If Programming Languages Were Religions

bshell writes "With Christmas around the corner I know we are all thinking about religion, or at least maybe wondering why this one religion dominates the rest for these few weeks. A fellow named Rodrigo Braz Monteiro (amz) posted this list comparing each programming language to a religion. Guaranteed to make you chuckle and generate a good long thread here on slashdot. Great way to pass the time as work winds down this week and we relate to our own programming faiths during this very special time of year. Merry PHPmas." Fortunately Pastafarianism is referenced.

Comments

What do you mean if?

[genner]

PHP is the one true way.

Re:What do you mean if?

[thetoadwarrior]

The one true way to writing bad code. ;)

Re:What do you mean if?

[TehZorroness]

No. There certainly are endless ways of writing truly atrocious code.

Re:What do you mean if?

[DiegoBravo]

But few ways so actively promoted by the language.

Re:What do you mean if?

[mcgrew]

In the beginning there was the word, and the word was assembly. It is the basis of every other language. No other is so pure, so simple, and yet at the same time so complex.

You try writing a playable battle tanks game for a 4Mz Sinclair with 4k of memory in any other language. I say it can't be done.

What kind of punk kid would write a religious creed about programming without even mentioning the language that all other languages are written in (or at least the languages they were written in were written in).

Get off my lawn. Damned kids. And take your burning cross with you.

wow

[stoolpigeon]

amazing how offense free that is. that had to take a bit of effort.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the part about only accusing Islam of murderous tendencies?
It's sad that only biases which disagree with our own internal ones are noticed.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally found offensive that he compared C++ to Islam. C++ is much more peaceful.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Like how you ignored the part about Fundamentalist Christians burning people at the stake.

Re:wow

[rthille]

He didn't accuse Islam of murderous tendencies, he asked that if you were a muslim that you not kill him.

Like it or not, Muslims are more likely to kill in response to perceived offenses against their religion, and his post makes light of that fact. If you're a moderate muslim and you find that offensive, then you need to do two things: get over it, since free speech is a right in the U.S.A. and therefore you're likely to find offensive speech living here, or on the internet; secondly, you should be decrying the violence promulgated by extremist muslims in the name of Islam. Part of the problem with moderate religionists is that they give cover for the extremists under the umbrella of "respect for religion". If they want their religion to continue getting respect, they need to police their own.

Re:wow

[aaron alderman]

1. Insult the religious.
2. Insult programmers.
3. ????
4. Prophet!

Re:wow

[theaveng]

If two anonymous posters speak to one another, does anybody hear them? ;-)

Re:wow

[jkiller]

This is all wrong. COBOL is like Judaism... it controls most of the world's money.

Re:wow

[digitig]

If they want their religion to continue getting respect, they need to police their own.

Er, how? The moderates usually have no authority over the extremists, so how should they police them? In what sense are the extremists the moderates' "own"? Your logic is like saying that I am responsible for the murder and torture of Baby P because as a British subject I am responsible for policing my own. Just how might I have done that?

Re:wow

[troon]

Seconded. I'm a Christian, a bit closer to Java than PHP, and am used to getting a bit of a slapping from ignorami spouting bigoted claptrap only lightly based on truth (yeah, and I know that's what most of you lot think of us...). This article made me smile: very clever, knowledgable of the nuances of the different faiths, and no unfounded digs at any of the (major) ones.

Re:wow

[tbannist]

It's a difficult question to answer, but it's one that the moderates are going to have to figure out. Any group that can't police their own extremists will, sooner or later, find themselves dragged into a war with everyone else. That's the nature of fanatical extremism, they want a war. And if they try hard enough, eventually they're going to get one.

As for Baby P, I assume the people responsible are headed to trial for their crimes? Thus Britain is policing it's own even though the example you chose isn't even roughly the same situation.

Re:wow

[HungryHobo]

Ya but he mentioned nothing of the chance of rape at the hands of fundamentalist christians.
Since catholic priests love the rape, or so the media coverage would tell us.
How much video footage of muslims sitting at home reading the paper are you shown? there's a billion of them out there but all you ever see is are the rabble rousers and nutcases.
Imagine if all they ever saw of america on their TV shows was Westboro Baptist Church protests,KKK protests and rednecks talking about how they'd love to shoot all dem damn muslums and George Bush. They might decide that Americans were all violent fundamentalist nutcases. And they'd be exactly as right as you are.

Re:wow

[jonaskoelker]

Visual Basic would be Satanism - Except that you don't REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist...

Speaking as the dark lord of hell, I'm offended by the insinuation that I want to possess the souls of VB "programmers"!

Re:wow

[sjames]

Like it or not, Muslims are more likely to kill in response to perceived offenses against their religion, and his post makes light of that fact.

It's not really intrinsic to Islam. It just happens that the surrounding culture of the area most strongly associated with Islam is more likely to kill over any sort of slight. Muslims who grew up in other surrounding cultures are MUCH more moderate as a whole. My personal experience is that Muslims who grew up in western culture are much LESS likely to attempt to impose their religious beliefs on others than fundamentalist Christians are.

AS for 'policing their own', what in the world is an American Muslim family supposed to do about the Taliban? Bombard them with greeting cards from the 'lighten up collection'?

Re:wow

[jason.sweet]

I personally found offensive that he compared C++ to Islam. C++ is much more peaceful.

You think so?

Try publishing some cartoons of Bjarne Stroustrup, then we'll see how peaceful it is!

Re:wow

[soddit]

the protestant/catholic fighting in NORTHERN ireland has fuck all to do with religion and everything to do with nationalism.

Re:wow

[Otter]

The second sentence is untrue (uh, yes, you can convert to Judaism), at which point I gave up.

Re:wow

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The moderates usually have no authority over the extremists, so how should they police them?

Leave the group.

If the organization or group you are in is being lead in a direction you are opposed to and you have no say in that course, then you should leave. To stay is to explicitly condone the actions of the leadership. The best contemporary example of this in the context of religious groups is in fact the "Mormon" Church of Latter Day Saints, which has seen many followers leave because of the way in which it conducted itself during the Proposition 8 vote.

Here was a church leadership which injected its organization voluminously and inappropriately into a contemporary political issue. They turned an institution of private religious belief into public political party. Their church is now feeling the backlash from this, and attempting to take off their political cap as quickly as they put it on is simply not possible.

By staying in their church, Mormons explicitly endorse their churches actions and stances. Ostensibly on the issue of gay marriage, but more importantly on the long term decision that the LDS church can and will inject itself and its considerable demographic and monetary clout directly and voluminously into any political debate that takes its fancy. Many european states, learning from experience, outrightly ban such behavior, but in the US, obviously things are different.

You can stay and support the actions of your church leaders, or you can leave. There are other sects, and other interpretations. The same goes for Muslims, particularly those in western countries, who frequent mosques with radical imams. Protestants break off and form new churches all the time. Even catholics can pick other pulpits if they take exception to their current priest. Staying to avoid social difficulty, or pretending that your presence is not being used to support your church leader's views and actions, are not valid excuses. Staying to "change from within" is only valid if you are actively doing so, otherwise it too is an excuse.

People can and should leave a church if that church's actions or beliefs go against their own principles. To stay is to abandon those principles.

Re:wow

[The Wooden Badger]

Absofreakinlutely. The only reason religion gets brought up in regards to Northern Ireland is that one side happens to be Catholic and the other side happens to be Protestant. There isn't any thing religious about the conflict at all apart from that. If they were all one or the other the Irish would still be pissed (angry) about British occupation, rule, whatever you want to call it. It would be really nice to call it what it is and stop calling it a religious conflict.

Re:wow

[tbannist]

An interesting question, but largely irrelevant as long as the extremists claim they are a part of the group, and that claim is not obviously and meaningfully repudiated. Remember, no group is ever perfectly homogeneous, so every group has factions within it. It will usually be difficult for people external to a group to accurately identify faction members within that group. And if it's difficult, many people won't make the effort to do it.

In the particular case of Islam, efforts to curtail the extremists seems to often be conflated by people in the larger, more moderate group, as an attack on that larger group. And the actions of the extremists often seem to have some level of approval from the moderate group's leaders. Thus leading me to the obvious conclusion that both moderate Muslims and extremist Muslims share a common group. I suspect this is a view shared (rightly or wrongly) by the majority of non-Muslims.

Re:wow

[Archangel Michael]

Would that make ... OSS developers .....

Non-Prophets for Non-profits?

Re:wow

[YttriumOxide]

Note in advance: I think ALL people that truly believe in a religion have a mental illness. This is regardless of what the religion is, but I do have a particular distaste for the Abrahamic religions, as they seem to espouse the most hatred in their religious texts.

Now, that is a pretty horrible quote from the Qu'ran, but there are equally as horrible ones from the Christian texts, and indeed very horrible ones in texts that are shared by pretty much all of the Abrahamic religions.

Re:wow

[Dr_Barnowl]

Basically violence has nothing to do with religion. People will use ANY religion as an excuse to justify their view they they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Imagine if you could present a complete mathematical proof with no wiggle room at all that a particular cultural viewpoint was just plain wrong.

Your average secular Joe might think about it and concede that they were wrong, and something might actually change for the better. Or they might just say "that sounds very nice, but I like my old opinion better".

A theist can stick their fingers in their ears and chant litanies, and is indeed, far more likely to, because their doctrine includes inbuilt mechanisms that tell them to resist all questions and doubts. They might even obey the instructions in their doctrine that tell them to destroy those with world views that conflict with theirs.

A scientist would examine and attempt to verify the other fellows position - and if he was right, may actually thank him for the enlightenment.

Yes, people will do violence for other reasons. But religion is inherently inflexible in a world where the one constant is change, produces a sense of entitlement to use any means - because the end is "Gods Will", and religious texts often contain actual explicit instructions to do violence to individuals and cultures that do not comply.

I do not concur that religion and violence are unassociated.

Re:wow

[tehcyder]

So if one terrorist says "I'm a Muslim" then everyone who doesn't immediately renounce their own Islamic faith is a terrorist too?

Utter tosh.

Re:wow

[JoshJ]

There are at least a half-dozen quotes in the bible saying that unbelievers should be killed, and a bunch more saying that people who perform certain actions (which aren't unethical from a secular perspective) should be killed. And of course, there's "be not yoked with unbelievers".

It's not a Quran-specific thing. All the Abrahamic religions have no respect whatsoever for those outside of the religion. The mentality boils down to nothing more than "hate everyone who's not one of us".

Re:wow

[Just Some Guy]

Out of your examples, the only one related to modern Christianity was about the abortion doctor murderers, and they are loudly and publicly condemned by all but a few nutcases. Honestly, you'd be hard pressed to collect a worse set of evidence for your hypothesis.

Re:wow

[Tack]

The parent's post might be worded rather harshly and somewhat unfairly, but the general point is valid.

During the Danish cartoon incident, I was quite surprised that the primary reaction of moderate Islam wasn't condemning the violence of their fellow Muslims, but rather insisting that the cartoonist should not have insulted their prophet.

Re:wow

[Tack]

When you insult the pope, large mobs don't raise the placards demanding "behead those who insult Catholicism." They don't execute people on the streets or burn down embassies.

Re:wow

[mattwarden]

> I'm a Christian ... and am used to getting a bit of a slapping from
> ignorami spouting bigoted claptrap only lightly based on truth

Hey now, the clergy are only doing their jobs.

Re:wow

[mattwarden]

Yes, that factual part of history offends me greatly, too.

Re:wow

[squidfood]

Hey, that's LISP. Oh, wait. I mean that's Zen!

For those who doubt that LISP is Zen, I ask the following: What is the sound of one ) closing?

Re:wow

[rthille]

No, Blacks and Muslims aren't the same, because Black is not a choice, but Muslim is.

Re:wow

[tnk1]

Yeah, I guess that they did forget to mention Ancestor Worship as one of them.

If Programming Languages Were Religions?

[eldavojohn]

What do you mean "If"?! As a young man, I was saved by the one true C.

Re:If Programming Languages Were Religions?

[rhfixer]

Are you sure you can assert that?

Re:If Programming Languages Were Religions?

[eldavojohn]

What do you mean "If"?! As a young man, I was saved by the one true C.

Are you sure you can assert that?

No, the 90s where a turbulent time filled with drugs, rock music and Java. I've largely lost my way for the cheap harlot of a language that runs on any platform. In a way, I miss the sharp sting of the preachers segfault against my knuckles, the way I would allocate and deallocate memory night after night over and over. Sometimes I look back and long for the purity that once was ... and curse the Sun Microsystem that lead me astray from the good letter.

Often at home I resolve to code only in an efficient language. But in the morning when I wake up, I take the paycheck and do what greed drives me to do: Java.

Re:If Programming Languages Were Religions?

[MSBob]

The Holy C

If C++ is Islam

[earthforce_1]

Then Linus must have joined Salman Rushdie in hiding after this rant:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918

Re:If C++ is Islam

[Anonymous Coward]

His rant is that of one who knows only how to use a hammer, so everything looks like nails.

No! Some things look like thumbs!

Re:If C++ is Islam

[maxwell demon]

But those only become a problem after hitting them with a hammer.

I'm Atheist I suppose.

[MouseR]

Objective-C isn't in the list. And that makes me happy.

Re:I'm Atheist I suppose.

[QuantumG]

objc is a heretic cult and will be quashed.

LOLCode

[Andr T.]

LOLCODE would be Pastafarianism - An esoteric, Internet-born belief that nobody really takes seriously, despite all the efforts to develop and spread it.

WHAT??? What do you mean no one takes Pastafarianism seriously?? Die, infidel!

Re:LOLCode

[berend botje]

Obviously you ment: "Dine! Infidel!" :-)

Re:LOLCode

[jollyreaper]

WHAT??? What do you mean no one takes Pastafarianism seriously?? Die, infidel!

If you disbelief in the deities you're an atheist, if you disbelieve in Pastafarianism does that make you antepasta? And if so, what would be a good wine to match with you?

Re:LOLCode

[Arthur Grumbine]

Or maybe, "Dine! With Zinfandel!"

Dual religion is accepted?

[TheDarkMaster]

I am a fundamentalist crhistian (java) AND a satanist (visual basic)? LOL!

I am the incarnated paradox :)

Re:Dual religion is accepted?

[jandersen]

I am a fundamentalist crhistian (java) AND a satanist (visual basic)? LOL!

I am the incarnated paradox :)

How so?

Re:Dual religion is accepted?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Actually, you are what many experienced programmers refer to as "A Terrorist".

Theologians will disagree

[Kupfernigk]

I think TFA suffers from the author not knowing an awful lot about the different religions.

IMHO,

• Java is more like Episcopalianism - it's based ultimately on C (Judaism) but rejects some of the more traditional ideas and allows for a wide range of interpretations.
• Erlang is like Zen - initially hard to understand but based around some apparently simple but deep concepts. And yes, I have studied Zen, you insensitive clod!
• C# is Mormonism - a kind of parallel reality to the mainstream Episcopalianism that is Java, and it costs more to join.
• C++ is fundamentalist Christianity - at first sight it looks fine but you have to believe increasingly strange things the more you get sucked into it, and it can just blow up in your face without warning.
• And COBOL is Islam - it has been around a long time, it is still widely believed in, it can be a bit narrow but for many of its believers it works extremely well.

Re:Theologians will disagree

[aaron alderman]

I don't believe in programming.

Re:What, no scientology?

[Andr T.]

Python would be Scientology? I surely don't agree.

You have to pay nobody to learn it. It's fun and there's no Xeno. Also, nobody was attacked after saying bad things about it. I think.

I wish programming was a religion

[jollyreaper]

Then we could excommunicate people for breaking coding conventions and burn them at the stake for buffer overflows. Of course, this would also mean we'd need altars to Gates and Torvalds in the server room, would have to burn the right incenses and make appropriate obeisances to ward off crashes. Of course, when the crashes happen anyway, we could then have the debate over whether the religion was false or if we simply weren't observing it strictly enough and decide to throw a virgin off the roof and see if things improve. (cue jokes about the likeliest department to find virgins in.) You know, it would be kind of cool to have a giant computing pyramid atop which is the altar we tear out the beating hearts of living sacrifices.

Re:I wish programming was a religion

[paulsnx2]

The 10 commandments of coding conventions

1) Thou shalt not place the Left Curly Brace on a line of its own; this shows disrespect to thy Fathers and thy Mothers who only had 80 columns and 24 lines in days of old
2) Thou shalt not use the GoTo, for such disrespects the Prophet of Programming Dijkstra,
3) Thou shalt comment thy code, and provide great detail about the workings of thy mind when thou does first write thy method. And thou shalt revisit and revise thy comments only in the earliest hours of the morning prior to thy code review.
4) Honor thy Sun and thy Java that your days may be long upon the Virtual Machine where thy code livith.
5) Thou shalt Compile before checking in.
6) Thou shalt Run thy code at least once before shipping.
7) Thou shalt Test at least one Browser against thy Server's code, and thy backup Server's code, and thy Neighbor's Server's code.
8) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's operating system unless thy neighbor runs Linux; If ye cast your eye upon thy neighbor's Windows Server, and covet it in thy heart, thy staff shall take thee into thy parking lot and stone thee with mice until the demon of stupidity leaveth thee
9) Thou shalt not make libraries of other gods such as C# or Perl. These are an abomination before thy God.
10) Once thou hast compiled thy code, generated thy Java Doc, Reviewed thy code with the elders of thy people, Deployed thy code upon thy server, and tested thy code upon the Browser of thy God (Firefox 3.0), and thy customer doth stumble upon thy bug, thou shalt blame thy customer with thy mouth, and curse his existence, for thou hath commented, placed thy braces properly, indented with four spaces (and not eight as do the godless), hath capped thy constants, hath lowercased thy methods, and hath passed all thy JUnit tests..... It is the truth of God that if yee hath done all these things, thy customer must be at fault.

Re:I wish programming was a religion

[miscGeek]

I guess I must have my own cult cause if you follow command 1 I will personally burn you at the stake.

Re:I wish programming was a religion

[orclevegam]

I guess I must have my own cult cause if you follow command 1 I will personally burn you at the stake.

Thou wilst follow thy K&R style guide or be beaten to death with dangling pointers. Always remember to cuddle your else clauses, they get lonely easily.

BASIC

[SoundGuyNoise]

BASIC is like any Sunday School. It give you a base to start out with. Might not be on the ball with the full tenets of a religion, simplified for a new audience, but it points in the direction for deeper philosophical research.

Re:Are religion

[PinkyDead]

More to the point, religions are programming languages.

Re:python is unrestrictive?

[quarterbuck]

It is unrestrictive not in the simple keywords and functions sense, but in the sense of object oriented design.
In Java it is next to impossible to write a "Hello World" program without tripping over object oriented design. In python don't really need to create a ObjectFactory to create little widget objects if you don't feel like it etc.
This leaves the user unrestricted when it comes to program design (though python slightly does nudge you in the rightish direction with the way the language is developing).

Prolog must be Soviet Russia style communism.

[lxs]

After working with it for 48 hours I woke up in the middle of the night, convinced that computer was programming me.

Re:Atheism

[JasterBobaMereel]

Atheism - There is no computer ...

Agnosticism - You cannot prove there is a computer by programming ...

One small quibble...

[rickb928]

"COBOL would be Ancient Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it's almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today."

COBOL is more likely Freemasonry - While claiming to be born before C and Java(and we ask, 'this is a hard teaching!'), it espouses concepts much more ancient, and as yet not disproven in utility. It works unseen, underpinning most of society, gains little public respect (indeed scorn and distrust), and occasionally becomes noticable, usually in crisis not entirely of its own making. Adherents are dying off, but fear not; COBOL still fills a need, and while many Post-Modern competitors rise and fall, COBOL lives on, doing whatever it does, quietly, efficiently, daring all pretenders to replace it. Many have indeed succumbed. Be wary of annoying this breed. They have access to all your bases.

Re:One small quibble...

[Just Some Guy]

COBOL is more likely Freemasonry

As a Mason, I demand that you take that back. Fail to do so and we'll appoint Bush again.

Slight Tangent

[JoeMerchant]

Taoism: Shit happens.
Confucianism: Confucius say, "Shit happens."
Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn't really shit.
Zen Buddhism: Shit is, and is not.
Zen Buddhism #2: What is the sound of shit happening?
Hinduism: This shit has happened before.
Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah.
Islam #2: If shit happens, kill the person responsible.
Islam #3: If shit happens, blame Israel.
Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserve it.
Protestantism: Let shit happen to someone else.
Presbyterian: This shit was bound to happen.
Episcopalian: It's not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve the right wine with it.
Methodist: It's not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve grape juice with it.
Congregationalist: Shit that happens to one person is just as good as shit that happens to another.
Unitarian: Shit that happens to one person is just as bad as shit that happens to another.
Lutheran: If shit happens, don't talk about it.
Fundamentalism: If shit happens, you will go to hell, unless you are born again. (Amen!)
Fundamentalism #2: If shit happens to a televangelist, it's okay.
Fundamentalism #3: Shit must be born again.
Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?
Calvinism: Shit happens because you don't work.
Seventh Day Adventism: No shit shall happen on Saturday.
Creationism: God made all shit.
Secular Humanism: Shit evolves.
Christian Science: When shit happens, don't call a doctor - pray!
Christian Science #2: Shit happening is all in your mind.
Unitarianism: Come let us reason together about this shit.
Quakers: Let us not fight over this shit.
Utopianism: This shit does not stink.
Capitalism: That's MY shit.
Communism: It's everybody's shit.
Feminism: Men are shit.
Chauvinism: We may be shit, but you can't live without us...
Commercialism: Let's package this shit.
Impressionism: From a distance, shit looks like a garden.
Idolism: Let's bronze this shit.
Existentialism: Shit doesn't happen; shit IS.
Existentialism #2: What is shit, anyway?
Stoicism: This shit is good for me.
Hedonism: There is nothing like a good shit happening!
Mormonism: God sent us this shit.
Mormonism #2: This shit is going to happen again.
Wiccan: An it harm none, let shit happen.
Scientology: If shit happens, see "Dianetics", p.157.
Jehovah's Witnesses: Knock Knock Shit happens.
Jehovah's Witnesses #2: May we have a moment of your time to show you some of our shit?
Jehovah's Witnesses #3: Shit has been prophesied and is imminent; only the righteous shall survive its happening.
Moonies: Only really happy shit happens.
Hare Krishna: Shit happens, rama rama.
Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this shit!
Zoroastrianism: Shit happens half on the time.
Church of SubGenius: BoB shits.
Practical: Deal with shit one day at a time.
Agnostic: Shit might have happened; then again, maybe not.
Agnostic #2: Did someone shit?
Agnostic #3: What is this shit?
Satanism: SNEPPAH TIHS.
Atheism: What shit?
Atheism #2: I can't believe this shit!
Nihilism: No shit.

Converting into Judaism

[Jason Levine]

The article's author says about Judaism:

The catch is, you can't convert into it - you're either into it from the start, or you will think that it's insanity.

This isn't true, however. You can convert into Judaism, we just purposefully make it difficult to do so. The custom is that you need to turn the person away 3 times. Only after they come back after the third turn-away can they begin the process to convert. This helps ensure that people don't take conversion to Judaism lightly. The conversion itself is mainly classes to get up to speed on the religious laws and then a dunk in a mikvah (a kind of ritual pool). Males have an extra obstacle - circumcision. And don't think that hospital-administered one will get you out of it. In the case of an already circumcised male convert, a drop of blood is still taken (as a sort of token religious circumcision). The end result is that converts are actually more likely to be religious than natural-born Jews and aren't likely to convert away from Judaism on a whim.

I beg to differ

[MarkusQ]

Basically violence has nothing to do with religion. People will use ANY religion as an excuse to justify their view they they are right and everyone else is wrong.

I was right with you up till that.

Religion (and yeah, any other non-rational shared belief system, like football (aka "soccer")) is a key component of most episodes of large scale violence. It's hard to get people to do things that are liable to get them hurt or killed, or lead them to hurt or kill others. Their natural reaction will be to think "But wait, what if somebody gets hurt?"

This is where all having the same imaginary friend comes in. If you can get people worked up by some non-falsifiable hogwash you can whip up a mod that will believe and do anything. Getting people to do stupid things is much easier if you shut their brains down first.

The great thing about imaginary friends for this sort of thing is that they can't contradict you. If you use a living celebrity ("Come on, people, let's kill him for Oprah's sake!") there's always the risk your Chosen One will step up and say "WTF are you thinking?"

There's a reason it's so easy to associate specific religions with specific stupid bloodthirsty acts, and that's that they were causal in the perpetration of those acts..

--MarkusQ

Re:I beg to differ

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I believe Stalin (as well as Pol Pot, and those responsible for Rwanda's genocide) adequately demonstrated that atrocities need no basis in religion. You can just as easily come up with a flawed ideology that is not based on a belief in the supernatural and use that for genocide.

Re:I beg to differ

[Joe the Lesser]

But their atrocities were based in ideology, which religion is a subset of.

If one believes in a cause, perhaps one can kill for a cause.

Of course, mysticism is popular and easier to use than political beliefs..., but Stalin and Hitler were able to use other beliefs to the same effect. All of it uses a similar mantra: "you need to be afraid of the enemy, assume the worst, and strike first. To do otherwise is to let them win." Ironically the phrase 'Evil needs only for good men to do nothing' is a double edged sword.

The caveat is that for good to succeed all that is required is for evil men to do nothing.

If all causes can be used for evil, then sometimes doing nothing is the moral choice.

Re:I beg to differ

[Rycross]

Well but then you're not talking about religion but something else. What you're referring to is that its fairly easy to get humans to rally around any sort of idea or belief, and then paint their group as being under attack, which will provoke a defense response. Its a fundamental human nature that gave us a competitive advantage when we were still just small groups strewn about the globe.

I think people give religion too much credit. Religion is not some special-case organization, but rather a simple result of the mental quirks that evolved in humans to help us survive. You can see a lot of the behavior from people who adhere strongly to political parties, racial-supremacy groups, nations (nationalism), and even sports teams. Even the religion-is-bad crowd says a lot of shit that is stunningly similar to a lot of stuff that the religious crowd puts out.

The reality is that its a problem with humanity, not a problem with religious people. Religion just tends to be an easy and comfortable target to project their fears and anger on. Kind-of like the atheist version of Satan and heathens, so to speak. Of course, recognizing that its a human condition brings up all sorts of uncomfortable truths.

Re:I beg to differ

[mattwarden]

So you've shown that religion isn't necessary for violence. I don't think that's what anyone is saying. Would you say it's easier or harder to organize a violent effort when religion is involved?

what the fuck are you talking about?

[ClioCJS]

They worship the same damn god. While I think *all* religions are scummy and create murderers, you really need to blame Abraham for creating Judaism, which split off into Christianity, which split off into Islam (and later Mormonism).... All four are crackpots who worship the same god, Abraham's God. Renaming him Allah or Yahweh doesn't change this fact.

You're also pretty damn clueless about atheists. An atheist may be just as likely to sacrifice their life. If you're an atheist, and you don't believe in the afterlife, would you not trade your life for your family's, so that they can live? Afterlife or no afterlife, most parents are willing to put themselves in the place of their child regardless of consequence, and most family members will sacrifice themselves to save *the whole rest of their family* regardless of consequence too.

I think you don't understand altruism. Your post makes it sound like the only people willing to sacrifice their lives are those that think there is an afterlife. Those people are the *selfish* ones willing to sacrifice their lives, but there are *unselfish* people out there too - believe it or not.

Re:what the fuck are you talking about?

[BlueStraggler]

They worship the same damn god.

This is the popular belief, but it doesn't stand up well to academic scrutiny. The Jewish, Muslim, and Christian gods can be traced back to different ancestral deities, which became fused as monotheism (belief in one and only one god) gradually replaced monolatry (belief in many gods, but worship of only one).

The Judaic god is Yahweh. The Muslim god is Allah, formerly El (the etymology survives as Elohim in the Bible, as well as in the names of the archangels, Gabri-El, Rafa-El, Micha-El, Uri-El). El was a sky god, and therefore a king of the gods, like Zeus. (Elohim is a plural form, and probably originally referred to El plus his lesser gods, analogous to the Olympians.) In Judaism, Yahweh took over El's duties either by absorbing a neighbouring tribe that worshipped El, or by the mythological feat of overthrowing El and taking over the King of gods position, as did Zeus, when the Jews had risen to a position of political and military power that clearly signaled the ascendance of Yahweh. In any case, Yahweh absorbed many of the aspects of El, and after several rounds of edits, they came to be referred to interchangeably but not especially consistently in the Old Testament. El survived this fusion outside of Jewish realms, but because of Judaism's superior documentation of the matter, the fusion was accepted by later religions such as Islam.

The Christian god is Jesus, an entirely different figure who took on all of the myths and characteristics of Roman Empire sun gods. Sun gods generally were fathered by the king of the gods, and birthed by a virgin. That meant that Jesus worshipers needed two more gods, a father and virgin mother, to fit the sun god archetype. But the trinity idea didn't work so well with the trendy monotheism thing, and kind of distracted from Jesus himself. After a couple centuries of various heresies, purges, and whatnot, the Christians got it all sorted out: the trinity was really just facets of the same monotheistic god; the Father was the abstracted god in heaven, easily equated with Yahweh-El (or any other local King god, which was how it got sold to the Romans); Jesus was the real manifestation of that God on earth; and the Virgin got booted from the Trinity because there was no room for another god or another person. (Nevertheless, the Virgin cult has survived in many respects to this day.)

Re:Programming Languages aren't Religions...

[orclevegam]

Linux could be the hundered of branches of Christianity. However, I like Hinduism. Hinduism has many teachings, and people practise differently. Hinduism also claims Buhhdism as a subsect of Hinduism, so that opens you up to even more variation.

Actually I think that would make Linux Buddhism and Unix Hinduism.

Calling languages religions?

[Requiem18th]

It's blasphemous!

Atheism...

[PPH]

..is Whitespace.

Re:Atheism...

[atomic-penguin]

..is Whitespace.

No that is nihilism, the belief in nothing. Atheism is the belief in no God.

One could define atheism with a Perl one liner as such:

my $God = undef;

Nope

[Moraelin]

There's a reason it's so easy to associate specific religions with specific stupid bloodthirsty acts, and that's that they were causal in the perpetration of those acts..

No, it's usually because people usually have no clue about what other religions did. So they have religion X for which they know evil acts A, B and C, and religion Y about which they don't know jack. So they do a jump to conclusions that religion Y was all saintly, harmonious and benevolent.

If you look at it deeper, yes, the GP is right, virtually _any_ religion that existed prior to the 20'th century at all, has been perverted into justifying some atrocities -- or at least turning a blind eye to them.

E.g., taoism is all enlightened and all about harmony and doing the right thing... but caused one of the bloodiest revolts in recorded history.

E.g., shintoism and generally the Japanese view of the world is all about purity, duty, respecting the spirits, avoiding murder and generally doing the right thing... but the mindset around it is what _caused_ such massacres of civillians as the Rape Of Nanjing or the Japanese atrocities against prisoners and civillians in WW2. The rationale was that since the enemy didn't do what the Japanese philosophy demands (e.g., fighting to the last breath, regardless of odds), they lost their right to be called humans, and can be treated like cattle. E.g., the fact that the Chinese soldiers discarded their uniforms and tried to hide among civillians, to escape the Japanese atrocities, was seen as such a breach of what a true human should do, that they and the whole city deserved nothing less than mass slaughter.

E.g., Tibetan buddhism is all enlightened and all about scoring karma points for your reincarnation... but has been a justification for the most abject slavery of most of their population. The justification being that if you were born a slave, well, you deserve that and it's your punishment for your evil deeds in a past life. So you had a religion which preached benevolence to your fellow man, and a theocratic caste treating their fellow man like shit in its name. Go figure that one out.

The religion may not have _demanded_ such massacres, and there may not have been a "pope" to decree it, but that particular view of the world was distorted into basically, "anyone who doesn't see the world exactly like us, deserves death." Go figure.

E.g., look at any "enlightened" and "noble savage" shamanistic or animistic cults, and you'll find a history of endemic warfare and slaughter, where generations after generations of young warriors are sent to rape and pillage under the shaman's blessing and guidance. In fact, the very first depictions of warfare we have on cave walls -- interestingly enough coinciding with the invention of missile weapons -- show groups of archers shooting at each other, each lead by some shaman with some holy symbol. That's how the history of human organized warfare _started_.

And I'm not even getting into ancient religions demanding a stream of human sacrifices and the like.

Look as far back as the first religious hymns we have, e.g., The Exaltation of Innana by her high priestess Enheduanna, and you'll find a disturbingly blood-thirsty girl praising her Goddess for turning major rivers red with the blood of her enemies -- soldiers and innocent bystanders alike -- and destroying their crops. That's early human religion for you.

So, pray tell, which religions do you have in mind, which _didn't_ facilitate a few choice atrocities? Again, only those which existed for any length of time, please, not late 20'th century new age cults or jokes like Pastafarianism.

Ever heard of tacit approval?

[Hognoxious]

So if one terrorist says "I'm a Muslim" then everyone who doesn't immediately renounce their own Islamic faith is a terrorist too?

But by not denouncing the act (or denouncing it with a "but") they are supporting it. Tacit approval, look it up.

Stop me if you've heard this

[mcgrew]

A lawyer, a priest, and a Rabbi are on the Titanic when it hits an iceberg.

"Save the children!" yells the rabbi.

"FUCK the children!" snarls the lawyer.

"No time for that!" excaims the priest.

//alternate version for those who don't like lawyers//

A rabbi and a priest are walking down the sidewalk when they see a poor waif in tattered, wet clothing shivering homeless in a doorway. "Poor thing," says the Rabbi, "What should we do with him?"

"Take him home and fuck him" the priest says.

"Out of what?" asks the rabbi.

//one more//

Two Muslims are walking down the st%$&*&^5J[no carrier]

Re:Stop me if you've heard this

[clone53421]

Somebody must have heard the Muslim one.