This pissed me off so fucking much when people defend Christianity by saying that all of the bad shit is in the Old Testament and that the New Testament is totally fine.
1 Corinthians 6:9
"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,"
Gay people and gender non-conforming people are not allowed in to heaven
1 Peter 3:1
"Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands;"
It's still an extremely misogynistic book even in the new testament
Romans 1:26-27 ... 32
"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
...
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them."
Both homophobia and misogyny
I could go on and on, and I probably will in the comments, but it's pretty fucking clear that all the nasty bigoted shit in the book just doesn't go away in the New Testament
You cannot separate the bigotry from the Bible. The Bible is very clear that you cannot pick and chose, that you have to accept the full book or none of it, you can't just take the verses you like and still be Christian. To be a good Christian who follows the entire Bible you must be bigoted
No, you deal with the root cause of that suffering rather than putting a God shaped bandaid over it
Wow, why didn't I think of that?! ๐
Come on, we clearly need to use an opiate while we work on dealing with the material conditions at the root of religion. Religion has a material cause, it will evaporate when people don't need it anymore. Until then, we can decolonize it for our own uses.
Eh I think even under Full Communism people will still get existentially sad sometimes.
Alleviating suffering is an incredibly admirable endeavour, and it is certainly true that at this moment the majority of suffering in our world is unnecessary and a result of injustice. However at the same time, even in an ideal world suffering will exist, it is a fact of human existence. Even in a classless moneyless society we will still feel the sorrow of heartbreak, the grief of a loved one's passing, the pain of injury and disease, the existential angst of wondering who you are and what your place in the world is. These are topics which spirituality and religion address in a way that materialist analysis often fails to. We do ourselves no favours by denying this fact, we just appear like out of touch assholes to the countless people who find relief from suffering through spirituality and religion.