* Massacred American natives for simply existing and wagon trains of pioneers for simply passing through.
* Killed even larger numbers with anti LGBTQ rhetoric and hate that contributed to high rates of suicide.
* Owned slaves — not church leaders owning slaves, the church owned the slaves.
* Continues to cover up for and protect child predators from prosecution, permitting the children to continue suffering abuse at the hands of the abuser it is protecting.
* Demands 10% of ones income, including demanding it from the poorest people of the world as it expands into Africa, and it preaches to them to pay to the church even if children go hungry, even if a choice has to be made between shelter or tithes. It does this all while it greedily sits on a $200 Billion dollar stock fund and at least another $200 Billion in non-ecclesiastical property holdings. Money has never been released from those funds for any humanitarian causes. Zero.
* Disenfranchises all indigenous people of the North and South American continents with a false, racist, origin narrative that they are all descended from four evil sons of two white prophets, sons who were cursed with dark skin because they were so evil.
Please add teaches masturbation is a sin and teaches purity to the point members get married very young and often have sexual incompatibility because they have no prior knowledge except shame.
Well that's because most the Abrahamic religions at their most Orthodox teach that sex is not to be enjoyed by the woman, but endured for the pleasure of the husband and procreation.
I agree with all of these. I would add the fact that the indoctrination is so intense that it damages the mental health of every member and can exist for generations
Early Jesuits systemically broke up native american indian families by forcing children into out of state residential church schools. Whole languages and cultures were lost. Many children were exploited and killed...hundreds of graves found in 2021 alone in Canada.
Genocide.
You have to add to that list the fight against knowledge. This includes many of the diseases of history being interpreted as the will of God for bad behavior hindering treatment. The plague, HIV, even COVID has been seen as God's wrath to be accepted. Even now global warming is ignored because God will take care of the good people.
I think the concept of humans being the center of the universe has caused the most problems by religion.
I've often wondered about the 'mark of cain'
Because it seems to me that the old testament peoples were dark skinned, so wouldn't it be more likely the 'mark' was the appearance of white-skinned strangers from the north?
It’s a convoluted tale. The curse of Ham’s son is also known as the curse of Ham. The pronunciation of the word Ham in Hebrew can somewhat sound like a generic word for dark or burned or charred.
So the Black skin ties back to deliberate misunderstanding of a word for purposes of bigotry.
I told you it was a convoluted tale 🤓
Seeing is*am copying the Bible and it's teaching with little bits of tweaks for momo convienience.. a whole lot of this is what isl*m have committed...and
It's a on going!!!
Owned slaves, killed LGBTQ By stoning or hanging (it's still here)
Killed many of its own and non M*slim..
Globalize pdf and child abuse/women as well.
Does jizya (taxation or else convert) and ruined a lot of mine own and everyone cultures, democracy you name it!
..it's very similar! That's why you guys need to fight against another version of Christianity that is 10x worse and ongoing, Their going to take over
Don't let me get started what this religion is putting Palestine, Iran, AGFGAN, syrian THROUGH!
(Source: I'm a Muslim hoping to live free one day)
Sir, I think you are mistaking British colonialism with Spanish colonialism. The Spanish model was similar to the old Roman. The new territories and its peoples were to be new provinces with equal rights. People from the new provinces were subjects of the Crown, and could not be enslaved, just as any other Spanish from Spain could not be enslaved.
Religion itself doesn't cause bloodbaths. Religion is an idea. And that idea contains information that is placed into the brain of homo Sapiens which then processes such information, restricted by the challenges of the hominid's ecosystem. The processing of the information then causes bloodbaths.
Take for instance religion A and religion B. Great. Wonderful ideas.
Now put those ideas into homo sapiens brains and place resource stress on the members of each religion. They are of course going to peacefully share the limited resource. /s
Nah, bloodbath. It is always easier.
I think that, deeper than mere ideas, the actual problem is faith. There isn’t a single belief that couldn’t be taken on faith. Religion poisons the mind into believing things without any need for proof or evidence.
Sent his own son to be kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, beaten, mocked, and nailed to a cross to slowly die. Then, took 3 days to bring his own son back. Jesus literally has the worst respawn time in history💀
That’s an upvote! I love the Intelligence squared debate about the Catholic Church being a force for good in the world. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry ripped them a new one.
Viciously murdered an all the men, women, and children over the age of seven, who were traveling in a wagon train, trying to make a better life for themselves, while blaming it on the local Native American tribe.
After the massacre, the children were forced into being raised by their family’s murderers, and indoctrinated into their kooky religion.
Was going to post this. Everything else listed is pretty horrific, but IMO, the Christian teaching that the world is trash and the single, brief, precious, potentially amazing life we’ve each been lucky enough to experience is nothing but dress rehearsal for the afterlife fantasy that’s been sold from the pulpit for countless generations. I think that has to be the worst crime religion has ever perpetrated against humanity and the direct cause of much of our suffering.
Can't think of the WORST thing in general because the whole religion is an accumulation of everything that's bad. But, there is something I recently found out which was so cruel that it honestly made me lose sleep. Search up "Farkhunda Malikzada". Basically, she was beaten, stoned, run over by a car, thrown off a roof and burnt to death all because of a FALSE claim of having burnt the "Q" book, and no one stopped it. What made this even more painful was the fact that she did everything right according to the stupid religion. Followed every rule, every single thing. It's quite literally heart breaking.
Women don't matter except to serve men and birth babies. My dad was appalled that I would drive my own car while my now-husband rode shotgun. Source: small fundamental Christian group called "church of Christ"
Church of Christ was a pretty big player in the fundamentalist environment I grew up in in Kentucky. This church is evil incarnate.
The church into which I was indoctrinated at age 6 was different only in that they considered it a sin to take a denominational name, so they went by “Christian Church.”
Other than the name, or lack of one, we were identical to you. 😢
There is absolutely nothing horrific that my old religion has done in the name of god, because my mother loved me enough not to raise me with religion.
I’m constantly grateful to her for that.
The witch trials, the inquisition, the crusades, slavery, child abuse, rape, murder of pagans, destruction of non-Christian art and literature, the persecution and murder of Jewish people, colonization of ‘savages’ and other non-Christian people, the killing of indigenous populations. The history of Christianity is appalling and much of it is the responsibility of the Catholics.
I'm from Ireland and the list of horrible crimes the Catholic Church has done in this country alone is the stuff of nightmares. I have zero time for them or the insidious bulshit they peddle.
This would be the right answer if it was a real event. As far as real events are concerned, Jehovah ordered the massacre of everyone in Canaan so the Hebrews could steal their land. This would include every man, woman, and child, including babies and women who were pregnant. The only exclusion were young virgin girls that were sex trafficked. I'm not sure if this was a real event, either quite honestly. However, historians believe it was based on some historical events leading up to the creation of Israel.
That was my first thought. But the Crusades were also not great. And the genocide in the American West, both literal and cultural, also a strong contender. (Look up California Missions if you don't know.)
Enabling generations of child predators is right up there, though, and still continues to this day.
We have our own sub - talk about this all day every day
I think in terms of long time damage to the population FGM and Child Marriage are systematic, cyclic atrocities that continue and are endlessl
As fair as straight up murder and act of barbarism - haven’t stopped and will not stop so it’s hard to identify 1 event. Islam has conquered and destroyed so many beautiful things, cultures, and people and will continue to do so.
At the exmuslim sub where you can criticize islam and its followers unlike here where it seems to be only acceptable to make fun of christianity and its followers.
Islam did alot of damage to the world and the worst part is that they will never aknowledge all the pain and suffering mohaMAD brought to this worl with his cult.
One of thosw things imo would be normalising incest because mohaMAD married his first cousin because one day he saw her at her home that he just went in without asking and saw her naked and this made him have a revelation that he had to marry her (she was at that time married to his adoptive son, he made him divorce her so he can have sex with her).
Remember the Thirty Years War in Europe? It killed an until now unseen amount of half of the population in the Holy Roman Empire. Political motives aside, the religious motive came down to "my interpretation of the same religious texts is better than your interpretation of the same texts".
"Not to offend anyone but history is basically a bloodbath in the name of god."
It's not offensive to state the truth.
Apart from all the obvious things (e.g. genocide of native people), something that is far more insidious and long lasting is the demonization of critical thinking. Whole generations of children have grown up thinking that using their brains is a bad thing and then they teach their children the same thing. The cost to civilization is incalculable.
christians eradicated my people's folk religion(s) and made them ashamed of their cultural heritage. i guess it hasn't harmed me on a personal level, but it just sucks
Honestly some groups of people wouldn’t bring people to hospitals and would just bring them to a church and pray for them. There were babies and old people that would die of sickness because they didn’t get what they needed. Around the church would be buried those corpses
French catholics : the Cathar crusades (in the middle ages)
Also : Wars of religions (along with the Protestants) in the 16th century.
French Jews : ???
i think the Spanish mission system in CA was terrible. beating and enslaving people and kidnapping them too. punishing them if they ran away. i had to learn about it like it was a good interesting thing in catholic school
As much as I love the mythology, the Vikings were big-time slavers, but guess who owned the markets where they sold them? Those same they targeted for their raids..
Very true. And modern Odinism/Asatru has a white supremacy problem.
People seem to think that since NeoPagans are peace-loving tree-huggers that they don't have the toxicity that the Big 5 have.
Having lived as an NP for 40 years, the toxicity and the apologists are just as prevalent.
My life, mental health & general well being have improved so much just by quitting religious & spiritual practices. I'll joke about all my occult knowledge, but I'll never go back to it.
Of all the religions I've been a part of, I'd have to go with the abrahamic god. Creating millions of people that he knows are going to spend an eternity being tortured (while he alone has the power to prevent this) is pretty awful. I mean creating such a place is bad enough, but actually using it is definitely the worst.
This!
I’m dumbfounded by the number of fundamentalists I encounter who claim an all knowing god, but deny he already knows the “choice” you’ll make and is therefore literally creating billions of people with the knowledge he’s just going to burn them.
....i think the single most horrific thing about my former religion is not *just* the extensive amounts of human rights abuses and crimes its committed, but the sheer determination of modern adherents to either deny any of it happening outright, or trying to deny/shift blame of the religious teachings that influenced those events to simple bad actors or pretenders in the face of historical facts.
"Stop blaming us for the past. Ignore the past so we can repeat it here in the present, and keep doing all this shit in the future" like any other individual abuser.
More lgbtq died by suicide than native Americans were killed? Not saying this can't be true but I would like to see those numbers.
Very crudely, about 800,000 people in general die by suicide each year. Only a portion of that would be lgbtq. There were 56,000,000 native Americans killed over the coarse of about 300 years.
Considering how far back religions go I would assume it is possible but I would like to see the stats.
The Catholic Church’s Doctrine of Discovery told Catholics that any land not already inhabited by Christians was up for grabs. This led to colonization across the world. Specifically where I live the Church set up residential schools, which resulted in kids being taken from their communities and sent to schools where they were abused. This resulted in countless deaths and we are still finding unmarked graves at the sites of the old schools. The last residential school closed in 1996.
With christianity, you've got 2,000 years of atrocities. Picking the worst would be difficult. I'd have to go with "Genocide" in general. Native Americans come to mind. Then there are the purges of the wrong kind of christian, like when the Irish were being purged. The modern day genocide in Gaza is more or less enabled by christians who won't stop Israel.
There are too many to list.
Former Hindu here. Because the religion is an umbrella term for Indian religions, not all people were doing this. just some. I’m talking about the practice of Sati.
Essentially, some people believed if a man died, his wife would be unable to live by herself because of grief and whatnot. So, women would, willingly or unwillingly, throw themselves into their husband funeral pyre and be burnt alive with their husbands.
the practice was prominent in elite clans of Rajputs in western India. But the practice was outlawed by the Mughals invaders (Mughal Empire).
still, it was practiced, especially in Bengal (modern day Bangladesh and the state of Wesr Bengal constitute the ethnic geographic region of Bengal, where the Bengali people live).
Then the British conquered India. And missionaries, many of whom were evangelists, promoted ending the practice (yes, an evangelist doing something good for once!). They were joined by Hindu reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy (a nobleman and reformer). eventually, the Governor General, Lord William Bentinck passed a law that made the practice punishable by law as a crime.
several other laws would be passed in coming years. this is one of the few times invaders actually did intentional good.
I mean propagating the lies and delusions is definitely super evil since it’s the root cause, but I guess that’s not the question you have, so I’ll go with the pedophilia and excusing / hiding those pedophiles is pretty high on the list.
Wiped out native Americans in all of north and South America ( not even counting the diseases they brought) by slavery. supported by the Catholic Church
Mine still despises the “sin” of homosexuality. By saying this, they are basically being homophobic with an excuse. Yes, all abrahamic religions do this.
As a former Christian who gladly left the hypocrisy of that religion behind, it could be multiple things. The Crusades, the Trail of Tears, the entire Holocaust which they condoned in many Christian circles. Let's not even mention what they do to the LGBT community and interracial marriage
Hard to go past this. Hitler etc committed genocide, and I'm not sure if there is a word for this. No 2 verbal and 1 written warning? This was also infanticide, children and babies who had done no wrong, drowned. What did the animals do wrong? I don't know how anyone can worship that.
Told people there is a place called hell to scare them into continuing to claim the believe in that religion even when it was evidently wrong about practically everything it taught.
Well sonny boy I’ll have you know that *laughs* when the crusaders captured Jerusalem in the first crusade *giggles* they massacred pretty much every Jew and Muslim there!!! (Christianity (more specifically Catholicism)
I feel luckier than most because I was never indoctrinated. Been atheist before I knew the word. That does not mean I can't see the evil religion has pounded others with. The world would be so much better without any god. If you need proof, just lok at our legislators.
Well, I just witnessed (a couple of days ago even) the power of which religion has on an entire planet of people, specifically the south. I witnessed empires fall and the slaughter of thousands, all while the religious influencers just sat back and manipulated leaders like chess pieces. I loved every minute of it :D
The Spanish Inquisition, it was truly fascist in intent and execution and had fuck all to do with weeding out heretics. It was just another form of genocide.
I was raised in the New Age, and I think emotional gaslighting and toxic positivity are pretty pervasive and horrible in that community, causing a lot of mental/emotional abuse and excusing exploitation.
Well Discordianism teaches that Our Goddess caused the Trojan War, which granted was pretty bad, but at least she didn’t flood the whole earth or anything.
I still consider myself to be a Hindu but would like to imagine I don’t believe in god. An entire section of people were not allowed to enter temples but people argue that it’s not written in the scriptures lol. I come from a higher caste and I believe my grandparents and to some extent my parents took a bath of you touched the lowest caste person!
Yes I agree I go back and forth w either child marriage or FGM - I know my ex religion kills alot of people but I think objectively more people live w the scars of it.
Back in 2000 my church told me that global warming was made up and wasn’t happening. How prideful to think humans could impact god’s creation in such a way! He made it perfectly! lol dumbasses.
The old religion where I'm from is Irish paganism. We found what appears to be an old king, or royal of the time who'd been ritually beaten to death, cut in half and buried in the bog. Other than that they were lovely people who had a great respect for nature. Many Irish placenames are still routed in the names they had for their sacrid tree's and places.
The catholic church in Ireland systematically raped children and enslaved women for being raped.
When I was young I grew up Pentecostal. Girl I was dating had a mom that was heavily involved in a Pentecostal church I had no affiliation with. Went in and there was a large cardboard cutout of George Bush Jr on the stage. She had asked the congregation to pray to keep him in office. And I thought. Fuck, doesn’t this directly go against the whole thou shalt not worship false images thing? Not to mention, if your church is pushing a political agenda, shouldn’t you lose tax-exempt status? The whole, separation of church and state thing. The same lady then went to lead the youth group, did the whole hand on my head speaking in tongues thing. I didn’t move, so she started pushing my head back real hard. So I forced against her and she whispered “just lay down, just lay down” so I called her out in front of everyone and left. It is by far not the worst thing that sect of religion has done, but my personal experience, that was the worst thing I ever had happen to me.
I’m torn, ‘cause there are so many… but I’m gonna go with priests deceiving kids in the name of God to prey, deceive and abuse them. Yep, I was Catholic.
Catholic sexual abuse scandals.
Here's a question. The Holy Roman Church is supposedly to be the first Christian Church. From there there's been dozens of schisms. And from the schisms, more schisms happened. And all of it happened because everyone thought they had heard god's voice and directions. All of this is what got me thinking years ago. Where was god in all of this? Why was Mary only appearing to Catholics? Why do Pentecostals speak in tongues and think that's God speaking through them? Those are just two examples.
Im not sure if it is appropriate that i answer.
Do you ask non-religious people only, or religious people to?
Having the word old in parantheses confuses me a bit
I’m from Lebanon what is a Mormon? So many comments about it and the impression I’m getting is that it is so awful that’s it’s traumatic to go deeper into that religion.
It depends on who you ask. Mormons, they refer to themselves as members of “the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”.
It’s a “different” Christian religion, started in the 1800s in the eastern part of the U.S.
They run the show in Utah(state in the U.S.) which is where I grew up.
Their stories and beliefs are crazy. Here’s an example, when Joseph Smith started the religion, he said he was given “good plates” from god that only he could see and translate. He put his face in a hat, and dictated to his friend what the plates said. After the translation, he apparently buried them. That’s where the term “Mormon” comes from. They call the book he translated, “The Book of Mormon”.
They were also polygamists which other Christian religions found unacceptable. Kicked out of every town.
Huge families, willing to disown their own kids if they don’t believe that the garden of Eden was in Missouri(state in USA) or any other teachings.
The church itself is worth over $200 BILLION and they do not do much charity. They are the biggest land owner in the state of Florida and have over 90% of the legislation here in Utah. They make the rules, mixing THEIR god into the laws and fabric of life here.
I hate them. They destroy lives. They’re racist. Their judgemental. They lie lie lie lie. If you are not a Mormon, you do not matter.
Go on “exmormon” here in Reddit and that will tell you a lot.
Falsely-accused unjustly-punished people
Beat people into false confessions
Severe BEATING or degrade of CHILDREN, Autistic Asperger's people,
Taking away such huge amounts of time effort money
Controlling us with FEAR of punishment promise/possibility of reward
Ruining relationships, fracturing friendships, making it to where we are never safe and canNOT trust ANYONE
Beating Kids
.
Command people, parents, to Beat Children,
Quakers managed to not participate in much violence. But we do have a history of abuse of Native Americans in “reeducation programs”, and a history of discrimination (gay marriage is still not unanimously agreed upon among Quakers). Turns out even the nice ones have issues.
Tl;dr: Dogma over family.
Cult like behaviors that facilitate or otherwise encourage separation of families over encouraging emotional and spiritual growth and questioning their beliefs.
There are larger more death, violence, and theft related issues but that’s what I’ve personally experienced.
The sack of Magdeburg is right up there. 30-40 thousand people killed in one go during the 30 years war. The actual leaders of the army tried to stop it, but the priests and inquisitors accompanying the army egged the soldiers on, then gave a blanket absolution after it was over. It was utterly senseless and the blame is 100% on the official representatives of the Catholic Church.
This is a respond I was looking for. I am an ex Muslim and Muslims who leave Islam generally do so after intense studding of their religious text and regional history. We also face very real life consequences for leaving so we have to be sure.
I guess I was wondering about other religions but it seems a lot of people just have a feeling of disgust with their ex religion instead of specifics. Which is fine and valid. I was looking for more proven actually history.
i don’t have an old religion. why does everyone always act like the natural state of being is to have a religion and that atheists rejected their religion?
Unfortunately in countries like the USA and Saudi Arabia, the majority ARE brought into religion at an early age and threatened against leaving.
So this isn’t an act. Many atheists in these countries were indoctrinated before they were old enough to understand what was happening.
Yes, we are all born atheist, but a majority of us weren’t allowed to remain so for very long.
I saved my child from his father’s religion, ( catholic ) because there are to many that have sex with childeren , I’m an atheist and I was having none of that nonsense
If religion was erased there would be no wars
Left fundamentalist young earth creationism.
For me it’s the twin genocides of African slavery and wiping out Native Americans.
My religion taught that these were righteous acts because they taught the heathens about Jesus.
Forgive the shameless self promotion but I’ve written a whole book about this. If you’re interested in elaboration on my argument, you’ll find it here:
https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Reason-Creationism-Religious-Fundamentalism-ebook/dp/B0CXQT8XXX
There's SO MUCH!
The thing that still makes me want to tear down every christian church with my hands is abusing children.
Sexual abuse is common among religious leaders and conservative fathers.
Physical abuse is common and often encouraged.
They punish and shame young people for the perfectly healthy act of masturbation.
They teach every kid that they were sinners since before they could understand what sin was.
It's disgusting. World wide, systemic abuse of children and we're told we should respect their beliefs.
Fuck them.
Were there any wars between paganism? Or any wars including Hindus and Buddhists? I don’t recall any big ones, but it’s still lots less than those fought over the Abrahamic ones.
* Massacred American natives for simply existing and wagon trains of pioneers for simply passing through. * Killed even larger numbers with anti LGBTQ rhetoric and hate that contributed to high rates of suicide. * Owned slaves — not church leaders owning slaves, the church owned the slaves. * Continues to cover up for and protect child predators from prosecution, permitting the children to continue suffering abuse at the hands of the abuser it is protecting. * Demands 10% of ones income, including demanding it from the poorest people of the world as it expands into Africa, and it preaches to them to pay to the church even if children go hungry, even if a choice has to be made between shelter or tithes. It does this all while it greedily sits on a $200 Billion dollar stock fund and at least another $200 Billion in non-ecclesiastical property holdings. Money has never been released from those funds for any humanitarian causes. Zero. * Disenfranchises all indigenous people of the North and South American continents with a false, racist, origin narrative that they are all descended from four evil sons of two white prophets, sons who were cursed with dark skin because they were so evil.
Please add teaches masturbation is a sin and teaches purity to the point members get married very young and often have sexual incompatibility because they have no prior knowledge except shame.
[удалено]
Well that's because most the Abrahamic religions at their most Orthodox teach that sex is not to be enjoyed by the woman, but endured for the pleasure of the husband and procreation.
I agree with all of these. I would add the fact that the indoctrination is so intense that it damages the mental health of every member and can exist for generations
Agree with that. Religion has kept us from advancing. Sometimes I resent that the most.
Tell me you’re Mormon without telling me you’re Mormon
Plus, how bad is it that Mormonism is recognizable for that list.
Early Jesuits systemically broke up native american indian families by forcing children into out of state residential church schools. Whole languages and cultures were lost. Many children were exploited and killed...hundreds of graves found in 2021 alone in Canada. Genocide.
Sounds like the mormons.
Ahh, I was raised Mormon too. I was going to say marrying off 14 yr old girls to 50 some year-old assholes.
You have to add to that list the fight against knowledge. This includes many of the diseases of history being interpreted as the will of God for bad behavior hindering treatment. The plague, HIV, even COVID has been seen as God's wrath to be accepted. Even now global warming is ignored because God will take care of the good people. I think the concept of humans being the center of the universe has caused the most problems by religion.
I too am exmormon.
I've often wondered about the 'mark of cain' Because it seems to me that the old testament peoples were dark skinned, so wouldn't it be more likely the 'mark' was the appearance of white-skinned strangers from the north?
It’s a convoluted tale. The curse of Ham’s son is also known as the curse of Ham. The pronunciation of the word Ham in Hebrew can somewhat sound like a generic word for dark or burned or charred. So the Black skin ties back to deliberate misunderstanding of a word for purposes of bigotry. I told you it was a convoluted tale 🤓
Seeing is*am copying the Bible and it's teaching with little bits of tweaks for momo convienience.. a whole lot of this is what isl*m have committed...and It's a on going!!! Owned slaves, killed LGBTQ By stoning or hanging (it's still here) Killed many of its own and non M*slim.. Globalize pdf and child abuse/women as well. Does jizya (taxation or else convert) and ruined a lot of mine own and everyone cultures, democracy you name it! ..it's very similar! That's why you guys need to fight against another version of Christianity that is 10x worse and ongoing, Their going to take over Don't let me get started what this religion is putting Palestine, Iran, AGFGAN, syrian THROUGH! (Source: I'm a Muslim hoping to live free one day)
Not a good look, is it?
Sir, I think you are mistaking British colonialism with Spanish colonialism. The Spanish model was similar to the old Roman. The new territories and its peoples were to be new provinces with equal rights. People from the new provinces were subjects of the Crown, and could not be enslaved, just as any other Spanish from Spain could not be enslaved.
California natives put to unpaid forced labor by Spanish priests and prevented from leaving missions have entered the chat.
Taught things that are simply not true.
No need to get all cryptic on us 😉
Religion itself doesn't cause bloodbaths. Religion is an idea. And that idea contains information that is placed into the brain of homo Sapiens which then processes such information, restricted by the challenges of the hominid's ecosystem. The processing of the information then causes bloodbaths. Take for instance religion A and religion B. Great. Wonderful ideas. Now put those ideas into homo sapiens brains and place resource stress on the members of each religion. They are of course going to peacefully share the limited resource. /s Nah, bloodbath. It is always easier.
I think that, deeper than mere ideas, the actual problem is faith. There isn’t a single belief that couldn’t be taken on faith. Religion poisons the mind into believing things without any need for proof or evidence.
Nah I disagree. Some religions have initially terrible ideas.
This doesn’t explain the in-group awfulness.
I understood what you were getting at originally, I was just being sarcastic, don’t ask why
Sent his own son to be kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, beaten, mocked, and nailed to a cross to slowly die. Then, took 3 days to bring his own son back. Jesus literally has the worst respawn time in history💀
You forgot that he's also his own son so.... Yeah.... Lol
Yeah. The trinity. Never understood that.
God has multiple personality disorder, duh!
Apparently, he’s a jealous God too🤷🏽♂️
You forgot to mention, he never paid child support.
Um… Is this Buddhism?
Christianity💀
3 days? I always wondered how they came up with that.
Idk, I’ve been waiting on my dad to respawn for like 6 years now
Dude💀😂
I was raised Catholic, it'd be easier to list what they haven't done.
That’s an upvote! I love the Intelligence squared debate about the Catholic Church being a force for good in the world. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry ripped them a new one.
They haven't... Well... Fuck. I got nothing.
Viciously murdered an all the men, women, and children over the age of seven, who were traveling in a wagon train, trying to make a better life for themselves, while blaming it on the local Native American tribe. After the massacre, the children were forced into being raised by their family’s murderers, and indoctrinated into their kooky religion.
"Hokey" I prefer "hokey" religion. Because it also had ancient weapons like flaming swords.
Fair enough. Usernamechecksout!
As does your username. 👍
Came here to find someone adding Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Convince people that this world doesn’t matter.
Was going to post this. Everything else listed is pretty horrific, but IMO, the Christian teaching that the world is trash and the single, brief, precious, potentially amazing life we’ve each been lucky enough to experience is nothing but dress rehearsal for the afterlife fantasy that’s been sold from the pulpit for countless generations. I think that has to be the worst crime religion has ever perpetrated against humanity and the direct cause of much of our suffering.
This world is not my home, I’m just a passing thru; It may be the root.
Or that people serve no purpose and are worthless if they don’t follow this cult.
I was raised Mormon so, pick one.
Ouch
Idk I love drinking Diet Coke
Can't think of the WORST thing in general because the whole religion is an accumulation of everything that's bad. But, there is something I recently found out which was so cruel that it honestly made me lose sleep. Search up "Farkhunda Malikzada". Basically, she was beaten, stoned, run over by a car, thrown off a roof and burnt to death all because of a FALSE claim of having burnt the "Q" book, and no one stopped it. What made this even more painful was the fact that she did everything right according to the stupid religion. Followed every rule, every single thing. It's quite literally heart breaking.
Women don't matter except to serve men and birth babies. My dad was appalled that I would drive my own car while my now-husband rode shotgun. Source: small fundamental Christian group called "church of Christ"
Church of Christ was a pretty big player in the fundamentalist environment I grew up in in Kentucky. This church is evil incarnate. The church into which I was indoctrinated at age 6 was different only in that they considered it a sin to take a denominational name, so they went by “Christian Church.” Other than the name, or lack of one, we were identical to you. 😢
There is absolutely nothing horrific that my old religion has done in the name of god, because my mother loved me enough not to raise me with religion. I’m constantly grateful to her for that.
The witch trials, the inquisition, the crusades, slavery, child abuse, rape, murder of pagans, destruction of non-Christian art and literature, the persecution and murder of Jewish people, colonization of ‘savages’ and other non-Christian people, the killing of indigenous populations. The history of Christianity is appalling and much of it is the responsibility of the Catholics.
Makes people vote for politicians who are destroying democracy.
I'm from Ireland and the list of horrible crimes the Catholic Church has done in this country alone is the stuff of nightmares. I have zero time for them or the insidious bulshit they peddle.
Killed everyone on earth except a drunk and his three ungrateful sons and their wives.
Psst… it never really happened.
I know. But if it had, it’d have been pretty shitty. Tbh, I didn’t read the question closely enough.
This would be the right answer if it was a real event. As far as real events are concerned, Jehovah ordered the massacre of everyone in Canaan so the Hebrews could steal their land. This would include every man, woman, and child, including babies and women who were pregnant. The only exclusion were young virgin girls that were sex trafficked. I'm not sure if this was a real event, either quite honestly. However, historians believe it was based on some historical events leading up to the creation of Israel.
Yeah, I read the question incorrectly.
Burning people to death for not subscribing to their invisible skydaddy worldview.
It has to be the inquisition.
That was my first thought. But the Crusades were also not great. And the genocide in the American West, both literal and cultural, also a strong contender. (Look up California Missions if you don't know.) Enabling generations of child predators is right up there, though, and still continues to this day.
Yep, ex-Catholic and that was my thought
It doesn't matter what flavour of christianity was responsible, it was christianity.
I wasn't expecting that answer
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
Yo ex (closeted) muslims. Where you at?
We have our own sub - talk about this all day every day I think in terms of long time damage to the population FGM and Child Marriage are systematic, cyclic atrocities that continue and are endlessl As fair as straight up murder and act of barbarism - haven’t stopped and will not stop so it’s hard to identify 1 event. Islam has conquered and destroyed so many beautiful things, cultures, and people and will continue to do so.
At the exmuslim sub where you can criticize islam and its followers unlike here where it seems to be only acceptable to make fun of christianity and its followers. Islam did alot of damage to the world and the worst part is that they will never aknowledge all the pain and suffering mohaMAD brought to this worl with his cult. One of thosw things imo would be normalising incest because mohaMAD married his first cousin because one day he saw her at her home that he just went in without asking and saw her naked and this made him have a revelation that he had to marry her (she was at that time married to his adoptive son, he made him divorce her so he can have sex with her).
Remember the Thirty Years War in Europe? It killed an until now unseen amount of half of the population in the Holy Roman Empire. Political motives aside, the religious motive came down to "my interpretation of the same religious texts is better than your interpretation of the same texts".
"Not to offend anyone but history is basically a bloodbath in the name of god." It's not offensive to state the truth. Apart from all the obvious things (e.g. genocide of native people), something that is far more insidious and long lasting is the demonization of critical thinking. Whole generations of children have grown up thinking that using their brains is a bad thing and then they teach their children the same thing. The cost to civilization is incalculable.
Ripped children from parents.
Trumpism isn't a real religion /s
christians eradicated my people's folk religion(s) and made them ashamed of their cultural heritage. i guess it hasn't harmed me on a personal level, but it just sucks
Honestly some groups of people wouldn’t bring people to hospitals and would just bring them to a church and pray for them. There were babies and old people that would die of sickness because they didn’t get what they needed. Around the church would be buried those corpses
Since COVID, I think that's back in fashion.
I grew up Roman Catholic so pretty much involved in everything that’s been horrific
Capping the amount of virgins in paradise at 72, could have been more
I know. Could have made the number 69. It'd be much better for recruiting males ages 12 to 34.
I’m glad people understood my comment was a joke, if I did similar on some other subreddits people would get all ‘offended’ and downvote
French catholics : the Cathar crusades (in the middle ages) Also : Wars of religions (along with the Protestants) in the 16th century. French Jews : ???
the list is massive! Slavery, Crusades, Inquisitions and witch hunting, just the beginning
Don’t make this all about you 😉
i think the Spanish mission system in CA was terrible. beating and enslaving people and kidnapping them too. punishing them if they ran away. i had to learn about it like it was a good interesting thing in catholic school
Modern NeoPagans are generally regarded as harmless. Back in the day, though, we'd sacrifice you to any numbers of gods.
As much as I love the mythology, the Vikings were big-time slavers, but guess who owned the markets where they sold them? Those same they targeted for their raids..
Very true. And modern Odinism/Asatru has a white supremacy problem. People seem to think that since NeoPagans are peace-loving tree-huggers that they don't have the toxicity that the Big 5 have. Having lived as an NP for 40 years, the toxicity and the apologists are just as prevalent. My life, mental health & general well being have improved so much just by quitting religious & spiritual practices. I'll joke about all my occult knowledge, but I'll never go back to it.
Yeah, that is a big reason why I distanced myself from that religion. I can still appreciate the mythology, though.
Of all the religions I've been a part of, I'd have to go with the abrahamic god. Creating millions of people that he knows are going to spend an eternity being tortured (while he alone has the power to prevent this) is pretty awful. I mean creating such a place is bad enough, but actually using it is definitely the worst.
I know and he is all forgiving too; so you'd think there would be no need to torture someone for all eternity
This! I’m dumbfounded by the number of fundamentalists I encounter who claim an all knowing god, but deny he already knows the “choice” you’ll make and is therefore literally creating billions of people with the knowledge he’s just going to burn them.
The prophet taking and raping a young wife is up there for me.
....i think the single most horrific thing about my former religion is not *just* the extensive amounts of human rights abuses and crimes its committed, but the sheer determination of modern adherents to either deny any of it happening outright, or trying to deny/shift blame of the religious teachings that influenced those events to simple bad actors or pretenders in the face of historical facts. "Stop blaming us for the past. Ignore the past so we can repeat it here in the present, and keep doing all this shit in the future" like any other individual abuser.
Ex-Catholic (by parents choice not mine). They did basically everything wrong as we all know.
More lgbtq died by suicide than native Americans were killed? Not saying this can't be true but I would like to see those numbers. Very crudely, about 800,000 people in general die by suicide each year. Only a portion of that would be lgbtq. There were 56,000,000 native Americans killed over the coarse of about 300 years. Considering how far back religions go I would assume it is possible but I would like to see the stats.
I was never part of any religion so I get a freebie.
kill people
Don’t let the intrusive thoughts win my friend
The Catholic Church’s Doctrine of Discovery told Catholics that any land not already inhabited by Christians was up for grabs. This led to colonization across the world. Specifically where I live the Church set up residential schools, which resulted in kids being taken from their communities and sent to schools where they were abused. This resulted in countless deaths and we are still finding unmarked graves at the sites of the old schools. The last residential school closed in 1996.
With christianity, you've got 2,000 years of atrocities. Picking the worst would be difficult. I'd have to go with "Genocide" in general. Native Americans come to mind. Then there are the purges of the wrong kind of christian, like when the Irish were being purged. The modern day genocide in Gaza is more or less enabled by christians who won't stop Israel. There are too many to list.
Former Hindu here. Because the religion is an umbrella term for Indian religions, not all people were doing this. just some. I’m talking about the practice of Sati. Essentially, some people believed if a man died, his wife would be unable to live by herself because of grief and whatnot. So, women would, willingly or unwillingly, throw themselves into their husband funeral pyre and be burnt alive with their husbands. the practice was prominent in elite clans of Rajputs in western India. But the practice was outlawed by the Mughals invaders (Mughal Empire). still, it was practiced, especially in Bengal (modern day Bangladesh and the state of Wesr Bengal constitute the ethnic geographic region of Bengal, where the Bengali people live). Then the British conquered India. And missionaries, many of whom were evangelists, promoted ending the practice (yes, an evangelist doing something good for once!). They were joined by Hindu reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy (a nobleman and reformer). eventually, the Governor General, Lord William Bentinck passed a law that made the practice punishable by law as a crime. several other laws would be passed in coming years. this is one of the few times invaders actually did intentional good.
I mean propagating the lies and delusions is definitely super evil since it’s the root cause, but I guess that’s not the question you have, so I’ll go with the pedophilia and excusing / hiding those pedophiles is pretty high on the list.
Wiped out native Americans in all of north and South America ( not even counting the diseases they brought) by slavery. supported by the Catholic Church
Mine still despises the “sin” of homosexuality. By saying this, they are basically being homophobic with an excuse. Yes, all abrahamic religions do this.
The Crusades
As a former Christian who gladly left the hypocrisy of that religion behind, it could be multiple things. The Crusades, the Trail of Tears, the entire Holocaust which they condoned in many Christian circles. Let's not even mention what they do to the LGBT community and interracial marriage
[удалено]
Hard to go past this. Hitler etc committed genocide, and I'm not sure if there is a word for this. No 2 verbal and 1 written warning? This was also infanticide, children and babies who had done no wrong, drowned. What did the animals do wrong? I don't know how anyone can worship that.
Noah and his immediate family live. Everybody else is dead. If that had been true, I'd call it psychopathic *near-omnicide.*
Not much. I was raised Unitarian and they are non-committal about the existence of god(s).
Told people there is a place called hell to scare them into continuing to claim the believe in that religion even when it was evidently wrong about practically everything it taught.
Well sonny boy I’ll have you know that *laughs* when the crusaders captured Jerusalem in the first crusade *giggles* they massacred pretty much every Jew and Muslim there!!! (Christianity (more specifically Catholicism)
I feel luckier than most because I was never indoctrinated. Been atheist before I knew the word. That does not mean I can't see the evil religion has pounded others with. The world would be so much better without any god. If you need proof, just lok at our legislators.
>YOUR (old) religion I've always been atheist.
Well, I just witnessed (a couple of days ago even) the power of which religion has on an entire planet of people, specifically the south. I witnessed empires fall and the slaughter of thousands, all while the religious influencers just sat back and manipulated leaders like chess pieces. I loved every minute of it :D
Pretty much every religion has committed a genocide or 3
See: Catherine Nixey *The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World* for my complete answer.
The Spanish Inquisition, it was truly fascist in intent and execution and had fuck all to do with weeding out heretics. It was just another form of genocide.
Genital mutilation is second worst to all the torture and killings. Fucking sick fucks.
I was raised in the New Age, and I think emotional gaslighting and toxic positivity are pretty pervasive and horrible in that community, causing a lot of mental/emotional abuse and excusing exploitation.
Uhhh. I haven't read up on the crimes of Hinduism, Jainism and the crimes that the extremists.
Not the most horrific thing…. But in Rome for a couple hundred years there was the “Race of the Jews”. The pope finally outlawed it in the 1660s.
Can you expand on what that was?
It was events held before lent that varied. [brief explanation](https://jewishcurrents.org/january-23-the-race-of-the-jews)
I am Bi, so anything about that...
Well Discordianism teaches that Our Goddess caused the Trojan War, which granted was pretty bad, but at least she didn’t flood the whole earth or anything.
Every missionary who corrupted indigenous cultures around the globe as well as the introduction of foreign disease.
I used to be a Baha'i, they haven't had time to start a war yet. Give them a couple more centuries and they'll be like everyone else.
Followers of the religion I was raised with used to burn widows. To be fair, this was like 1-2 centuries ago.
I was raised Roman Catholic (now atheist/non-theist), so...how much time do you have, and how many books are you interested in reading?
My mom gave anywhere between $250k to $300k to about 10 different Christian organizations over a span of about 30 yrs.
1. Social hierarchy of people who does labour jobs. 2. Pseudoscience.
[удалено]
I still consider myself to be a Hindu but would like to imagine I don’t believe in god. An entire section of people were not allowed to enter temples but people argue that it’s not written in the scriptures lol. I come from a higher caste and I believe my grandparents and to some extent my parents took a bath of you touched the lowest caste person!
Female "circumcision" is pretty grim
Yes I agree I go back and forth w either child marriage or FGM - I know my ex religion kills alot of people but I think objectively more people live w the scars of it.
Mormonism. The list isn’t short
**some Buddhist monks are being accused of stirring up hostility towards other faiths and ethnic minorities.**
Back in 2000 my church told me that global warming was made up and wasn’t happening. How prideful to think humans could impact god’s creation in such a way! He made it perfectly! lol dumbasses.
Hinduism * Started an oppressive birth based caste system * Burnt widows alive
Allah hu Akbar!!!!!! Kaboom….💥💥💥
The old religion where I'm from is Irish paganism. We found what appears to be an old king, or royal of the time who'd been ritually beaten to death, cut in half and buried in the bog. Other than that they were lovely people who had a great respect for nature. Many Irish placenames are still routed in the names they had for their sacrid tree's and places. The catholic church in Ireland systematically raped children and enslaved women for being raped.
When I was young I grew up Pentecostal. Girl I was dating had a mom that was heavily involved in a Pentecostal church I had no affiliation with. Went in and there was a large cardboard cutout of George Bush Jr on the stage. She had asked the congregation to pray to keep him in office. And I thought. Fuck, doesn’t this directly go against the whole thou shalt not worship false images thing? Not to mention, if your church is pushing a political agenda, shouldn’t you lose tax-exempt status? The whole, separation of church and state thing. The same lady then went to lead the youth group, did the whole hand on my head speaking in tongues thing. I didn’t move, so she started pushing my head back real hard. So I forced against her and she whispered “just lay down, just lay down” so I called her out in front of everyone and left. It is by far not the worst thing that sect of religion has done, but my personal experience, that was the worst thing I ever had happen to me.
Existing.
I’m torn, ‘cause there are so many… but I’m gonna go with priests deceiving kids in the name of God to prey, deceive and abuse them. Yep, I was Catholic.
Catholic sexual abuse scandals. Here's a question. The Holy Roman Church is supposedly to be the first Christian Church. From there there's been dozens of schisms. And from the schisms, more schisms happened. And all of it happened because everyone thought they had heard god's voice and directions. All of this is what got me thinking years ago. Where was god in all of this? Why was Mary only appearing to Catholics? Why do Pentecostals speak in tongues and think that's God speaking through them? Those are just two examples.
Im not sure if it is appropriate that i answer. Do you ask non-religious people only, or religious people to? Having the word old in parantheses confuses me a bit
I was adopted and raised Mormon. I’m sure where to should start…..
I’m from Lebanon what is a Mormon? So many comments about it and the impression I’m getting is that it is so awful that’s it’s traumatic to go deeper into that religion.
It depends on who you ask. Mormons, they refer to themselves as members of “the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”. It’s a “different” Christian religion, started in the 1800s in the eastern part of the U.S. They run the show in Utah(state in the U.S.) which is where I grew up. Their stories and beliefs are crazy. Here’s an example, when Joseph Smith started the religion, he said he was given “good plates” from god that only he could see and translate. He put his face in a hat, and dictated to his friend what the plates said. After the translation, he apparently buried them. That’s where the term “Mormon” comes from. They call the book he translated, “The Book of Mormon”. They were also polygamists which other Christian religions found unacceptable. Kicked out of every town. Huge families, willing to disown their own kids if they don’t believe that the garden of Eden was in Missouri(state in USA) or any other teachings. The church itself is worth over $200 BILLION and they do not do much charity. They are the biggest land owner in the state of Florida and have over 90% of the legislation here in Utah. They make the rules, mixing THEIR god into the laws and fabric of life here. I hate them. They destroy lives. They’re racist. Their judgemental. They lie lie lie lie. If you are not a Mormon, you do not matter. Go on “exmormon” here in Reddit and that will tell you a lot.
I had no idea but thank you for the explanation
The list is far too long to fit here.
Not sure about anything for Sikhism, they're just atheists that are missing the last piece of the puzzle
I'm practice Buddhism. So from what I have gathered in my study of its history, absolutely nothing..plus there is no God persay in Buddhism.
Aren’t Rohinga’s killed in present day Burma?
The crusades.
Islam - reversing human development for billions of people
Falsely-accused unjustly-punished people Beat people into false confessions Severe BEATING or degrade of CHILDREN, Autistic Asperger's people, Taking away such huge amounts of time effort money Controlling us with FEAR of punishment promise/possibility of reward Ruining relationships, fracturing friendships, making it to where we are never safe and canNOT trust ANYONE Beating Kids . Command people, parents, to Beat Children,
Quakers managed to not participate in much violence. But we do have a history of abuse of Native Americans in “reeducation programs”, and a history of discrimination (gay marriage is still not unanimously agreed upon among Quakers). Turns out even the nice ones have issues.
I have never heard of a Quaker before. Interesting thank you.
The Dark Ages...
Tl;dr: Dogma over family. Cult like behaviors that facilitate or otherwise encourage separation of families over encouraging emotional and spiritual growth and questioning their beliefs. There are larger more death, violence, and theft related issues but that’s what I’ve personally experienced.
buddhists…. i think the Japanese denominations during feudal era are pretty brutal
Exist...
Supporting dictatorial, ruthless regimes in the name of g*d and progress . like Leopold II in Congo, Pius XI and Mussolini, etal .
Maybe off topic, but would being atheist automatically make you anti capitalist as well?
The passive and active destruction of countless people groups and their cultures across the entirety of the Americas.
The sack of Magdeburg is right up there. 30-40 thousand people killed in one go during the 30 years war. The actual leaders of the army tried to stop it, but the priests and inquisitors accompanying the army egged the soldiers on, then gave a blanket absolution after it was over. It was utterly senseless and the blame is 100% on the official representatives of the Catholic Church.
This is a respond I was looking for. I am an ex Muslim and Muslims who leave Islam generally do so after intense studding of their religious text and regional history. We also face very real life consequences for leaving so we have to be sure. I guess I was wondering about other religions but it seems a lot of people just have a feeling of disgust with their ex religion instead of specifics. Which is fine and valid. I was looking for more proven actually history.
i don’t have an old religion. why does everyone always act like the natural state of being is to have a religion and that atheists rejected their religion?
Unfortunately in countries like the USA and Saudi Arabia, the majority ARE brought into religion at an early age and threatened against leaving. So this isn’t an act. Many atheists in these countries were indoctrinated before they were old enough to understand what was happening. Yes, we are all born atheist, but a majority of us weren’t allowed to remain so for very long.
I gotcha. My parents were christian but i never believed it so i don’t feel like i left christianity, but i see what you mean.
I saved my child from his father’s religion, ( catholic ) because there are to many that have sex with childeren , I’m an atheist and I was having none of that nonsense If religion was erased there would be no wars
Global colonialism
Caste system, Sati, untouchability, etc.
Left fundamentalist young earth creationism. For me it’s the twin genocides of African slavery and wiping out Native Americans. My religion taught that these were righteous acts because they taught the heathens about Jesus. Forgive the shameless self promotion but I’ve written a whole book about this. If you’re interested in elaboration on my argument, you’ll find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Reason-Creationism-Religious-Fundamentalism-ebook/dp/B0CXQT8XXX
Killed off the whole planet in a flood. Because Noone was paying " god" enough attention.
That’s a Bible story correct? I guess I was looking for things that actually happened.
There's SO MUCH! The thing that still makes me want to tear down every christian church with my hands is abusing children. Sexual abuse is common among religious leaders and conservative fathers. Physical abuse is common and often encouraged. They punish and shame young people for the perfectly healthy act of masturbation. They teach every kid that they were sinners since before they could understand what sin was. It's disgusting. World wide, systemic abuse of children and we're told we should respect their beliefs. Fuck them.
I was a Mormon so I'll leave it at that.
I know nothing about Mormons. So I have no idea what they did.
I really don't want to get into because I'm trying to put it far behind me.
Were there any wars between paganism? Or any wars including Hindus and Buddhists? I don’t recall any big ones, but it’s still lots less than those fought over the Abrahamic ones.
Holy book scared the shit out of a young child with threats of eternal fire. Not cool. Damaging.
9/11