Nah, friend. Religion does encourage superstition and such nonsense, but it doesn’t, on average, lead to violence and hate. As mentioned above, it’s usually shit situations that make people susceptible to that stuff.
Imagine you have a family. You used to be able to support your whole family, comfortably, with your job. But over the past twenty years, things have been getting more expensive. You’ve had trouble get raises to catch up. Even worse, the company is laying people off, and you’re worried you might be next. It feels like the world is going to shit. You’re too busy with work and family to keep track of all the politics and economics to know why things are happening. You just know that things suck, and you don’t know why. So you start wondering, “what changed?” Well, there’s a lot more talk of gay people. Or you’ve been seeing women with hijabs, and you never saw that before. Maybe they’re the reason. At church, you complain about your life to your friends. They claim it’s the gays and the Muslims. They tell you there’s another church where the pastor knows what’s going on. You should go there instead. So you do, and now you’ve gone from a pretty chill, “love everyone” kind of Christianity to the “gays should burn in hell” kind of Christianity.
Honestly, beyond the different denominations, I think even within denominations, it can be almost an entirely different religion, based on the congregation and pastor/priest.
Average humans are chill until they touch religions.
Nah, friend. Religion does encourage superstition and such nonsense, but it doesn’t, on average, lead to violence and hate. As mentioned above, it’s usually shit situations that make people susceptible to that stuff.
Imagine you have a family. You used to be able to support your whole family, comfortably, with your job. But over the past twenty years, things have been getting more expensive. You’ve had trouble get raises to catch up. Even worse, the company is laying people off, and you’re worried you might be next. It feels like the world is going to shit. You’re too busy with work and family to keep track of all the politics and economics to know why things are happening. You just know that things suck, and you don’t know why. So you start wondering, “what changed?” Well, there’s a lot more talk of gay people. Or you’ve been seeing women with hijabs, and you never saw that before. Maybe they’re the reason. At church, you complain about your life to your friends. They claim it’s the gays and the Muslims. They tell you there’s another church where the pastor knows what’s going on. You should go there instead. So you do, and now you’ve gone from a pretty chill, “love everyone” kind of Christianity to the “gays should burn in hell” kind of Christianity.
Honestly, beyond the different denominations, I think even within denominations, it can be almost an entirely different religion, based on the congregation and pastor/priest.