Societal Standards vs WP Rules about criticizing religions

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This thread is inspired by a sub conversation in the Virgin Mary thread

WP rules allow you to say something like “Israel is a genocidal state because the Jewish Religion is inherently genocidal”. On WP you are not allowed to say Jews are genocidal. In society if you said “The Jewish religion is genocidal” any chance of having a successful life will end.

Anti Christian and Christians statements and jokes are largely accepted and have been for as long as I can remember. “Fundies” is an acceptable slur against Christian Fundamentalists as a people. In 1978 the Jewish Billy Joel had a big hit with ‘Only the Good Die Young’ which contained the lyrics “Come out, Virginia, don't let me wait You Catholic girls start much too late”, “The stained-glass curtain you're hiding behind Never let's in the sun in”, “You got a nice white dress and a party on your confirmation You got a brand new soul Mmm, and a cross of gold But, Virginia, they didn't give you quite enough information You didn't count on me When you were counting on your rosary”. While there were objections from The Catholic Church the song became a massive hit. If you are thinking the song is a product of its time it is still endlessly played on oldies and Classic Rock stations.

Criticizing Islam as a religion is more complicated. Implying Islam as religion is conspiratorial and terroristic gets you shunned in some quarters but in other quarters saying if we let more immigrants in they are going to impose Sharia Law is a main talking point. Portraying Muslims as terrorists was common well before 9/11, hits its peak in the years after. It has tampered down a lot but is still around.

I am glad that you have been inspired the the Virgin Mary thread! It is always nice to have people think about a thread in a bit of depth.

The founder of this forum is someone who is from California and has left-wing political views, to my knowledge.

At the risk of somebody taking offence that I am using someone's personal views to make a point, I will say that the rules of the forum probably reflect in part, the personal views of the founder of the forum.

I'm not saying this is inherently a right or wrong thing, though in my opinion, I think religious folk and their opinions are probably lower down the pecking order in terms of importance or consideration. You can see that in the sorts of posts that are made in PPR especially and with regards to those posts which are seemingly valued and those which are not valued.

Yeah, I’ve not seen anyone say that the “Jewish Religion is inherently genocidal,” either. I would talk about the practice employed by a subset of folks, not just a subset of Jews, of using scripture to justify genocide and colonialism and how inhumane or absurd many passages of ancient texts are to highlight why it’s unwarranted to use them as a justification for atrocious behavior. I think that’s an important conversation to be having.

Similarly, I wouldn’t imply that Islam is inherently terroristic but terrorist groups like Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah, IDF, etc. are.

Offline and especially outside of PPR, it’s hard to have conversations about politics and religion because some think those topics should be completely off-limits and get offended rather easily. Simply stating that I’m a liberal and an atheist would offend some people where I live. My county is very Red and very religious. My son was bullied in school for having differing views than the norm.

It seems like social norms vary from region to region as far as what is acceptable to say or not say. I think it’s a negative thing that beliefs and ideas can’t be openly scrutinized and criticized, especially when they are contributing to real problems, because it impedes progress. I also agree that we need to be careful about not adding to the burden of oppressed groups and minorities.

This is what I wrote
"WP rules allow you to say something like “Israel is a genocidal state because the Jewish Religion is inherently genocidal”. On WP you are not allowed to say Jews are genocidal. In society, if you said “The Jewish religion is genocidal” any chance of having a successful life will end."
Nobody on WP has said Jewish religion is genocidal but it is allowable under WP rules.

In society, it is not allowable to say that. That is probably why only the "crazies" say that, and that is hopefully because only the crazies believe that.

This thread was created to explore differences in the acceptability of criticizing different religions. The truth or obviousness of the criticism is secondary in the context of this thread.

As far as 'As Only The Good Die Young' is concerned the Catholic Religion is being criticized for being so uptight about sex it is causing "Catholic Girls to start too late"(That the song is not interpreted as misogynistic in today's context is surprising to me but that is a whole other discussion)

FYI this thread was not intended to be primarily about WP but larger societal attitudes. WP was brought in as a comparison because we are familiar with it.

But since this thread is about WP left or progressive views do predominate. From what I have seen these views would be less predominate if “conservatives” would not give up and leave. I understand why it happens. Conservatives or right leaning people come here and find themselves in the minority and say to themselves here we again.

What I am getting out of this thread is that we all should be more cognizant about reporting people saying negative things about Catholics and Christians in general. We made a lot of progress against the causal sexism and misogyny that was common here we can do the same with casual Christian phobia.

I don’t see a lot of negative remarks about Catholics or Christians in general. It seems like most people are abiding by the guidelines in this regard, not that I read everything.

I often refer to myself as a “former fundie” when I talk about my experiences in a fundamentalist cult. It’s a label I believe appropriately describes my former self and the problematic beliefs I was indoctrinated with. It’s also shorter than saying “former fundamentalist (Christian).” However, as with anything, I suppose it is a bit different to use the label when referring to other people.

Folks might be more inclined to use terms like “fundie” than gender slurs given that bigotry and other harmful characteristics (e.g. anti-science) seem to be built into fundamentalist belief systems. IMO, that’s one of the things which set it apart from issues related to sexism which has been and still is a problem on WP. I’m not saying that the behavior is appropriate. I’m just saying why I think it happens, including by other Christians from time to time.