this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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I honestly can't think of a single organised religion that hasn't had atrocities committed in its name (or encouraged adherents to commit atrocities). A lot of unorganised religions and spiritualities also encourage/require some abhorrent shit too, such as genital mutilation or the use of human body parts in certain folk magics.
it's just flatly true of religions and ideologies. there are bad people who adhere to everything—you can't avoid that, so it just doesn't make sense to really analyze it from this dimension. if you want to make a useful critique of either i think you have to actually weigh the scope and scale of the atrocities somehow.
Unitarian Universalists. Quakers. Zen Buddhists probably?
Quakers invented solitary confinement which isn't quite a war crime but it's not exactly great.
By this logic, it only takes one bad apple to spoil the name of a group, but that bad apple isn't necessarily representative of or indicative of the whole group.
sure, we could argue about who's bad apples are more rotten, but what's the point? humans are fallen and imperfect, so it's no surprise that groups of humans are also imperfect.
I guess the next question to ask, is the group defined by the actions of it's bad apples, or by the principles it claims to stand for?