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No Gods, No Rulers
(lemmy.sdf.org)
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this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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Oh, you don't need religion for that. Most of the world already worships The Economy and would rather destroy all life on earth than hurt The Economy.
Why though? There are so many counterexamples to both of those. Most western religions don't say that gods defy the limits of the world in any way. Thor doesn't defy the limits of the world when he summons lightning with Mjolnir, for example. In fact, Thor has to wear special bracers that protect him from the hammer's power. Prometheus still has to follow the commands of his king even though he's a god, and when he doesn't, he gets chained up and eaten by vultures. Even Jesus needs to sacrifice himself on the cross in order to satisfy the Old Laws and get everyone into heaven. None of these gods exist outside the world, they're all bound to its rules. It's just that when you have a magic hammer, the rules are a little more permissive. Just like the rules for humans have been more permissive ever since humans figured out antibiotics and aircraft. The gods, in nearly all religions, are just powerful people or creatures. And often they're not even powerful. Shinto has 8 million Kami. And while Kami aren't exactly what most people think of when they say "god", we're talking about divine beings in general, right? Some Kami are just... the spirit of this one river here. The worst thing they can possibly do to you is give you turbulence when you cross the river in your boat. Or maybe make too much silt deposit in the soil on the banks of the river and spoil the farmland over a few generations. If your family has been farming that riverbank for generations, you should definitely cultivate a good relationship with the river god. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. That Kami has no more power than Village Idiot Tetsu who accidentally dropped a bag of salt on your land while he was taking a shortcut back from the market. You should also be polite to Tetsu, because he's your neighbour and it's the right thing to do. Tetsu is just a guy and the river kami is also just a guy, who happens to be nonhuman.
Drag forgot what drag's point was.
Oh don't worry, I have have issues with that too.
If you believe Thor is the cause of lightning, you might be more willing to ignore meteorology. If you believe the Aesir are actually divine and walk between the worlds, you might be more willing to believe that some people are descendants of them and thus superior.
If you believe that blood sacrifices hold power, you might think that some people are performing them when they aren't, or even perform them yourself.
If you believe the world will end, you might not be so concerned with maintaining it or even living in it.
My point is that making a habit of denying reality makes it easier to deny reality in the future, and even if one denial of reality is innocuous, later denials may not be. Bigots love to use religion to push racist, discriminatory, and abusive ideas, and the best way to defend against those ideas is to see how they align with reality. We can't identify harmful acts if we can't agree on the effect of an act, can we?
Anyway, the original topic was putting words in anti-theist's mouths. There's not even a generally accepted definition of anti-theism, with some being against organized religions, and others against monotheism specifically. To paint them all as opposite-christians is using a Zamboni as a brush.