this is fine until i have to figure out what minute I'm born. idk man I was kinda busy being born, didn't check the clock
As someone that has done natal charts semi professionally if you give me a general time (I was born at 3 am instead of 2:31 am) and the birthplace it's pretty easy.
But someone making a natal chart without any birth time or place info is a red flag that they are more into the aesthetics and idea of astrology than the actual tool
I've never heard of astrology being described as a tool. Would you mind explaining what you mean by that?
A means by which one can engage in introspection on the nature of themselves or on a decision to make.
Look at the responses to this post. Someone says to be accepting of religious comrades and everyone's dismissive, assuming bad faith, or adding buts.
If someone posted a critique of leftist discourse on any other form of exclusion and people were going "Trans people are okay, but..." or "Veganism is fine, but..." people would lose their shit and mods would be doing mass purges.
Instead, it's religious people, and you're fine with people saying "Yeah, but irrelevant point about religion" or "It's okay you think that, but keep it to yourself."
It's a refusal to engage with the critique and an instinctive desire to redirect attention.
Yes, substituting one word for another
It's a fucking analogy, but if you want to see disingenuous word substitution, take a look at this:
I’ve yet to see christians being oppressed in the west
Who mentioned Christianity? Who mentioned "The West"?
I'm sorry, have trans people or vegans used their identity to oppress for thousands of years?
Religious people are fine, but if you say you are one, within the context of my country the first thing i'm going to think is that you must be VERY right wing.
Religious people are fine, but
Please self crit.
within the context of my country
If you can't think beyond the stereotypes within your national borders, you're the problem.
Religions are institutions and I can have a negative opinion of an institution.
No, they're not. They're beliefs, groups, identities. This isn't about institutions. It's about people.
Someone is asking you to be nice to other people and you feel the need to attack their belief systems completely unprompted.
This is a great take but just to nitpick, liberation theology I think is less a general phrase than a specific branch of Catholic theology mostly out of Latin America, and doesn't so much apply to other religious comrades.
Yeah, but it’s still a good rhetorical term for leftist theology
Did you ask the people who actually subscribe to liberation theology, or the people who are religious leftists but are not associated with liberation theology?
When something is a term for something specific, it is usually not a good idea to just start applying the same term to other tangentially related stuff, especially when it is not a broader tendency but just something people in obscure forums do. I've noticed it a lot, people here and other leftist forums often use a weird lingo and use names of groups and tendencies in different ways than everyone else and it's very weird sometimes.
I've definitely seen theologies outside of South America be referred to as "a type of liberation theology".
I'm not an expert, but I imagine liberation theology or "theologies of liberation" are a broad category of theologies mostly concerned with liberation.
In the same way that Marxism-Leninism can be applied to circumstances and contexts outside of Czarist Russia.I’ve definitely seen theologies outside of South America be referred to as “a type of liberation theology”.
Over here, yes, because it's one of these words that people apply to everything. There are some groups outside South America which call themselves liberation theology but it's not a lot. If you're a christian and also a socialist, that doesn't mean you're doing liberation theology, it mostly just means you're a christian and also a socialist.
I’m not an expert, but I imagine liberation theology or “theologies of liberation” are a broad category of theologies mostly concerned with liberation.
Not really, there's christian socialism which is quite old and has been influential in some places, and there is islamic socialism, but liberation theology is usually just a specific thing influential mostly in south America, which synthesizes Catholic doctrine with socialist/marxist elements.
yeah...but I don't see why that wouldn't or couldn't influence people from other imperialized nations and be applied to their country culture and circumstance?
and I really don't know what to call those except theologies of liberation.yeah…but I don’t see why that wouldn’t or couldn’t influence people from other imperialized nations and be applied to their country culture and circumstance?
It can? Maybe? Maybe not? Like, that's not something people will decide here and it's not necessary either, it's just something that happens.
and I really don’t know what to call those except theologies of liberation.
Just call them whatever they are. Or whatever they call themselves.
:10000-com: this is the point I'm trying to get across and a lot of commenters here seem to be missing it entirely.
I swear to god (hah), at least 20% of the posts on this website are posts making good points, but in the most hostile way possible.
Why are you surprised that some people reacted defensively to this post? You just stereotyped a bunch of people as crybaby wojacks, if you had instead made a short paragraph of text explaining your feelings, there would be way more people who would be willing to discuss the topic rationally.
People are talking. There are 140+ comments and a huge amount of it is very good. People will be learning from it.
The thread that actually gets people to engage and talk is more effective learning material than the thread that people gloss over and don't engage with because it's entirely reasonable and doesn't rustle any jimmies or have the real guts to properly challenge anyone's position. Challenging other people's positions inspires them to defend it, and what comes from challenge and defence is the valuable good stuff.
There are ways to challenge people's beliefs gently, there doesn't have to be a shitstorm on this website whenever someone wants to discuss a controversial topic.
I don't really see a shitstorm here.
With that said. I like the shitstorms the most.
Probably biased here because I agree with OP.
I feel like that was more about actually controversial topics. Whether or not religion should be completely and totally rejected isn't a controversial topic, it obviously shouldn't. There are specific forms of it that do need to be fought and that comes down very much to analysis of the conditions. The Russian church was embedded into the very government bureaucracy itself for example, or the American christians who are bordering on building a fascistic theocracy. The South American christians on the other hand not so much.
A yes, Hexbear.net. The place to challenge people's beliefs gently.
That notion has been dead for a long time. The mods came out and said "all aggression, all the time" and that was it.
The long paragraph thing might just be that people aren't reading it not that the context wouldn't offend them
honestly compared to a lot of the soybaby wojack shit.
this one is pretty on point. a large portion of the people on this site are like that.
if you had instead made a short paragraph of text explaining your feelings
seventeen paragraphs later
Wait. Stop. Not like this.
Going to church, singing hymns, following dietary restrictions, sacrificing to the gods, etc., etc. :halal:
Demanding a ban on abortion because women's rights makes baby Jesus cry :haram:
“aktually jesus is into abortion because he gets to see babbys sooner” - pat robertson, probably
I never got the ban on abortion thing if you actually wanted to stop abortion you would be in favour of additional support for mothers, banning it just pushes the practice underground and makes it less safe
I think it's because they're thinking about abortion through a deontological lens as opposed to a consequentialist one.
The only important thing in Marxist thought separation of church and state as well as a separation of church and economy. Religion is a personal matter and the whole idea is that it ceases to be faith and becomes a tool of social reproduction of capitalism when it is integrated with the state.
Religion, like the state is something that withers away as social administration of the means of production increases.
Politics and economy are a continuum. Separation of church and state in the enlightenment sense only launders the influence of religion as a tool of the state into the hands of capitalists. In Europe, when states still had state religions, abolition of state religion was important. However as seen in America that has been technically secular since 1776, that doesn't stop religion from still dominating economic and political reality.
As the state seperated from religion, the role of support is shifted to the capitalists who, brought up in usually white christian society, use their economic influence to preserve the church as a dominant force in the social reproduction of the working class. See: prosperity and wealth gospel/mega churches.
Separation of church and economy is basically just the prevention of the church from accumulation of capital beyond what is needed for its own subsistence. Essentially to prevent its expansion. It's allowed to continue operating freely, but loses its role as philanthropist and savior of "the wretched masses" and essentially proto-welfare state as that role is taken on by the liberated working class now master of their own destiny.
Lenin quote:
The thing done is to keep silent about it as if it were a piece of old-fashioned “naivete”, just as Christians, after their religion had been given the status of state religion, “forgot” the “naivete” of primitive Christianity with its democratic revolutionary spirit.
It's important to remember that nothing exists in a vacuum, and christianity has developed alongside the capitalist state as a functionary of the capitalist state.
Marx:
Man emancipates himself politically from religion by banishing it from the sphere of public law to that of private law. Religion is no longer the spirit of the state, in which man behaves – although in a limited way, in a particular form, and in a particular sphere – as a species-being, in community with other men. Religion has become the spirit of civil society, of the sphere of egoism, of bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all/competition). It is no longer the essence of community, but the essence of difference.
Essentially, the making of religion a private matter converts religion into a private enterprise. One subject to the same economic forces that govern capitalist production. So abolition of religion is more the ignoring of religion and removal of special privileges from it.
So basically the state will not act to either compel religion or forbid it and the charitable role of religion will be ended along with the need for charity, is that what you're saying.
Christianity developed under the Roman state it adapted to both capitalism and feudalism, I'm sure it can adapt to socialism too people did after all make similar predictions about the end of religion about the transition from a feudal to a capitalist system so I'm somewhat dubious that a shift in economic systems will kill it
Quite possibly, but Christianity and other religions adapting to a socialist state will essentially change their nature. It will be christianity or whatever religion only in name and its practice will be indistinguishable from socialism. As the divide between the social collective and religion narrows the historical necessity of religion will disappear and anything that exists will be a vestigial appendage of the old society.
The claim that it will wither away is that it will not have a social function anymore, it will become something akin to entertainment and not an institution with material effects on society. Like how the Roman gods still exist today, but it's Thor in the Avengers.
Edit: In the case of Soviet oppression of Christianity, that was more a decision made by the party as a means of preventing the emergence of the church as a counter-recolutionary force either by domestic bourgeoisie or international intervention.
You can see in China a good example of the state facilitating religion without giving it special priveleges. Also a similar form of supression occurring when the church (in this case mosque) becomes a source of counter revolutionary action.
Oh I know, they just had a lot of KGB agents constantly watching the church and kept a close eye on the clergy (and rightfully so).
Kinda need to do that with something as volatile as the European Christian church. Something that millions had fought and died for over the centuries.
Repression of the church in the USSR was more like repression of the clergy
Gaddafi was a devout muslim,
Gaddafi was really, really not very good, he was just anti-imperialist and better than what the US had in store for Libya. But he's not really a great example of some cool leftist leader or whatever.
Generally very online people tend to be less tied to faith, but there are liberation theology movements that are an integral core of our current leftist vanguard.
Actually for some reason very online people tend to exaggerate the importance of religion, presumably in reaction to annoying reddit atheists or whatever. They talk about all the religious leftist people and if you ask them they're like "oh, I know someone who knows someone like that". Most young people in most developed countries couldn't give two shits about religion and of course you shouldn't be an asshole to the ones that do but religion really isn't that significant in leftist politics and usually tends to be a hurdle. In a few specific places it works advantageously, for specific reasons.
I think in that conversation you just happened to pick out the right set of issues that are most politically controversial over the last fifty years in the West. Outside of that context, there may be a million things that a person will do or think because of their faith, but they don't necessarily lead to headbutts with you.
I think a lot of the time you could translate the ideas of the people you have those conversations with into a set of fully secular moral and epistemological axioms, but in doing so you have to admit that they are axioms through and through, and faith is about as logical a coathook to fix them on as anything else.
I think in that conversation you just happened to pick out the right set of issues that are most politically controversial over the last fifty years in the West. Outside of that context, there may be a million things that a person will do or think because of their faith, but they don’t necessarily lead to headbutts with you.
Most younger people who say they are religious don't really do anything different from anyone else. I live in a country where supposedly 90% are christians and only 4% are atheists. Most don't really do or think anything different, they just have it in the back of their mind that they're christian or whatever, and they may light a candle in a church if they happen to be inside one.
This is no different than the error made when people say “Not all men” or “Not all white people” or whatever.
This is no different than the error made when people say “Not all men” or “Not all white people” or whatever.
It is different in this case.
The conversation didn't begin is a systematic critique. It began as an invitation to individuals, and the response was bigoted generalizations disguised as a systematic critique. If you respond to an appeal for inclusion with an attack, even tangential, you're being exclusive.
I understand. I just find it concerning that a post critiquing leftist spaces for not being accepting of religious folks is 95% critiques of religion and less than 5% actually welcoming.
You can say you're accepting of religious believers, but if you can't express that without adding a dozen asterisks, it's completely disengenuous.
Partially guilty. You're continuing the same problematic trend, but approaching the existing conversation with the most nuance. Whole thing was sort of derailed from the start.
I didn’t get the impression that was the majority of comments
Per the leftist group I got this from, apparently this happens often. What part of this seems anti-lgbt? That's flying over my head. I'll delete if there's something I'm missing.
Yeah I can kinda see that. The "so much for the tolerant left" crowd can go fuck themselves.
I don't think you're overly cynical at at all. Honestly, our everyday discourse is fucked and language is tied to oppression. We just gotta call it like we see it and if we are good comrades we gotta acknowledge we will accidentally step on people's feet we just gotta apologize when we eventually do. Some people are just myopic.
I really hate hearing about religion from people who are obviously white fallen-away protestant atheists. They have such a narrow specific view on it and think they are smarter, in general, than anyone else who has an opinion on the matter.
About religion in general, yes totally.
About the specific faith they grew up in and fell away from, though, I would disagree.
That's why I said the exact things that I said in the order I said them. You can;t be disagreeing because I didn't say that.
atheists from a protestant cultural background who used to believe but stopped. It's like how in Ireland catholic atheist and protestant atheist are meaningful distinctions
It’s like how in Ireland catholic atheist and protestant atheist are meaningful distinctions
Can you elaborate? Are you saying there are meaningful distinctions or are you saying you're dubious of meaningful distinctions? I'm a former Catholic. Am I doing atheism better than protestant atheists? Score!
It also refers to your cultural background as religion is not only a spiritual but a cultural influence. For example the Irish example I made was referencing the troubles
Edit because I just thought of it, a lot of the atheists you see in the west are definitively Christian atheists as that is the religion that they are culturally familiar with and the one that informs what they perceive proper religious practice to be.
I'm referring to someone who was raised in a protestant form of Christianity, left that faith, and now believes in atheism. I find them to usually have acquired the worst traits of both protestants and atheists, in that they assume everyone except them is some kind of ignorant cult member. So many of them seem to realise that there are problems in Christianity, but just think it is because religion is inherently evil. They also swallow all the lies that protestants have spread about Catholicism(lots of misunderstanding of Church dogma and tradition), and never seem to question it despite also thinking every religious leader they had was an evil liar.
TBH, devout Orthodox Christians are overwhelmingly very right-wing. However, majority of Christians in former Soviet Union haven't been to church since their baptism.
the main point I assume they were making is that protestant atheists don;t have a more interesting perspective on Orthodox churches than anyone else, but will still elevate their opinion.
I knew a communist orthodox Christian and I also think there might be a bit of chicken and the egg with the fact the soviet union continually disrespected Orthodox Christian communities
Communist orthodox Christians in former USSR tend to hold even more social conservative views than other people who are not really social progressive themselves.
USSR opposed Orthodox Church more due to the fact that Orthodox Church was one of the pillars of the Russian Empire, fiercely opposed expropriation of the church-owned economic assets and supported Whites in the Civil War.
I'm cool with the church as long as they pay taxes and follow the laws of the elected government. Subordinate status.
The church, same as the state, will wither away as the social and historical conditions necessary for it's reproduction vanish. It will still exist for a long time, but the inability of the church to act as a tool of capital and model for socially reproducing capitalist hierarchy will cause it to devolve into a more primitive form of itself like the early revolutionary democratic Christians of the Roman era.
Abolition of religion is not suppression of religion, but the freeing of religion from the oppressive hierarchical fetters that have been placed upon it as a tool of capitalist and feudal oppression. A returning of all religions to a "primitive democracy" that is nearly indistinguishable from the model of the transitional state.
The main problem is the literal texts of those religions (well, Abrahamic religions at least, I don't know much about others) is pretty in opposition to leftist beliefs. Yeah you can be a religious leftist, but you have to ignore half of your holy book or more.
I do think something like liberation theology is the only way you could have leftism in America, especially the South. But the contradictions need to be grappled with.
you're gonna find about 10 people on earth who follow the literal texts of their scripture to a t. The abrahamic religions all have pretty good stuff about sharing wealth, its a great basis
Perfect! I ignore half of Capital also, that means we already got a lot in common.
As Tony Benn said: Capital is like the Bible nobody actually reads either
The text was written in the early iron age for an early iron age audience, the cultural context they were living in is going to bleed through to how the interact with God
I mean those texts are compendiums edited and curated over the course of 3 millennia. If those rando editors can ignore wholesale entire works I don't see why it's inconsistent for anyone else to.
Because those edits happened at least a millennium ago, and not many people were actually able to read the books or know changes were made at that time anyway.
Besides what could be snuck in through "mistranslations", the overall content of the Abrahamic books are pretty set in stone at this point. Good luck convincing billions of people to accept a version of the "Word of God" that was revised in their lifetime to remove whole swaths of text.
Of course most people just ignore vast parts of their books (most of whom haven't even read those parts), but those parts are still there, still considered part of the holy text, and therefore form contradictions that allow reactionaries to point to them and say we should be following them.
Besides what could be snuck in through “mistranslations”, the overall content of the Abrahamic books are pretty set in stone at this point.
There were entire insertions centuries after the fact. Jesus and the adulterer? Totally made up and added. , it seems.
Good luck convincing billions of people to accept a version of the “Word of God” that was revised in their lifetime to remove whole swaths of text.
I mean that has happened on the scale of millions. CoJCoLDS revelation is a tangled mess of evolving self-contradictions that the membership just go along with when they have good reason to. It's just a matter of giving people a good reason to that resonates with them.
Besides, no one here is advocating for a wholesale restorationism movement of leftist religion like you seem to be implying. I'm just pointing out that a person can absolutely yeet Paul's thoughts on women in the ministry and still consider themselves a Christian and that's neither cheating or a hack.
ITT:
1 - normal people being like “yeah religious homies are cool”
2 - nerds who read dawkins
Some of these comments really do read like enlightened r*ddit atheists wrote them.
It’s funny af. They always tell on themselves.
“I don’t understand why everyone thinks I’m a loser. Anyway ima spit up some abandonment issues on this keybord”
I don't know or care about what is going on in this thread but why would you accuse people who are arguing as having "abandonment issues". That is weird as fuck and not productive in the slightest
because I previously had abandonment issues I had to work through which resulted in me having resentment and hostility towards organized religion. it is a fairly self-deprecating joke based on my lived experience. also I am a shitbird, productivity is not in my nature.
Ok, I'm sorry to hear that. But don't assume your experiences are universal and don't assume things about people's mental condition.
Just don't make it personal, you know?
I understand your point. I promise I am not making it personal and am not targeting anyone specific with my comments, jokes, roasts, and memes unless I specifically tag their username.
Idk I'm just choosing not to voice my opinion because I have a lot of baggage on the subject so I can't trust myself to communicate on it rationally. And I don't want to upset any of my religious comrades, because as you said, they are very cool and good.
As long as the religious organizations get no political power or influence, are okay with being subservient to secular worker led rule, and they don't try to be lgbt or women's rights (including calling abortion or gay sex a sin), they're fine
Religion is fine as long as it isn't used to oppress minorities or workers
Religious comrades good but many religious claims and beliefs must be challenged. Many are incompatible, antithetical to liberation, reinforcing patriarchical systems, gender normativity homophobia, classism, ethnic "purity", victim blaming, and a deprioritization of material struggle.
Which is not to say it's always the most important thing to highlight these things in every context, nor that you should withhold critical support for AES and revolution by inevitably imperfect movements. We must have solidarity.
many religious claims and beliefs must be challenged
Going to be hard to believe, but religious doctrine is a constantly evolving thing in pretty much every faith. Dogma is largely mythical and intersectional religious tolerance is routinely understated, particularly by hyper-partisan spectacle focused mass media.
Shouting "You idiots! Why don't you learn to think for yourselves!" at people who have been grappling with the finer points of their faith for their entire lives is wildly disrespectful and exactly the sort of shit organizers shouldn't be doing.
We must have solidarity.
Solidarity is a tricky thing as it demands a certain level of rigidity to build a foundation, but also a level of flexibility to grow and expand a movement.
It's helpful to define what you're building solidarity around. If "a strict commitment to atheism" isn't it, try not to turn that into a sticking point.
Solidarity is a tricky thing as it demands a certain level of rigidity to build a foundation, but also a level of flexibility to grow and expand a movement.
Be. clap
Like. clap
Trees. clap
"certain level of rigidity to build a foundation" - trunks/roots
"level of flexibility to grow and expand" - branches and leaves and all that good stuff.
Me, staring at a screen, cringe.
Trees, standing outside and doing nothing in the sun, based.
I think I said this elsewhere but the Bible was written in the early iron age for an early iron age audience and it simply isn't materialist (the belief that ideas come from your influences) to not factor in that the cultural and material reality of that context won't influence how they interact with God and religion.
The Bible was written and modified over a super long time that includes basically all of the three big historical ages, and of course for and by different cultural groups (and individuals).
But I'm not sure what understanding that context - and people who draw from that legacy, which you've mentioned - has to do with what I said.
You have to consider the context to determine the meaning of what it says, the part that would stand out as odd to the intended audience is generally the message, for example the sacrifice of Isaac human sacrifice was common and not unexpected but the refusal and command to not practice human sacrifice would have been the surprising twist
But I'm not talking about interpreting texts... just religious beliefs. We don't need to argue about someone's religious text to know that the transphobic belief that they support through, say, the Genesis narrative is both religious and part of oppression. It's the kind of thing that would come up when supporting bathroom bills or stripping funding that supports trans kids.
I have to wonder how some of the folks here reconcile, for example, these two things:
-
Trans rights are human rights, we love our trans comrades.
-
We shouldn't reject transphobic religious beliefs.
I know you aren't saying exactly the latter, but folks seem to think that it's something they need to argue about. Some religious beliefs and the need for liberation are incompatible and we must support liberation. And then, when this ideal cannot be reached due to factors outside of our control, we must consider compromises, as all socialists do. The socialist candidate in Peru has some regressive beliefs and I'm sure many would be considered religious. I think most of us can give critical support anyways, since we think that having a problematic comrade will help a lot of people and that new harms are likely to be small. Though there's plenty of healthy discussion to have around such topics.
Alternatively, just consider the other side of the implied dichotomy: "we should not reject any religious beliefs". I don't think people are usually explicitly subscribing to this, but it's the implication behind taking issue with the qualified statement of "we must reject some religious beliefs".
This would be completely untenable even in theory, because the gamut of religious beliefs are frequently mutually exclusive and have real material impacts, even on the class struggle. You will have a negative position on some religious beliefs if you are socialist. e.g., prosperity gospel. Add liberation movements to the struggle, as this community certainly does, and the number of rejections will only increase.
We shouldn’t reject transphobic religious beliefs.
I certainly didn't intend to send this message. Reactionary beliefs should 1000% be rejected.
The point of the meme is that religious comrades are being rejected, ie. people who actually believe in liberation for all and want to work towards building socialism. The evangelical chuds can fuck all the way off.
Oh absolutely OP! My first comment was 100% on board with your post and so are these. These replies down here are just to people who seem to think that opposing some religious positions (regressive/oppressive ones) is problematic.
Love my religious comrades.
Hell yeah comrade :sankara-salute: :heart-sickle: I just wanted to clarify because other posters itt seem to think I was implying "accept bigots cuz religion". Transphobes, homophobes and all variety of garbage reactionaries can eat my fat shits.
I don't think Christianity actually has anything to say about transgender people explicitly, I would not be surprised if there was a lot of "I'm uncomfortable with it so shall project that belief as religious doctrine". Prosperity gospel also has very little behind it and rather than being a mainstream belief has a very small group of looked down upon practitioners.
"God created two genders: man and woman. It's right in Genesis."
Have you ever argued with a Christian transphobe?
Don't transgender people transition from male to female or vice versa. That says nothing about that
-
Quite good. Shiva is the god of change and death so it helps me with my mortality and my buddhist practice in regards to mindfulness and understanding dependant origination experientially. I also chant maha mrityunjaya mantra frequently and if I'm anxious saying the last line brutal generally centers me.
