• Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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    3 hours ago

    Religion.

    It served a purpose when societies were first moving from hunting and gathering to agriculture. A community needed to coalesce around something tangible for resource sharing, protection, decision making, etc…

    It’s why, from a societal evolution perspective, we went from totemic religions based on fertility and family groups, to mass religions with defined hierachies and roles, because the evolution or religions reflect that evolutions of society at the time.

    We don’t need that anymore. It does more harm than good in the modern world.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 hour ago

    English orthography. It’s like this close to being random.

    Other languages have reformed theirs (or theres or they’res) to make sense at some point since the dawn of modern literacy.

    • Soggy@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      We did address it. And then everyone immediately changed how they pronounced every vowel.

      We should address it again, and fix the way a ton of words have been Anglicized at the same time, but we’re far from alone. French is loaded with needlessly silent letters as well, just as the first example that springs to mind.

      (actually, can we just switch directly to the International Phonetic Alphabet?) (This is a bad idea for reasons that are probably obvious, it’s a lateral move at best)

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        38 minutes ago

        We did address it. And then everyone immediately changed how they pronounced every vowel.

        What do you mean? The Great Vowel Shift happened well before any standardisation of spelling I’m aware of. And there’s plenty of problems beyond just the vowels.

        French is probably number two on the shit list, but there’s at least a consistent pattern there.

  • Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk
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    4 hours ago

    Well, facism seems like the obvious choice right now, but I’m going deeper and choosing bigotry.

      • Flax@feddit.uk
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        34 minutes ago

        They lack a good moral code. Although by this logic I could also say that on this basis, I think Islam should have died out. But I am British and that’s “racist” apparently.

  • Quilotoa@lemmy.ca
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    20 hours ago

    Tips. How ridiculous is it that restaurant owners guilt us into paying their employees salaries because they are too cheap to pay them a living wage? How unjust is it that we chose to tip the people who bring our food from the kitchen to our table and leave the hundreds of other service workers without tips?

    • Krudler@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      A better understanding will flow from knowing that federal minimum wage for tipped employees is $2.13 per hour.

      So there is specific legislation in place to abuse restaurant workers, restaurant owners take full advantage of this.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Racism will never die as we evolved to be tribal. Best we can do as a society is make it unacceptable. Which was happening when I grew up in 70s/80s America. Now we’ve backtracked and gone all-in with dog whistles.

      • Bazoogle@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        That’s not true. Sure, we have tribalism, but there’s no reason it has to be about race. It could be about religion, politics, country of origin, and countless other things

        • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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          4 hours ago

          In reality, it’s not purely about race. Most racism isn’t between groups that are culturally identical, it is between groups with significant cultural differences. Race is just the most obvious attribute used to identify the other group.

            • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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              18 minutes ago

              Bring any nuance to a charged topic and the ones who think in black and white terms will come to misinterpret what you said in the least charitable way.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Young earth creationism

      What I hate so much about that, is all the “evidence” just points to some near extinction level event that humans worldwide suffered.

      And obviously for that to have happened, it means there had to be a lot more people.

      Like, entire cities/tribes/whatever were wiped out everywhere, but some had individuals survive. Which explains how “the last two people” could have kids who just happen to later have spouses and kids of their own without any explanation for where the new people came from.

      They were just outside of walking distance.

      Over the 300,000 plus years anatomically modern humans have been on Earth, that’s probably happened a bunch. Hell, we’ve had 2-3 actual ice ages over that span.

      We don’t know shit about 250k of those years.

      • -RJ-@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        From what I understand (and as a Christian), it’s those Christians that take a literal reading of the Bible, not understanding that those parts of the Bible aren’t meant to be read literally but are about the WHY of creation rather than the HOW. It’s about WHO God is rather than how He did things.

        • Krafty Kactus@sopuli.xyz
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          23 hours ago

          Either that or Genesis is just an explanation made up by a people group that had little to no idea how anything in the natural world works lol

          • shalafi@lemmy.world
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            21 hours ago

            If you squint real hard, Genesis is a tale of stellar and planetary formation. Then comes evolution. Give the first bits a read! Yeah, evolution is mixed up a little, still surprisingly on point for a bunch of Bronze Age sheep herders.

            Then there’s a second tale, in the same short book. What a clusterfuck. But I can still see some real history in it. If I squint real hard.

            • Soggy@lemmy.world
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              1 hour ago

              Squint so hard your eyes are closed, maybe. Any overlap between biblical verse (translated through at least two languages) and modern scientific understanding is coincidental.

            • Krafty Kactus@sopuli.xyz
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              20 hours ago

              Yeah seeing as the writers of the Pentateuch didn’t even know what the stars were, I’m pretty sure that’s all a coincidence lol.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          Wow! Nailed it! I had thought that as a young Christian, didn’t know there was a verse for it. Lost my religion long ago BTW.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      What’s weird is the young Earth thing is relatively new. Before the 1850s or so, you would be laughed out of the room. As ignorant as we were, naturalists were having a hard time trying to figure a world that was millions, or 10s of millions, of years old. Churches, of any stripe, sure as hell wasn’t preaching it.

      And here we are, with the flat Earth idea being even newer.

      • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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        2 hours ago

        I get you, but how would you phrase it? I expect, BTW, that it might be intended to cover both the extreme of children forced to work in a sweatshop 12/7 and children who have to help their parents with some subsistence tasks.

          • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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            2 hours ago

            Maybe not, but the boundaries can be fuzzy, and statistics tend to get built on technical language that may not treat the fuzziness the way you or I would agree with. So I get the urge to use vague language like ‘affects’ or the difficulty in finding language that is general enough without sounding mealy mouthed.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Easy to say, but I’d argue it’s baked in.

      “Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there were`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”

      ― Peter Watts, Echopraxia

    • iii@mander.xyz
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      1 day ago

      I kinda get it. Everyone needs something to look forwards too. Sadly, for some, there’s only the idea of afterlife for that.

      • flabbergast@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        All religion is baseless bullshit, so yes, it is problematic in itself.
        It is divisive by nature/design.
        And it is made worse by people abusing it for power over others or discrimination.

        • Yeahigotskills2@lemmy.ml
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          12 hours ago

          I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say it’s all baseless. It could just as easily be the passing down of allegorical tales — stories seeded by some guiding or controlling force countless generations ago in our collective development. There are even arguments for things like a collective consciousness or sub-atomic networks, suggesting that our linear experience of time might just be a way of processing information.

          Honestly, who really knows? But speaking as someone who has oscillated between Christianity, Buddhism, and atheism in my youth, I’ve come to see atheism as just as much of a limiting dogma as any other belief system.

          • flabbergast@lemmy.world
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            12 hours ago

            After posting my comment, I figured the baseless part might get some critique, but I decided to leave it. I meant it as ‘not based in realty or not based on facts’, if that helps clarifying.
            Also, if you heap in atheism with Christianity and Buddhism, you don’t understand what atheism is.
            Christianity and Buddhism are actual systems of belief, while atheism is simply a lack of belief in any god or deity.
            Anyone who does not believe in some god/deity/greater power, is an atheist. Whether they like it or not, that’s what it is. A simple definition about a persons lack of belief. It does not come with any other rules or dogma. No rituals or leadership at all, so it can’t be a system.

            • Yeahigotskills2@lemmy.ml
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              5 hours ago

              I wouldn’t say I heap them in together. At times in my life I have rejected a belief in anything ‘higher’, which fits your definition of atheism, although perhaps my mindset was closer to an agnostic atheist stance, which to me is more along the lines of ‘I don’t believe, but I can’t be certain as there’s a limit to my knowledge’, as opposed to being a strong proponent of the belief that there is nothing beyond death.

      • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        No, it is directly a problem. Believing in bullshit because someone in a higher position than you said it with zero fucking evidence is how MANY of humanity’s ills have come about and persist. Religion feeds that idiocy.

        No, it’s not the only route, but it is a HUGE component of people believing things without evidence. That is, unequivocally, an actual, literal, direct problem.

        • Flax@feddit.uk
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          3 hours ago

          Where’s the evidence that your partner loves you?

          Also, there is evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, people just reject it because it doesn’t fit their desires and makes them cry like a waa waa baby

        • Daemon Silverstein@calckey.world
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          21 hours ago

          @[email protected] @[email protected]

          Firstly, it’s obvious “believing” means “zero evidence”. If a belief had any solid evidences, it wouldn’t be a belief, it would be a peer-reviewed scientific paper instead.

          That said, you’re conflating “belief” with “religious hierarchy” when, in reality, belief isn’t necessarily dependent on hierarchy. I believe in Lilith and Lucifer, and I have no one “above me” except for Her and Him. In fact, the belief I follow on my own isn’t even compatible with any kind of hierarchy, because these entities represent independence and rebelliousness, so it’d be quite paradoxical for me to have a leader/master/priestess/whatever.

          Finally, I challenge you to point out any kind of “humanity’s ill” inflicted by Luciferianism and other left-hand path beliefs, even those who actually have hierarchies (e.g. Quimbanda).

          So, I sincerely remind you, don’t generalize and attack every single religion and belief system on Earth because of a half dozen big ones who actually are to blame for many historical wars (“Holy wars”) and their interference on scientific progress. Don’t demonize the demons and demonesses, we’re friends of scientific inquiry. Beware not to do friendly fire.

          • Flax@feddit.uk
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            3 hours ago

            Don’t demonize the demons and demonesses

            You are all following demons. Self-proclaimed Satanists, Atheists, “progressivists”, billionaires, nazis, racists, bigots, child molesters, and rapists. Men who abuse women and women who abuse men. And those demons hate you more than anyone else can. They’ll lead you to the everlasting hellfire. They won’t be your friend.

            we’re friends of scientific inquiry.

            Christians basically invented the scientific method. It has never rejected science apart from some fringe beliefs.

          • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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            20 hours ago

            rofl you refute my statement, backed by centuries of human history… with, “but my religion doesn’t have a lord!”

            Good job proving my point that it doesn’t matter which religion, but belief in bullshit os damaging… because your nonsense is … nonsense.

            • TheWeirdestCunt@lemmy.today
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              15 hours ago

              Go on then try to explain how pagan religions that boil down to “don’t fuck with nature, it’ll kill you” are damaging?

              • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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                3 hours ago

                rofl way to strawman their beliefs… Sure, it makes sense when you leave out everything made up.

                Nowhere did I say they’re AS BAD as Christians et. al., but belief without evidence is still fucking stupid and harmful to yourself and anyone you teach such drivel to.

                • TheWeirdestCunt@lemmy.today
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                  2 hours ago

                  my point that it doesn’t matter which religion

                  idk man saying it doesn’t matter what religion you’re talking about sounds like you think they’re all equally bad to me.

                  Also idk who’s beliefs you think I’m making a strawman out of but I was refering to my own beliefs that help me to actually go into nature as I can at least 4 times a year to help with my depression, maybe I’m more open to it because up until a few years ago I was studying to become a conservationist but it’s certainly better than back when I also thought that anyone who believes in something is a dumbass

            • Daemon Silverstein@calckey.world
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              20 hours ago

              @[email protected] Where in centuries of human history were there any wrongdoings stemming from Luciferianism and other leaderless occult belief systems? Where in centuries of human history did Luciferianism and other occult belief systems interfered or tried to hinger with scientific progress?

              • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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                3 hours ago

                We don’t know because the Christians purged the history books of them.

                I’m not saying you’re just as bad as Christians et. al., just similarly brainless for believing in things without evidence, which IS dangerous on its own.

      • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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        1 day ago

        at best its a waste of human energy and maybe good for those that require that emotional crutch

        your argument is the same for guns, which we as a species should also mature out of