Definitely. Teaching children to feel disgust for things that don’t affect you or them is really hard. Somehow racists have this down to an art. Maybe it’s all the literature.
Hating The Gays is mostly backed by The Bible which is a such a horrible piece of literature, that getting even a basic grasp on its concepts requires weekly discussions lead by someone who devotes their life to its study and even some of them haven’t read the whole thing.
My parents taught me that if I didn’t want to see something that someone was doing I need to look elsewhere. It ain’t my business.
They’re both religious, but they have talked shit about the bigotry in their church for as long as I can remember. They never understood why I abandoned religion. However, Mom did eventually tell me “As long as you’re a good person I’m not going to press you on it. At least you didn’t turn out to be a jackass like <name of their assistant pastor who I grew up in church with>.”
I wish more people viewed their religion like that instead of viewing it like that jackass.
It’s not that it was written poorly, so much as it was written in and for a Bronze Age culture that no longer exists.
The modern audience isn’t reading it with the cultural context in which was written, and without that context it’s as you say, awful.
A lot of the imagery is just allegory- especially in the prophetic bits. The vast majority of human history was written in a time where saying “[that asshole ruler] is an asshole” wouldn’t get you killed, or saying “[that jackass of a priest] is batshit crazy!” Would get you tortured and then killed.
So they use allegory and symbolism to say it, and any one who was meant to be the audience would understand that. The book of revelation, for example, was in part about Nero (the antichrist,) (it should be noted revelation was probably written by John of Patmos, on the island of Patmos. Which is famous for always having… how shall we say it… “interesting” mushrooms?)
Definitely. Teaching children to feel disgust for things that don’t affect you or them is really hard. Somehow racists have this down to an art. Maybe it’s all the literature.
Hating The Gays is mostly backed by The Bible which is a such a horrible piece of literature, that getting even a basic grasp on its concepts requires weekly discussions lead by someone who devotes their life to its study and even some of them haven’t read the whole thing.
My parents taught me that if I didn’t want to see something that someone was doing I need to look elsewhere. It ain’t my business.
They’re both religious, but they have talked shit about the bigotry in their church for as long as I can remember. They never understood why I abandoned religion. However, Mom did eventually tell me “As long as you’re a good person I’m not going to press you on it. At least you didn’t turn out to be a jackass like <name of their assistant pastor who I grew up in church with>.”
I wish more people viewed their religion like that instead of viewing it like that jackass.
I have long been of the opinion that after the printing press came into vogue the Bible was intentionally made illegible.
It’s written so fucking poorly it has to be intentional, you literally couldn’t fuck it up that badly on accident.
It’s not that it was written poorly, so much as it was written in and for a Bronze Age culture that no longer exists.
The modern audience isn’t reading it with the cultural context in which was written, and without that context it’s as you say, awful.
A lot of the imagery is just allegory- especially in the prophetic bits. The vast majority of human history was written in a time where saying “[that asshole ruler] is an asshole” wouldn’t get you killed, or saying “[that jackass of a priest] is batshit crazy!” Would get you tortured and then killed.
So they use allegory and symbolism to say it, and any one who was meant to be the audience would understand that. The book of revelation, for example, was in part about Nero (the antichrist,) (it should be noted revelation was probably written by John of Patmos, on the island of Patmos. Which is famous for always having… how shall we say it… “interesting” mushrooms?)