[nekusar]

> Whenever you try to remove religion the void fills up with something, and that something is demonic.

I've heard that exact type of comparison before, and it's from those fundamentalist christians. You find out quickly, that "everything is the devil or demonic" that wasn't written down in a bronze-age book and interpreted and translated the snot out of, over a game of telephone played over 2000 years. Most of which was done by illiterates.

Better yet, lets look at what the opposite of this demonic is - judeo-christian values.

1 Samuel 15:3 "Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe [kill and dedicate to YHWH] all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!"

That god sounds like a petty tribal warlord. Really? Genocide? Even kill the infants and animals?!? And this is what's being accepted as good and holy? And when Saul (king) spared the Amalekite king and some animals, even that benevolence was rewarded with destroying Saul.

Petty. Tribal. Warlord.

And yeah, I've actually read the Torah and New Testament and Koran. I know what I disagree in, and I see how our culture are still afflicted by all this historical religious baggage.

[graemep]

So, you can find a few isolated quotes in a series of documents written over thousands of years that support the idea that religion is the problem.

Have you read these works considering historical and cultural context? Can you find anything in the New testament that supports this? Do you know about the history of how Christianity shaped European culture? There are excellent books on the subjects (Dominion by Tom Holland is brilliant on the lats of these).

[nekusar]

I work in IT, but I also do stuff in historical studies. I dont want to dox myself, cause I just want to chat here anonymously.

In the Americas and Europe, Christianity is the fundamentalist scourge. We all know of Israel, of fundamentalist Judaism. Middle East? You guessed it, 4 of the 5 major sects of Islam are fundamentalist. And moving further East, we see extreme caste-ism and Fundamentalist Hinduism.

China rooted out Fundamentalist Buddhism with Tibet. In 1953, 700,000 of an estimated total population of 1,250,000 were serfs - effectively enslaved peoples on the land attached to the land-lord. Usually a lama, or a priest in Buddhism. This is a case where an oppressive fundamentalist religion was rooted out, and almost a million people were freed.

Im also well aware of all the damage Christianity and Islam did through the millennia in Europe. The priesthood collectively held back science, arts, literature, and countless other things because of "demons, devils, satan". And that only got worse with Dante's Inferno, which somehow got collapsed as bible stories, but really is a fanfiction.

We also see fundamentalist christian hatred flood everywhere with <GASP> more anti-woman sentiment with Witch Trials held basically everywhere. Even had executions up in Holmavik Iceland, to of which a museum was made to commemorate their witch trials. And everyone knows of Salem Massachusetts. Estimates of 30-60000 women were executed in these sham trials, and was predominantly women targeted here.

Perhaps it was too narrow to just blame christians, although the USA is a "christian nation" and what I'm most exposed against my will. No, the problem is fanaticism and fundamentalism. Its one thing to say "My religion says I cant do (action)." and a whole different thing to say "My religion says YOU cant do (action)". All the fundamentalists demand both.