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submitted 3 months ago by Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net

I always believed religion was incompatible with a society rooted in addressing material reality, although I know we have have religious users and wanted to hear people's takes.

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[-] LGOrcStreetSamurai@hexbear.net 33 points 3 months ago

GNU/Linux for sure.

[-] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 30 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I'm bracing for people to say Buddhism but tbh Buddhism has a strong inclination towards not helping out others because "it's their karma" as well as the catholic church version of Buddhism, namely Vajrayana, being culpable for lots of criticisms that people level against the Catholic church.

Islam gets an honourable mention because of their fairly strict prohibition on riba, which is like usury except a souped-up version of it (which is more or less enforced in Islam, unlike most forms of Christianity) and a genuine, enforced commitment to actual charity and not just tithing. Islam is often pretty hostile towards communism but that's mostly because of material conditions and the fact that their version of Liberation Theology-type leaders mostly get killed.

I also think that Sikhism gets an honourable mention because it's quite radical, abolishing caste and demanding that justice be upheld, even if it requires violence or putting one's life on the line to defend it. I know in India there was a split in the communist movements in the north, where Sikhism is most prevalent, over whether the revolution would be fought with modern weapons or with the traditional weapons of Sikhism (the kirpan, the khanda, the katar, the chakram etc.) I get why they are of central religious significance to Sikhs but idk why it's cause for a split though; the last human Sikh guru owned a musket.

It's probably due to being culturally adjacent as much as anything but I'd say that Christianity, specifically Liberation Theology, is the most compatible with communism especially given the Colombian ELN and the FSLN (Sandinistas) in Nicaragua.

Personally I think that religion requires a foundation of idealism that is inherently incompatible with materialism and I would like to see the gradual erosion of religion such that it exits the political and ideological spheres and gets relegated to cultural practice, like what you see with something like Shintoism as practiced by most Japanese people or ancestor worship in East Asia; lots of people build shrines to their ancestors and celebrate relevant days of observance but plenty of people don't actually pray to their ancestors or believe that the heavens have influence on the world. This is a lot like how westerners visit graves and do things like talk to the deceased or write letters to them or leave flowers, alcohol, and mementos (*gasp!* almost as "offerings" except that only the Orientals leave offerings - westerners are above such superstitious practices, right??) If the world can reach a stage where religious rites and observances are performed due to cultural habit rather than belief in the supernatural then I think we would be on the right track.

[-] echognomics@hexbear.net 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Islam gets an honourable mention because of their fairly strict prohibition on riba, which is like usury except a souped-up version of it (which is more or less enforced in Islam, unlike most forms of Christianity)

With how Islamic banking/finance is currently widely being practiced, can you really say that prohibition of riba is being strictly, or even "more or less", enforced in contemporary Islamic practice? I think the best that can be said is that the prohibition is observed in form, but not in spirit. In my very limited experience (please take all this jabbering with a ton of salt; I'm neither Muslim myself nor any sort of specialist in Islamic finance) with Islamic financing on the legal side, it largely seems to involve private or sometimes state-owned financial institutions using profit-sharing, joint-venture, and/or commodity sale contracts to imitate the practical effects and consequences of conventional fixed or variable interest financing instruments while still formally complying with the riba prohibition. Essentially, the bank's technically not earning any interest off the principal; just "profit" from commodity sales/company shares. Seems to me that what's been done is just a thousand convoluted and fancy ways of ensuring that the surplus value reaped by the bank is not vulgar "interest", but some other technically non-prohibited form of (or names for) extracting value from the labour of others, thus reducing the practice to basically a matter of formal compliance without any application of its underlying or originally intended principles - i.e., the moral idea that any financial exploitation of others (in other words, capitalism) inherently corrodes your soul.

I also can't see any real difference in material interests between Islamic and non-Islamic financial institutions: both are typically just extreme concentrations of financial capital, privately owned, within capitalist societies motivated by their own reproduction/perpetuation/expansion through systemic extraction of surplus value through investment in market commodities and productive concerns. In the worst case scenario, I can see how leftists fixating on riba as a theoretical concept leads to idealist mystification of productive/property relations, frustrating the materialist analysis of that which is central to Marxism.

Basically, it's all like this mostly because of (like you said) the destruction of pretty much all 20th century efforts towards socialism in Muslim-majority countries (except Libya? But I'm not aware whether Gaddafi promoted Islamic financial principles), resulting in those Muslim-majority countries being dominated by reactionary politics, leading to this utterly debased version of Islamic finance being the global industry norm.

[-] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I don't disagree with what you have said here but I was also intentionally avoiding getting into the weeds with interpretation and real-world application of Sharia because it's super complex.

Of course Riba has been one of those things that has always been hotly debated in Islam and it's something that an Islamic jurist could spend a lifetime debating and you'd be able to split a denomination in two over your take on it.

Ultimately I think that Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time and, at that time, critique of the economy in a fully-realised way didn't exist. Speaking as an outsider, I think that some of the basic problems were identified in trading and finance but the root of the economic problem was not fully ascertained until much later; if you can't diagnose a complex societal problem accurately then you're almost certainly not going to be able to fix it. At best you're going to be taking a stab in the dark, which is what I think Islamic jurisprudence was doing with Riba or with edicts about charity or what shape a caliphate should take or what have you. So my sympathy for the prohibition on Riba is limited because it lacked a material basis (and I think this is where religious jurisprudence more broadly tends to fall down - the inherent idealism at the core makes it critically flawed.)

A+ for effort, but as for execution? Ehh, not so great.

I also think that this is where other things fall down like religious decrees on not turning away the needy from your door - is that in a literal sense? What implications does it have for refugees in the modern world where your government can effectively maintain its borders very strictly? What implications does today's ability for transporting masses of people anywhere around the world in a matter of hours have? Obviously back in Muhammad's era, refugees would almost always travel within their local region and it was extremely rare to have vast masses of people or entire populations fleeing from one part of the world to somewhere entirely different. Also the economic implications are very complex - in Muhammad's day constructing housing was a much simpler affair and if people needed extra food or work then they'd be able to utilise the commons or to work the untended land on the outskirts of a town or village. These sorts of things options rarely exist in the developed world today. So while it probably worked quite well for the time it existed in, the world is a very different place today and shit is so much more complex than it was.

And you're absolutely right about the creation of infinite loopholes to arrive at roughly the same destination in a way that circumvents the spirit of the law while technically adhering to the letter of the law (more or less). This is exactly why Ikea is a non-profit organisation lol.

And there's no doubt in my mind that probably every Islamic financial institution that exists today bends the rules to the breaking point by charging things like "administrative" fees and stuff like that.

And really, if we look at this from a broad perspective, I think that the prohibition on Riba could be grouped in with all sorts of socialist utopian and reformist efforts as being guilty of the same general attempts to fix the system by tweaking at the dials rather than rebuilding it from the ground up.

This is why I give it an honourable mention - it was a good attempt. Flawed, insufficient, poorly articulated, vulnerable to exploitation, yes, but it was a good attempt all the same.

I think that a serious discussion on Riba would be a really good angle to agitate for socialism with a Muslim though and tbh as an atheist Marixst, it's those kinds of pressure points that I'm most interested in; I'd be fascinated in hearing what a Muslim would have to say about how they think Muhammad would respond today if he saw how private equity firms like BlackRock are grossly distorting the property market and squeezing every last penny out of people who have no other options for housing available. Something tells me he wouldn't just be like "Alright guys, this arrangement is totally fine as long as you don't jack the rents up too high, okay?"

[-] echognomics@hexbear.net 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ultimately I think that Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time and, at that time, critique of the economy in a fully-realised way didn't exist.

More precisely, it's that the Quran and the hadiths - the written sources - that were a product of their time. Jurisprudence - if understood as the legal theorising and interpretation being done upon prior texts - is a continuing process that's still ongoing today, and it's definitely here where modern forces of global capitalism have influenced modern Muslim legal theorists into moulding the orignial texts into the current industry/academic edifice that's labelled as "Islamic finance". So yeah, technically speaking, it's not that "Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time", but "is a product of its time": that time being present-day global capitalist hegemony. (Sorry, I'm probably nitpicking here; I know you said you want to avoid going into the weeds with interpretation and real-world application. I think I would agree generally with most of what you've written above; just taking the opportunity to air out and give some structure to a few thoughts that had been jangling around my head for some time.)

I'd be fascinated in hearing what a Muslim would have to say about how they think Muhammad would respond today if he saw how private equity firms like BlackRock are grossly distorting the property market and squeezing every last penny out of people who have no other options for housing available. Something tells me he wouldn't just be like "Alright guys, this arrangement is totally fine as long as you don't jack the rents up too high, okay?"

True, and I'm aware that there is some existing discourse/scholarship by Muslims on the Islam's compatibility with socialism as a political movement. Syed Hussein Alatas's Islam and Socialism provides a good overview, I think. One bit I think is particularly relevant to the concept of riba is where Alatas outlines the position argued for by Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto, who was a nationalist figure in pre-independence Indonesia; Alatas suggests that Tjokroaminoto, in trying to prevent a spilt between the Islamic moderates and radical Marxists in his party (which eventually happened and led to the the radicals joining the Communist Party of Indonesia) attempted a theoretical reconciliation of the contradictions between Islam and socialism (pg. 62-4):-

In 1924, Haji Omar Said Tjokroaminoto, the leader of Sarekat Islam, then the biggest political party in Indonesia, published a monograph (113 pages) on Islam and socialism. (...) It arose out of the need to counteract communist propaganda. Tjokroaminoto’s party, the Sarekat Islam, was seriously infiltrated by communist elements which led to a split in 1923.

(...)

Regarding state ownership of the means of production, Tjokroaminoto suggested that this was Islamic. In the time of the Prophet, the state owned and acquired land. It is interesting how Tjokroaminoto linked Marx’s theory of surplus value and its expropriation by the capitalists to Islam. The Islamic prohibition of usury, according to Tjokroaminoto, is the same as a prohibition against the immoral capitalist expropriation of surplus value.’ The reforms carried out by the Prophet were thoroughly in the spirit of socialism. The instances cited by Tjokroaminoto are the following, in his own words:

“With the law of zakat Islam intended to make it obligatory for the rich to spend on behalf of the poor. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) land was the greatest source of livelihood for the working class, and as I have explained earlier, land was owned by the state. Small industry from pre-Islamic times was run by the poor or the slave for the sole profit and welfare of the owners, most of whom were harsh and oppressive. Before the advent of Islam, those who worked in industry were extremely looked down upon by the aristocracy, while the slaves who functioned as labourers were treated as animals by their capitalist masters. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) immediately raised the status of labour and workers. Though he descended from the highest Arab aristocracy, he worked as a trader before his preoccupation as a Prophet took up his entire time. As a recognized prophet he became ‘the spiritual and worldly ruler over Arabs and the Muslim territory, but he mended his own clothes and shoes. The biggest step he took in the direction of industrial socialism was when he raised the status of the slave to that of the free man. The slaves were given rights which they never had before. The slaves were made fellow workers; they were given positions of command in the army, or to become heads of other undertakings, while in yet other spheres as in the family, they became members of the family who treated them as animals before the coming of Islam. That being the case, the slaves took part in sharing the welfare and the profit of their masters. Truly, the step taken by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to improve the condition of the working class during his time, was unsurpassed in greatness in the economic history of the world.”

Tjokroaminoto was not blind to the fact that during the last thirteen centuries, despotism, autocracy and egoistic materialism had chiselled at the foundation of Islam. As long as the Qur'an is still with us, the ideal of democracy and socialism in Islam shall remain alive. He said: “If we Muslims truly understand and practise the teachings of Islam, we cannot avoid becoming a true democrat and a true socialist.

[-] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 5 points 3 months ago

Damn, that's fascinating thanks so much for the reply. I am ashamed to admit that I don't know nearly enough about Indonesia as I should so I hadn't come across Tjokroaminoto before. Good point on the nitpick - I was seriously sleep deprived when I wrote that last reply.

Obviously my angle on this is matter really clear but I know that if I sat down with a reasonably devout Muslim and we had at least an hour to chat about Riba, its nature and the intent of its prohibition, and to really hash it out we'd come to an understanding about how my position on the extraction of surplus value under capitalism is actually in line with a legitimate interpretation of the islamic prohibition on Riba.

Am I confident that I'd be able to get the other person to the point of being convinced my position is the right one? Nope lol.

But to walk away from a conversation really deeply analysing the economic circumstances we face from a Marxist perspective and having had one person make a solid case for why this is in line with the spirit of Islamic law would be a major victory imo.

[-] echognomics@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago

Hey I'm glad that you find this interesting! I'm not really subject area expert on Islam or Islamic finance; just picked up a few things here and there from studies and from work. Honestly a bit surprised that I have this much to say about it, especially from the angle of Marxism.

And don't worry about convincing your hypothetical Muslim interlocutor about the truth of the immortal science or whatever; even if they're not convinced into immediately converting to secular communism, if they truly are arguing in good faith and with intellectual curiousity, they'll probably arrive at some general position about their own religious belief and practice that would lead them to do some good in the world.

Go get some sleep! Care-Comrade

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[-] SpiderFarmer@hexbear.net 22 points 3 months ago

Yeah, some of those Reddit-Atheist takes were painful to read on one of the other recent posts. There's a whole tradition of religious individuals being pushed towards anarchist and communist ideologies. Some Catholic priests have even had an about-face, getting so involved in liberation theology as to be excommunicated. Still making painfully slow progress in the Quran, but there's a lot of stuff about supporting the poor, hungry, and sick. I've worked with a lot of (non-Evangelical) Christians on praxis. You can also say a lot about stuff like Wicca and its dogshit creator, but I've known a few witches to also get involved in stuff. If religious people couldn't be revolutionary, then the government wouldn't have killed people like Malcolm X, MLK, John Brown, and the preachers behind so many peasant riots in England back in the day.

[-] Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net 23 points 3 months ago

Majority of Cubans are religious and they’ve accomplished more than militantly atheist European and American communists ever have.

[-] SpookyGenderCommunist@hexbear.net 5 points 3 months ago

You can also say a lot about stuff like Wicca and its dogshit creator, but I've known a few witches to also get involved in stuff.

As a Wiccan, I can confirm, Gerald Gardner was a weirdo little freak who sucked major ass. He gets credited with codifying the thing we now call Wicca, but his contributions tend to get overblown, since tons of that stuff was done by other people, especially women, who were a part of that movement. Women who were, by and large, cooler than he was.

Also, one of the more important primary source texts that influenced Wicca's development was Aradia, The Gospel of the Witches, wherein the Goddess Diana gives birth to a messianic figure named Aradia, who teaches oppressed peasants how to do magicsl class Warfare, which basically boils down to sabotaging crop yeilds, and poisoning priests and lords. It's incredibly cool and based.

[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 5 points 3 months ago

and the preachers behind so many peasant riots in England back in the day.

Could you elaborate on this subject?

[-] SpiderFarmer@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago

So to the top of my mind there's Levelers and Diggers, as well as a couple other groups, but struggling to recall at the top of my mind. The German Peasants War was also cool. Naturally the fascists tried to claim Müntzer for their own, but obviously they just did that because the guy was a folk hero.

[-] Leon_Grotsky@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Cathars and Hussites are maybe the most famous examples (Though, from France and Bohemia rather than England), they had multiple crusades called against them. In the Albigensian Crusade alone some estimated 200,000 to 1,000,000 Cathars (Albigensians) were killed by the Church.

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[-] coeliacmccarthy@hexbear.net 20 points 3 months ago

All religions are compatible with communism except for american [and by extension western] protestantism

[-] xj9@hexbear.net 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

ngl catholic and protestant Christianity are both on the fash watchlist. you can't enable mass genocide and multiple wars in the middle east and keep your commie card.

[-] EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net 21 points 3 months ago

You're clearly forgetting that Catholics can be absolved of all wrongdoing by going into a little box and telling a priest that they did a bad thing and then saying a handful of ritualized prayers.

That's not actually how confession works, but that doesn't stop most Catholics from believing it is.

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[-] Ericthescruffy@hexbear.net 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

So I'm an Atheist but here's a hot take: most if not all religions are kind of equally compatible and incompatible with communism in the same way they're equally compatible and incompatible with capitalism. The concept of Diagetic Existentialism is largely concerned with realities that are understood to be fictional in nature but I also think it goes a long way towards explaining how you can simultaneous have the American religious right as well as people unironically proclaiming that "JESUS WAS A SOCIALIST" in the same timeline. They're both working with the same material and sources but at the end of the day its all kinda in what you choose to take away from it.

[-] xj9@hexbear.net 19 points 3 months ago

religions that come from communal cultures (that's most of them) are compatible with communism. religions that develop under the material conditions that promote the development of fascism and capitalism, not so much.

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[-] yoink@hexbear.net 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

at the risk of being called a reddit atheist, i have to say it's frustrating that this discourse keeps abstracted to 'is religion compatible with communist ideology' and not 'is being reactionary compatible with communist ideology'

because that's what it ultimately comes down to - a lot of the issues people have with religion stem from reactionary thinking and actions, which on a surface level seems like it can be separated from religion as a whole, but I would argue that the two functionally can not be unlinked. At the end of the day, at it's very core many religious beliefs rely on, and encourage, reactionary behaviour - and while some are better and more communal minded/liberation adjacent than others, I would say that this is by coincidence and we cannot make the mistake of trying to make reactionary ideologies 'work for us'. You need only look at stupidpol to see what happens when you throw people under the bus in order to not turn away what you might see as potential comrades - you will not drag them left with you, you'll only poison your own well and create yet another avenue for reactionary ideology to bolster itself.

This is not to say that no religious person can be a revolutionary, or that religious people cannot be our comrades - but they would have to be communist first and religious second or else I'd be wary that at some point some oppressed group is going to be thrown to the grinder, and I'll be honest - anecdotally, not a lot of religious people are like that, nor a lot of religions encourage such a relationship with their faith, no matter what denomination.

[-] HiImThomasPynchon@hexbear.net 17 points 3 months ago

Posadism

No I will not elaborate

[-] aaro@hexbear.net 11 points 3 months ago
[-] Ithorian@hexbear.net 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

From an intro to a book on modern druids (what I consider my self)

“We (Druids) therefore recognize that our individuality is only an illusion, or a temporary state while we are in physical bodies. We are therefore not subordinate to anyone or anything, but rather interdependent upon each other. We recognize that if one person hurts, everyone hurts, if one person is homeless, everyone is affected by that state, that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. So certain political philosophies, such as libertarianism, are anathema to us. Selfishness is the greatest evil there is. We really are our brothers keeper as he is ours."

I think that quote probably captures how a lot of us feel. Capitalism is in direct contradiction to that way of thinking. If we feel that all people are equals, all deserving of respect and compassion then the exploitation and suffering caused by the capitalist class must be opposed by us. And if you believe that you're connected to all living things then seeing your self as part of a collective is natural. Druidism is basically green anarchy with extra steps.

[-] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 7 points 3 months ago

Fuck yeah, druids

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[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 14 points 3 months ago

To at least give a slightly novel answer relative to the usual ones: Cheondoism was famously defended by Kim Il-Sung as being a "progressive" religion that should not disqualify someone from Party membership because it's fundamentally oriented around the liberation of the masses.

Also, I'm going to be That Guy and say that Theravada Buddhism is relatively compatible, as it was almost-inconceivably progressive for its time and still compares positively to many religions, including the more popular sects. It has its own issues, but in general I think the Buddha of the Pali Canon, the one who said there is no soul and risked his life to save a goat, is someone worth emulating from a communist perspective. I also think he bears little resemblance, for hopefully obvious reasons, to the Buddhas who have celestial empires and believe that those who suffer should be left to suffer because of Karma.

Also shout-out to Chan/Zen Buddhism with the major caveat that it has probably the worst co-opting by westerners into reactionary bullshit.

[-] HauntedBySpectacle@hexbear.net 5 points 3 months ago

Isn't Chan/Zen Buddhism a Mahayana (i.e. not Theravada) tradition?

[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 7 points 3 months ago

It is (and I was trying to express it as a tangent to my talking about Theravada, not as a subset). I must give it credit compared to more popular Mahayana sects though for not being oriented around celestial empires and contempt for the suffering, but rather focusing on the mundane and, if not totally benevolent, at least therapeutic. In those regards, I find it much more grounded and pro-social than many religions and hence better-suited to communism.

[-] HauntedBySpectacle@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago

Thanks for the explanation. I didn't mean to correct you, but I noticed you implicitly judged Mahayana in general as incompatible, so I was curious what sets Chan/Zen Buddhism (as a subset) apart from what you dislike.

[-] TheLastHero@hexbear.net 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

None, all religions are cope and lies and thus impede human and societal development. (Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of humans who have either not yet won through to themselves, or have already lost themselves again.)

Religious values and officials should not be seriously considered and should be always be excluded from important political decisions, and if they dare to insist on holding political power they should be suppressed until they learn to play along or stay quiet. But if people just want to pray or whatever because it makes them feel better then who cares, that's not a political matter. In a fully developed communist society religion will wither away anyway as self-actualization become universally available and exploitation is abolished.

Edit: Thought that is not to say that certain religious movements couldn't be hijacked and co-opted to serve a revolutionary movement seeking the construction of scientific socialism, but that's probably not what you or most people mean by "compatible" with communism. (Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.)

[-] Nacarbac@hexbear.net 8 points 3 months ago

Good luck with that vast multiplication of irreconcilable enemies.

[-] Babs@hexbear.net 14 points 3 months ago

Lots of religions have principles that align with a love for mankind and communal sharing of resources.

How many of them have the understanding of material conditions needed to organize people into a force capable of meaningfully fighting against capitalism?

[-] Ildsaye@hexbear.net 13 points 3 months ago

Religions are not static, they also are subject to dialectical and historical materialism. The rooting out of feudalistic and capitalistic institutional structures from the religious world, and the solving of more material problems by the secular world under socialism, will change people's relationship to religion, which in turn will change religion further.

I don't see any essential reason communists and religious entities have to step on each other's toes, but in the present a lot of incumbent reactionary power rides on existing religious institutions and formats. We can look to the histories of the socialist experiments to see examples both of the initial crushing of the reactionary religious elements, and later of more nuanced handling so that religious elements that pose little or no threat to the proletarian state are let be.

Communists have the soundest and best demonstrated methods of resolving class struggle that I know of, and I also think the changed relationship to work and leisure under socialism goes a long way to healing the lingering wounds of class society. I really don't know if a niche for spirituality will be left open by a communist society, or if the questions that become religious ones will be addressed satisfactorily before they can grow into aches.

For my part in the present, I use spiritual practice because my class enemies are still supplying me with plentiful wounds and aches, and my local communists are far from big or totalizing enough to have subsumed matters presently understood as spiritual. I'm working with the tools I've got.

[-] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 12 points 3 months ago

I feel like the religions with high levels of non-theism are compatible. Quakers, Unitarian-Universalist, etc.

[-] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I'm inclined to agree with this take and, although I can't speak for the tech-using Mennonites and their level of non-theism, I can say that they are very often at the forefront of social justice movements and also in Ukraine during the civil war, a proportion of the Mennonite community there took up arms and joined the Bolsheviks which speaks to their compatibility with communism (although these were Mennonites as defined by an ethno-religious group and not necessarily strictly devout as per the Mennonite faith - details are extremely scanty, unfortunately, and you'd probably need to speak to an American Mennonite historian to find out if there's any more information about the Bolshevik Mennonites) so I would find it convincing if someone threw the progressive Mennonites into this group although personally it wouldn't be my first answer.

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[-] gramxi@hexbear.net 11 points 3 months ago

acid marxist taiping gnosticism

[-] NewAcctWhoDis@hexbear.net 11 points 3 months ago

It doesn't answer your question, but I think this publication from the CPC Central Committee is worth reading: https://redsails.org/on-the-question-of-religion/

[-] TawnyFroggy@hexbear.net 11 points 3 months ago

I hate feeling like a reddit atheist, but it feels really hard to imagine any organized religion not being a ticking time bomb in a communist society. You can bend most/all religions to fit communism in the same way you can bend them to fit capitalism and social conservatism, by ignoring the parts you don't like. However to me it seems like an organized religion is going to breed dogma and an in-group which is going to breed out group and discrimination. I'm pretty sure it's hard for me to look past my bias though, as my experiences with religions is mostly them wanting me dead.

[-] wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net 9 points 3 months ago

I would argue that most religions are fine for this as long as you purge them of reactionaries.

[-] LaForgeRayBans@hexbear.net 6 points 3 months ago

The same could be said of atheism, communists don’t got a monopoly on the irreligious.

[-] Site_Hating_Moid@hexbear.net 8 points 3 months ago

unorganized shamanistic rituals int he middle of the forest high on mushrooms

[-] tamagotchicowboy@hexbear.net 7 points 3 months ago

None, however, those liberation and mutual aid tendencies that exist in near every religion will be ok until humanity can support itself enough to toss away the religious-mythical pain killers for the soul.

[-] TheDialectic@hexbear.net 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Christianity. The Bible in multiple places states being rich one of the worst sins possible. It frequently states that giving what you have to help the less fortunate is the highest virtue. It's hard to imagine anyone messing this one up

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[-] JohnBrownNote@hexbear.net 7 points 3 months ago

all the ones that compartmentalize the unprovable "source: a guy said so" stuff can get along the same god-of-the-gaps way most religious people use cars, computers, and medicines despite the very same science that created those those things also invalidating doctrine and many supernatural claims.

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 6 points 3 months ago

Shinto. It lacks the problem of organised religions, although the Japanese state has previously put work in to create state Shintoism it doesn't really work the same way other organised religions do. It's very in tune with the natural surroundings and it cares about taking care of the environment because it is the environment that produces the Kami, spirits that inhabit it and come from objects/environments.

I see it as more of a spiritualist connection to our surroundings and even if you sincerely believe that the spirits are real they're never divinely perfect and are many of them are fought against entirely by humanity because they're obviously not good.

It works well.

Honestly though I've always thought the problem is not really religion or spirituality but organised religion functioning as an arm of the state.

[-] Fishroot@hexbear.net 6 points 3 months ago
[-] CptKrkIsClmbngThMntn@hexbear.net 6 points 3 months ago
[-] aaro@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I ain't no theologician, but I really like reading this thread and I'd also love it if someone could explain Judaism from this perspective. I'm not terribly knowledgeable on how Judaism really works internally, but I've heard a couple bits and pieces, particularly relevant here is the parable of the Oven of Akhnai, and I'd love to hear someone give more context and depth and then relate that to communist ideology

[-] ReadFanon@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago

I think that Judaism is a particularly heterogeneous religion because it largely doesn't maintain a strict orthodoxy in the same way that a religion like Christianity or Islam does/attempts to do (e.g. how these different religions deal with heretical beliefs) so I'd guess that it's actually very difficult to describe internally because takes can be so varied that it makes it hard to generalise.

That's not to say that historically it didn't or that there aren't some sects that strictly maintain an orthodoxy, just that Judaism as a political institution is largely a feature of history and not the modern day (Pissrael excluded) and so it doesn't maintain orthodoxy like Catholicism does, for example.

Of course you can point to an example of sects like Alevis, which the majority of Muslims denounce as heretical, so this comment isn't really intended as anything more than broad brushstrokes - the general character of Judaism is closer to, say, Hinduism or Baha'ism with regard to heterogeneity and orthodoxy than it is to, say, Islam or Druze (although arguably Druze is a heretical sect of Islam but that's a massive discussion in itself...)

Judaism, partly due to repression and partly due to how it is interpreted and practiced (and the stuff mentioned above), often had people who were more culturally Jewish or who were Jewish but only for Hanukkah and Passover and so it wasn't uncommon for these Jews to be amenable to communism or who were openly communist through history. Whether you can attribute that to Judaism itself or to the fact that people strayed from strict observance of Judaism is a matter for debate however.

Hopefully someone who knows Judaism from the inside will chime in to contribute their take.

[-] iridaniotter@hexbear.net 3 points 3 months ago

Uhh probably cult of reason if I had to guess but it might be too bourgeois

[-] RyanGosling@hexbear.net 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Any of them as long as you focus on the right now and not the afterlife stuff. That would technically make almost no religion compatible, but realistically not everyone will be devoted to the afterlife.

I don’t care if you think bread and wine can transform to blood and flesh if you chant some words. Are you providing bread and wine to people to eat and sustain themselves? If so, everything else is your business.

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this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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