MovieChat Forums > Agora (2009) Discussion > If I could go back in time

If I could go back in time


...I would kill Abraham. The source of all evil that is credited to the illusion of God and all madness that followed. Christianity, Judaism, Islam - it all was born from the assumed interaction between Abraham and an alien visitor who claimed to be the creator of all that is known and unknown. If I had the chance to stumble upon the one who claims to be God I would slaughter him as well. I was so disgusted watching this film and the filthy savages of Christianity. Today we are no longer terrorized by Christians but instead the followers of Muhammed.

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Polytheistic societies killed & pillaged one another also.



Totus Tuus O Maria!!! Totus Tuus O Jesu!!!!

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+1
I also agree, any religion or belief system other then these 3 Abraham religions are multitudes better then these vile desert religions.

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You obviously do not research the history of other religions, do you?



Totus Tuus O Maria!!! Totus Tuus O Jesu!!!!

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I read history books since I was 10 so don't start on me you ignorant fool.

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I read history books since I was 10 so don't start on me you ignorant fool.


Good for you. In that case, you should know that violence & mayhem take place in other religions & cultures, as well as the Abrahamic religions too, you bigot.

And before you say that is why atheism is right, even under official atheism (Communism), millions have died for their religious faiths.

Totus Tuus O Maria!!! Totus Tuus O Jesu!!!!

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You should learn to read, where did I say I am an atheist?
Very typical of people like you to brand everyone as atheist or whatever as soon as they doesn't fit into you cult of belief.
Sure violence & mayhem take place in other religions & cultures but it is still a lot more peaceful when there is no Christianity, Judaism or Islam in involved.

Jesus is a myth by the way, he is a copy of Mithras, centuries before the year zero. And Islam ironically isn't made up by a Arab but by small group Jews who were disappointed with Christianity and there own religion.

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You know what? How clumsy of me. You are right. You didn't say you were an atheist. You could be any one of these non-Abrahamic religions for all I know.

Sure violence & mayhem take place in other religions & cultures but it is still a lot more peaceful when there is no Christianity, Judaism or Islam involved.


Why? Because when these religions are around, all the other religions suddenly become violent? And if/when they do, are the Christians, Jews, & Muslims the targets of the violence? Because if they are, isn't that kind of like blaming the victim?

Oh, & by the way, the Lord Jesus WAS an Historical Person. He was not a copy of Mithras, Horus, the Buddha, or any other religious figure. He Did indeed Exist.

Totus Tuus O Maria!!! Totus Tuus O Jesu!!!!

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A person called Jesus existed, but the story about him being born to a virgin and being the son of god is a copy of a very old myth/legend that has been repeated in stories from various cultures.

It's like, take Ron L Hubbard, founder of Scientology. Because it's in our recent past, most people outside that religion think it's all nonsense because we know he's just some ordinary crazy dude. But in a few hundred or a couple thousand years, a story about him and who he was and what he did could very easily become infused with mythological/magical things and one day people will be far removed in time enough to believe HE was some divine messenger who performed miracles etc etc. Yeah he was a real person, but real people who have influence or become famous have stories and rumours spoken and written about them all the time, some fall by the wayside throughout time, others stick and get reinforced and new bits get added until there is a strict narrative and a consensus about who and what and where and when that is miles away from the small nugget of truth that started it all.

The 3 Abrahamic religions are just stories, told in a time where people knew little about who the world works and needed explanations for it. This movie was good at showing the different ways people approached knowledge and learning in this earlier time in humanity's history where there were so many things yet to discover. Some people took an experiential and rational approach to discovering new knowledge about the world, like Hypatia, and others sought comfort in easy to understand stories about mysterious powerful agents who were pulling the strings behind the scenes, who would make death less frightening and would confirm humanity's central and meaningful place in the universe, while others still would take advantage of this need in the majority to have such an explanations, to have someone to pray to etc, and wove stories about gods for political gain. Of course, Jesus was one of the latter people, not that he was necessarily interested in political power himself, but he was like an activist against some of the more strict and ridiculous aspects of Judaism and believed in a simpler belief system based largely on empathy rather than on complicated and seemingly arbitrary sets of rules that could be quite damaging to follow at the expense of all else. And then, of course, once Jesus had been martyred and the stories and rumours and mythology sprung up around him, and he got more and more followers, the people in charge did what they always do, embraced it, made 'Christianity' official, and in so doing twisted it all into something else, something politically useful that could be used to control the masses.

And people like Hypatia, who were searching for truth about the world, got crushed, and they still do in some places. And you can bet that if it wasn't eventually discovered that the scientific method could actually be useful in terms of gaining money, power and influence, scientists would still just be philosophers musing things out in secret and we'd all still be wearing togas and lighting our ways with candles at night. There's a reason most scientific advances and discoveries come from military funding.

Anyway, the point is that organised religion is a tool and nothing more - it's used to grab certain types of relatively uneducated people right inside, around their most powerful emotions, their fears, their sense of self and their place in the world and to get them to channel all that unwittingly on behalf of various political purposes. It's used in a myriad of ways to silence, to shame, to incite violence, 'Othering,' tribalism, war and to exert power and influence over the most personal and private areas of an individual's life. When you stand outside it, and have not been ensnared in its thrall, or instilled/ brainwashed with it from a young age, it's an incredibly absurd and disturbing thing to witness. Because otherwise seemingly normal people DO do strange and violent things for their religion, they DO get swept away and what's more is they feel justified by some invisible unanswerable made-up 'entity,' whose invisible and made-up or inherently twistable and highly interpretable, humanly fallible 'words' they can pull out of thin air to justify even the most heinous of crimes. The Abrahamic religions are the worst for this because of their rules, their insistence on being the 'only way' and the fact that they rely on large texts composed of incredibly contradictory texts that can be interpreted and used to justify almost anything.

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What an essay!!! Bravo.

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Yeah I wish I would spend that much time and effort on doing the actual work I am actually meant to be doing!

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Religion was manipulated to become a tool for control. If it wasn't that being used throughout time, it would be something else. Destroying it at its core would only change the method of control.

Some people are waking up to this, but you see new tools of control being used in its place. Biased media, the illusion of choice about which lobbied government we vote for, propaganda dividing groups of people so we fight amongst ourselves rather than unite against the real evils of the world.

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I know! Civilization was so peaceful before Judaism, wasn't it? Egypt never went to war or committed acts of atrocity. Nor did Babylon, the Hittites, or the ancient Greeks. Ancient China built the Great Wall just for tourists, and India never had any brutality in its cities!

But then once Abraham came along, people started warring with one another, raping, murdering, stealing. I'm sure it all comes back to Judaism.

/Sarcasm

Pretty sure this was a troll topic, though. LOL.

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That would be a waste of a perfectly good time machine. You'd get better results going back and dropping off a pile of modern encyclopedias (they still make those?). Even then, though, it likely wouldn't change much.

Kill one religion and another would just take its place. The problem isn't the belief, but the mind that produces it.

When people face mysteries, we're designed to try to come up with explanations for them. And in lieu of relevant data and education to guide us to the best answer, we'll just work with what we can make fit. We use our imaginations. Our ability to find patterns and make meaning out of them, our tendency to anthropomorphize and assume things are about us, our instinct to build narratives that make coherent sense of life. See a volcano erupt? Experience the ground start shaking? Have a flood? A close relative starts spasming on the ground? Maybe that happened because we're being punished? Maybe it's a message meant to guide us? Why did the person I love die? They can't truly be gone, can they? What happens when I die? It's unfathomable that I wouldn't exist anymore. We found food after a child accidentally drowned. Maybe there's a connection. Should we kill more? People are getting sick after eating pigs. Whoever made life must not like us eating them.

These things and a million others all do have explanations, obviously. And we, thankfully, courtesy of the trial and error of our ancestors, have the luxury of knowing the explanations for most of them. But most humans throughout history didn't. They had the thirst for answers, but none of the resources to get them. Other than imaginations and emotions. So they made stuff up that fit as explanations.

This was occurring far before Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. It still happens when people see a mysterious light in the sky and, rather than waiting for further info, we jump to the conclusion that its aliens and our government is covering them up. This is just how our brains work.

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