this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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Religion is always trash. No way around that and even as open mind leftists or wannabe leftists we have to recognize that. However the worst elements of religion tend to moderate with development something the Muslim world has been denied by the great Satan
L
There is a specter haunting this thread: the specter of Sam Harris style "not Islamophobic,
" Reddit New Atheism.
it haunts the whole website!
I hate people like this, so, so much.
Feel free to square that circle and explain how religion and Marxism are able to go hand in hand. Marxism is a material analysis of the world. Religion is not and quite the opposite.
actually not interested in a debate reddit atheist, just wanted to let you know your take sucks!
What debate lol
Marx called religion the soul of soulless conditions.
Sanctimoniously looking down on downtrodden people before anything about those conditions can even begin to improve must feel good, but it doesn't win anyone over that isn't already tipping fedoras at you.
Religion is literally used to maintain dominance over people and prevent condition from improving
Your smug bloviating is "literally" alienating and pushing people away that are so crushed by their present conditions that saying "um actually religion bad" is just an insufferable liberal-coded flex on them that makes them hate you more.
Plenty of New Atheists in the present day lick corporate boots and they are certainly contributing to a worsening of conditions, no formal religion required.
Have you fucking read Marx? The post-religious world comes a long time later and your self-congratulatory present-day smugness has no function or purpose in it.
"Hah, fine, I'll read Marx"
"
and that's why i left the Left"
Ok I just thought about it some more, although I somewhat agree with your sentiment and think you have good intentions, I think it is quite unfair to say "religion is always trash" and vehemently disagree with that belief. We have users here who are Palestinian muslims currently facing a genocide *in no small part because of their faith, which gives people the will to continue in the face of unspeakable horrors, is definetely not "trash". We in the west have to remember that just because our own governments are insane genocidal christian/jewish extremists doesn't mean we can solipsisticly apply this judgement to everyone else, including the people who they are genociding. We should always remember to think of others and be considerate.
don't erase palestinian jews, christians, atheists, and whatever else. there's a fuckload of islamophobia in the zionist rhetoric but muslims are not the sole victims of this genocide and they can't get out of the genocide by changing religion.
this is parallel to nazi extermination of ethnic groups besides jews, whatever difference of proportion
oh yes absolutely I shouldve specified so it doesn't become a normative statement since I was mostly talking within the context of this thread and the comment, the pissraelis did make sure to ethnically cleanse and physically destroy some of the oldest Palestinian Jewish neighborhoods when they first settled
Fair enough. Trash isn't the best word to use when discussing a sensitive topic.
Agreed, also wouldn't say its a discrete abstract "sensitive topic", its moreso an acknowledgement of the sheer gravity of the current ongoing situation, the reality of the horrific genocide that our governments are bankrolling right at this very moment, the mass death and suffering that the west has failed to prevent. Even as we speak there are innocent people murdered and tortured by the enemy, whose loved ones may be posting here as well. We in the west need to discard condescending attitudes, come down from the ivory tower and return to reality so we can stop this genocide.
Sounds like "I am sorry if you are offended" weasel words.
The OG Zionists were atheist Jews who opportunistically used a religious text revealed by a God they don't even believe in to claim Palestine as their own. If anything, it was the more religiously observant Jews who resisted Zionism because they saw the bunk pushed by those particular atheist Jews as the bunk that it was. And while secular Bundism is no more, anti-Zionist Hasidic communities still exist.
No no, you heard the fedoralord. All sociopolitical problems are because of religion and if religion vanished tomorrow in a puff of euphoria, all would be well.
And? So many of the current Israeli are religious fundamentalists. Jews are an ethno religious group and making Israel a country for Jews (literally their law) is both an ethno nationalist and religio nationalist project.
How about telling some of those aforementioned suffering people that ACKSHULLY their religion is the sole source of their suffering and how they're "too dumb to realize it"
and see how long you can stand there smirking at them before you got hurt.
Your words not mine
Yes, so get some reading comprehension so you can contextually understand them.
Marx himself said that a post-religious society was a good thing, many steps ahead.
There is no step of being a smug condescending fedoralord while capitalism is still crushing people. Or, as another poster just put it here:
You may not be leaving the left, but if all you have to contribute is being a divisively condescendingly smug fedoralord, maybe you should because Reddit beckons you back.
Is religion a progressive force or not? I'm just here to point out it's not. Dressing up my stance with your imagined motivations is a you problem. And I actually think that religion and capitalism are so tied up together at this point that a post capitalist world will have to come hand in hand with a post religious world.
AGAIN.
READ. MARX.
You are so fucking excited about the no religion part that happens after capitalism's end that you are using it to such smug and divisive ends in the here and now that even here you're just pissing people off and you somehow expect your fedorable messaging to win the working class over outside of here?
Do you build a table by trying to have dinner on the unassembled nails and planks first?
You're clownishly ignorant if you don't notice that Silicon Valley's corporate sector is absolutely stuffed to the gills with New Atheists, right now.
Could you at least try to be as cool as this cat if you're going to be tipping that fedora of yours?
The new atheists are just a bunch of racists and that piece of shit Dawkins literally calls himself a cultural Christian.
Also in case it isn't clear the religion most tied in with capitalism is Christianity and the religion that has caused by far the most damage and will continue to do so in the future is Christianity.
I think all this Islamophobic propaganda which is at its core an racist project and not an anti religion project has made people reluctant to see or unaware of the harm other religions cause.
You're retreating to the old and tired "oh they don't count as real atheists because that may make my position look as clownish as it is" position.
Your circus act is old and tired. I've seen your smug tiresome act from plenty of other New Atheists many times before.
I ask once again, exhaustively, for you to ONCE AGAIN actually READ MARX and actually try to understand what he said beyond what you got out of it, which is apparently "religion bad" and "being smug and condescending toward religious people will surely rally the working class in the present and near future!"
Dawkins is obviously an atheist but a racist and the religious umbrella of Christian fundamentalism is a comfortable habitat for him.
Are you that fucking dense that you think there's some magical euphoric racism-free default state of atheism that Dawkins and millions of affluent tech capitalists and their minions are somehow banished from (and somehow cease to be atheists) the moment they become racist?
Do you seriously believe that racism comes specifically and exclusively from religious belief?
And or a racist. I'm saying he is a racist and an atheist. The two are independent. But his racism finds a good home in Christian fundamentalism as it would.
I'm just trying to clarify what I meant and Ill be honest I have no idea what you're saying or arguing at this point.
You're too high on Sam Harris' farts to actually read and understand what Marx wrote, apparently, so I'll instead ask you to at least read the room.
Looking down on crushingly oppressed people around the world because they didn't become le enlightened gentlesirs of le atheism yet is making a clown of you here.
I repeated myself many times regarding what Marx actually said compared to what you are pretending he said. No investigation, no right to speak.
You're being ridiculous. I dont like fedoras or care what sam Harris or his racist pos group of new atheists say. Pointing out that people dying under capitalism find hope in religion doesn't make religion a progressive force. And me pointing out that religion can never be a progressive force is not me condescendingly looking down on these people. In fact I am more aware of the tragedy than you are in that their only hope (as they are genocided in real time on everyones social media feeds) is a complete dead end. And Islam has hurt Muslims far more than anyone else (although it's clear Christianity is the far more damaging religion) and I can recognize that because guese what I grew up Muslim.
You're once again demonstrating a total failure of reading comprehension. You don't have to literally like fedoras to be a fedora tier arrogant and ignorant reactionary. Pretending to cite Marx while failing to understand the time and place and conditions for a post-religious society is also on you.
You are ridiculous to a ruinous degree and you embarrass atheism with your ignorance and clownishness.
Can you link these Marx writings you keep referencing? I'm curious how he'd explain countries like China being so anti-religion, in practice if not in rhetoric? Can they just afford to be because they're post-revolution if not yet post-capitalism?
China is not remotely anti-religion in practice.
Religion in China has been entirely neutered and completely divorced from any political power. Churches are firmly under the thumb of the state and house churches trying to avoid these restrictions are illegal. You literally can't be even a low-level public servant and openly religious beyond vague spiritual folk practices on holidays.
China's absolutely tolerant of religious people existing, and are tolerant of religion as a personal concept, but in my mind they're absolutely anti-religion in an organised form.
It wanders deep into apocrypha, but the subtext is there even at the start of the better-known Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which is where the "Opium of the People" line is derived from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_Hegel%27s_Philosophy_of_Right
The conditions were ideal, even exceptional, for the people of China to reject religion in their proletarian revolution. The people attained an early post-religious viewpoint on their own; they didn't need, or even have use, for someone to approach them as they toiled and suffered pre-revolution and tell them why were, quoting this thread, "dumb" for what they believed. The revolution, as I said before, provided the post-religious societal movement as the will of the people, not some ideological conversion from some self-appointed luminary looking down on them from afar.
Not American. Not white. I really don't know what image you've cooked up in your head
Gotcha. Anyway I'm probably getting banned so feel free to keep this going
Actually you know what, in the spirit of making this site a better place to use for everyone and since you didn't really say anything bad I am sorry for aggressively responding to your original post and wrongly insulting your intelligence, very bad behaviour on my part. Next time it would have been better for me to start a productive discussion about the relationship between religious thought and the superstructure of class society. Unironically hope you have a good day.
For such a very enlightened New Atheist, you sure seem to like dragging around a self-righteous self-pitying cross.