Does Religion divide Humans just like Racism and Nationalism does ?

[tradeunionsupporter]

Does Religion divide Humans just like Racism and Nationalism does ?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...84641446868316#

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Religion does divide, hence all the various denominations vying for each others throats and all the "holy wars." It is possible for various religious people to get along but on a mass scale this becomes more difficult (largely due to demagogues and the like).

[Azraella]

Religion does divide, hence all the various denominations vying for each others throats and all the "holy wars." It is possible for various religious people to get along but on a mass scale this becomes more difficult (largely due to demagogues and the like).

This. I can admit that religion is divisive and is a land mine to discuss. I have been thinking about this for a while now...

Most people(95% of people) generally do not care what you believe in(or if they do, they take a honey catches more flies than vinegar approach) and are more likely to be indifferent to your individual beliefs. I might be a polytheist and an animist but when does that honestly come up in everyday conversation? Hardly ever, if at all.

The problem as I see it is rather the positions of power where religion and spirituality can be manipulated to serve someone else's agenda. Historically, God has been a rallying point for good and a rallying point for evil. Hitler was Christian but he was an incredibly evil man. However, I look at people like Tolstoy, another Christian and I see endless potential for good. I have encountered people from all walks of life in my life as both an activist and as a psychologist. I have met amazingly decent and moral people of both the religious and non-religious persuasion, just as I have met shitty people of the same.

I have heard fiery preachers often talk about how "modern society" is leading us all to damnation or how I live an "immoral lifestyle". I obviously do not agree, but these types of people are the problem. It's not religion. It's the loud and vocal people that unfortunately ruin it for the rest of us religious types. I think the phrase "We are our deeds" is the single most profound idea that my ancestors had in their worldview. It is incredibly applicable to everyone's worldview and has made a profound impact on how I view people and is what got me out of the whole *generalizations about others* phase.

I think serious interfaith dialogue is needed. If we don't have it, god versus god will be the undoing of our species.

[NGNM85]

Absolutely. To paraphrase Sam Harris; Besides killing eachother, the only way to resolve our differences is through conversation, and religion is a conversation-stopper. If you and I subscibe to different, incompatible beliefs, and one or both of us believe that the others' religion is wrong, and the path to eternal damnation, that's going to be an impasse. Like Nation-States, religion is a vestige of our primitive past that must be overcome.

[Franz Fanonipants]

i do hate protestants

[dodger]

i do hate protestants

I can't think why dear Franz........................

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haWB6Qs8trw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIxXKswVX8E

they speak so highly of you.......

[阿部高和]

Christianity has been used to destroy selected populaces for centuries under various leaders from Cyrus to Justinian; Christianity has always been a religion of iron, never of the olive branch.

[bubbajon]

my opinion is that religion divides the people if they want it to.

it divides the people as much as race does. purely relative

[tradeunionsupporter]

I agree religion divides people.

[CommunityBeliever]

Religion has served as an excuse for the Western imperialists for several centuries. For example, when the Western imperialists discovered the Americas, they brutal enforced Christian beliefs on all pagans. Religion creates divisions in humanity such as the division between believers and pagans.

[tradeunionsupporter]

I agree.

[OHumanista]

No doubt, it's one of the great causes of division. Even if less so than say...in the Middle Ages. Still there are hardcore zealots doing their best to revive that mindset.

[NineOneFour]

Does Religion divide Humans just like Racism and Nationalism does ?

No question. It's repugnant.

Just look at Catholics and Protestants killing each other in Northern Ireland for years or the Palestinian-Israeli nightmare.

[Balaer]

Depends.

There are Simultankirchen in Germany (used by Catholics and Lutherans at the same time), Jews against Israel, ...

[ckaihatsu]

---

There were repeated riots in Jerusalem and recurrent outbreaks of ‘banditry’ in the country areas, especially Galilee. Sometimes these would take on a religious coloration. Thus there was a near uprising against King Herod as he was dying, and 3,000 Jews are said to have died when his son Archelaus put down a rising, with a further 2,000 crucified. There was guerrilla war in the countryside of Galilee led by a certain Judas who called himself ‘King of the Jews’, and at the time of the Roman census of AD 7 two men ‘aroused the people to rebellion...and general bloodshed ensued’, according to Josephus.110 Again, 40 years later, the prophet Theudus roused support by proclaiming himself a messiah (christos in Greek) and was beheaded. The Roman rulers dealt similarly with ‘a band of evil men who had godless thoughts and made the city restless and insecure’ as they ‘incited the people to insurrection...under the pretext of divine revelation’. Soon afterwards ‘a false prophet from Egypt...succeeded in having himself accepted as prophet because of his witchcraft. He led...30,000 persons...out of the desert to the so called Mount of Olives in order to penetrate into Jerusalem, and attempted to overthrow the Roman garrison.111 ‘Hardly had this rebellion been put down when...a few wizards and murderers joined forces and gained many adherents...They passed through the entire Jewish land, plundered the houses of the rich, slaying them that dwelled therein, set fire to the villages and harried the land’.112 In all these clashes, class hatred among the Jewish poor of the Jewish upper classes merged with hatred of the Roman forces of occupation.

Class differences found expression in different interpretations of the Jewish religion.

Harman, _People's History of the World_, Chapter 6, 'The rise of Christianity', p. 89

[Solzhenitsyn]

Christianity has been used to destroy selected populaces for centuries under various leaders from Cyrus to Justinian; Christianity has always been a religion of iron, never of the olive branch.

If you think Cyrus was "using" Christianity 400-500 years before the birth of Christ then you are hopeless. Completely restudy Western History before making another post.

[RevSpetsnaz]

Religion, whether it was initially designed to do so or not, is undoubtedly one of the primary dividers of people.

[TRIUMPH]

Look around.. Anarchism (Green/Communist/Capitalist), Communism (Leninism/Stalinism/Trotskyism).. Humans are divide, unstoppable.. I don't complain with that.. Unnecessary..

[smk]

It depends on how you (people) decide to treat religion. One is religion as an identity. This is how most people look at religion, as some thing that is either right or wrong. I grew up in a Sufi muslim family and I was always told that “There are as many paths to God as there are souls on Earth." In other words, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc. are merely metaphors that one can use to understand the spiritual world. Under this treatment, all of them are as "true" as the others. With such a treatment, religion changes from an identity to a preference.

So no, I don't think that religion has to divide people. Indeed, it can even do the opposite if one looks at it a different way and recognizes the universal human condition which all religions address.

If religion has to survive into the future, people will have to start changing how they view it.

Or they could just forget about religion altogether. That works too.

[smk]

Christianity has been used to destroy selected populaces for centuries under various leaders from Cyrus to Justinian; Christianity has always been a religion of iron, never of the olive branch.

This is very wrong. Christianity has been severely bastardized from its original teachings. It started out as the religion of the poor underclasses, preaching love, humility, generosity, care for the poor, etc. Then Constantine came and fucked it all up. At that point, it started to be used for an excuse for more violent acts.

However, even look at the Jesuit priests assassinated in the 70s by the US in Ecuador. These priests were preaching the radical idea of a "preferential option for the poor". Turns out, this isn't too radical if you go back to the original teachings, but by today's standards, they were too dangerous to keep around.