Are all religions equivelant ?

[UndertheOcean]

Or are there some religions that are more destructive than others , and some are simply harmless.


The reason for this question is that some argue that despite the evil done by adherents to Christian Fundamentalism , Islamic Fundamentalism is intrinsically much more dangerous.

How can one approach this subject without sugarcoating the truth for the sake of political correctness , or exaggerating because of bigotry and Xenophobia.

[Donnachaidh]

1. ,,,,

:eyes: :popcorn:

[UndertheOcean]

3. Popcorn has a lot of calories by the way

[Lost-in-FL]

4. Snacks high in protein are better than those like pop corn which are mostly carbs...

and that too is debatable.

[guyanakoolaid]

2. In some ways they are all equivalent

They all cause a person to base their reality upon a false premise. Future decisions will come from a mind that has already willingly replaced facts with beliefs, that has said that no proof is necessary for them to make a decision.

[Captain Angry]

5. I follow a very small sect of Buddhism.

It's the one that says I should be nice to everybody, and in return I get to watch hockey on a big screen TV.

:-)

To be more serious, I don't have a problem with people having a belief system. I do have a problem when a belief system is hijacked and is used as justification for hate.

My folks are very Christian, and are wonderful people. Once in a while I have to adjust what they've heard about other religions and remind them about Nazis and missions if they've brought something especially offensive home with them.

Right now, many Christians can't see the harm done by Christianity over time because it's all they've ever known, and there is (still) so little truly understood about Islam in many churches.

When religion becomes Us versus Them as opposed to "look out for your neighbors and be nice to people in general", I have a serious problem with that religion.

Religions should be crutches, not hammers. They should be guidelines, not laws.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. You don' t think what was going on in that LDS town is just as dangerous?

I do.

[UndertheOcean]

7. Just as dangerous as being brainwashed to seek martyrdom

by blowing yourself up and kill some infidels ?


I don't think so

[Viva_La_Revolution]

9. These "christians" raped young girls and tortured babies

for years, and years and years, and bred new generations and did the same to them.

so yes, I do think it's worse.

[martymar64]

8. One myth is as good as another

Hail Satan!

[ZombieHorde]

10. I don't believe that all religions are equivelant.

Some religions, such as Heaven's Gate and OM Supreme Truth, seem to be very dangerous.

[msongs]

11. nice debate, which religion is LEAST worst - 2000 years of rape/torture/murder wins hands down nt

[ZombieHorde]

15. "2000 years of rape/torture/murder wins hands down"

That is one way to look at it. Another way may be to look at what percent of the people of a particular faith engage in such activities. There was only one survivor of Heaven's Gate.

Here is a short video that they made (does not show suicide, only propaganda).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1V4vDMHVQc

[Beregond2]

12. There was

a time in my life when I would have agreed with those posters here who say: "All religions are dangerous because they encourage irrationality." But as I have matured and studied many religions for years, I realize it isn't so simple. "Faith" and "belief" are two different things, for a start. There is also the question of the different ways knowledge can be arrived at, through discursive reason, observation, intuitively, and so forth, and to what extent objectivity is even possible. Then there are the many uses of mythology, and the fascinating ways it arises. So the answer to the question: "Are all religions equivalent?" is clearly "no," but that doesn't begin to address the complexity of the subject.

An approach that I find very helpful is to ask where people fall on the scale of spiritual development. This is a branch of psychological stage theory. People can be involved in any religious tradition, and still be at very different levels of maturity within it. Scott Peck simplified these stages into four: 1.Chaotic/Antisocial; 2.Formal/Institutional/Fundamental; 3.Skeptic/Individual/Questioner; 4.Mystic/Communal. By this reckoning, people who are in phases 1 and 2 are much more likely to be "dangerous" than people in 3 and 4, regardless of the particular religion they are affiliated with. Stage 1 types are very good at hiding their true nature, and therefore often rise to places of leadership in stage 2 organizations. I would say that the leaders of the fundamentalist groups that are such a menace to society right now (both Christian and Islamic) are most likely of this stripe.

If anyone is interested in reading more on this subject, here is a link:

http://www.factnet.org/Stages_Of_Spiritual_Growth.html

[provis99]

13. this was your 666th post? How ironic, given the subject

and for the original poster, the correct answer is: all religious suck equally, and are oppressive, except mine.

[varkam]

14. Can you give an example of intuitiveness as an epistemological tool? eom

[dmallind]

16. Well right now you are right IMO

The political situation is such that fanatical Muslims are more dangerous to more people, when danger is measured in terms of injury and death, than fanatical Christians at this time.

Does that make Islam worse than Christianity? No more than the reverse would have been true 1000 years ago, when Islamic culture was the more tolerant. It just means the loonies who have nothing to lose and little to hope for happen to be in Muslim dominated countries at this point in history not Christian dominated countries, whose loonies tend to be as a group richer and more secure and hence less likely to want to start suicidal bloodbaths.

Anyone of any religion who wants to kill or oppress those who disagree is an equal loony. Any religion with sufficient political influence that pushes such a course of action is equally dangerous. How much influence these religions have tends to vacillate based on sociological and economic factors, which right now are tilted against Muslims so that's where the actively dangerous looniness is greatest.

The danger of any religion (and in fact any deeply held ideology - it's just that religion with the introduction of metaphyscial superior beings adds a whole new dimension to the danger potential) is in its ability to make people think there are more important things than the welfare of living people. Once you twist your mind enough to include that concept, it's a short step to doing horrible things to living people in the name of the "cause". Religion - any of them - provides a handy corkscrew to do that twisting, so the current situation where Islam is causing more mayhem is merely a passing example, not a constant differentiation between religions.

[varkam]

17. That's a pretty deep question.

On one hand, I'm inclined to agree that most -- if not all -- religions are equivalent in that they all ask you to sacrifice some aspect of your critical thinking and just to "take it on faith". To me, that is harm in and of itself, though I'm sure many would disagree with you.

But there are things that we can all agree that are harmful, such as religious violence. I think that it changes over time, but throughout the course of human history the big three have the most blood on their hands. Right now, I would have to say Islam is in the lead, but there are also Christians, Jews, and even Buddhists who wage war currently.

[moggie]

18. I'm doubtful about this sort of calculus of atrocity

When an argument devolves to the form "your side has killed x million people, whereas we've only killed y million, so we win!", I think the point has been lost somewhere down the line. And how can you measure the misery of (say) the stunted lives of z million women?

Who is most at risk from religious violence depends on who and where you are, of course. Personally, I'm more at risk from Muslim extremists: I've been close to some of their bombs, whereas the local Christians tend not to resort to such measures. But if I were an abortion doctor somewhere in the US, chances are I'd feel much more threatened by Christians than by Muslims. If I were a homosexual in a Muslim theocracy which the US doesn't plan to bomb, I probably wouldn't feel particularly swayed by arguments that Christianity is more dangerous.

As long as a dogma is harming a non-trivial number of people, I think arguing whether it's "worse" than some other dogma is just so much tedious wankery.

[varkam]

19. I agree, I also think it gets lost somewhere down the line.

But I also don't think that the sort of calculus that you mention has no place in debates on this subject, but that's not to say that anyone "wins" necessarily. I'd argue that Buddhists tend to be one of the more peaceful religions around, even though there are currently Buddhists killing Muslims and visa versa - but that the general trend is not an exoneration of the religion.

I further agree with you that, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter which religion is "worse". Harm is harm.

[TZ]

20. Its not a question of which religion is more harmful per se

All zealots are dangerous, IMO. Be them xtian, islamic, jewish or other religions.

[Lou Queb]

21. With freedom of religion comes equal religions.

If we admit the freedom of religion like we admit the freedom of speech and the freedom of press, then we must secure that every religions are equal before God and laws just like men and women.

[smoogatz]

22. To a non-believer, they seem roughly equivalent—although there's something

particularly obnoxious about evangelical religions. As Dawkins says, stop shoving your imaginary friends in my face. And yes, please stop trying to kill me for failing to participate in your delusions.

[pegleg]

25. I agree somewhat with your take on things here, but I don't think

you can exclude the danger of radical atheism as witnessed recently in Tibet. They were indeed assaulted by the officially atheistic Chinese government who were in the act of trying to suppress a religion. So then , this type of behavior need not be associated with any particular religion, but rather with the actions of violent human behavior and philosophies carried to extremes.

[smoogatz]

29. The Chinese are trying to suppress Tibetan nationalism.

It's got very little to do with religion or atheism as far as the Chinese government's concerned.

[Kitty Herder]

23. Some cause more harm than others.

Unitarian Universalists, for example, aren't hurting anybody.

The FLDS, on the other hand.....

[Manifestor_of_Light]

26. The Buddhists don't go around killing people, either.

Sometimes the Hindus and Muslims get in fights and kill each other.

That is far rarer than the murder and violence record of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

[moggie]

27. Buddhists are not always nonviolent

An obvious example would be the civil war in Sri Lanka: the majority Sinhalese population is overwhelmingly Buddhist. But it's probably true that, at least in recent times, most organised Buddhist violence has been a form of self defence (such as in Tibet and Ladakh).

[Deep13]

24. They're not all equivalent, but they are all wrong. nt

[tpj317]

28. No!

[Marr]

30. Wow-- I really don't think Christianity and Islam are different enough to

make such a broad pronouncement. Religions change over time, and vary in the way they're practiced from one region to another. It's like a case of the margin for error being greater than the difference measured, if you take my meaning.

I think if you wanted to talk about one religion being more harmful than another, you'd have to look at religions that are more removed from one another. Like say, western religion as a whole vs. eastern religions as a whole.. or maybe Native American religions as a whole.

Western religions all share a fascination with the divine, and the divine is always something unattainable on earth. The natural world is something dirty and flawed; something to escape from someday. I've never thought that was particularly healthy.

But anyway, all religions aren't identical, and so of course they're not all equivalent anymore than all economic systems are equivalent.

[JerseygirlCT]

31. Most religions are human attempts at relationship with the divine

I think some do a better job than others.

Any belief system that urges harm to others fails the test, in my thinking. Any that recognizes that compassion for others is at the center of our search for God is on the right path, IMO.

Equivilancy is tough to define in this arena. To whom? I think there are belief systems enough to suit all the people seeking one!

Religion is a human construct, IOW, and therefore subject to all sorts of human fallibilities. It's a means, not an end. I think to weigh the value, you have to look at the end.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

God cannot be fathomed by the human mind

so all religions are human attempts to understand the incomprehensible.

I suggest reading Karen Armstrong's A History of God. She claims that deep-down, all the monotheistic religions have a lot in common, in that they all have some very destructive varieties and some very beautiful and gentle varieties.

Religions are influenced by the cultures in which they arise or are imported, and they in turn influence those cultures.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[regularguy]

34. Grovelbot's a Witch! Burn the Witch!!!!!!

[regularguy]

33. It's hard to seperate Religion and Culture.

It's not like, for example, the desert cultures of the Middle East were feminist Utopias until mean Ol' Islam came around to opress women.
In the case of Europe, yes they fought and killed each other over religion, but then they outgrew that and fought and killed each other with even more vigor over nationalism.

[Taverner]

35. No

But all theocracies and aspiring theocracies are