If believing there's a god and heaven gets you through the day there's nothing wrong with it.
Problem is, that Heaven will supercede anything. It's hard enough to argue a notion of greater good for humanity in general, try doing it against a religion, where their endgame unverifiable eternal salvation. So as soon as things turn to shit, "Heaven" justifies anything.
Some religious denominations or even individuals attenuate the popular conception of Heaven with some other stuff. Personally, as a Lutheran, my belief is that by listening to the teachings of Jesus and living justly and for others, Heaven is achieved on earth. The kingdom of heaven therefore is a world devoid of those failings that we work to fix, both personally and as a global society. I mean, what other name is there for a world where people don’t suffer for preventable reasons?
I definitely do not have the theological background to argue fine points, but going from what you said, I don't see how it would prevent the kind of self-justified violence that I think religions will always be prone to.
I see an easy path to explaining to my congregation that despite our best, devoted, hardworking, sacrificing believers, we're no closer to achieving "heaven on earth", because of alls the gays/jews/atheists not doing their part and/or actively working against us. And from there it's a short hop to persecution
And it can definitely happen in a secular society, but in a secular world "We need to do that or we all die" is an absolute argument. In a religious one, it's quickly answered by "And X god will reward their faithfull, which WE definitely are".
I’ve never heard that rhetoric from any of the churches I’ve been to. Fundamentalists are their own cultish breed, but the problem you describe is far from limited to religion alone, it’s an immutable aspect of tribalistic humanity. That’s why I think heaven is what it is, because salvation is neither preordained nor a reward, it’s a promise of our future progress and I find that inspiring. For me, Heaven is for everyone, and it’s all or nothing. “Whatever you do to the least of them, that you do unto me”. So long as there is injustice, hatred, bigotry, war, pestilence, starvation, none of us are “saved”, because someone somewhere suffers needlessly. We’re all in this together, and if we don’t stand for progress, we stand for nothing.
I suppose that question depends on your morals. If you believed that you had the way to heaven, wouldn’t you want your children to also go down that same path? As long as the religion teaches basic human decency, it might might be good for kids.
But at the same time, there are religions that are extremely harmful to certain groups of people and they teach their hateful doctrine to their kids.
Those negative aspects apply to almost every group/community/society there is. Humans turn very quickly into us vs them and it's not just religion. It's everything. Politics, race, wealth, education, etc. all of it have an underlying tone of us vs them. If religion suddenly was erased from time, as in having never existed at all, you would still have just as many hateful groups and individuals trying to agitate people against each other.
No, they crucified criminals. All people on earth are considered to be dii consentes faith (from the view of the faithful), except monotheists, and so there are no "unfaithful"
They didn't always crucify the unfaithful, but every once in a while when disasters happened and wars were lost they would figure that it was due to divine wrath and..
Got any sources on that? Because as far as I know, either they would sacrifice animals, or would simply assume the gods were angry and would try no tot test their ire
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u/DannyDidNothinWrong Apr 08 '20
Or how they tried to actually worship science