"Religion" doesn't have the slightest thing to do with Jesus coming. Religion human thing. Jesus didn't say "go and spread religion to every man"...he said "go and spread the GOOD NEWS to every man".
Religion is the word we use to describe how us human's have managed to twist and warp and misunderstand that good news. We use it for gate keeping: "sorry this event is for church members only". We use it to put down people based on their behavior: "He seems like he needs religion". We use it to interfere with the law of the land: "Sorry, that law doesn't apply because of religious freedoms". And so on....
I don't think the big man gives one fiddly flying fig leaf about "religion". His son said(over, and over, and over!) that "I desire mercy, not sacrifice.". That means NOT excluding people over religion, insulting or belittling them with religion, or creating an unfair situation with "religious freedoms" in law. He wants MERCY.... that means instead of telling the beggar that religion would help him get clothed, fed, and generally happy - you should be giving him or her your clothes, sharing your food or drink, and welcoming them to your home where they can be safe. Will they abuse your trust? Who knows - and it's not important - your mercy to them was the critical action. You don't get into heaven for being discerning and clever...there is no award for actions like "I didn't invite him home, because he looked like a criminal and I don't trust him...". That's not mercy, that's you finding a human excuse to ignore the least of your brethren.
Jesus founded a church in Matthew 16. He literally said go forth and make disciples of all nations. I could go through scripture and demonstrate why almost every claim you said here is false, but you don't care about scripture, just emotion.
Churches are fine - there are endless letters and instructions to them in the scripture you mention. "Religion" is not the same word as church. If you feel compelled to "demonstrate why almost every claim you said..." etc, feel free - it's ok! Christianity is about mercy and compassion, and you mention "emotion" - that's absolutely true. I'm very emotional about it, because my message is an emotional one, and emotions were high when it was given to me. It's not going to end my little universe if you disagree, or make fun of, or try to embarrass me about it. My sincere hope is that you are happy, and that through "emotion" or any other medium, you make others around you happy.
So Jesus:
1. Founded a church
2. told the apostles to make all nations disciplines and baptize them, bringing them into that church
3. The apostles wrote letters to those churches instructing the people on how to live a christian life
4. The successors of those apostles carried on their teachings, spreading more churches all over the world and convening councils to clarify doctrine
sounds a lot like a religion, how do you define religion?
Religion (to me) is defined as a codified subset [or even superset] of beliefs, rituals, and culture.
The letters you speak of (penned by apostles of Jesus) are exactly as you describe. They were humans, trying to do what a divine being told them to do. It appears they went about it(at least partially) by writing letters. The passage I believe you are referring to, where Jesus instructs his disciples is:
> Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
This doesn't say to "spread religion", it literally tells them to teach and baptize all nations. They went and wrote letters, and here we are thousands of years later calling that "religion".
What is important to you? I see this conversation as attempting to make disciples of all nation. If it's successful for anyone(not you necessarily, maybe someone reading)...then hoo-ah! That's a win! If not, the instructions that preceded the passage you refer to say that I should "shake the dust from my feet", and leave the metaphorical house(s) that will not listen.
I don't know how we got from 0-50 A.D. to where we are now, regarding "religion", but I don't see even the most remote connection from the behavior of Jesus' disciples and their letter writing, to whatever the heck is going on in modern day.
I literally have no idea what you're talking about. I feel people like you pretend Europe's colonial era didn't exist or the American slave trade didn't exist or the holocaust didn't exist, etc... etc... etc... The only response to the millennia long list of atrocities Christians have committed, often times to other Christians, is the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy.
I think those were evil people doing evil things. Who calls the people who perpetrated these things "Christians"? If I am king, and direct my armies to slaughter another country's people because "<anything> cannot be tolerated by us, the Christians"....then I am a liar, and masquerading as something I am not. The people that did these things wanted to do them for one or more reasons, and none of those were because God told them to, or Christianity demanded it of them.
There's nuance and interesting bits of history that are missing from the orthodox pov, but that get bulldozed by the absolutism of "Religion has always been a tool for the powerful to control the masses," which, while true, is as interesting as saying "stairs are often used to ascend buildings." Power does what it always does: it grabs whats lying around and sharpens it into a spear of control.
If you know a little about the history of Christianity, you see a gradual centralization over a period of hundreds of years. Christianity obviously didn't start centralized. Religious orthodoxy burned a lot of manuscripts and rewrote history to appear to be a powerful unbroken lineage in order to justify their legitimacy.
We have to remember that the concept of heresy was invented. Hellenic and pre-hellenic cultures didn't demand compliance to doctrinal orthodoxy. Instead they practiced ritual orthopraxy. Ritual orthopraxy's sphere of influence begins and ends at the ritual. The sphere of doctrinal orthodoxy on the other hand made belief itself the battleground. The Greeks didn't care if you believed Zeus was literally real or metaphorically useful, as long as you poured the libation and didn't piss off the city.
Christianity became not just "do you love God," but "is your metaphysical model of the Trinity exactly consistent with the Nicene formulation from 325 CE." Anything but that became heresy. And that rejection of the pluralistic orthopraxis and the inability to live in harmony with Hellenic culture is exactly what made Christians so unlikable at the time and incidentally created a bunch or martyrs.
What gets lost is the weirdness of those early centuries before doctrinal orthodoxy created heresy in order to monopolize plurality of belief. We can learn important lessons from this and extrapolate to how heresy and orthodoxy get used today and why matters of doctrine end up being so encompassing and totalizing. If anything it gives us an additional point of view on our own culture.
religion (that is, an objective morality) has always been the only thing the masses have when confronted with the great pagan principle: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"
> religion has always been the only thing the masses have
This is broadly speaking true because religion is one example of a coping mechanism at cultural scale. If you trace the genealogy of morals, these precise beliefs - humility, temperance, kindness, patience - are all survival strategies of people being oppressed. At a large enough scale, it becomes embedded in moral reality itself ie: in religion.
I can see how that's appealing. One of the most common human behaviors is creating rules or in this case moral rules, and then doing a mental switcheroo where they forget that they made the rules and attribute them to universal principles, reality, truth, etc.
In general, the process of believing concepts are real objects - simply observations of reality - is called reification. Every society does it and the result is that human constructs feel as if they are inalienable truths about how reality works. The only problem is that it's culturally specific and as we know, each culture works differently and yet feels as if they've gotten it right - their concept of how things works happens to match reality.
One of the downsides to this is that we often project our own ideas of reality onto strangers especially from other societies. "Of course they protect the weak," we tell ourselves, when in fact, they're operating on a completely different set of moral relations. When our projects override objectivity, we deny ourselves the beauty of seeing the world in a new way. We rob ourselves of appreciating the magnificence of the diversity of human experience.
Is the powerful taking advantage of the weak part of the magnificence of the diversity of human experience?
I mean, I can see the powerful claiming such a thing. To return to my original quote, which is certainly a consistent philosophy: "strong do what they like the weak suffer what they must"
I agree, it feels absolutely true that the strong shouldn't exploit the weak.
But here's the thing, most societies have felt that way about something, and often, the "something" turns out to be radically different each time.
Romans felt it was universally true that honor must be defended with blood. Medieval Christians believed letting heretics speak freely was morally wrong. Victorians were convinced it was immoral not to civilize "savages."
They didn’t think they were rationalizing cruelty. They thought they were being good.
The discomfort comes from realizing that we're not standing outside history, just inside a different historical moral context that feels just as inevitable. The desire to protect the weak might be deeply human, but even how we define "weak" or "harm" changes more than we like to admit.
What if we recognize our certainty is also part of this context, not part of the conclusion?
i'm saying it is that way, and i also think you know it to be true, but don't want acknowledge that due to further conclusions that can be drawn from that truth
so we aren't agreeing at all, in any way: you don't want to believe in an objective morality for your own reasons, I acknowledge it despite the inconveniences it presents me
The point is that I sometimes wonder, if I were born in ancient Rome, wouldn't I have also felt, just as deeply, that defending family honor with violence was righteous? Not in a barbaric way, just in a 'this is obviously the right thing to do' kind of way?
It's not that there's no such thing as right and wrong, it's that what counts as 'moral clarity' seems to shift, and everyone thinks they're the ones seeing it clearly. That includes people we now think were totally wrong. What do we do with that?
Imagine someone 500 years from now looking back at us with horror and clarity, seeing our blind spots as clearly as we see slavery or witch-burning. Don't you ever worry, like me, that you might be the one taking a stand for what will one day be unthinkable? Not because we didn't believe that right and wrong didn't exist, but because we were so certain that we had it correct?
Pointing out the lack of precision and accidental aspects of custom in discussing morality is typically used as an excuse for immoral behavior, often personal.
Today, I don't view moral certainty as a primary or even secondary moral problem. Instead, I view it our primary moral problem as the idea that: "there are no absolute moral principles."
This is a self-contradictory statement, as a moments reflection will make apparent. Most people who advocate it either haven't thought about it or are sophists attempting to smuggle in a different absolute moral principle: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
Say what one will about this latter absolute moral principle, but at least it's a self-consistent ethos. I can understand why the rich, powerful and debased should prefer to see it established, as they have. A (bad) part of me certainly prefers it.
> Pointing out the lack of precision and accidental aspects of custom in discussing morality is typically used as an excuse for immoral behavior.
I guess I just don't see it the same way. When I examine the most immoral acts, I see moral certainty being a necessary component.
The Spanish Inquisition: "For the good of their souls."
Stalinist purges: "To protect the revolution."
U.S. manifest destiny: "To civilize the savages."
Terrorist movements: "In the name of God."
When I examine the faults of moral relativism I see the blandness of inaction at worst - "I suppose that's what works for them."
At an individual level, I see cynicism as the defining feature of immorality - "No one else is doing good, so why should I?" or "If I don't do bad, someone else will," but these aren't based in relativism. Relativism or absolutism simply isn't part of the moral calculus.
If anything the relativistic approach is harder than then absolutist one. An absolutist may have the burden of knowing what actions are right and wrong within a moral framework, but someone who is a relativist wanting to do good doesn't even have that. They have the additional burden of having to perform meta-ethics from which to derive ethical positions. I hate to turn this into an "I have it worse," discussion, but the grass ain't always greener.
It may be surprising to learn that moral relativists even have a history of taking moral positioning and opposing atrocities. Franz Boas opposed scientific racism, eugenics, and the use of anthropology to justify colonial domination and publicly condemned anthropologists who collaborated with the U.S. military. Ruth Benedict argued that morality is culture-bound and opposed Western ethnocentrism and the moral superiority claimed by colonial powers while critiquing the racism behind Nazism in her wartime work The Races of Mankind. Finally, Margaret Mead promoted tolerance of cultural diversity and critiqued Western sexual and gender norms. She used her platform to oppose war, advocate for civil rights. My point is that one can be a relativist and take a strong moral position - one I'd be surprised either of us would be opposed to.
you can dance around The Choice with as many words as you like
“We see then that the two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt of God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far contempt of self."
I don't know anything about hinduism, but I assume there is a base morality that the strong may not take advantage of the weak, in contrast with the athenian dictum I quoted.
"Religion" literally means, 'the device which binds people into one', and is not the only form of this very same device.
Latin religare ‘to bind’.
We are all bound "in legion" (literally, by the strong, cured ligaments of a foot) here on HN, for example. Ligament and Legion and Religion are all based on the same common root: a way to bind people together, strongly.
So forget about trying to make the human capability to become an egregore exclusive to those who organize around religion. We humans don't get anything done unless we are bound together, as one, around a common purpose.
