Much of he talk on this site refers to Christianity. Does anyone have any comments or experiences relating to any other philosophies/religions that could be discussed?
Having seen the aftermath of honor killings in the ME and hearing some stats about Muslim dominated areas and knowing Xtianity is waning, I think Islam is probably more dangerous than Xtianity right now.
I do semi-regular meditation with secular buddhists and have hung out with a few chill pagans.
I'm inclined to agree there. Really Christianity is just the kid you don't invite to the party because he makes so much noise and tries to bully the other kids. There are a lot more pernicious ideologies around.
It all depends on the region you are from, and what the majority religion is. What ever the majority is it tends to be more hostile and toxic especially when it feels thretened by any of the minoretiey religions. This goes for any and every religion through out the world. Every religion and its followers are capable of horrible acts.
As an example, those of us here in the US tend to think of Buddhism as a peaceful philosophy, while that may be true here in the states where it is a major minorety. If you head to a region where it is the majority you will see a far more aggressive stance on the "peaceful philosophy".
It is all really a matter of perspective.
I had looked into several types of religions in my early days of searching for 'the truth'. As a result of those years, I am substantially more tolerant of the more peaceful and less intrusive belief systems. Buddhism
Yeah same to add my serious answer. Havent had many negative experiences with religion outside christianity and its sub cults but Im rather down with eastern cosmology. Buddhism and Taoism seem like relatively bullshit free philosophies if you don't take them overboard like one can do with anything. Also a big fan of a few newer nontheistic analogs for religion like Dudism, Pastafarianism. May his noodly appendage abide with you or somethin, man.
On a few rare occasions, we've had members who said they'd once been involved with religions other than christianity. There have been several who were once involved with islam.
Those folks were still working their process with their departures having been fairly recent.
Living in the US, nearly all my interactions have been with those who claimed either christian or jewish backgrounds. So, I don't have much personal experience with other religions.
That said, I think they're ALL bullshit. Even the ones people try to say aren't "as bad" as the others.
I have no use for any of them.
In addition to being an atheist, I am a staunch anti-theist.
For me it's a matter of respect. I've never been beaten, shunned, abused, or degraded by muslims, jews, Buddhists, or other. I've been mistreated by christians more times than I can count.
I dislike all organized religion, but I believe that if we want respect for our lack of religion, we should respect others. This is hard for me when it comes to christians because they're the ones that have hurt me.
I need to work on that, but conservative christians just keep making it harder and harder
Thus far, I've not had any negative interactions with people of different religions. I've had friends, neighbors, and my children's friends of the Muslim faith but none have ever tried to recruit me, "educate" me, or judge me to my face. A Hindu friend shared vegetarian food with me, but I didn't feel pressed to convert. ?
Most of us here have extensive experience with Christianity compared to, say, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., so that's what we tend to talk about. You'll run into an occasional former Scientologist more often than a former Muslim in my experience. Many of the Muslim unbelievers post surreptitiously in broken English from their home countries ... they have a more survival-based set of concerns, sadly, just trying to communicate with fellow skeptics without getting found out and sent to some torture chamber somewhere.
But as @ArdentAtheist points out, all of those belief-systems share the failed epistemology of religious faith, so the general conversation doesn't really change. It's not like the non-Abrahamic faiths are fundamentally different from the Abrahamic faiths ... they still assert that things are so without feeling obligated to substantiate those claims in any way. The things they assert may be somewhat different (cyclic afterlife rather than sequential for example) but it's still all bullshit.
They are all fake so the conversation is the same, insert the religion of your choice. I don’t really discuss religion much and would rather discuss the things that are real. I dismiss them all in favor of science and a realistic view of the natural world.