customs” as one’s moral compass?

Religion is not rarely about that, as you say. It’s quite often about that, in fact. Religion does everything in its power to convince you that you have to follow its guidelines and don’t question things, that you must have FAITH. In the New Testament, “doubting Thomas” is ridiculed because he would not believe without proofs! Religion tells you that “the Bible was written by God because the Bible said it was written by God! And if you don’t believe it, you’re a fool and you will go to hell.” The mentality of devotion you talk about is everywhere, you’re right, but it was encouraged and reinforced by religion. If you’re lost and looking for morals, religion can easily lead you in the wrong direction. If you’re already a sexist/homophobic kind of person, you have found a religion that completely supports your views, and you don’t even have to question them because, hey - it’s the Word of God! Almost ALL Christian denominations but Quakers focus on Scriptures. The fact that many religious people do not even own a Bible doesn’t change the fact that their priests do, and can mould and shape them as they wish. 

Also, the Old Testament is NOT the only problem. I could keep ranting for hours, but you’ve mentioned Saint Augustine, so I’m just going to leave you with this quote, because… SEXISM! VICTIM SHAMING! And because many people still agree with him nowadays, which I find SERIOUSLY disturbing and worrying.

Bertrand Russell on Saint Augustine: “Next comes the question of pious virgins who were raped during the sack. (…) It is suggested that God permitted rapes because the victims had been too proud of their continence. It is wicked to commit suicide in order to avoid being raped (…). Suicide is always a sin, except in the case of Samson. There is one proviso to the exculpation of virtuous women who are raped: they must not enjoy it. If they do, they are sinful.”

I do agree with you, in all cases.
But at the same time I did want to emphasise this division between the Old Testament and the New Testament, becuase the very nature of the New Testament is that it was supposed to eclipse the old. Christianity itself is based more on the New testament, because Christians are followers of a Jewish heretic, essentially. The Old Testament is an essential Jewish base which, while it is encompassed in jesus’ teachings, by placing jesus as the literal son of God and by emphasising how he preached a new message more focused on mercy and all that jazz, as it’s emphasised repeatedly,  Christianity itself is, really, only the New Testament. So, in that case, it is a dividison between an ‘old god’ and a new one, and the literal reading of the bible only applies to getting the words right for the new God. In this respect it’s easy for them to disregard over half of the Bible and still follow this ‘direct word of god’ stuff.

The problem is that people haven’t ever much detatched the two, and centuries have been dedicated to running round in circles over technicalities when the central messages are pretty simple. The religion itself is followed by the central messages like the ten commandments and all of that and, throughout history, the majority of practicisng Christians have followed these easily-memorised things rather than the Bible itself, since the majority have never read it.

And then even those who have read it have spent the last 2,000 years arguing either side of all arguments while never fully contradicting the actual words.

It’s just…gah. I appear to have lost my train of thought.

In short yes I do agree with you lol

But my origional main point was that this isn’t something that’s wrong with religion itself. That’s a hugely sweeping statement that neglects to show what religion actually is in practice. Be that the Christian religion or any other religion.