I hear a lot of people talk about how we need to look at religion from a materialist lens and that religion is incomparable with socialism. But I think we need to seperate the two. Religion is about the metaphysical so it’s hard to look at it from a materialist lens. While politics deals with materialist matters, so it’s necessary to view it with a materialist lens. And it’s not like atheism is fully materialist either, with ‘nothing after death’, and ‘universe starting without a god’ being metaphysical explanations as well. And humans are naturally spiritual and to deny that, makes it harder for socialism to be accepted by people. But of course that doesn’t mean we should tolerate the reactionary aspects of religion. We should combat it whenever necessary.

What’s your opinion?

  • booty [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    211·
    1 year ago

    with ‘nothing after death’, and ‘universe starting without a god’ being metaphysical explanations as well.

    Uh, no? This is such a weird, confused argument. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a god, which is the natural, intuitive stance to hold in the world we live in where there is no evidence of any gods. No “metaphysical explanations” required. Show me evidence of a god and I’ll change my view, just like with everything else.

    And humans are naturally spiritual

    I mock people who bring up “human nature” arguments in any other circumstance, I don’t know why it would be different here. You’re not “naturally spiritual” you’ve been indoctrinated into a system of beliefs by people motivated by their material interests.

    • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.mlOP
      39·
      1 year ago

      But there’s also no proof that god doesn’t exist, so the actual materialist thing to do is to be agnostic

      But humans ARE naturally spiritual, spirituality literally goes back tens of thousands of years, and maybe even longer. And this was before hierarchy existed.

        • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.mlOP
          42·
          1 year ago

          But we are talking about the beginning of the universe, something that we don’t understand yet. So in that way the existence of god, and god not existing are both metaphysical explanations

          • Water Bowl Slime@lemmygrad.ml
            15·
            1 year ago

            I don’t see how an event that took place billions of years ago has any bearing on human politics. Or why a gap in knowledge is the same as belief in divinity in your eyes.

          • Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            9·
            1 year ago

            something that we don’t understand yet

            Are you saying your god is only as powerful as the gaps in human knowledge?

              • Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
                12·
                1 year ago

                we don’t know what’s out there

                I’ve come to believe that it’s extremely unlikely that it’s the Christian god though, and that even if it were, it sounds like the abusive dictator that the West accuses North Korea of being.

                As an aside, do you also think it’s equally likely to be every one of the other ~10,000 gods humans have invented?

                • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.mlOP
                  13·
                  1 year ago

                  Well I don’t necessarily believe in a god, but if there’s a god, it’s probably a monotheistic god, which is what most religious people believe. The case for polytheistic gods existing, who are the majority of the gods in your argument is pretty weak

                  • Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
                    11·
                    1 year ago

                    it’s probably a monotheistic god

                    Are you a deist then? There’s no practical difference between that and atheism IMHO. What real difference does it make if it turned out a time-traveling Pokémon created the universe if it just relaxes on another planet and demands nothing of anyone or anything?