this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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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.
You're completely missing the point. A claim can be either factual or non-factual, whether the claim is correct is irrelevant in that regard. A factual claim can be supported or disproven by evidence, a non-factual claim cannot. Just the fact that you are disputing the quality of the purported evidence for the claim proves that the claim is factual, and can be discussed and proven/disproven by rational people that disagree without hating each other.
At no point did I say that I hate anything. In fact I wouldn't say I hate any of the things discussed here. Just the fact that you think I do shows that you are confusing the discussion of a concept (whether a factual claim can be bigoted) with supporting that concept and possible consequences.
No, I never said anything about whether the statements were correct or not, what I said was that they can be discussed and proven/disproven without having an opinion about whether the people involved are good or bad people. Once again you are conflating the factual statement with the people making them, and attributing to them opinions they don't have, because you seem to have a hard time separating the claims that are being discussed from your perceived consequences of those claims being correct. You also seem to have a hard time understanding that someone could be interested in discussing a factual claim, even though they don't like the facts they find.
For the record: I haven't looked into any evidence as to who killed Jesus, and frankly think that any historical evidence to the fact would likely be too old to be conclusive anyway. Finally, I don't really care who killed him, that fact being established wouldn't change the world, or my perception of it, by one bit.
So you're arguing without any familiarity of the evidence, just going along with a antisemitic narrative because it conforms to your feelings?
That's just disingenuous. The entire point of all my comments has clearly been that whether or not the mentioned claim is true is irrelevant to the fact of whether it's anti-Semitic, because it is a purely factual claim.
You made incorrect assumptions regarding whether I believe those claims, and as an anecdote I corrected your mistake.
My point stands: I don't need to take a position as to whether the claim in question is true or false in order to argue that it is a factual statement that can be supported or disproven by evidence.
You seem to struggle with the idea of supporting a concept vs. supporting a concrete statement.