Whenever someone tells you religion is harmless or a purely personal choice, remember articles like this. Religion encourages and facilitates abuse in ways non-religious institutions do not. Religion encourages blind obedience and trust in authority. Religion glorifies suffering and encourages children to minimise and ignore their own wants and needs.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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This is because there is a huge difference between belief and religion. Belief is personal. Religion is organized.
When it's organized you get problems with dogma, corruption, power, money, bad people abusing this power as a means to control, and the steps they are willing to take to make sure the organization survives.
And when you can convince millions of people that you're doing God's work.. well then you can get away with anything, and you can make people do/accept anything. Look at all the shit organized religion has done throughout history. I think nobody/nothing surpasses that body count.
Nah. The core issue is believing things without strong evidence. Whenever you do that you open yourself up for manipulation. The core requirement of "beleif" is what causes the harms of "religion" as youre choosing to divide the terms.
Well, you're right that believing bullshit without a good reason can be a problem. A big problem. For example, anti-vaxers. But even there, individual anti-vaxers aren't much of a problem (except to themselves and maybe their kids). It's only when they start organizing and occupying power positions where they can change laws and endanger everyone else that they become an actual issue.
Then again, many people believe many things without evidence, but a lot of it doesn't really harm anyone else. Believing something in itself isn't necessarily an issue.
I could believe that an invisible purple elephant controls the people around me, and it wouldn't hurt anyone else. They'd laugh at me when I told them, but that's about the end of it. People can believe whatever bullshit they want for themselves. As long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, do/think/believe whatever the fuck you want. When you believe in some wizard on a cloud who controls and judges your life, that's your problem. But when you find millions of others who believe the same crap and then you organize and try to force your beliefs on others, that's the problem.
Belief =/= religion.
Nah, when you believe things without good evidence the rot sets in. Religion and belief in the supernatural in general are always harmful to society.
You know I'm not even really arguing against what you said, right? It's a matter of degree.
I'd rather be surrounded by 10 million people who all have their own personal beliefs (however problematic that might be in your eyes), than by 10 million members of one big religion that has the will and power to try and force me to live by their rules.
And I'd rather be surrounded by 10 million people who have no religion.
Well, excusez-moi, I didn't know imaginary utopias were part of this discussion. At least in that we are 100% agreed, that's what I would want too.
Although technically, 10 million people with individual beliefs is exactly what you describe. It's not a religion until it's organized. :p
I disagree. The phrase "organized religion" exists for a reason. Most people do not seem to use the word religion the way you do.
Alright, so if I really believed an invisible purple elephant controlled people around me, in your eyes I would be religious?
Yep.
See and we differ in this. In my eyes I would be delusional.
Something becomes a religion when the delusion reaches some kind of critical mass where it's suddenly accepted and legitimized; where the followers are suddenly no longer laughed at like the village idiot, but taken seriously and protected by society because for some reason 'we should respect every religion;' where the organization suddenly gets tax breaks and political power.
The delusional get ridicule, or maybe medications. The organized delusional get religious exemptions and their own public holidays. Village idiots aren't dangerous. Millions of them organizing, well, there's christianity.
Religion is a subset of delusion based on the supernatural, yes.
Someone who believes lizard people run the government is delusional but not religious. Someone who believbes lizard people run the government and by praying to the snake god Glycon they can become a lizard person too is both.
No, that person would be delusional until he can find enough other people who believe the same thing to become a religion. :p
Don't get me wrong, I think religious people are delusional. It's just that society doesn't treat them that way, because we have somehow convinced ourselves that mass delusions are special.
Anyway, it's clear we pretty much agree except on the definition of the word 'religion.' Shall we just leave it at that? ;)
Is there a reason why they say forced labor instead of slavery?
Two former residents of a Missouri faith-based residential program have filed a federal lawsuit alleging they were subjected to systematic abuse, neglect, coercion and forced unpaid labor while they were minors at Kansas City Girls Academy.
Because the US is used to chattel slavery, where someone "owns" the person and the person (in general) is never freed. "Forced labor" denies the fiction of ownership and maintains the illusion that everyone can be free.
[As a complete aside, ancient Rome had a law saying that a father could only sell his son into slavery a maximum of three times.]
pretty sure that's classed as human trafficking
I have a feeling a good chunk of the parents that send their kids to places like these in the first place hope/know they’re forced labor or torture programs
That’s how you cure a “troubled teen”
All people have to do is stop believing and religion disappears and this kind of stuff stops. Simple as that. Let's go!
Sure but religious people LOVE abusing children.
a crazy little fact George W. Bush gave Teen Challenge programs a license exemption in texas because their religious organization and because the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse was going to shut them down for multiple violations
Boy I wish. But stop believing in gods and people find other things to worship, as the techbros and cults of personality prove. There seems to just be part of the population that wants a ‘higher force’ to mindlessly follow.
Unfortunately, history says otherwise. Religion will always pop up, as will people prepared to exploit it for personal gain.
L. Ron Hubbard sailed the world with underage girls under the guise of religion. Scientology and today's "modern" Christianity are kindred spirits. Money, money, money.
The lawsuit states that within days of admission, the facility allegedly discontinued prescribed psychiatric medications without proper medical oversight, denied medical care when the girls experienced distress or fainting and told them their mental health struggles were demonic or a sign of spiritual failure.
Those 10 John Does had better be facing some lengthy jail time over this bs.
Yay, religious freedom.
That is fuckin terrible.
But why they on boats?
https://www.news.uscg.mil/Doing-Business/Photos/igphoto/2003677939/
Apparently it's a Coast Guard drug operation in the Pacific. No idea why that picture is on this article. A mistake?
What a shithole country.
Dear downvoters, let's hear why you think the US is not a shithole country. No harm in an honest discussion. I see the downvotes, but no retorts. Why so quiet?
I just got to this thread and didn't downvote you, but I assume it's because the US is huge and the laws are not the same in every state. So it'd be like calling Europe a shithole continent because Russia is conscripting men into war, or because Hungary is trying to suppress freedom of the press.
Should Canada be judged as a whole for the actions of Alberta?
But what if America elected a child-rapist psychopath serial liar con artist racist thief and murderer as President who destroyed democracy and civil rights at home, and broke every treaty abroad and backstabbed every ally internationally AND had a Missoury "church" run a labour camp. Then would it be reasonable to judge them as a whole? A shitwhole. A no go zone?
All gas no brakes with this idealistic view, eh?