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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[TD1]

Judaism's God appeared as various things Zeus-like. The Burning Bush, for instance, definitely spoke - but had no lips. Plenty of tongues, however (XD).
Christianity's God, on the other hand, was a physical man. He had lips.

[HmH]

Sure, god's all powerful, but does he have lips? Woah...

"And God said, let there be light..."

Well, Judaism's deity, at least.

There's also the whole "created humankind in his own image" thing.

[delphonso]

Can God make lips so big that not even he could kiss them?

[hector13]

I have been thinking of late, and it is indeed late.

Do the various churches around the world reinforce abusive relationships? I’m only familiar with Christianity, specifically Catholicism, but if someone gets divorced they’re unable to partake in Communion if they enter into another relationship, ‘cause SIN.

So this presents the crux of my issue: if someone wants a divorce because their partner is abusive, but faces some form of shunning within their religious community as a result - particularly if the abused and the victim are in the same religious community - it presents the victim of the abuse with a significant reason not to get the divorce because they risk losing what could be a significant part of their life.

Or something like that, I’m tired and biased, but also curious.

[wierd]

You act like religion is not a tool of the state to control the masses, and to reinforce a set of societal norms, despite the deleterious effects.

Have you been living under a rock?

Only a handful of religions are purely spiritual/detached philosophical in nature; Nearly all of them are really early forms of "Do as I say, or the (divine actor) will punish you!" in nature.

[HmH]

That's one way to look at it.

The other is that religions' main beneficial function to the society - that of preserving knowledge and stabilizing cultural norms throughout war, famine, coups d'etat, and other calamities - has the unfortunate side effect of making them defend a set of values that had been cutting-edge for a slave-owning society... even when that religion's host country has already evolved through medieval, mercantilist, and industrial ways of life.

So there is nothing surprising that religions are slow on the uptake, especially when new cultural norms clash with the ones they're supposed to preserve.


And more to the point: yeah, religions tend to reinforce abusive relationships.

If you look at it from the perspective I outlined above, the reason for this is that they're still carrying values from a time where an abusive relationship was, from the tribe/commune's perspective, a lesser evil compared to no relationship at all.
From the tribe's perspective, having a wife-beater amongst your numbers might be morally distasteful - but giving women the freedom to bear no children would be deadly to the whole tribe. If you don't outbreed competing tribes, they will eventually crush you.

The world two thousand years ago was brutal as fuck. The values of its societies reflect that.

[Loud Whispers]

And more to the point: yeah, religions tend to reinforce abusive relationships.

Ah, yes, the flagellant's creed. Whip me harder God daddy

The world two thousand years ago was brutal as fuck. The values of its societies reflect that.

Depends where you lived 2,000 years ago. Polynesians were having a blast sailing the ocean and looking at stars

[HmH]

The world two thousand years ago was brutal as fuck. The values of its societies reflect that.

Depends where you lived 2,000 years ago. Polynesians were having a blast sailing the ocean and looking at stars

And getting eaten by wildlife, and dying of common-cold-turned-pneumonia, and getting raided by their similarly seafaring-stargazing neighbors...

[Maximum Spin]

And getting eaten [...] by their similarly seafaring-stargazing neighbors...

ftfy

[Telgin]

I have been thinking of late, and it is indeed late.

Do the various churches around the world reinforce abusive relationships? I’m only familiar with Christianity, specifically Catholicism...

It's the same for fundamentalist Christians of other denominations, at least in the southeastern US, and is one big issue I take with them.  They generally are very inflexible and literal in their reading of the Bible.  If Jesus says that God joined two people together and no man may undo that, then that's just the way it is.  Sorry, you should have been clairvoyant and known it was either not going to work out or turn out abusive.

Then again, these denominations generally believe you can be forgiven of anything aside from blasphemy, so by the RAW of the Bible, you can divorce, remarry, ask forgiveness and everything's cool.

[Egan_BW]

aside from blasphemy

Man, I'm so irredeemable.

[Telgin]

Interestingly, on that note, this is something I haven't really seen a consistent definition of.  Even the most fundamentalist groups around here will believe you can always be forgiven and come back to god, so I'm not sure how they reconcile it with that passage from the Bible.  I'm guessing they massage the writing to mean that blasphemy is just dying without being a Christian or something else similarly meaningless while you're alive.

Otherwise, by a strict interpretation, anyone who has ever said that god didn't exist or had no power would be permanently screwed.

[Eschar]

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, specifically. Nobody's quite sure what that refers to.

[Egan_BW]

If the holy spirit represents the thing which gives you sympathy for fellow humans, than blasphemy against it would be psychopathy, I guess?

[Loud Whispers]

And getting eaten by wildlife, and dying of common-cold-turned-pneumonia, and getting raided by their similarly seafaring-stargazing neighbors...

All of that still happens today, but they didn't have to worry about deadlines on top