• Hucklebee@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Welp, unpopular opinion time.

    Honest question: all of it? Like including all the history and its influences on our modern society? Every opera, classical music and piece of art? Will we be forbidden to listen to its influences?

    Tom Holland (who is a secular historian, not that actor guy) writes:

    “Familiarity with the biblical narrative of the crucifixion has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a deity Christ was … [Christianity] is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.”

    And again, he is not actually a christian believer, but his thesis is that all of our western society is drenched in christian values, and it would have looked absolutely different without it.

    Even Richard Dawkins calls himself a “cultural christian”. Would you destroy that culture too? Our whole western society is built upon it. To destroy religion is to destroy way more than you might realize.

    Do some religious people do bigoted things? Yes! Would I like that to be different? Yes! But “destroying religion” is throwing away the baby with the bathwater. The time of the new atheists movement has been over for a while. The sentiment of religion= bad is getting old and frankly, outdated. In the academic world they’ve moved on: more and more academics see atleast some value in religion, even if they don’t necessarily uphold a faith themselves.

    Not trying to sway you to believe in anything religious. I don’t care. But not seeing any value in religion is… a depressing take on this world and it’s beauty.

    • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Every bit of it, and I wouldn’t feel the slightest bit guilty.

      First, I think Religion’s impact on the arts is over played. And they probably would have been better without the arbitrary religious restrictions placed on them.

      And even areas where religion has some slight positive impact. It is miniscule compared to evil it has wrought on humans.