NEETzsche (neetzsche@iddqd.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Nov-2023 00:14:45 JST

I never take the “this is what X group ACTUALLY BELIEVES” type segments seriously, especially if it comes from someone who left the faith or left the political ideology or whatever. They’ll have a detailed view of their beliefs, but it will be given the most pointedly parsimonious interpretation of the facts. People who left any branch of Christianity with a bitter taste in their mouth will give descriptions of the religion to the effect of “Christians believe a dead Jew died on the cross and now you have to give the Church 10% of your income or else you go to hell.” You know, as if that’s all there is to Christianity.

You can do this with basically any religious movement. Most of them have something pertinent to say, and it counts, otherwise they wouldn’t survive more than a couple years. Really, you can probably do it with most political ideologies, too.