#richfool — Public Fediverse posts

Dogmas are always problematic for me, and I tend to see religion as mostly a set of dogmas.

I've always seen faith and religion as two separate things. Faith is personal ...

WARNING: this reply to https://mastodon.nl/@voorstad/117055607776743115 grew unexpectedly long while writing 😄

I'm posting it here so that it also reaches non-ActivityPub platforms.
View article View summary @Eelco Mulder :mastodon: 🇪🇺 Dogmas are always problematic for me, and I tend to see religion as mostly a set of dogmas.

Faith and religion

I've always seen faith and religion as two separate things. Faith is personal conviction, religion is someone else's convictions that are forced upon you.

If you haven't seen the (Dutch) film Simon, you should. Other than being a really, really good film, it also has the main character give us this wisdom:

Every form of organized religion is wrong.

I agree. Faith is fine, religion is (mostly) not. Let everybody think for themselves: a "moral compass" should be in your head, not in random ancient texts.

But if the gist of your holy scripture is to be nice to each other, to help those in need and to see all human beings as equal, several serious questions and doubts should pop up in your mind if an openly racist misogynist with a long list of convictions for crimes that also go against the Ten Commandments, says he is a true christian. Is he? And if so, are you?

What would Jesus do?

Again, I'm an atheist, but I have absolutely no problem with telling people that face a moral question, to ask themselves "what would Jesus do?"

For me, Jesus wasn't an immortal deity who could walk on water, but simply someone who pointed out the same societal problems we see today: inequality, poverty, greed, abuse of power, hypocrisy... He wasn't the first or the last to do that either.

Creeds on greed

Jesus was crystal clear about greed; this article, "What did Jesus say about greed?", explains it exactly like I see it.

That's pretty much the same as what Buddha teaches us, only the goal to reach is not a god or heaven, but enlightenment.

I like to see myself as a socialist, a concept that is based on the same ideas as those preached by Jesus and Buddha: help each other, and share. Capitalism is the opposite of that: grab what you can.

A true Christian can never also be a capitalist, at least not without an unhealthy dose of hypocrisy.

#USpol #MAGA #christianity #Bible #dogma #christofascism #atheism #buddhism #socialism #hypocrisy #NSGOP #greed #capitalism #AgentOrange #OrangeDefiler #RichFool #GoodSamaritan

Dogmas are always problematic for me, and I tend to see religion as mostly a set of dogmas.

I've always seen faith and religion as two separate things. Faith is personal ...

WARNING: this reply to https://mastodon.nl/@voorstad/117055607776743115 grew unexpectedly long while writing 😄

I'm posting it here so that it also reaches non-ActivityPub platforms.
View article View summary @Eelco Mulder :mastodon: 🇪🇺 Dogmas are always problematic for me, and I tend to see religion as mostly a set of dogmas.

Faith and religion

I've always seen faith and religion as two separate things. Faith is personal conviction, religion is someone else's convictions that are forced upon you.

If you haven't seen the (Dutch) film Simon, you should. Other than being a really, really good film, it also has the main character give us this wisdom:

Every form of organized religion is wrong.

I agree. Faith is fine, religion is (mostly) not. Let everybody think for themselves: a "moral compass" should be in your head, not in random ancient texts.

But if the gist of your holy scripture is to be nice to each other, to help those in need and to see all human beings as equal, several serious questions and doubts should pop up in your mind if an openly racist misogynist with a long list of convictions for crimes that also go against the Ten Commandments, says he is a true christian. Is he? And if so, are you?

What would Jesus do?

Again, I'm an atheist, but I have absolutely no problem with telling people that face a moral question, to ask themselves "what would Jesus do?"

For me, Jesus wasn't an immortal deity who could walk on water, but simply someone who pointed out the same societal problems we see today: inequality, poverty, greed, abuse of power, hypocrisy... He wasn't the first or the last to do that either.

Creeds on greed

Jesus was crystal clear about greed; this article, "What did Jesus say about greed?", explains it exactly like I see it.

That's pretty much the same as what Buddha teaches us, only the goal to reach is not a god or heaven, but enlightenment.

I like to see myself as a socialist, a concept that is based on the same ideas as those preached by Jesus and Buddha: help each other, and share. Capitalism is the opposite of that: grab what you can.

A true Christian can never also be a capitalist, at least not without an unhealthy dose of hypocrisy.

#USpol #MAGA #christianity #Bible #dogma #christofascism #atheism #buddhism #socialism #hypocrisy #NSGOP #greed #capitalism #AgentOrange #OrangeDefiler #RichFool #GoodSamaritan