assailants targeted the al-Rawda mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed. The people were doing nothing but worshiping and praying on this Friday morning (11/24/17), until the assailants launched a bomb and started shooting. Over 230 people were killed by the bomb and/or gunfire. No one has claimed responsibility, but this is still a horrifying tragedy. I know it can be hard to keep up with national news in the US, but Egypt deserves as much attention and condolences.
Unpopular opinion: Religion isn’t inherently bad or good. But it is dangerous.
It all depends on the context and how it’s utilized.
Religion can turn violent and uncaring people into more docile and merciful folk, but it can also turn healthy people to self-loathing and guilt complexes.
It can be used for positive social change, but also for violence and terrorism.
It can condone and support research and science, or suppress them.
It can build strong communities and familial ties, but it can also isolate people from their communities and families.
It should be practiced responsibly or it shouldn’t be practiced at all.
As someone who is both a practicing pagan and a religious abuse survivor, this is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell people.
opinion too meta to be popular or unpopular: this is the case with ANY
unifying system. any combination of emotional commitment plus group activity has the potential to make people behave in extreme and uncharacteristic ways.
you see this with political movements, with sports, with music, even with fiction fandoms. anything that unites a group of people and gives them a mental treasure to protect. it reaches past the skeptical cognitive level and digs right into the tribal monkey brain.
then an unscrupulous charismatic person, leader or not, can turn the group into a mob with very little effort. quite often without even intending to do so.
think about it. you’ve seen it in your fandoms. one fairly popular person with a pet peeve makes a deliciously nasty post about it, and within a week it’s torches and pitchforks all up ins.
a personal plea from a religious person who doesn’t mob up: please resist the viewpoint that it’s religion, and in particular christianity and islam, that causes this phenomenon. it’s inherent to apes with tribal social structures, and that’s what humans are. chimpanzees have wars. we didn’t invent this.
when you blame religion for human nature, you simultaneously demonize a lot of people who’ve done no harm, create a divide where there doesn’t need to be one, and excuse non-religious group violence.
tl;dr: don’t tell yourself you’re exempt from it just because you’re not religious. you’re human. we ALL have to watch ourselves when those Group Feels kick up.
“Oscar gets more unsolicited comments about how cute he is, more uninvited pinches on the cheek and ruffles of the hair and demands for affection from strangers, than anyone else I know. I made a point, from when he was very young, of teaching him to express his discomfort: he says ‘I want some space’; he says ‘I feel shy’; he says ‘I don’t want you to touch me’; he says ‘I don’t like that, please stop.’ These statements from him are almost always laughed at, and then ignored, until I step in on his behalf.”
People never think of children as people. They are tiny humans with feelings and agency dammit.
marlowfication 