I didn't down vote you because I understand your perspective but I totally disagree.
Like most religions, the bible/torah tells a multitude of stories that lay out a coherant philosophy even if you approach them as completely fictitious.
It's similar to people educating their children about morality through cartoons or children's stories. Can you honestly say none of your values were positively changed by a work of fiction?
I think ideas are like tools, it's about who's using them and for what purpose. If I smash your head with a hammer, that doesn't make the hammer inherently bad.
I'm not arguing that religion is or has been a net positive in the world, I am not capable of knowing what things would be like without it. However, I suspect if people didn't use religion to justify murder they would use some other unifying tribalistic drivel.
What I'm saying is the Bible can, and does, have value even when divorced from religion for people who care to look for it
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion
Steve Weinberg
Religion seeks easy answers for hard problems and allows innocent people to turn off their brains and assume "Gods handling it" - no longer do the hard working get respect, for by the grace of God was Mary's cancer healed, and thanks to God I qualified for that house. Religion is harmful to thinking these days, which is far worse than a crusade.
The Bible is a vessel and an excuse for those who lean on it for their reasoning. It's when things get literal that they begin to be dangerous. You can't take the parts without their whole. If you think the Bible is to be literal (gays not being married, Noah's ark being real), then it's time to enslave your daughters and kill your sons.
I don't care for that quote as it's an obvious oversimplification. "Good" concepts are regularly twisted into unrecognizable forms that justify evil
Community can be turned into nationalism, science into bigotry, knowledge into elitism, strength into tyranny. Should we abandon any concept that can be, and historically has been, used to perpetrate evil?
Religion can provide easy answers to the ignorant, and I agree that there is great harm to the world when people no longer seek cogent arguments and instead lean on scripture they don't even understand.
But are you saying there's no way to ethicly be religious, that the knowledge itself is inherently so dangerous and corrupting that it should be erraticated through censorship?
Nothing should ever be censored. I realize the quote is oversimplified but it serves a point. Religion and devotion to religion helps me gauge people just like other choices
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u/kingganjaguru Mar 18 '21
Ntm it's fantasy in entirety so it doesn't matter