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this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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chapotraphouse
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I feel it paints my religion as for people who have no capacity for critical thought. That merely reading the bible would suffice to cure people of Christianity is snarkily commented on almost every post in reddit or Lemmy atheist communities.
I don't necessarily know if it suggests that people who read it and understand and remain religious lack critical thinking ability. (I personally would quite like to have faith, but cannot justify it).
It more implies to me that a great number of people who are currently religious and yet have not read their foundational texts would probably not remain so if they did.
I can't fathom how someone who is genuinely religious can believe that the key to salvation is knowledge contained within a book they have easy access to, and yet don't ever feel motivated to read it themselves, and I can't respect someone who identifies as Christian or Muslim or Jewish and yet has little to no knowledge of scripture.
To those who've read their religious texts and remained religious, I can respect that as a difference in opinion. To the people who have not done so, I can only think f them as ignorant.
ok that makes more sense to me. Evangelicals for instance haven't actually read their central text, they instead read sparknotes summaries and disconnected quotations. A lot of Americans are also Christian by default and haven't thought seriously about their religion, they just go to church on sunday and say they have faith.
I don't know if simply reading the Bible would be enough to make them atheists. I'd say it more like they're already very disconnected from maintaining a coherent spirituality and their ideology would buckle under the slightest scrutiny. Because their religious faith often boils down to no more than "God lets me do what I want." And how is any kind of ideology maintained if it doesn't inform actions?
If we're going with Marx's statement that religion is akin to medicine (opiate), then the faith that many Americans exhibit is more like a bandaid. Easily ripped off because it was never attached very strongly in the first place. What I'd say about that is a lot of white American Christianity is just dressed up white supremacy or imperialist ideology. It's standard conservative American values dressed up with Christianity as coat of paint to make it more palatable, or make it seem more serious.
otherwise I still respect people who are religious in despite of all of that. If they are inspired into acts of charity and connection through their faith, they know their text and feel comfortable, then that's kind of beautiful to me. Wish I could do that.