What is your opinion of Christianity?

[DC Al Fine]

What is your opinion on Christianity?

I think Christianity is full of ideas and tenets that are hostile towards human nature. For example, it says that being jealous, even slightly, is wrong. Being gay or bisexual is also considered wrong.

Let's turn that around for a second. Given humanity's penchant for selfishness, violence, and sexual misconduct, why shouldn't a decent ethical standard be opposed to human nature in some fashion?

[DC Al Fine]

The same as my opinion of all cults: An abusive indoctrination system that has wasted innumerable human lives with its insular delusions and anti-individualism. There were thousands of obscure desert cults in the ancient world, and the fact that this one happened to survive is the only reason why today we treat it any differently from Zeus or the moon goddess Nanna. It is a self-sustaining brainwashing organization that survives by emotionally abusing young people, making them feel as though they only have value as part of a greater community, and transforming them into unthinking, unquestioning followers of doctrine and scripture. The moment that we as a species banish it from our moral philosophy, our lives will be incomparably improved.

I see the word cult and you lost me. You know what cults are? Cluts are based on people, they associate with each other and shut off everyone else, they are unified under one real leadership, they don't let people leave, they blackmail people, they controll every aspact of the members lives.

You're talking about an international, leaderless, personal, dissolved, open religion. In fact there are thousands of types. A cult has one leader, and no single person is a leader of all Christendom. (That's a good thing, by the way.) While a few of those types do fit the description, most of them don't.

Cults and religions are different. Too many people think they are the same.

Technically speaking this is not true of all Christians, as at least the Catholic Church has a very clear "leader" (the pope). From what I can tell Orthoxox churches also habe relatively clear leaders.

Really that only applies to protestantism.

Well, it's understandable for you to both look at that differently ... a majority of Christians in your country are Catholics, and a majority in our country are Protestants.

Getting back to Dule's original argument. He's playing fast and loose with his definitions here. It doesn't really matter whether there's one guy at the top or not. Lumping Christianity into the pejorative "cult" and all that implies, or the Pope with David Koresh is ridiculous to say the least. There are all kinds of meaningful differences.

One may as well call Dule a communist because they both reject the divine right of kings.

[DC Al Fine]

What John is suggesting is a pretty common sociology/religious studies view of how religions form. As he says, whether it's inherently a bad thing or not is obviously going to depend on the religious preconceptions of the person assessing the concept, but suggesting that it's the case isn't necessarily a euphoric edgelord thing.

Sure that's not necessarily wrong. The edgelordy part is jumping between the academic definition of cult and the popular pejorative one.

[DC Al Fine]

What John is suggesting is a pretty common sociology/religious studies view of how religions form. As he says, whether it's inherently a bad thing or not is obviously going to depend on the religious preconceptions of the person assessing the concept, but suggesting that it's the case isn't necessarily a euphoric edgelord thing.

Sure that's not necessarily wrong. The edgelordy part is jumping between the academic definition of cult and the popular pejorative one.

I've never understood the 'edgelord' meme about atheists, probably because I don't actually know any religious people IRL. If I'd wanted to be edgy in secular California, I would've become an Evangelical.

That's rather remarkable consider you go to a town with almost as many churches per block as a typical Olde Southerne Town. The only differences is that those churches can vary from Catholic to Jewish Temples/Synagogues, from Buddhist Temples to Quaker Meetinghouses, to say nothing of the Temple Hill area over in Oakland.

Scott Alexander made an interesting point about this. He noted that he didn't know a single Young Earth Creationist, but given how YECism polled in his state, the odds of him not knowing a single creationist by random chance was something like one in a trillion. He concluded that he had created an extremely strong social bubble entirely by accident.

Dule appears to have done something similar.

[DC Al Fine]

Whoosh