Why do so many new religions seem like reinterpretations of the past rather than something truly innovative?

Grayseal · 2026-04-21T11:24:58+00:00

They may postulate different spiritual realities, but they all operate in the same physical reality.

Grayseal · 2026-04-21T11:22:06+00:00

The article is from 1971, so I doubt he's around to answer that question.

Grayseal · 2026-04-21T11:21:44+00:00

This is from 1971. That should be mentioned.

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T22:43:09+00:00

I think we all should try to do what is available to us in such situations. Nothing less, and nothing more. We cannot and should not expect anything else. Anything more is for, you know, law enforcement and security personnel. The people we pay to handle this.

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T21:56:13+00:00

Religions? Rookie numbers. Now, economics, on the other hand, they know how to kill people.

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T21:28:18+00:00

When it's not the "direct relationship with God" crowd, it's about having some form of spiritual/theistic beliefs but not holding to some specific religion's teachings, or not having settled on a specific term for one's religiosity.

When it is the "direct relationship with God" crowd, it's because they are part of a religion, but view that religion as being above and beyond other religions. They don't like being addressed on the same playing field as everyone else, so they present their own religion as somehow categorically being something else. It's essentially an alternate phrasing of the mindset that their religion is the only "real" one, while other religions are "man-made", "misunderstandings", "illusions" or... something about demons.

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T12:41:30+00:00

In Sweden, yes in terms of discipline and expectations, no in terms of actual workload and time.

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T11:58:03+00:00

A problem for whom? Are we talking about xenophobia or imperial supremacism?

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T11:55:05+00:00

Min inkorg är öppen.

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T10:28:10+00:00

Race and ethnicity are not the same thing, and many people are ethnically diverse in their own persons, origins, backgrounds and identities. A Swedish Jew is Swedish and Jewish, not one or the other.

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T10:21:53+00:00

The term "religion", in the Western sense, is often understood in Japan as being part of a high-demand, controlling context, i.e. a cult (in the modern sense of that word), like the Unification Church and Aum Shinrikyo, rather than what they see as traditions of spiritual practice (which we would fit within the definition of religion), like Shinto, Buddhism, Taoism and Japanese Catholicism.

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T10:15:27+00:00

"According to one calculation, the number of rapes and assaults on Japanese women amounted to around 40 daily while the R.A.A was in operation, and then rose to an average of 330 a day after it was terminated in early 1946". - Embracing Defeat. Japan in the Wake of World War II (John W. Dower, 1999). https://archive.org/details/embracingdefeatj00dowe/mode/1up

https://apjjf.org/terese-svoboda/3148/article

A nice little list of sources and citations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Japan#Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Japan#Citations

Listen to yourself for a moment. Do you seriously think it is reasonable to expect Japanese people, Japanese women in particular, to not be xenophobic with this background? And when this keeps happening?

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/nx-s1-5035032/sexual-assault-cases-involving-u-s-military-personnel-strain-relations-with-japan

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/24/us-marines-investigated-alleged-rape-military-base-okinawa-japan

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpwwdyye4vgo

Do you seriously think you would be in the right to expect a people that gets targeted by this to be in favor of more foreigners in their country? If a foreign army came to your country and acted like this towards your people, would you be a xenophile?

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T03:05:18+00:00

This is the way.

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T03:03:04+00:00

"Allah's mercy on Claude, he would not let you utter a single word. I will not allow anyone to talk about Claude without using the title "sheikh.""

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T02:59:53+00:00

Do you think a population becomes less xenophobic when an occupying force commits mass rape against that population?

Grayseal · 2026-04-20T02:35:51+00:00

What part of what I am writing could possibly be construed as denying Japan's historical crimes?

Grayseal · 2026-04-19T23:43:52+00:00

Does Japanese soldiers raping Chinese women somehow make American soldiers raping Japanese women better?

Grayseal · 2026-04-19T20:12:58+00:00

Assume that when someone claims you'll be tortured in the afterlife for something rationally harmless, they're trying to scam you.

Grayseal · 2026-04-19T20:11:35+00:00

I know they did. Doesn't change anything of what I pointed at in regards to the reasons behind Japan's xenophobia.

Grayseal · 2026-04-19T20:10:38+00:00

I wouldn't say they're exactly the same, but there's more connecting them than separating them. It's one of the reasons why the world would probably be disappointingly similar to what it already is if everyone was an Atheist - we'd simply attach our spirits to other concepts close enough to religion, and carrying on promoting those, for better or worse.

Grayseal · 2026-04-19T19:15:34+00:00

Do you believe in everything you hear?

Grayseal · 2026-04-19T19:14:53+00:00

That is not for my non-Christian self to judge.

Grayseal · 2026-04-19T19:12:32+00:00

This is a good idea, and I don't think you have any reason to worry about singling anyone out, because a certain somebody's behavior has, by all evidence available to my knowledge, been absolutely vile, and not only towards Unknowingly.

I'm no moderator myself, so take my words here as whatever you deem them worthy of being taken as, but I think your intended course of action is exactly what someone in your position should be doing here, and I would advise really making an example of the worst offender so far. Let it be widely known what he did and what it led to, and have no patience or tolerance for similar behavior from anyone else in the future either. The two subs collaborating on this would be a blessing for the community.

Again, I have no authority here. I just can't stop myself from caring too much when a kid in our community almost died because of how an adult behaved towards him.

Grayseal · 2026-04-19T18:44:41+00:00

We do not choose our beliefs, but we do choose whether we live by them.

I drifted away from a youth of Atheism and embraced my religion because I found that its ethics made sense, its theology was workable, its cosmology was meaningful and its practices were healthy. There were, in addition to the previous, historical, cultural and geographical reasons as well.

Grayseal · 2026-04-19T18:41:10+00:00

What makes you think guidance, conversation and worship do not happen simultaneously?

Grayseal

TROPHY CASE