Master of Applied Cuntery, Level 7 Misanthrope, and Social Injustice Warrior

  • 4 Posts
  • 85 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: September 18th, 2023
  • _cnt0@unilem.orgtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Why do we always consider cultures as inherently better than cults? Are there no exceptions to this?
    8·
    1 year ago

    The terms cult and culture have the same problem(s) as sect and religion. There is no one clear-cut definition, but many competing definitions, most of which are kind of vague or ambiguous. Both sect and cult are usually used in us versus them narratives. If you pick a random person and try to discuss if and why something is a cult/sect or culture/religion you are almost guaranteed to run into unresolvable conflict because you’ll likely have different definitions in mind. The obvious solution is to settle on a common definition beforehand, but that will just cause the next conflict because there are so many and there is no obviously correct one.

    People often bring up an aspect of control as the defining characteristic of cults/sects. Does that make all states cults? Does that mean every major Christian denomination was a sect 200 years ago?

    Another common definition is that of a new group splitting off from the established group. Does that mean the entirety of Christianity is just a jewish sect?

    Most definitions, when applied rigorously, imply that every culture/religion has been a cult/sect at least for some time in the past. And here comes the trouble: Most people from some culture/religion will provide you with a definition for cult/sect, when arguing about it, but will not accept when you apply it to theirs and point out that by that definition it either is a cult/sect, or was 200/500/1000 years ago. Because most people use those terms to denote otherness possibly even in a pejorative way.

    In an academic context (for example anthropology or history) the distinction between cult and culture or sect and religion can be useful when a definition is given in the context and it is applied consistently. Outside of academia those terms aren’t very useful beyond instigating people against each other or minorities, solidifying circle jerks, or starting flame wars.

    My nonprofessional take on it:

    Every culture started out as a cult and all cultures are or have been horrid given the opportunity.

    Every religion started out as a sect and all the sects’ and religions’ fairy tales are equally ridiculous when observed from the outside.

    The distinction between cult and culture, and sect and religion, has no net positive benefit outside of academia and should be avoided outside of fiction.

  • _cnt0@unilem.orgtoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Please, do not use Brave.
    1·
    1 year ago

    Considering how many tests Brave does not pass, I’d say that page looks pretty balanced and fair. Also it is consistent with independent studies where Brave came out on top of the list.

    My impression is that most opposition against Brave is largely political. And then people try to find technical reasons after the fact, which simply isn’t justified in comparison with other browsers.

  • _cnt0@unilem.orgtoAtheism@lemmy.world•*Permanently Deleted*English
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’m going two second the Discworld Novels. I started reading them when I was 9 or 10. Though, what really cured me from religiosity was reading the bible from cover to cover when I was 11 or 12. Story time:

    My mother read the bible to me (/us) every friday evening. First she would get slightly irritated when I pointed out contradictions or nonsensical stuff. Then she would progressively get more angry when I did it, until she said: “Maybe you should read it yourself!”. And so I did. I read it from cover to cover within something like two weeks (if my memory serves me right). It was a grueling exercise in boredom and idiocy. But, I pulled through with it and it made me a very firm atheist. I didn’t even catch half the contradictions and absurdities at that age, but it is beyond me how people can read that and remain believers. I suspect most Christians don’t actually read the bible, at least not in its entirety. What would have made it much more pleasurable (or rather much less unbearable) for me, would have been the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible: https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

    I’ll give you just one excerpt and you should get the size of it:

    (2.19 b) “God … brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.” After making the animals, God has Adam name them all. The naming of several million species must have kept Adam busy for a while.

  • _cnt0@unilem.orgtoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Please, do not use Brave.
    2417·
    1 year ago

    Being chromium based it

    • has better performance
    • has less bugs
    • has better standards compatibility

    Don’t get me wrong, I am using Firefox, but your entire post is pretty disingenuous. Criticizing Brave over privacy concerns and then suggesting Firefox instead requires disingenuity or a special kind of ignorance and/or stupidity. Firefox has had 10 times as many privacy “mishaps” as Brave with all the “experiments” of corporate affiliates they shipped to users unannounced. There’s a reason there are so many forks of Firefox.

    Pretty much everything you criticize about Brave is entirely optional.

    Then you title a link as Brave “getting ousted as spyware”, and the linked to page does not oust Brave as spyware at all. You would do good to adopt some of the more neutral/factual tone of that page.

    And in parts that page is pretty ridiculous, too: complaining about what is set as the default search engine (the same as Firefox, btw). Who the fuck cares what search engine is set by default? Just change it. Opt out of everything you do not like. If there’s stuff you cannot opt out of which is bad, we can talk about that. But arguing about optional features is ridiculous.

    Edit: little add-on: Brave factually has better out of the box (no plugins) privacy protection than Firefox: https://privacytests.org/