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Agreed, I'd like to know more about this also. As someone raised in the Jewish faith, and having spent time also learning about the New Testament and the Quran (though without having read the texts directly), I'm inclined to think Christianity on paper is "the best" of the Abrahamic religions, in that the core messages of Jesus are about forgiveness, nonviolence, and helping one another. These messages are in the Torah and the Quran too, to be clear, but specifically with matters of sexuality, gender, and gender roles, Christianity is the most "forgiving" of people who are non-normative or opposed to those norms in the first place. I say this as someone who doesn't believe in any religion fwiw, not as a born-again Christian or whatever. And I also want to be clear that there are progressive interpretations of all religious texts, people of all religious practices can be LGBTQ, poly, drug users. And religion can also be used to justify incredible acts of evil. Christianity was the justification for the Inquisition and the Crusades after all, despite the violence of both certainly going against the teachings of Jesus. |
Abrahamic? Maybe. I have studied comparative religion somewhat -- more than the vast majority of religious people -- and the least unpleasant "religion" by far is old-school Buddhism.
The original has been widely corrupted and turned into a forest of competing rival faiths, most of which have become religions, but the original seems to me to have been designed by someone very smart, who studied, subjected themselves to various allegedly spiritually-improving practices... and then wrote down a sort of vaccination to inculcate into people carefully designed to protect them from religion.
Religions are contagious memetic infections. Virtually nobody that calls themselves Christian actually follows what little is known of the teachings of Yeshweh. In practice, "being Christian" is not so much a recommendation as a warning.
In my 58 years, I have so far met one (1) person who was a true Yeshweh follower.
Original Buddhism was an inoculation to protect lesser minds from memetic infection.
But it itself has been corrupted by viral influences, to paraphrase Neal Stephenson, and turned into what it sought to protect people from.
Any sect of Christianity that has a name should be avoided. Ditto Islam, Judaism, all the big ones.
For a good overview of world religions, I recommend this excellent book:
https://thebookshop.ie/moncrieff-sean-god-a-users-guide-larg...
Very accessible, funny, and gives you a great "big picture" view.