Religion is not the enemy, church is the enemy. Church wants to be accepted as the only path to salvation. The enemy is church, or whatever name it is called.
Are you forgetting the genocide commited by the ultra orthodox Spanish in South America? Have you ever been to Buenos Aires? Super long flight only to end up in the whitest European city ever. Oh and also, what about the total killings until today just by US made mines and shrapnel in Southeast Asia? Doesn’t even come close to whatever number you had in mind for “Islamism”.
“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.” - Christopher Hitchens
What atrocities have mainstream Buddhists participated in? I know there have been Buddhist terror groups but it really doesn’t seem like the norm. Aggressive and greedy people use religion as a tool, some religions are more likely to engage in violence than others though.
I doubt you’ll get a response. You’ve made your position clear in your statement: any actrocities referenced will be declared an act by a terror group outside the norm.
i mean, to some degree, any act of terror can be deemed outside the norm specified. I think realistically. As long as a group has a tangential terror rating lower than the average human populous that’s probably a good thing.
What do you mean, how is that even a position? There have been crusades lead by Christians numerous times though, Islamic conquest, Jewish Zionist terror groups, a lot of history to be referred to, when within Buddhism it is much rarer. One historical tale is of Ashoka, a powerful emperor in the Indian subcontinent who supposedly after converting to Buddhism spent most of his efforts spreading teachings about kindness and non-violence. Buddhist principles of harmony and non-violence helped unite Japan, bringing about relative peace after centuries of conflict.
Buddhists in Tibet have been involved in perpetrating atrocities, both against each other and individuals of other religions. The historical context reveals instances of violence and oppression within Tibet, including the feudal serfdom system that subjected serfs to harsh conditions and exploitation by their owners, who were often monks and aristocrats.
Moreover, the involvement of Buddhists in violence is not limited to Tibet but extends to other regions as well. For example, during the Cold War era in Southeast Asia, Thai Buddhists were complicit in anti-communist mass killings under a nationalist ideology that aligned with Buddhism’s principles. This involvement in political violence highlights how Buddhism has been weaponized by political authorities to consolidate power. The history of Buddhist violence underscores the complex relationship between religion and politics, showcasing how religious beliefs can be manipulated to justify or incite acts of aggression. Some notable examples include the mass killing of Ajivikas in India, the violence in Myanmar against Muslim Rohingyas.
I guess what you were trying to say was that Buddhism wasn’t as powerful as Christianity to reach the scale of Crusades.
You are correct that what I said could just reflect the fact that Buddhism hasn’t reached the same level of political consolidation as Christianity. But there have been Buddhist empires throughout history.
You do point out another aspect that I was reflecting on though, that these religions are used as tools by nationalists or other political authorities. In my view it is not the religion itself that enables or supports these atrocities but the centralized power that these organizations are able to hold. Human societies have had religion for all of known history so it is difficult to thoroughly prove that these societies would be more or less violent without religion of any type. If they didn’t have a religious group driving the masses to be pawns of their violence, it could be a trade group like the Dutch East India Company.
Buddhism has extremely good PR, but ultimately it is just that: PR. You can find messages of peace, compassion, and violence in plenty of religions to higher or lesser degrees, but as soon as they become large enough to be politically relevant, one leader or another will resort to violence sooner or later, and will take advantage of their followers’ faith to justify it.
Christianity is not inherently better than Islam, it just behaves better nowadays.
And the reason it behaves better is not something inherent to christianity, but because it got dragged, kicking and screaming, into the age of enlightenment and beaten up with education, democratisation and secularisation until it had to bend or break and it’s adherents decided to bent.
Islam is still more radical because it faced less opposition to it’s ideas from within. The islamic world needs it’s own age of enlightenment where radical tensions between religion and an educated public reduce the influence of religion on that public.
And I don’t think this has much to do with Islam being younger. Islamic natural philosophers are behind some of the most important discoveries in the sciences and the Islamic Golden Age ended around 200 years, before the Renaissance even started.
If the Islamic Golden Age had not declined, today Christianity might have been the more radical religion and we might have seen a mostly secularized islamic world. It is mostly through chance that history unfolded differently. And with Project 2025 in the US, we might still see a return to barbarism and departure from secular enlightenment in the most powerfull nation puppeteered by christian extremists.
Islam will be much harder to reform because it claims to be THE FINAL revelation. There is no-one allowed to come with new ideas because of that. Add to it the barbaric penalty for leaving the religion and you’ve got a hot mess.
All religions are shit, but Islam is worse at its present state.
It doesn’t behave better. It’s coerced into being less harmful than it used to be, due to its irrelevance in the daily lives of millions of people coming from places with a Christian history, and more secular legal frameworks, which, you’re right, where fought for tooth and nail.
Give Christianity a finger, and it’ll take the whole arm. It’s still as dangerous as it’s ever been, but it’s more contained than it used to be. Cf Poland, France, the Southern US, Russia on issues like abortion, feminism, LGBT rights, and even geopolitical stuff like the support of Israel thought to be a step towards the apocalypse.
The Southern US Y’all Qaeda types are proof that Christianity is just as backwards as Islam is, when given the opportunity.
Edit: I’m not opposed to you, I’m just adding more thougts to yours. Sorry if this sounded adverserial.
It doesn’t behave better. It’s coerced into being less harmful than it used to be, due to its irrelevance in the daily lives of millions of people coming from places with a Christian history, and more secular legal frameworks
Not the OP, but you’re not coming across as adversarial. Those of us who aren’t wedded to an identity over common sense can disagree without feeling attacked. However, I don’t disagree with you. Everything both of you said is true, with your comment making both more true, if that makes sense.
I took my partner to a catholic church to check out the ceremony (she’s from a non-christian country). We’d toured it before because it’s very grand and impressive from an architectural standpoint. I try to view it through her eyes, as though for the first time (I didn’t grow up catholic, but I’d been to many varied-christian masses). What a bizarre ceremony. Any people consider it completely normal. This reflection has nothing to do with the original topic. It’s just something that crossed my mind as I typed this out.
If you think Radical Islam is alone I’d like to introduce you to Ireland and India. Both countries proving that radicalism transcends race and culture.
You say that as if conservatism has always been. Its a relatively recent phenomenon. Religion, at its earliest historically, has been a function of community; and essential service to strengthen a community’s bonds. Eventually it was used by the ruling class as a guise for divine right, to legitimize the power of those in power. Then it has evolved into what it is today, a cash grab. Of course this is very surface level, but my point still stands.
If you don’t think radical atheism isn’t like radical Christianity and radical Islam, you haven’t studied the history of the various communist countries of the world.
People who are absolutely certain they are right can do some fucked up shit.
Whatever belief or non belief anyone has isn’t the problem … it’s when those individuals want to impose this beliefs or non beliefs onto other people whether those other people want it or not.
I really don’t care what other people think, that’s their life. The problems start when people start thinking that they have a right to force their ideas or thoughts onto other people.
Add up all the people that have lived over the past 4,000 years … wars, genocides, conflicts, violent revolutions have all led to countless dead because of religions.
You might be surprised to learn that the world population hasn’t historically been as high is it is in modern times for more most of those 4000 years.
So I got at least a couple of billion people having their beliefs oppressed by atheists. You can now go through the exercise of going over historical documents and adding up the number of people that have been oppressed by religions throughout history, and let me know when you reach 2 billion and I’ll start doing a more accurate accounting of the number of people oppressed by atheists. Because when you consider the populations of the Soviet Union and China and there being multiple generations living under atheist rule, It’s likely the number is significantly higher than 2 billion. But I doubt you can get to that very conservative estimate by looking through all of history.
Sorry to be the one to break this to you, but atheists have been the absolute worst people to have held power in all of history. The facts just don’t line up with what you believe.
I’m counting the dead not the oppressed … atheists haven’t been around long enough to rack up the same murderous numbers of death and destruction as theists have over the past few thousand years.
The Soviets and communist Chinese (both systems I disagree with and do not support) never launched full fledged pogroms, death camps or extermination programs of killing in order to get rid of religious groups … they oppressed and abused religious groups and maybe even killed often … but never to the level of industrial killing … the Nazis did that and even though Nazis may be identified as atheists, they had a political / ideological belief system that was more identifiable as a religion than a lack of belief
The only system in history that has any blood thirst for killing opponents has been and still is religious based.
Are we not including the numbers that died in various famines resulting in atheists thinking that because they aren’t religious they can just decide how science works? That’s like half a billion deaths from incompetent atheist governing.
I mean if you’re going to consider the Nazi movement to be a religious movement and not a nationalistic fascist movement then I think it’s fair to consider the famines under atheist rule to be religiously motivated too. Not nearly as much of a stretch as you’re making considering the writings by Trofim Lysenko.
The only system in history that has any blood thirst for killing opponents has been and still is religious based.
Pol Pot has entered the chat. You ever hear of the Killing Fields in Cambodia, son? Some fucked up shit, maybe you’ll learn about it when you’re ready.
I mean religion is pretty much just the concept of defining the relationship between us and the Universe we live in. God is the Universe. Atheism is all about being pedantic about meanings of the words God and Universe. Usually it’s just people that were in a radical religious sect that believes that scriptures are literal and atheists reject all religion because they think that what they were taught in Sunday School as a child is the totality of religion.
If you’re in an atheist that feels the need to join an atheist discussion group tho constantly reinforce your “non-belief” you kind of out yourself as a radical atheist.
Do you mean anti-theism? If you’re talking about people that actively oppose religion. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in theism.
I’m also not sure how communism relates either, unless you’re talking about secular societies that were communist and committed atrocities, such as Soviet Russia under Stalin. In Soviet Russia the state belief was atheism, but again, in their pursuit to eliminate religion I would argue that is really anti-theism.
I’d say the inquisition was more about decolonization. Decolonization isn’t always a pretty thing.
Antisemitism is usually about finding a convenient scapegoat for problems which is mostly about horrible people solidifying power more than anything else.
Religion is often warped to gain political power which is why a separation between church and state is so important.
I can agree with everything you said here, but read most of the posts and comments in atheist communities and tell me most of them aren’t at least somewhat anti-theist.
Imagine an actual violent war broke out between Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans. They are bombing each other’s conventions, and shooting each other in the streets. From the outside, you’re just like, why are they acting like this? None of it is even real! Why can’t you just let each other enjoy science fiction? Why do they have to like YOURS better?
Atheists, like all people, do have things to go to war about. Money, power, real things that are important to them, and it may be greed or love that pushes an atheist to war, but science fiction had nothing to do with it.
Religious people, like all people, do have things to go to war about. Money, power, real things that are important to them, and it may be greed or love that pushes the religious to war.
Cute, but that doesn’t work when “kill the infidels!” is literally their warcry. They openly call them Holy Wars and promote them as driven by religion. Sure, there’s money and power involved as well, but people are fighting over religion. That’s just fact.
You’re defining your feelings as fact. Just like fundamentalist religious people that cry out “kill the infidels” do.
It’s also a fact that atheists have killed even more people because of adherence to weird ideologies.
Like I say, people who are 100% certain of things can come to strange conclusions. Real life isn’t so simple as seeing one person saying “kill the infidels” and concluding that all people in that religion think the same way.
Joseph Stalin was an atheist, does being an atheist make you think the same way as Joseph Stalin?
I’d be surprised if you had a single though about this whatsoever… Not only do you somehow link atheism, a philosophical outlook on the impossibility of godhood as described by religion, with Communism, a socio-economic model, you attribute the actions taken by dictatorial semi-socialist leaders to both.
I don’t think a regular human could say something this stupid if they tried.
Apparently everything done by a government is now inherently linked to every single system and model used by said government. Do you people even think… at all?
Are you saying it hurts when you’re just lazily lumped together with fundamentalists simply because there’s some overlap between what you believe and what they believe?
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