this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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Religion isn’t about actually helping people. It’s used to control the masses with shame, guilt and the threat of eternal damnation. It’s used to abuse and fleece the weak and the poor.
People holding onto “that’s not what Jesus would do” are just in denial about the cult they participate in.
Jesus is just a tool used to dupe rubes. If you need a fictional character to tell you to act like a decent human being then you’re not a good person.
Harsh but true.
But a little besides the point OP is trying to make - which is about Jesus' teachings themselves, not the cult that grew up around it - as far as we can deduce what Jesus actually did and said of course. Which isn't much but enough to come to a similar conclusion as OP claims.
Which is why he had to be made an example of and executed. It took a few hundred years for his brand to be perverted into funding a gilded palace in Rome.
You can’t call every christian a rube and then make such a simplistic accusation about organized religion. Yes there are (major) flaws with organized religion, but surely you realize your statement is at best hyperbole and at worst moronic
Dawg I ain’t saying organized religion is innocent. But it is false to claim that the sole purpose of religion is to control the masses. Your original comment was also just wrong like bruh, how can you claim that a figure like Jesus (the guy flipping tables in the marketplace, preaching ab how the poor are the most holy, saving the lepers, etc) was actually an evil psychopath who had a long game where he was going to fleece the poor of their wealth and threaten people with eternal damnation so they would follow him. That’s just some braindead conspiracy shit where you’re afraid everyone is out to get you. Grow up
Whatever jesus the human did in the past is irrelevant. He is used as an icon to control people by those who built an organized cult around him.
Why didn’t you start with that 😭 your original argument sounded so silly. Hell you could’ve said smtn interesting like how an originally innocuous scripture was co-opted for nefarious purposes but instead you just wanted to sound like an 8th grader who found r/atheism for the first time 💔
The over 100 upvotes say otherwise…
Religion is a cult that’s actively making the world a worse place.
“The over 100 upvotes say otherwise”🤓 grow up lmao
And buddy we literally agreed ab how scripture/prophets/religious ideas are often co-opted for power over a group of people.
I’m just tryna let you know that your argument sounded stupid lol. Try using specific evidence for arguments next time.
For example “religion is a cult…” is an awful start to an argument. 1) wtf is religion, that is a very broad term 2) the religion you’re mentioning is written in the singular, are you trying to say that all world religions are actually the same religion? 3) what about this (singular?) cult is actively making the world worse?
Instead try saying something like “Zionist politicians purposely mislead their constituents through well chosen scripture in order to garner support for the genocide of thousands.”
See how my statement was the effectively the same as your argument, but it uses more precise language and points to a specific modern day example.
I don’t give a shit about your opinion. I’m not going to censor myself or use click bait sounding arguments.
Religions are fucking cults, every last one of them and I’m done pretending they are not.
So what you did there is contradict yourself.
And considering that you keep responding to my comments and (poorly) defending your argument, you clearly care a lot about my opinion.
You also really gotta clean up this thesis of yours. Besides the brutal and ignorant simplicity, you need to find a noun other than “cult.” I get what you’re trying to say, but by using cult in this manner you are essentially arguing that we need to change the definition of the word “cult” instead of remove all religion (which seems to be your goal).*
*I’m not really going to expand more on what I mean by how you use the word “cult” cause it would require me to write a much more interesting essay than your poorly thought out idea.
IMO it made sense in the times when enforcing the law was harder to do. But a lot of time has passed since then, religions (as in whole communities, priests and followers) somehow made it their point to not change much
Constantine left a lot out to solidify his rule too.
"Enforcing the law" a.k.a. "opressing people"
Not necessarily. Punishing theft or manslaughter is not oppression. And it makes sense to have systemic safeguards against those
Why do people steal?
People do not necessarily do reasonable things. A lot of society is built on the assumption of people doing reasonable things.
Not being able to cook and eat humans make some people feel oppressed, too, and it's still the law. I think cultural context also matters. Jesus, if he existed as a singular person, was certainly ahead of his time, and imo, when he said he came to fulfill the law (old testament) rather than abolish it, that meant it was completed, thus over. It was time for a new law. Plus I've also done a lot of reading at early Jewish writings.com, earlychristianwritings.cim, the Ethiopian Bible in English, my Jewish learning.com, Jewish encyclopedia, etc, so there are a lot of mistranslation, too.
I would argue that the verse where he said I am here to fulfill the old testament is more proving that christians should follow the old testament. There is not much in bible canon to suggest the old testament was vetod by Jesus, I would say there's more than enough evidence in bible canon that old testament rules still apply to all christians.
Almost everything Jesus taught was in contradiction to the ot.
"Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill"
What is "A saying used until someone commits a crime against the speaker" Alex.
There are a lot of different religions and beliefs in the world, right? Christianity and similar religions are not the only ones that exist, and many religions originated from ancient human primitive tribes.
What happens when you need a real person to tell you to act like a "decent human being" like every human in existence today? Are we all by nature "evil" because we require third parties to dictate what "good" is?
Nobody needs third parties to dictate what good is, it's embedded in our genes.
This is incorrect. You likely have learned little on your own, especially true regarding behavior.
I'm not arguing against that, but there definitely is a moral compass embedded in our genes. We've evolved to work and live in a society. Otherwise we would be extinct. You may be taught things that "feel" wrong.
You appear to have never raised children. Being empathetic and kind to children is key so they can learn what empathy and kindness is; without the demonstration (and for many children, the reinforcement) children's instinct are to resort to violence to get their way. Infants start out in the world copying the perspective of their parents, which is It is so critical to be expressively empathetic with infants so they can learn the appropriate mapping of experiences with feelings.
Children don’t just pick up these values from their parents, but from everyone around them; and in a social group where everyone balances their values against everyone else, norms and traditions form, and now there is an informal religion; and where norms and traditions transcend generations of those practicing, social structures are inevitably built to reinforce the norms into future generations, and now there is a formalized religion.
Any social structure can be corrupted by power. To say religion is inherently amoral because it is corrupt is put on intellectual blindfolds to how social values and norms are shared
We may be speaking of different things. Let me ask you something: do you think the warm feeling you get when you help someone or share a moment of achievement with another person is taught by society?
There definitely is no evidence to support an inherent "moral compass" in humans or any other animal because there is no evidence to support genetic memory which would be required to pass information without teaching it.
Genes are a type of memory. Instincts aren't taught.
Define instincts and provide an example of them being inherent.
The entire life of a turtle...?
Did you know that the mother communicates to her eggs before leaving the beach? They also have a very complex verbal and non verbal way of communicating which begins even before they hatch.
Even assuming you're correct, which I very highly doubt as you have provided no source for your claim that contradicts the overwhelming majority of information you can find online, are you going to tell me flies also communicate with their eggs? Does it continue all the way down to amoebas?
Search "Turtles speak to eggs" if you want to see an overwhelming amount of information that supports the studies done on Turtle communication. Not only do the mothers speak to their babies in the eggs, the baby turtles speak to each other before they hatch.
No, because we are talking about Turtles and what studies know about Turtles. I am unsure what we know about how flies communicate, or how amoebas communicate beyond chemical reactions, but that has nothing to do with the facts about Turtles.
Feel free to source your bullshit before asking for a source from someone else.
We're not talking about turtles but about instincts, that's why I said "assuming you're correct" because even if you are, you're not disproving the existence of instincts, which is pretty much scientific common knowledge. The specific example is not that important for the argument, which you conveniently avoided.
I asked you to provide an example of inherent instincts, you said Turtles, I demonstrated why you were wrong.
The onus is on you to prove your original hypothesis:
I am not avoiding your argument, I am explicitly telling you it is bullshit. This is bullshit and not backed by anything real.
Feel free to source something or jog on.
Sigh...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct
There you go, sources and all. It's very illuminating.
My argument is that there is a basic moral code embedded in our genes via instincts. For example the ability to feel compassion and empathy - these are instinctual.
https://online.uwa.edu/news/empathy-in-animals/ (just an example)
Now, what exactly is "good" is a philosophical question without an objective answer. But to assume our entire behavior and everything makes a person "good" is learned is pretty disingenuous, at least under the definitions of good I've most commonly come across.
A wiki does not an argument make, and your argument fails to explain why compassion and empathy are not universal in our species and a learned behavior.
You're not arguing in good faith - the wiki was the source for the existence of instincts you asked for. Also, Wikipedia is a very good resource actually, what difference would it make to you if I just copied the sources referenced in the article?
I didn't get your second part.
I know you didn't get the second part because you don't understand your own argument.
lol have a nice day