I get that this comes off as anti-Jewish but it’s really anti-religion.
This is the problem when your world view is guided by hating a thing. It make you biased and bigoted. Ok so you’re bigoted against all religions, but when you talk about a specific religion your logic perfectly aligns with those that are only bigoted against that particular religion.
So does being bigoted towards all religions make you a better person than someone that’s bigoted towards only a single religion? You’re both using identical rationalizations, does does applying bigoted rationalizations more broadly make you more or less of a bigot?
I simply know my bias. I don’t like religion and make no bones about it. I do see some historical value to various religions but this bias also lets me see the cost.
I simply know my bias. I don’t like religion and make no bones about it. I do see some historical value to various religions but this bias also lets me see the cost.
So you admit to being a bigot? That’s what bigotry is, having a bias against people and seeing everything through the lens of that bias to perpetually confirm that bias.
They’re being accurate to one take of a mythology which happens to have caste the Jewish people in a bad light for millennia.
There is no record of this story happening past word of mouth.
I could make up an equally plausible story right now for why the competing religious faith would caste the other predominant faith in a bad light but not want to raise the Ire of the governing authority, “Roman’s didn’t do it, it was the other religion?‽!!”
If we do a venn diagram their hatred of the Jewish religion (antisemitism) is completely enclosed within the larger circle of hating all religion. Does drawing a larger circle around the smaller circle fundamentally change the smaller circle?
It’s the old “I’m not racist because I hate everyone equally” statement. But somehow I doubt they actually hate all people. Just those that are different from them.
In the end it’s splitting hairs. They are promoting the same ideas that are promoted by the antisemitic crowd. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, how much effort should we make debating over whether it’s a duck simply because the duck has more enemies than a normal duck?
There are a LOT of very good reasons for someone to hate religion as a whole that have absolutely nothing to do with being antisemitic. And I’m saying that as someone who doesn’t hate religion myself, though I can understand why some people do, especially since I’m a member of the lgbt community.
I mean if someone said “I hate gays” is that not homophobic? Is it no longer homophobic if that person later says they hate “liberals” and in the ignorant worldview “liberal” encompasses all the minority groups they hate? So while that person does hate gay people they also hate a lot of other groups of people they just broadly defined to be “liberals.” So does that make their statement no longer homophobic?
I don’t think it works that way because even when someone is in a group every person is an individual. If someone expresses hatred towards you, the effect is no different if the person also expresses hatred towards other groups too.
Same goes when someone is spreading antisemitic “Christ killer” kind of narratives. Is the effect of the words different if the person spreading it also hates Christians, Muslims, Buddhists as well as Jews? I don’t think there’s a difference in the effect of that narrative no matter how many other religions the person that’s spreading it hates.
Atheists can have a problem with religious bigotry. Obviously not all atheists have this issue, but it should be called out when it happens. Not believing in God doesn’t grant someone a free pass to be hateful towards people that have different beliefs from them. Religious bigotry is religious bigotry even when the bigot doesn’t believe in God. “Christ killer” narratives coming from atheists should be treated no different from when that same narrative is coming from a Christian.
That’s an entirely different argument, and not the argument you were making. You are claiming they are antisemitic because they don’t like religion, when being antisemitic is absolutely not the same thing as being anti-religion. And being anti-liberal isn’t the same thing as hating gay people just because they’re a majority liberal group of people, there are conservative gay people too believe it or not, that’s a false equivalence. Also gay people don’t choose to be gay, but religion or politics is not something you’re born with and are unable to change, religion/politics are willful beliefs and practices and something you choose to be a part of, if you have an issue with hating religion as a whole that’s fine you can have that opinion, but argue that instead of making baseless accusations, and use an appropriate argument instead of comparing being gay to being religious. If they’d singled out people who are ethnically Jewish at any point then maybe you’d have half a leg to stand on with that comparison, but they’re not talking about ethnically Jewish people they’re talking about religion in general, and it’s possible to be ethnically Jewish without being religious. Hell they never even named Judaism explicitly in their original comment. It is canon to most mainstream Christian beliefs that Jesus was a Jewish person killed by other Jewish people, whether you like it or not, if you have a problem with that take it up with Christianity but that’s not the other commenter’s fault.
You’re completely missing a crucial point because of how you choose to phrase this. Saying “I hate religion” is completely and fundamentally different from saying “I hate religious people”. The same thing applies elsewhere: “I hate liberalism” is different from “I hate liberals”. When you move from ideologies to personality traits it gets a bit more messy, but in principle “I hate homophilia” is separate from “I hate gays”, in that the first relates to the overarching concept, while the second relates to the people.
You honestly can’t call someone bigoted for hating or disagreeing with something conceptual: Bigotry is about hating people (either individuals or groups). You can call them ignorant or close-minded, but bigoted misses the mark.
The person your responding to specifically stated that the have a problem with “religion”, and even specified that their problem was with the political role it plays. That is completely distinct from having a problem with “religious people”.
Splitting hairs. If hating something related to a group of people leads someone to the exact same conclusions as someone that directly hates those people, what difference does it make?
People constantly mix politics, science, philosophy in with their hate to rationalize it. How is that different someone covering up hatred with religion? It isn’t. Someone dead naming a trans person because they have some flawed hypothesis about biology has the same effect as someone dead naming a trans person because they hate trans people. And the nature of hatred means we can never be sure if a person with weird rationalizations for these kinds of things actually believes the rationalization or the rationalization is just a method for the person that hates to promote it to others.
Atheists have become very skilled with their rationalizations for their bigotry, but they shouldn’t be given a free pass. This person is promoting “Christ killer” style rhetoric, and it doesn’t matter what their intent is, it’s antisemitic.
No, it’s not hair splitting, it’s of fundamental importance if you are ever going to have a hope of discussing something conceptual like politics or ideology with someone.
Hating consumerism without hating consumers, and work together with consumers to prevent over-consumption from destroying the planet.
You can hate transness as a concept because you’re in love with a trans person and want children, and find a solution like adoption together with that person. In that case you would hate the concept because you love the person and want to be with them, but the fact that transness exists means that they were born into a body that doesn’t conform to their personality, and that causes a dilemma for your relationship.
You can hate religion, in general or a specific one, for conceptual reasons, and work with religious people on creating a world that is best for everyone. A bunch of religious people see the advantages to a secular state (a load of secular states were founded by religious people) and a bunch of atheists acknowledge the positive sides of religion.
The difference between hating a concept and hating people is crucial.
Finally: Stating that “Jews killed Jesus” is a factual claim. It can be disputed, proven or disproven. It’s not even a statement about whether they approve or disprove of said killing. Even if they said that they disprove, it would be a statement about an action that’s claimed to have been committed, not about a person, and definitely not about all members of that group of people. That makes it fundamentally different from antisemitism, which is about hatred for a people. It cannot be met by reasonable counterclaims, because hating a large, multifaceted, heterogeneous group of people in general is in itself unreasonable.
Finally: Stating that “Jews killed Jesus” is a factual claim.
Fact based on what evidence exactly? Interpretation of the Bible?
So someone that claims to hate the concept of religion is using the religious text from one religion as a rationalization to push the same narrative that hate groups promote.
No, it’s not hair splitting, it’s of fundamental importance if you are ever going to have a hope of discussing something conceptual like politics or ideology with someone.
I think it’s of fundamental important that you work on your critical thinking skills if you are ever going to have a hope of discussing something conceptual like politics or ideology with someone. Defending someone that hates similar things to what you hate can lead you down same bad pathways. You’re literally defending antisemitic “Christ killer” narratives using some very faulty logic around it being fine for someone that claims to dislike religion arguing based solely on religious texts.
They spoke about a particular religion because that particular religion was the one relevant to the conversation already taking place. You are reaching REALLY hard to try to claim they’re being antisemitic here.
A lot of people dislike religion for reasons that are pretty understandable. I’m not anti-religion myself but I can absolutely understand why some people are because like it or not religion has hurt a lot of people because of how often it’s been used to abuse and oppress others including other religious groups.
The “it wasn’t the romans it was the Jews” is a long held antisemitic argument.
It’s super easy when someone is trying to push that narrative.
There are no contemporary records of the event ever occurring. It’s a story. How the precision of “nah it was the Jews who did it” comes out seems weird, don’t you think?
The person who is saying it here may not be intending to push the antisemitic narrative but they are just the same pushing the millennia old narrative that casts the Jewish people in a bad light and washes the hands of the “white Roman western authority who otherwise didn’t care”
Historically speaking the narrative they are pushing is an antisemitic one, when you couple the absolute lack of contemporary records of the event (but oh trust me bro it’s just these records were burned so take my FAITH that they existed!)
Again, it’s adding color to a mythological historical event that has no contemporary records of happening. When you insert specifics like that there is reason.
“it wasn’t the Romans it was the Jews” is also a fact of the most mainstream versions of Christian/Catholic beliefs. It’s also a fact of their beliefs that Jesus himself was Jewish, and I was taught both of those things when growing up in a religious school system without ever being taught to blame or hate Jewish people for it because Jewish people were also regularly victims of oppression in the bible being saved whether by Moses or God himself or others. Someone using it as an example of religious infighting doesn’t automatically mean it’s being used as an antisemitic argument. Whether you take issue with how that account of events came to exist historically isn’t the fault of the other commenter, it is still part of the mythos as most people know it, and the conversation was referring specifically to the mythos. Jesus forgiving his own people and telling god “they know not what they do” is kind of an important aspect of his sacrifice and martyrdom.
This is the problem when your world view is guided by hating a thing. It make you biased and bigoted. Ok so you’re bigoted against all religions, but when you talk about a specific religion your logic perfectly aligns with those that are only bigoted against that particular religion.
So does being bigoted towards all religions make you a better person than someone that’s bigoted towards only a single religion? You’re both using identical rationalizations, does does applying bigoted rationalizations more broadly make you more or less of a bigot?
I simply know my bias. I don’t like religion and make no bones about it. I do see some historical value to various religions but this bias also lets me see the cost.
So you admit to being a bigot? That’s what bigotry is, having a bias against people and seeing everything through the lens of that bias to perpetually confirm that bias.
The person you replied to said nothing anti -Semitic or anti religion and I’m not sure why they suggested that they did.
I think they were just trying to be historically accurate.
They’re not being historically accurate.
They’re being accurate to one take of a mythology which happens to have caste the Jewish people in a bad light for millennia.
There is no record of this story happening past word of mouth.
I could make up an equally plausible story right now for why the competing religious faith would caste the other predominant faith in a bad light but not want to raise the Ire of the governing authority, “Roman’s didn’t do it, it was the other religion?‽!!”
If we do a venn diagram their hatred of the Jewish religion (antisemitism) is completely enclosed within the larger circle of hating all religion. Does drawing a larger circle around the smaller circle fundamentally change the smaller circle?
It’s the old “I’m not racist because I hate everyone equally” statement. But somehow I doubt they actually hate all people. Just those that are different from them.
In the end it’s splitting hairs. They are promoting the same ideas that are promoted by the antisemitic crowd. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, how much effort should we make debating over whether it’s a duck simply because the duck has more enemies than a normal duck?
There are a LOT of very good reasons for someone to hate religion as a whole that have absolutely nothing to do with being antisemitic. And I’m saying that as someone who doesn’t hate religion myself, though I can understand why some people do, especially since I’m a member of the lgbt community.
Hatred is hatred, it’s never acceptable.
I mean if someone said “I hate gays” is that not homophobic? Is it no longer homophobic if that person later says they hate “liberals” and in the ignorant worldview “liberal” encompasses all the minority groups they hate? So while that person does hate gay people they also hate a lot of other groups of people they just broadly defined to be “liberals.” So does that make their statement no longer homophobic?
I don’t think it works that way because even when someone is in a group every person is an individual. If someone expresses hatred towards you, the effect is no different if the person also expresses hatred towards other groups too.
Same goes when someone is spreading antisemitic “Christ killer” kind of narratives. Is the effect of the words different if the person spreading it also hates Christians, Muslims, Buddhists as well as Jews? I don’t think there’s a difference in the effect of that narrative no matter how many other religions the person that’s spreading it hates.
Atheists can have a problem with religious bigotry. Obviously not all atheists have this issue, but it should be called out when it happens. Not believing in God doesn’t grant someone a free pass to be hateful towards people that have different beliefs from them. Religious bigotry is religious bigotry even when the bigot doesn’t believe in God. “Christ killer” narratives coming from atheists should be treated no different from when that same narrative is coming from a Christian.
That’s an entirely different argument, and not the argument you were making. You are claiming they are antisemitic because they don’t like religion, when being antisemitic is absolutely not the same thing as being anti-religion. And being anti-liberal isn’t the same thing as hating gay people just because they’re a majority liberal group of people, there are conservative gay people too believe it or not, that’s a false equivalence. Also gay people don’t choose to be gay, but religion or politics is not something you’re born with and are unable to change, religion/politics are willful beliefs and practices and something you choose to be a part of, if you have an issue with hating religion as a whole that’s fine you can have that opinion, but argue that instead of making baseless accusations, and use an appropriate argument instead of comparing being gay to being religious. If they’d singled out people who are ethnically Jewish at any point then maybe you’d have half a leg to stand on with that comparison, but they’re not talking about ethnically Jewish people they’re talking about religion in general, and it’s possible to be ethnically Jewish without being religious. Hell they never even named Judaism explicitly in their original comment. It is canon to most mainstream Christian beliefs that Jesus was a Jewish person killed by other Jewish people, whether you like it or not, if you have a problem with that take it up with Christianity but that’s not the other commenter’s fault.
You’re completely missing a crucial point because of how you choose to phrase this. Saying “I hate religion” is completely and fundamentally different from saying “I hate religious people”. The same thing applies elsewhere: “I hate liberalism” is different from “I hate liberals”. When you move from ideologies to personality traits it gets a bit more messy, but in principle “I hate homophilia” is separate from “I hate gays”, in that the first relates to the overarching concept, while the second relates to the people.
You honestly can’t call someone bigoted for hating or disagreeing with something conceptual: Bigotry is about hating people (either individuals or groups). You can call them ignorant or close-minded, but bigoted misses the mark.
The person your responding to specifically stated that the have a problem with “religion”, and even specified that their problem was with the political role it plays. That is completely distinct from having a problem with “religious people”.
Splitting hairs. If hating something related to a group of people leads someone to the exact same conclusions as someone that directly hates those people, what difference does it make?
People constantly mix politics, science, philosophy in with their hate to rationalize it. How is that different someone covering up hatred with religion? It isn’t. Someone dead naming a trans person because they have some flawed hypothesis about biology has the same effect as someone dead naming a trans person because they hate trans people. And the nature of hatred means we can never be sure if a person with weird rationalizations for these kinds of things actually believes the rationalization or the rationalization is just a method for the person that hates to promote it to others.
Atheists have become very skilled with their rationalizations for their bigotry, but they shouldn’t be given a free pass. This person is promoting “Christ killer” style rhetoric, and it doesn’t matter what their intent is, it’s antisemitic.
No, it’s not hair splitting, it’s of fundamental importance if you are ever going to have a hope of discussing something conceptual like politics or ideology with someone.
Hating consumerism without hating consumers, and work together with consumers to prevent over-consumption from destroying the planet.
You can hate transness as a concept because you’re in love with a trans person and want children, and find a solution like adoption together with that person. In that case you would hate the concept because you love the person and want to be with them, but the fact that transness exists means that they were born into a body that doesn’t conform to their personality, and that causes a dilemma for your relationship.
You can hate religion, in general or a specific one, for conceptual reasons, and work with religious people on creating a world that is best for everyone. A bunch of religious people see the advantages to a secular state (a load of secular states were founded by religious people) and a bunch of atheists acknowledge the positive sides of religion.
The difference between hating a concept and hating people is crucial.
Finally: Stating that “Jews killed Jesus” is a factual claim. It can be disputed, proven or disproven. It’s not even a statement about whether they approve or disprove of said killing. Even if they said that they disprove, it would be a statement about an action that’s claimed to have been committed, not about a person, and definitely not about all members of that group of people. That makes it fundamentally different from antisemitism, which is about hatred for a people. It cannot be met by reasonable counterclaims, because hating a large, multifaceted, heterogeneous group of people in general is in itself unreasonable.
Fact based on what evidence exactly? Interpretation of the Bible?
So someone that claims to hate the concept of religion is using the religious text from one religion as a rationalization to push the same narrative that hate groups promote.
I think it’s of fundamental important that you work on your critical thinking skills if you are ever going to have a hope of discussing something conceptual like politics or ideology with someone. Defending someone that hates similar things to what you hate can lead you down same bad pathways. You’re literally defending antisemitic “Christ killer” narratives using some very faulty logic around it being fine for someone that claims to dislike religion arguing based solely on religious texts.
They spoke about a particular religion because that particular religion was the one relevant to the conversation already taking place. You are reaching REALLY hard to try to claim they’re being antisemitic here.
A lot of people dislike religion for reasons that are pretty understandable. I’m not anti-religion myself but I can absolutely understand why some people are because like it or not religion has hurt a lot of people because of how often it’s been used to abuse and oppress others including other religious groups.
The “it wasn’t the romans it was the Jews” is a long held antisemitic argument.
It’s super easy when someone is trying to push that narrative.
There are no contemporary records of the event ever occurring. It’s a story. How the precision of “nah it was the Jews who did it” comes out seems weird, don’t you think?
The person who is saying it here may not be intending to push the antisemitic narrative but they are just the same pushing the millennia old narrative that casts the Jewish people in a bad light and washes the hands of the “white Roman western authority who otherwise didn’t care”
Historically speaking the narrative they are pushing is an antisemitic one, when you couple the absolute lack of contemporary records of the event (but oh trust me bro it’s just these records were burned so take my FAITH that they existed!)
Again, it’s adding color to a mythological historical event that has no contemporary records of happening. When you insert specifics like that there is reason.
“it wasn’t the Romans it was the Jews” is also a fact of the most mainstream versions of Christian/Catholic beliefs. It’s also a fact of their beliefs that Jesus himself was Jewish, and I was taught both of those things when growing up in a religious school system without ever being taught to blame or hate Jewish people for it because Jewish people were also regularly victims of oppression in the bible being saved whether by Moses or God himself or others. Someone using it as an example of religious infighting doesn’t automatically mean it’s being used as an antisemitic argument. Whether you take issue with how that account of events came to exist historically isn’t the fault of the other commenter, it is still part of the mythos as most people know it, and the conversation was referring specifically to the mythos. Jesus forgiving his own people and telling god “they know not what they do” is kind of an important aspect of his sacrifice and martyrdom.