Atheist Memes

Did Buddhism become a major religion by the quality of its truth? I am doubtful ...

Why Christianity became the superpower religion it did is quite debatable. But it probably wasn't through all that much violence. The violence happened later.

Christianity became a major religion by first generating mass appeal among the lowest class and then winning the support of key figures within the highest class. The class contradiction of the proletariat and aristocracy was (somewhat) reconciled through articles of religious faith that promised egalitarian utopianism to those that played nicely within their respective rolls.

The meme is overly simplistic, as it neglects the prevailing systems of violence predating Christianity. Systems which Christianity promised relief from - first by way of its evangalized utopianism and then by its capacity for resolving contradictions between classes which expanded the military and economic power of its adherents.

Later iterations of Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, and more baroque cult faiths like Scientology have repeated this pattern while the earlier iterations stagnate and calcify around a permanent gentry class. It isn't the Truth or the Violence that gives these religions its rapidly growing pool of adherents, but the promise of upward mobility and economic expansionism.

These faiths fail when alternative social structures outperform them. One religion replaces another when the growing congregants create more opportunities to join the prelate class and rise above one's inherited role in society. Capitalist institutions supplant church institutions when more people can join these large multinational management structures than can join the religious ministries (and church institutions infiltrate capitalist structures when religious denomination dictates one's managerial ceiling). Socialist institutions replace capitalist ones when state bureaucracies outperform private enterprises and party politics expands to encompass more of the proletariat.

"Truth" only matters in so far as individuals can realize a better standard of living. "Violence" only matters when participants can harvest their higher standards of living at their neighbors' expense. But the root of success in all these institutions is the speed and efficiency through which they incorporate more unaligned people into more (perceived) prosperous conditions.

Uh... Christianity spread a lot nonviolently though? Also a lot violently, but there's a reason Constantine (it was Constantine right?) converted and it's not because he was threatened with violence.

All religions have equal claim to this. And they’re all fucking bullshit made up by patriarchal assholes who were so terrified of losing their absolute power, they would kill anyone who would challenge it. For millennia.

I honestly don't think this is true, I think it's the savior part that made it successful.

Say you're a shitty person by stealing, lying, slept with married women and being a con man. If you can repent in your older years and all is forgiven by god, that releases the guilt.

In my mind, guilt is the emotion of control for most major religions. If you give rules that if you break are super "wrong," but actually human nature (like sex), you will be able to control the masses. The religion alone can release the guilt that the religion made up.

When you roll into the middle east and say believe or die. It's a pretty easy choice.

Rape your women, enslave your children and kill adult males. All with superior weapons and tech. An easy choice to throw on the cross and say I believe.