The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.
In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.
All these institutions of god trying to tell us our souls will be saved if we follow them. and that the “other” religions are prophligates, infidels, devils and heretics. LMAO
I’ve yet to find one that isn’t hiding a history of butchery
What in the fuck
Satanic Panic was projection.
If we do shit like this, imagine what they could do!
Yeah, and the irony is that in the Bible, Lucifer never even asked for an animal or human sacrifice, but god did.
Excellent name.
Also, under the Christian dogma, Satan has no authority beyond what God allows. Who then is truly responsible for his actions?
Satan is God’s QA guy. Maybe a bit more prone to destructive testing than he really needs to be.
The serpent never even told Eve to eat the fruit (the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, why would God create such a tree and why wouldn’t he want humans to have such knowledge? So stupid). All it did was tell her that it was an option.
Not to mention they literally had no concept of good and evil prior to eating it. Therefore they literally could not have known disobeying God was a bad thing. It’s all just so fucking ridiculous that people buy this shit.
I asked that question when I was a kid in catechism class. To the credit of the Dominican brother who was teaching the class, he wasn’t reactive, but later had a side-talk with me about demanding logical consistency from allegory. But that realization planted the seed that eventually led to my abandoning religion.
Yeah it’s absurd. Even if taken completely allegorical.
If we go after things that weren’t said in the Bible then hell as we imagine should be among the first. Maybe that’s the reason clergy are so beyond repair?
And while we are at it, the description of hell we used to is Dante’s storytelling of Hieronymus Bosch’s interpretation of an Irish monk’s account of a early medieval Cork knight’s ba
gd trip.Since Dante died almost 2 centures before H. Bosch, that’s some insightful storytelling.
Ok I fucked up the time line, apologies. Swap Bosch and Dante but the rest holds. Check out “Visio Tnugdali”.
It’s always projection
The band names are thick in the comments.
If your society cannot or will not support an unmarried pregnant woman on her own, your society is a failed one.
I love how the headline says as if this happened recently. Clowns.
I’m old enough to remember everyone getting all bent out of shape by Sinead O’Connor ripping up a picture of the Pope.
She was a couple of years early, but right.
Sometimes, all it takes to be ostracised and threatened is to be the first to say something that’s true.
But she paid a huge price for being too early :(
Didn’t she go full Islam afterwards though? Like… Bruh.
Kinda, though I think her idea of Islam was about as idiosyncratic as her view of Christianity.
She was a seeker, and someone who could only do things her own way.
No. Show your work.I have been educated today.
Fuckin’ weird move, Sinead.
I mean, it was 26 years after the pope thing but she did convert to Islam. Even changed her name.
HUH. Okay, fair enough.
Not immediately… She was pretty much blacklisted for like 20+ years
Oconnor was a victim of child sex abuse. Can you blame her for going after her church which actively hides child rape and murder? I think whatever your views are on Islam, you should let her have this choice without judgement. Shaking your finger at rape victims is… not a great response here.
Can you blame her for recognizing and turning her back on a harmful patriarchal religion that victimizes women and children and turning to… Islam? Yeah, I can.
I don’t. Her talent doesn’t make her anything special outside of that talent. A person can do the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Also, it happened during a time when Muslims were facing torment from the outside world because of 9/11. She wasn’t the only artist to convert to Islam during that time, but most of the ones I remember reading about at least had some potential connection to the religion through their ancestry.
Some people cannot fathom a world without religion, even when they see the destruction in what they’re familiar with. If you spend your heart fighting one enemy, it’s a lot easier to miss the crimes of the enemy next door, especially if that enemy is a perceived underdog.
Edit:
2018 is when she converted apparently, but she still would have seen and felt the post 9/11 world. I don’t know much of anything so disregard everything I said if you want to or tell me why I’m an idiot if I deserve it.
I question your judgement, and hers, but I also think people should be able to make poor choices so long as bystanders aren’t hurt. If she’s funding jihad, that’s a problem (and I don’t know if she is or not). If she’s living and letting live, I’m not going to criticize. I’ll make my own, different, poor choices.
Islam in and of itself is not problematic, not anymore than Christianity at least. Like with literally every religion, it’s the strict conservatives within the religion that are the ones who enforce ridiculous mores and dress codes and other things that are detrimental to the health of the followers of that religion.
It’s just funny that she could see the cruelty towards children and women in one religion and not another that is equally culpable.
Again, religion does not equal church. She spent a lot of time as a Catholic trying to make other Catholics see the evils within the church. I think she just became tired of being the town cryer in a world that doesn’t give a shit. And Islam, the religion and belief system not the various organized churches, might have held some amount of peace for her soul. Criticizing her for converting and not starting a whole new crusade to stop the myriad of abuse found within the various sects of Islam is just silly. Especially since there are already a million voices pointing out the faults in the Islamic churches already.
Sinéad AKA Shuhada begs to differ
“This is to announce that I am proud to have become a Muslim. This is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey. All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant. I will be given (another) new name. It will be Shuhada’”
— Shuhada’ Davitt (@MagdaDavitt77) AKA Sinéad O’Connor
She left main stream catholicism before the SNL incident: “The 51-year-old was previously ordained a priest by a breakaway Catholic sect, the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, in the late 1990s” source: Irish Post
She was a troubled being (who wouldn’t be with her childhood?), so not all her decisions are relatable. Converting to main stream (Sunni) Islam still sticks out as weird.
Yeah, you are still pinning her for her belief in Islam because members of Islam have been and continue being vile detestable people. But they aren’t vile detestable people because of their belief in Islam any more than the Christians, Catholic or otherwise, are evil because of their belief in Christianity. They are vile and detestable people regardless of their belief. Their religious beliefs isn’t the source, though it does end up being a justification for those acts. But that’s just sophistry used to cover their own prejudices.
She dumped Christianity and chose a different religion. That doesn’t make her culpable for the evils of that religion any more than anyone else is for the deeds of others who believe in the same religion they do.
It’s worth mentioning that Joe Pesci did SNL the following week and said “I would have gave [sic] her such a smack. I would’ve grabbed her by her … eyebrows.” AFAIK he has never apologized for this.
Not only Joe Pesci, also Madonna and others. But fuck Joe Pesci for not even apologizing after her death.
NBC did not rebroadcast the live performance unedited until 2025, when it was featured in the documentary film Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music. In it, Lorne Michaels stated that he had “admired the bravery of what she’d done, and also the absolute sincerity of it”, though no mention was made of prior negative comments from him or the show.
Oh FUCK Lorne Michaels. What a lying sack of dog feces.
She didn’t really explain much at the time though, and when she did it never got a lot of publicity. People thought she was just attacking Catholics as a whole.
All most people saw was her ripping up a picture, going “fight the real enemy” and then a bunch of smear articles about her going mental.
I remember that and I still listen to Mandika.
Religion is such hypocrisy. No wonder people are turning away.
On one hand, they tell people don’t use birth control, no abortion ; on the other hand, they don’t protect them.
well beat my record.
Religion has historically provided a safe haven to the sick and twisted among society, where they’re allowed to act with impunity due to their perceived status.
That’s not directly due to the religion; but rather due to the societal pedestal being devout seems to put people on; “a holy person could never do that to a child” etc…
The reality is, other areas that benefit from this sort of status too find themselves riddled with bad actors… Just look through charity organisations and I can guarantee you’ll be combing over a sea of sociopaths buying themselves good credit with public opinion rather than people looking to make a difference because they want to (not to say these people don’t exist; they just don’t end up running the show normally)
mental health nurses who work in an asylum/“hospital”/“mental health unit” too according to a friend who works in one as a nurse.
All inequality creates abuse.
Your last paragraph reminded me of Ashton Kutcher… I can’t watch that 70s show anymore. It was my favorite tv show of all time.
I can’t watch that 70s show anymore. It was my favorite tv show of all time.
I used to love The Cosby Show. Unwatchable now even if they would still air it.
I could never stand the smugness and “credit to his race” overtones.
That was one of my comfort shows, and I can’t watch it either.
You mean Masterson? Or am I forgetting some gross shit Ashton Kutcher did?
The both of them are complete gross. Ashton started a charity when he was with Demi on combating child sexual abuse and exploitation, and he wrote a letter defending/supporting Danny in the trial.
Ah right, I remember that.
To be fair, those are two different levels of shittiness… I would say his monetary contribution probably accomplished much more than his letter.
Yes, gross thing to do. But does it really compare to the actual crimes Masterson committed?
Being an enabler is just as responsible as being a perpetrator.
The rosy romanticisation of what should be a humanitarian entity is probably worst with Buddhism. The Buddhist majority-Burmese oppressing the Rohyngian Muslims, some Buddhist monks advocating for dominance in South East Asia, and even pre-CCP Tibet where the dalai lama and his ilks were decadent and corrupt, seem unfathomable for many who view Buddhism as the most secular and least dogmatic religion. There was an article I have read lamenting this corruption in Buddhist communities, and I was like “they are still humans, what do you expect?”
Fuck off sino shill, CCP is not doing any Tibetans favour’s by invading their country, they are a bunch of corrupt dictators
Not making CCP any better here, but truth is truth and doesn’t care about your feelings. Was it China’s business to invade Tibet? No, but pre-CCP Tibet was a corrupt theocratic state similar to Iran and Renaissance-era Vatican.
And what’s your source for any of this, I can bring up multiple sources for the atrocities done by the CCP on their own citizens (tiananmen square massacre) and those of neighboring nations, can you back up any of what you claim about Tibet, and even if it were true that does not give China any rights to invade them. Should the other countries invade China for their corrupt leaders then?
Take a deep cleansing breath. Now look at it with this more neutral framing: the last time the lamas were in power, what was it like? Was it some ideal, benign society or not?
And whether life under the CCP is any better is a separate question. From what I can tell, there’s been a systematic effort by the CCP to extinguish all aspects of Tibetan national identity. That’s probably Han racism packaged as anti-nationalism, but regardless, it’s shitty and slow-motion genocidal.
Amongst others these:
Both the old theocratic feudal state and the CCP oppressed state are bad
@TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world is not a “Sino-Shill”, none is questioning the atrocities of the CCP. Please re-read this thread.
Unhelpful American chiming in: if the Finns, or Danes are feeling feisity we could really use a regime change…
I don’t want those fuckers taking over, building saunas and nice bakeries everywhere, forcing us to have government accountability, good universal healthcare and employment rights.
Actually, I may have spoken too soon…
You could literally google and see sources what life was like in Tibet before. China is bad, and Tibet before was bad. Many things can be true at the same time. It is just the fact of life. No one is backing up China, it is only you problem if that is you are being emotional on a factual statement.
Look into any situation where there is a massive disparity of power between some people and other people and that’s were you will find the most abuses and I totally agree it’s for the reasons you said of there being far less risk for the abusers due to their “status” and that such places actually attract the worst people in society so it’s a bit of self-fullfilling prophecy that putting too much power and not enough transparency and accountability in a position will invariably end up with it being abused, even if you start with the purest of people and the purest of intentions.
This is also probably why there was (and only time will tell if that’s still or not the case) so much child sexual abuse in the Catholic church: adult in high standing in the community and implicitly trusted by all vs child (generally from a poor background).
Thinking about this over the years (mainly for Politics, but it applies to other areas) has led me to conclude that the “good” exercise of power is impossible to get from a static situation (i.e. the idealistic idea that “give power to honest people” solves it) and instead it has to be setup as a dynamic mechanism with frequent rotation of people and multiple unrelated (ideally, competing) people watching over each other other (which is probably where the ide behind the Three Pillars Of Democracy) and whose power balances.
Exactly concentrating power in the hands of a few is a recipe for disaster, doesn’t matter if you elect uncle Roger to the post. Power needs to be distributed and the people who have it should be in constant fear of losing it if they don’t work towards gaining the favor of the masses by working towards the betterment of society. This is why I find morons who pick political sides as if it’s a sports team so stupid, neither side should think you belong to them, they should worry about you flipping your mind all the time.
Couldn’t agree more!
Religion is fucked up.
Don’t trust any religious people.
They’re all sick in the head.
Religion is a social cancer. Sometimes it’s benign and the host reabsorbs it. Other times it’s spreads and kills living tissue
I’d say it’s like a tailbone. It was once useful (when we were apes), but has long since lost all purpose. Now it is just a useless appendage and if you touch it the wrong way, you can end up paralized for the rest of your life. We can’t go without though, because it’s attached to out spine and muscles.
If you’re not religious why are you upset that some people didn’t get a proper burial?
There were death certificates so it’s unlikely there’s foul play, unless there’s some details this poorly written article is missing. It’s just they didn’t observe proper religious ceremony on the disposal of the deceased.
So your argument is that religious people are bad because some religious people don’t always follow religious ceremonies? Like if you don’t think religion is good, why would you be upset over improper disposal of the deceased?
I dont agree with the original commenter, but come on.
This is a thread about babies.
Do you really think people need a religion to see that throwing their dead bodies in a septic tank is an incredibly disrespectful and dehumanizing act?
I dont need to wish for a christian burial to understand the implications of christian nuns doing this.
Yeah, I’m sure there was no foul play in an abusive institution dealing with most vunerable members of society.
Why do people simp for organized religion so hard?
Because it’s fun to troll atheists ;)
Proper disposal of the deceased isn’t limited to religious people.
I don’t give a fuck about proper burials.
Burying bodies in cemeteries is an incredibly selfish thing. All cemeteries and golf courses should be converted into income based housing.
I only said religious people are fucked in the head. Full stop.
All religious people are mentally unwell and a danger to society.
I hope that cleared it up!
Honestly I think that thinking that having a place for people to grieve their loved ones is a selfish thing is realy fucked in the head.
You don’t need a grief theme park full of buried corpses. You can grieve anywhere.
Believe me, I’ve done it too many times to mention, both for family and friends.
It’s good that this works for you. I’m sorry to here that you had too.
Other people wish to have a dedicated space to grieve their loved ones.
I am (honestly) interested to hear your other arguments against graveyards.
Sure, plant and dedicate a tree. Or a bench by a lake. Or keep an urn on your mantle. Or thousands of other ways. But, sorry you can’t live here because we need this space exclusively to grieve?
Well, the tree thing is reality for those that chose forest burials (at least thats a thing in my country).
I think we would run out of benches by lakes rather quick. Also, that is a thing already.
Keeping an Urn is not legal everywhere. I agree the it should be.
The thing is, that humans want to do something with he their loves ones remains. We are incredibly social creates, to the point where our bonds last beyond death. We have buried our dead for thousands and thousands of years. Neanderthals buried their dead. It’s just an extremely human way to process grieve, complete independent of any religion.
So having a dedicated space to do so makes total sense. Of course that takes up room. But I’d argue that having a park like, walkable and often very beautiful place in your neighborhood is a net win for everybody. Unless you think that we should also get rid of parks and other recreational areas.
And, you have the possibility to visit a dedicated place of grievance close by, which is sensible especially for elderly people.
We would run out of benches by lakes.
But not land to bury dead people forever?!
I find your lack of logic… disturbing.
Fair enoth.
Anything of value to add to the rest of my comment?
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Saucy! No sequitir! Illogical! And removed by mod!? LOL
You realise you don’t need to be religious to believe that people deserve a proper burial right? There doesn’t need to be some man in the sky watching everyone 24/7 for people to be buried with dignity
Yeah, burial is mostly just to make sure critters don’t drag your rotting bits out into the open and your putrid parts don’t contaminate the water supply.
Cremation works really well to prevent that and doesn’t waste as much land.
And there’s no point trying to convince Westerners of the environmental benefits of sky burial.
That’s the practical aspect, but I believe the dignity and respect shown throughout the process gives people some closure.
These homes existed purely to punish unwed mothers, because Catholicism. Don’t even try to minimise the deep national trauma still felt today because it might show a weirdo cult in a bad light.
Priests molested altar boys. That’s some real fucking trauma that left lifetimes of emotional scars on people that still alive now.
But sure something that happened to some dead bodies over 60 years ago is something you want to devote your two minutes of atheist hate towards today. You’re well adjusted and have everything in the proper perspective, LOL.
You don’t think it was traumatic for young women (plenty of whom are still alive) to be kidnapped into these institutions, physically and mentally abused, and have their newborn child (again, a great number still alive and wondering who they are) forcibly removed from them, with no idea where they ended up?
That’s not very fair. It’s fairly safe to assume that each of those babies were linked to lifetimes of emotional scars, too, just not for the babies.
Wait what? 20 deaths a year and because there is a death certificate there is no fouls play?
The article mentions “tens of thousands” of births but doesn’t state the numbers of people that were at this particular site. The infant death rate ranged from over 60/1000 down to 20/1000 for developed countries and higher for worldwide estimates.
Lacking numbers for the number of births there’s no way to compare to the averages, but yeah 20 deaths per year could very well be a normal rate. We tend not to think a lot about infant death rates because it’s not a fun subject, but it’s it’s a historical fact.
I get that people are addicted to being outraged, but a higher infant death rate over 60 years ago compared to today’s rate may not be something to get super emotional about until there’s specific allegations of foul play or at least some data to indicate there was something out of norm besides improper disposal of the deceased.
There were death certificates so the government at the time was aware of the number of deaths, and they didn’t seem to think it was out of the norm. Though it’s possible they just didn’t care. But in that case the government would be complicit in this so there should be hard questions asked about the government, not just the church. But that doesn’t seem to be happening, so it seems the controversy is just about corpse disposal 60 to 100 years ago.
There is plenty of evidence for the abuse and unaliving of children before the bodies were hidden.
Sources:
Holy shit.
Article - 800 dead babies.
You - There was no sign of foul play why would you heathens care about burial?
Get your fucking head checked.
This is the second time this week I’ve seen this argument:
- Religion has historically done X
- religion is bad
- why do you care about X, that’s religious!
(The last one was about marriage)
I suspect that you’re a religious person making a slippery slope fallacy.
slippery slope fallacy
Did you just randomly select some fallacy from a list in an attempt to sound clever?
There’s only two religions in the planet that do this kind of fucked up shit with any frequency, and it’s only because they’re the norm in both of those regions. Don’t make yourself sound like a literal Reddit atheist. You’re here exactly because Reddit sucks. Don’t bring it back.
Many people are religious without doing this kind of shit.
Only two? Hahahahahaha
Show me examples of Buddhists, Native Americans, or Paganists doing this kind of stuff. The literal reason Islamism and Christianity are particularly bad is because they’re mass-adopted and politicians take advantage of that.
Just remove all religion from politics and there won’t be any problems. Human rights dictate freedom of religion AND FROM religion, not just the later.
Have you heard of the Rohingya genocide? Buddhists absolutely do fucked up shit.
I would agree with you that not all religion is bad. But singling out Christianity and Islam as the exclusively bad ones is absurd. All religions have some really important things to teach us philosophically, but at the same time, pretty much every religion has been used to justify some pretty bad atrocities.
And let’s not forget what the peace-loving Sinhalese Buddhists did to the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Holy shit. A nuanced take on religion on lemmy not downvoted into oblivion
All religions are poison. Picking which is worse between lead poisoning or arsenic?
That’s all you bud.
I’ll be poison free.
So like I used to be anti-religion. But when I studied the history of religious thought, it seemed like every criticism I had of religion I was able to find a religious tradition which explicitly accounted for that criticism, and it made me realize a lot of the essential beliefs that I had about religion in general were simply untrue. Like there are religious traditions that literally deny institutionalization (so you can’t even associate religion in general with organized religion), there are literally religions that explicitly reject the existence of any kind of deity (so you can’t even identify religion with a belief in some kind of a god). In general, it seemed like the only thing that literally all religions had in common was that they represented a set of metaphysical beliefs that an individual has attached themself to for whatever reason. And I realized that it’s kind of impossible to never make any metaphysical assumptions about the world we live in. And I started to ask myself questions like “is it even possible to reject the entire category of religious thought in a meaningful way while still retaining the ability to reason about the world?” And “is there actually a good reason why I don’t want to think of my own humanist ideas about the world as religious in nature, or does it just make me feel kind of funny because I had already prejudiced myself so heavily against the concept of religious thought?”
Weird. I had the exact opposite experience.
I find every religion to be a liars den of lies.
And all religious people are liars fools or worse.
Humanism and religion are polar opposite ideas.
Don’t apologize for religion. It’s gross.
Keep that shit away from me and my kids. You bring it near my kids we are going to have a fucking problem.
I feel like you didn’t actually try to understand any of what I just said. I hate to break it to you, but it’s literally just a fact that there are religions that make metaphysical assumptions that are literally equivalent to secular humanism. If you think that they’re actually contradictory, it just means that you probably actually haven’t tried to study the history of religious thought from an actually critical perspective where you didn’t just presume that you already had it all figured out.
This is not a position born out of logic and reason, but out of hate. I hope you get better at some point, you obviously have suffered a lot to become filled with rage this much.
This is not a position born out of logic and reason, but out of hate.
Bingo.
All religions are hate groups. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
You nailed it.
You’re so close to getting better yourself.
You’re so close to getting better yourself.
You don’t sound like someone who is doing well, why would anyone want to be like you? The folk replying to you are applying empathy and patience while you shut everyone down with vitriol.
Being angry isn’t fun, anger slowly drains you of your joy and energy. Anger only feels like fun when the alternative is to face pain
If you think every religious person is evil then I’m sorry, but your religious trauma is not an excuse. Go back to reddit.
Not necessarily evil. But every religious person is damaging to society and the environment out of ignorance, because, for example, their voting is based on beliefs disjunct from reality, including absolute morals that will vilify a substantial part of the populace for no sane reason.
The people are not all necessarily evil. They are mostly indoctrinated and duped. The religion itself is just as evil as any other virus that weasels in.
A lot of words to apologize for evil.
No. You go back to church.
Fuck your god.
Buddhists - Rohynga Genocide
Native Americans - Aztec human sacrifice, up to 20,000 per year.
Paganists - not a thing. Paganism is a description, not a religion. But there are plenty of neo-Nazi neo-pagan groups who love burning churches.
Tell me you know nothing about buddhism without telling me you know nothing about buddhism. While we’re at it, opinions on hinduism?
Smaller religions have been sacrificing children since the stone age.
I’m not saying its all bad, but singling out two religions in your general area and blaming the problem on them being “political” as if religion isn’t based on dictating social norms is ridiculous.
I agree with the freedom to believe, though. Doesnt mean that there arent inherent dangers to this stuff. You’re in a thread about murdered babies, please keep that in mind.
While we’re at it, opinions on hinduism?
Well, there was the mass murder of Muslims at the time of India’s partition. And the murder of Gandhi by a reactionary Hindu fanatic. Then, there were the anti-Muslim riots organized by the BJP when it was getting started. And now, there’s the persecution of non-Hindus by the same BJP now that that snake Modi is in power.
So, I’d say that Hinduism is a vast, diverse family of religions, but brutality and bigotry are certainly part of at least some variants of it.
Christians, Muslims and Jews. Disproven. Now go away, troll (or misinformed idiot)
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Almost every religion has some kind of missionary element, trying to spread or enforce its beliefs (and selling it as eternal truth). That’s basically how they survive and grow.
That’s the core problem for me: the need to convince others to believe the same thing. It turns personal belief into pressure, and that’s exactly why I don’t trust any religion.
Yes, it’s not all religions, but … (you should know how to finish the sentence)
- According to the church, babies are without sin. If they die at birth, they go straight to heaven.
- Abortion was illegal at the time.
- Contraception was not widely available at the time, heavily discouraged by the church, and was still very primitive and hit-and-miss.
- There were far more unwed mothers having babies than couples who couldn’t have children, but wanted them.
1+1=2.
To the “religion is what makes us civil” crowd, fuck off all the way to whatever hell you believe in or just the sun.
Disclaimer: This is not a call for violence.
Understood, I will go and punch a nun.
You could start by exposing the next Mother Rasputin or Mother Teresa.
I have never understood this pseudo-argument. Christian morality is based on the fear of eternal punishment. Do these fools even realize that?! Morality can be explained much more comprehensibly and naturally through evolution and empathy.
It’s a major self-report without them even realizing. They’re basically saying that, without the threat of eternal damnation, nothing would stop them from raping and murdering.
My main issue in discussions on religion is that either side generally claims that either “it makes us civil”, as you say, or that “it’s the cause of evil”. In reality it’s neither. Religion has traditionally been (still is, I’m afraid) a powerful form of crowd control that in past times has steered some believers into doing better deeds by the duality of the hell-heaven system, and likewise has twisted others into extremism and using religion as justification for evil acts. Most of the time it’s just a simple way of life that rids you of the need to question the universe and to carve your own path. As a “Muslim” I sometimes, in some ways, envy those that simply view the etiquettes, laws, and traditions that govern their lives as unquestionable truths. There’s no need to search for purpose, you’re already born with it.
Humans are flawed and evil. That is true with or withour religion.
Sorry for rambling.
Religion, from the start, has been used primarily as a means of control. It is a system that is built for “flawed and evil” humans to exploit in order to oppress and control others.
Anything good that might come from that is incidental and in spite of that.
I think you nailed it here. The successful religions are the ones that are useful as tools for the powerful. It’s not the cause of evil, but it’s something that lets powerful people convince people to do awful things.
On the other hand, for the believers, it’s a source of community and comfort. They’re given simple rules to follow and promised that their suffering is not in vain. It gives them simple answers to complex questions.
It also allows people to get over feeling bad. A bad thing is “part of god’s plans”. A bad thing you did is not really your fault because a trickster god made you do it, or the devil made you do it, so you don’t need to do any self-reflection. Or, a bad thing happened to you or someone you love, that’s just a bad god, or a devil, or a complex part of a god’s plan, so you don’t need to worry about it. This is all really useful for leaders, because they’re inevitably closer to the gods than the people they control, and they get to use excuses like “you’re suffering because the gods are unhappy with you” or “it’s your lot in life, because you were born to that caste” or “this was all because of this wicked group of other people who believe in a different god, so we should kill them and take their land”.
Humans are flawed and sometimes evil, but religion is a very useful tool to manipulate those people.
I’m pretty sure it’s more like: religions define what we find civil as a society. Personal spiritual beliefs define what people find acceptable and unacceptable. Religion align spiritual beliefs among social groups.
So slavery is cool, then?
Numbers 31:18
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
You can keep the “religion defines what we find civil as a society.” Miss me with all of the shit.
Id say religion tends to be more of a reflection of what a society finds as civil. Look at other religions around the world, or historical religions and there are some things that would be entirely unacceptable in my local society at least.
I find them more to be a reflection of a small group. Then it is pushed on others to force them to assimilate. Christianity, Hindism, Islam, Judaism, and every other group has “do what we say or else.”
“civil”
Recently in England there was a Turkish man burning the koran… a Muslim guy came out and lunged at him several times with a knife he just happened to have on him shouting “you will not burn my holy book” or some such, the book burner was charged by the police (the bible can be burnt in England but for some reason the koran cannot). Kier Starmer didn’t want to progress an investigation into child abuse because of how it will expose the Muslim men abusing working class young white girls because their religion states girls who don’t cover their hair are sluts.
religions don’t deserve to exist.
Religion is the last mental illness you can’t call out or treat. When you have Mike Huckabees et al going around ushering in the End Times, we should have the power to medicate these people into a barely functional stupor.
Inb4 hot takes that are especially relevant in June.
Pray for my soul.
I agreed up until the end. Forcefully medicating people into a “barely functional stupor” is a horrific human rights violation.
So is allowing someone with delusions to cause mass murder. I’d say that’s even worse, just based on the body count.
Not every religious person wants to commit mass murder.
It’s not. If you see someone with a clearly broken leg and unconscious, do you wait for the person to wake up?
No, because that person is not able to have any say in the matter (they are unconcious). All we can do is operate in their best interest, by getting them medical help.
However, a person with mental illness is concious (in this case) and can advocate for themselves and we shouldn’t deny them the right to do so. That would be oppression.
Do you think all schizophrenic people should be forcefully medicated even if they don’t pose a threat to others? Because a lot of religious people aren’t a threat to anybody. They aren’t all extremists.
However, a person with mental illness is concious (in this case) and can advocate for themselves
They can’t effectively advocate for themselves when they’re delusional or paranoid.
Do you think all schizophrenic people should be forcefully medicated even if they don’t pose a threat to others?
Nobody mentioned schizophrenia but you. And the assumption was very evidently that the people in question did pose a threat. In the case of Mike Huckabee, an actionable and immediate one.
And yes, I know involuntary commitments have been horribly abused in the past. But I also know that there are times when such a process is necessary. I know people close to me who would not be alive and had the potential to harm others if they hadn’t been sectioned. And the most severe case wasn’t schizophrenia, it was during a bad bipolar manic phase. Not that there are good ones.
I know involuntary commitments have been horribly abused in the past.
It’s not all in the past. They are still abused today.
All we can do is operate in their best interest, by getting them medical help.
The end.
They can exist - if they pay taxes.
I’d rather they not, though.
Sure but you might be making some assumptions that don’t really apply here.
You mean assumptions about the 800 dead hidden babies in what is a very common finding inthese settings? Those assumptions?
Yes, those assumptions.
Do you think they had a valid and good reason to hide 800 dead babies in a septic tank?
It wasn’t a septic tank.
It was a structure with 20 compartments which was originally designed as some kind of sewage management system but was never used as such.
So your question is really, do I think they had a valid and good reason to bury 800 infants, who had died from various bacterial and viral infections over a long period of time.
The obvious answer to that is yes.
It was a refuge for mothers and children. There’s no indication of any abuse or neglect of the deceased at this time. I’m sure there are many valid criticisms to be made about this time and this place, and certainly there are valid criticisms to be made about religion, but this refuge is not the baby murder facility you’re looking for.
There’s a snopes article with a lot more information which challenges the assumptions you’re making:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/18/796-children-septic-tank-ireland/
Your god hates you, which is why she made you stupid.
Why did they hide them, then?
Except that Snopes article does not even agree with you.
It’s time you stopped excusing and glossing over the atrocities committed.
Sources on how fucked up Irish mother and baby homes were:
the idea of banning religion is painfully tyrannical, like how could you do that without instituting a thought police or a state sanctioned belief system…
however, in reality, they most toxic part of religion of organised religions, when they are big institutions fighting for political power rather than maintaining their beliefs and communities.
possible solution: progressive tax on religious institutions based on their size, a small community of 50 to 100? tax free, you have 1000s of congregants? start rising, megachurches with 1000 thousand people? 95% tax…
banning religion? I didn’t say ban it.
i assumed you wanted them gone.
I do. religion is a profound evil, and the cause of nearly all human suffering.
God has caused the bloodiest and most brutal wars ever fought, which were all based on religious hatred. Millions have died simply because ‘God told’ Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians it would be a ‘good idea’ for them to kill each other.
- George Carlin, Comedian and Social Critic
The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been . . . the most destructive to . . . the peace and happiness of man.
- Thomas Paine, Political Philosopher (1796)
The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.
- Richard Nixon, even this Dick thinks so
I don’t think religion itself is evil. But corporate religion. Organizations and individuals that claim religion as the reasons for thier own sin for profit. People waving the bible as an excuse to do harm unto others.
Worship of a higher power or purpose shouldn’t ever be used as a reason or means to commit sins. That’s the major problem. Corruption and hypocrisy is rampant because people gather power under the flag of religion. Power easily corrupts the more it gathers.
agree 100%
but will be pedantic and complain about your usage of “sin”, as it is a Christian concept and not necessarily a bad thing.
Sin/evil deeds then. Many decent religions denounce evil deed and have good morals. Then there are other religions that promote sacrifice of life (your own or others).
Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home .
The mothers were required to stay inside the home for one year, doing unpaid work for the nuns, as reimbursement for some of the services rendered. They were separated from their children, who remained separately in the home, raised by nuns, until they could be adopted – often without consent.
Some women who had had two confinements were sent directly to nearby Magdalene laundries after giving birth, as punishment for their perceived “recidivism”. According to Professor Maria Luddy, "Such a stance, though not intended to be penal, allowed for the development of an attitude that accepted detention as a means of protecting society from these reoffending women.
Confinements. Punishment. Detention. Reoffending women.
Damn those fucking monsters. Worse of all I bet the lived with no consequences…
Is it possible to pin replies? For some reason this was almost at the bottom for me.
Also I can add some more sources, that Fox article is really bad:
My brain took a moment to register the word infant. As in the child was already born.
