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Buddhism isn’t really a religion, the way I understand it, it’s not trying to sell anything like religions do, it’s more of a philosophical system, with psychological exercises and disciplines that to this day have proven to be of profound positive mental health impact.
Then people went and built statues of Siddhartha Gautama, which he supposedly had asked not to happen. Then there’s the “fat Buddha” from China, who was actually someone who lived almost two millennia after, and is known there as “Budai”.
Those statues and idols have nothing to do with what Buddhism originally proposes, in a nutshell: there is suffering in this world and life, how can we be free of suffering?
There is a mysticism aspect that falls under the umbrella of Buddhism, too. Like if one is enlightened sufficiently, they can ascend to another life form after death, otherwise it’s reincarnation to try again. I think there’s more to it than that, but honestly haven’t delved too much into it because the philosophy is where the useful stuff is.
And ironically, an aspect of enlightenment is accepting that suffering is a part of life so that you don’t suffer more being upset that you have some suffering. Getting that one was like a switch for me and life has generally been much happier. Things don’t “ruin my day” anymore.
I don’t know that Jesus asked for a church to be founded either, or left behind any guidance on how to organize it or run it properly. If SG specifically said “don’t do this” then wow that’s even worse that they did. But it seems like much the same deal all around.
In the sermon on the mount Jesus talked about resolving disputes by “taking it to the church” (literally “assembly” of believers) so there was some concept of church during his ministry. Church means “assembly” (of people) though, the greek word really bears no resemblance to the modern idea of church as a building with a carpark.
I feel that’s probably among the genuine sayings of Jesus because later editors have declined to inject verses supporting bishops and elders which was surely tempting to do.
His noodleness is the one true savior! Ramen!
Praise Bob!
🙏
Some delusions can bring comfort for life. Its not all bad.
A population trained to believe without critically thinking is dangerous to everyone.
I can believe that.
Thats a fair point but eternalism is always harmful.
I’m not a myth! Could a myth type a comment on Lemmy?
Take that, atheists!
Something can be untrue without being a lie. Generally we like to say that for something to be a lie requires an intent to deceive. If I tell you “the next bus is coming at 3:30pm” and it arrives at 3:32, was I lying? No, the bus was just late.
Anyway, most of these religions are very old and it’s hard to say we know anything about the mindset of the people who started them. Having said that, Scientology is not so old and based on Hubbard’s other writings we could probably make a solid case that he was intending to deceive people. So I don’t mind if you call that one a lie!
I like your analogy. I am not a Christian, but I believe the majority of Christian writers had honest intentions and were working with the way the world seemed to be to them at the time.
Eg Paul telling women to be silent in the church assembly is harsh but makes a little more sense given he’s created this mixed male/female religious meeting that didn’t exist before. It’s similar to telling all the new people to be quiet and sit still because they’re new to this. His reasoning is that “Eve” is weak. But the very fact he’s admitting all the women to his meetings in the first place shows he thought Christian belief was bringing men and women into a more equal space when previously there had been an even deeper division. And so on.
Hindu lore is pretty sick. Any story that involves an individual named “The Destroyer” is pretty ducking sick.
I have faith that we are all going to to die.
Faith is belief without evidence, and I have evidence everyone who has lived so far has died and the rest of us have enough in common that would cause us to die for similar reasons as those already dead. I don’t need faith to believe we’re all going to die, faith would be needed to believe someone won’t die because we have no convincing evidence for any immortals yet.
There’s actually a nuance here that religious people love to make much of. They would say that just because everyone who’s ever lived has died does not mean you know we all will. They would say you are just generalizing from the examples you have to all cases, which is fine but is inductive reasoning and therefore involves faith. They will say you cannot conclude deductively that we will all die, you can only reason inductively that you think we will, therefore you are operating in uncertainty and therefore you are exhibiting faith. Therefore science and religion are the same thing. (They’ll say).
This seems to be the latest favorite philosophical whipping post among religious people trying to find some basis in the modern world for their magic sky fairy beliefs. The funniest thing about it, to me anyway, is that it is an argument that boils down to “you’re just making shit up as much as we are!”
Bad news about the social construct of ‘delusion’
whether a belief is a “delusion” or not has a lot more to do with whether it is socially convenient to those immediately surrounding you and a lot less to do with factual truth
deleted by creator
hone your memes (with gimp and gmic-qt. do not look closely. modifications cc0, original image all rights reserved.)
Atheism is a belief. Just sayin.
What belief is being held?
All gods are myths
All religions are lies
All faith - including that in the above two things - is delusion.
I mean, you’re shooting your own messenger, but I hear ya.
“What drink would you like?”
“I’ll take a nice tall glass of the absence of water please.”
“You mean that you don’t want a drink?”
“No, the drink I’m requesting and the one I intend to drink the absence of water. Its my favourite drink.”
"So, like a coke or something.’
"No, thats the presence of coke. I want to drink the absence of water…
What do you mean by ‘I’m being ridiculous’?"
Calling atheism a belief is like calling bald a hair color. Or like saying ‘not collecting stamps’ is a hobby
Not collecting stamps, I like that.
It’s a non-belief.
It is a position you hold until a belief system provides sufficient evidence for you to form and hold a belief.
Gnostic atheism is a specific form which nobody actually holds to, which says that there positively is no god and this is known to be a fact. Any reasonable person would admit you can’t know this. And so virtually all atheists are agnostic atheists.
Being an agnostic atheist does not mean you are “on the fence” or “undecided” or “accepting of all beliefs equally.” It means you are intellectually honest that you cannot prove the non-existence of a god any more than you can prove there isn’t a planet in the universe where it rains lemonade. But until you have a firm reason to believe that some god exists, you’re going to proceed as if they don’t, because that’s the conclusion, however perpetually provisional, that best matches the evidence.
Then it’s a good thing belief isn’t mentioned in the image.
