this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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The same is true for ideologies. It's the same irrational approach imo.
Depends on the ideology.
also depends on the religion.
I honestly can't think of a single organised religion that hasn't had atrocities committed in its name (or encouraged adherents to commit atrocities). A lot of unorganised religions and spiritualities also encourage/require some abhorrent shit too, such as genital mutilation or the use of human body parts in certain folk magics.
it's just flatly true of religions and ideologies. there are bad people who adhere to everything—you can't avoid that, so it just doesn't make sense to really analyze it from this dimension. if you want to make a useful critique of either i think you have to actually weigh the scope and scale of the atrocities somehow.
Unitarian Universalists. Quakers. Zen Buddhists probably?
Quakers invented solitary confinement which isn't quite a war crime but it's not exactly great.
By this logic, it only takes one bad apple to spoil the name of a group, but that bad apple isn't necessarily representative of or indicative of the whole group.
sure, we could argue about who's bad apples are more rotten, but what's the point? humans are fallen and imperfect, so it's no surprise that groups of humans are also imperfect.
I guess the next question to ask, is the group defined by the actions of it's bad apples, or by the principles it claims to stand for?
It's especially difficult to argue against supernaturall beliefs. It means they don't even have to pretend to care about reality.
You have too much faith in humanity. Blind, irrational devotion to your beliefs with no regard for reality is not exclusive to religion. Browse a conservative forum for a few minutes and you'll come across plenty of atheists who also have fundy-esque devotion to nonsensical right-wing concepts like trickle-down. Not even cults have to be religious: just ask people who believe in the Jason Fung Diet or chronic lime disease why they think the scientists are wrong. Religion is just a means to an end for most dogmatists, their real god is the dogma itself.
The distinction is meaningless. A zealot is a zealot.