I only have a familiarity with Christianity and the “no other gods before me” thing. I am curious what other religions have to say about it.
Atheist here. My personal philosophy says to leave them alone as long as they leave me alone. If you start to preach or force it on me, I’ll do something in the range of: politely excuse myself, to tell you to fuck off, depending on how forceful, persistent, and annoying you are.
But in almost all such encounters so far I’ve just smiled and nodded because it was often coming from people using religion to bring them comfort in difficult times, and they were often not forceful. And if they say things like “God bless you”, I take it as a sign of respect, because they often say it out of either gratitude or out of positive feelings towards me. I’ve been fortunate enough to not encounter many religious fanatics, though I’ve heard many stories of them and am ready to pull out the Ol’ Reliable in the form of “Hail Satan” if it gets to that.
Same thing here, but I am worried about the influence of “magical thinking” on our society.
And you can’t escape this. Of course whether your neighbor goes to church on sunday is their choice to make. But in my opinion the state, schools etc should be secular. And they’re not. Religion influences politicians and people to have biases, for example towards abortion, gay marriage etc. and that definitely has an influence on law, my life and that of my fellow citizens. I think lots of christians forget what the word ‘evangelion’ (the gospel) means. It translates to “Good News”. And not not prohibition and trying to tell other people who they’re allowed to marry.
Yeah, secularism is definitely something we should strive for. The effects of religion depend on which it is and which country we are talking of course.
I agree, the influence of magical thinking has declined so much and it’s horrible. How the hell are we going to help trans people without magic? Sure, hormone pills are great, but they’re slow and hard to acquire. So many lives are being lost because people don’t know that magic is immediately available to solve their problems.
My (lack of) religion’s attitude towards all religions:
May you all be touched by thy noodley appendage
“No God before me” can have, and does have in the history of Christianity, three possible interpretations.
- the exclusivist one (Evangelical churches mainly): the Christian God is the only God, you have to confess him directly to be saved.
- the inclusivist one (mainly the Catholic church, and some Protestants), the Christian God is the only God, but you can unknowingly pray him when you pray an other God within other traditions, in other words you can be Christian without knowing it.
- the pluralistic one (other Protestants), most religions are equally valuable, but if you are Christian you should pray only the Christian God.
Of course this is just a model, all positions are deeper than that and most people mix two or even the three models. I don’t know where the Orthodox Churches stand.
For myself, I tend to be somewhere between the second and the third model.
We hate Microsoft. Long live RMS and the flying spaghetti monster!
