With respect, you seem to do that a lot. For the last hundred years or so we’ve made significant advances in thought by favoring data over anecdotes.
If you mean jeans and a T-shirt (or however it is that most Jews normally dress), I agree, since it separates the anti-Semitism from a negative reaction to historic costume.
I feel like that’s practically a rite of passage for US Jews…
I’m surprised the most disliked group isn’t the Satanic, Pagan, or Wiccan church. Second to Judaism those are some of my favorite religions!
@bibliophile20 What do you think the reaction would have been if you had done that experiment wearing a Satanist or Wiccan shirt? I imagine it might just have been viewed as a teenage rebellion thing because of your age, I can never tell if those belief groups are viewed seriously by religious fundamentalists and seen as real a threat or just viewed as a form of rebellion…
It’s weird how many Christians skipped over the part of the Bible where their lord and savior was tried, convicted and crucified by the Romans. Do they think “Pontius Pilate” is a Jewish name or what?
Is there a Satanic-Lite, now with 99% less Objectivism?
I have no idea, and, honestly, I’d love to do it again with a bit more rigor at some point; repeated trials, multiple people and outfits, etc.
I’m not sure there has ever even been a real Satanic church. The current movement in the United States has virtually nothing to do with belief as far as I can tell, they mainly focus on advocating for separation of church and state.
I think Aleister Crowley was as close as anyone has ever gotten to actually creating a belief system around the principles of Satanism… however if we move this into a discussion of actions I’m happy to argue that the majority of the Christian church’s leadership have been not so secret Satanists, just look at their historical actions: paying to get into heaven, the crusades, etc.
Then again you could also argue that maybe the actual principles of Satanism are kinder, more forgiving, understanding, empathetic, and generous than modern (or maybe even the original) christian church. Or maybe god (with a capital G) is just an asshole, I mean have you read the Old Testament?
EDIT: I mean no offense towards anyone with religious beliefs. I’m just coming from a perspective of religious cultural and tradition, not belief. This got meta quick, didn’t it?
More than a fair point.
OH no, it’s a real threat. Seen that in the midwest not by actual Pagans and Wiccans, but from metal heads with shirts with Satanic imagery.
Those of us who follow sandraandwoo.com will know that Powree and Knoerzer have been pursuing exactly this line of thought for the past weeks. I like to find my theology in strange places.
Please, please. I know you have none where I’m concerned; no need to pretend to an emotion you do not feel.
Welcome to America!
You know, I love Carlin, but he got really bitter later in life. His observations got less clever and funny and pointing out hypocrisies, and just more or less got mean. IIRC his wife’s death had a hand in that. (This is a general comment, I don’t have time to watch your link right now.)
But still, religion is a big ol’ mess. But it is really, really hard to characterize anyone group as good or bad. There is a huge line of history and the baggage that comes with much of it. There is also a lot of people who use it as tool for control, with no actual religion behind their motives. The beliefs and texts can be used to support or reject all sorts of things, depending on how you read and teach it. And then you end up with complicated things like sects of Christianity and Islam being anti-Semitic, controlling of women, and persecution of gays, among other things. But it is hard to condemn the whole over arching groups, because so many of them aren’t like that at all. Plus you also have billions of people following no religion per se, and one of the many non-Abrahamic religions.
Some people think that a lot of ills would go away if there was no religion, but I don’t think that is the case. People don’t need religion to find reason to be assholes or feel superior or condemn others. You can follow a god or a political or social ideology and end up in the same boat.
And to be fair, there IS a lot of charity work done by various religious groups, plus smaller, local networks of support and social groups. For example people coming over to check on my mom after her surgeries.
Only the times where you have questioned reports of anti-Semitism. I am not real fond of gentiles telling me what does and does not count as anti-Semitism.
Like @werdnagreb, I grew up somewhere where we were pretty well assimilated…almost as well as in Germany before the War. Since then the I’ve lived in many places - including England, though it was far from the worst - where animosity towards Jews was palpable. (And not just to those in medieval garb.)
Fuck no. That’s like saying your dog got fleas because it scratched, or blaming an injury on the arrival of an ambulance: “I’m injured because I hear sirens”. I blame humanity’s ills on humanity… but that’s not to say that religion hasn’t necessarily made it easier for people to inflict harm and profit off others. I’d compare it to guns and the perspective of “tool vs. hand” and how much blame each holds but I think that discussion would lead us nowhere. I ain’t in a good spot to assign blame right now except towards the voting population of my country… but I digress.
thats great!!
According to catholic doctrine (i.e. Lumen gentium 16) there is no need to proselytize muslims or jews.
its weird to think someone would use that as a answer to the first victims of slavery, ie Africans. When this was first out as someone of Irish descendent it made me feel even more sympathy and a greater hatred of both that institution and anyone who tried to argue for it in any context…
even if its fake i don’t get how that helps racists, its just another nail in the slavery coffin
This is why I always make sure I have a go at Italians for killing Jesus instead.
Yeah. Gets me occasionally. My default from the UK is to assume everyone is atheist, or at least secular. But it really is religious over here. I got told fairly recently that I was brave for freely saying I was an atheist. It’s NBD to me, but evidently to some it is.
The Jew-blaming is such a bizarre reversal. A Jewish guy gets executed by Roman authorities and a couple thousand years later it’s followers of a Rome-based religion blaming the Jews for the killing. It would be like white people blaming black people for the death of Martin Luther King Jr.
Since the UK has a state religion, and the BBC has a daily sermon in the middle of its morning radio newscast and and a Christian hymnal on Sunday TV, I’m not sure either word is quite accurate.
When I lived there in the 80s I couldn’t buy milk on Sundays because of the Church-driven blue laws. (That eventually changed, praise the Lord.) I could buy beer, however. The British relationship with religion never did make much sense to me.
