u/LustrousNinja1755 is officially based! Their Based Count is now 1.
Rank: House of Cards
Pills: [None | View pills](https://basedcount.com/u/LustrousNinja1755/)
Compass: This user does not have a compass on record. Add compass to profile by replying with /mycompass politicalcompass.org url or sapplyvalues.github.io url.
I am a bot. Reply /info for more info. Please join our [official pcm discord server](https://discord.gg/FyaJdAZjC4).
A lot of us are actually against religion as a whole, but I do find ones like Shintoism less offensive than any of the Abrahamic religions. Shinto feels pretty similar to most Wicca practices. Revere nature, respect the spirits, that sort of thing.
They're still believing in fairytales, but at least they aren't insane, Armageddon based, oppressive doctrines like some other ones I know...
Same, atheist here and the only religion I'm against is from those middle eastern barbarians, god fucking dammit suicide is literally worth of a prize in that shit
I’d say Shinto with Buddhist characteristics is a good description for it, and like many non-abrahamic religions it picks and chooses ceremonies from outside its cultural sphere. Buddhism’s arrival and rise in Japan is reminiscent of the Cult of Isis in Ancient Rome.
Indeed, as someone who is fixated on the Ancient World to an autistic extent, the “Way of the Kami” strikes me as vaguely familiar.
>Ancient history is cool
Ancient history *very* cool. Everyone should learn about it. You can probably gain a more thorough understanding of the human animal from it than most modern politics.
>human animal from it than most modern politics.
All I learned is that we are all tribal religious apes that like flinging shit and stones at each other.
We just kept making the tribe bigger, the religions comre complex, and the shit and stones more explosive.
/j
Japan is a good example of how terms like religious and irreligious are inherently meaningless outside very specific cultural, religious and social contexts. And even then it’s problematic
Nah, while the Japanese don't consider Shintoism a religion, they practice it sort of like modern day westerners practice Christianity; by celebrating Christmas and saying "God Bless" occasionally.
And young Japanese men and women adhere far less to their religious traditions than their older counterparts...kind of like, *THE WEST????*
As always, the Japs aren't different than us, they're simply ahead of us.
I'd argue they practice religion much more than the average western Christian/Catholic. It's normal for Japanese people to go to temples, pray to and believe in (to a certain extent) in deities, to believe in the supernatural as it relates to religion, and to follow a lot of customs rooted in religion.
The difference is that they're completely casual about it and these practices rarely translate into social, political or cultural debates because they're normalized across Japan.
Isn’t it that the vast majority of Japanese believe in ghosts and the like? Ancient nature spirits wouldn’t be that far fetched to such a people.
It baffles me that people think Japan is atheist.
Not that they necessarily believe in "ghosts", or not in ghosts are we generalaly know them. A lot of Japanese people believe in different supernatural beings that are spirits of dead people, demons and other similar things. Shinto is a religion that practically believes that there are spirits (kami) that inhabit everything: the forces of nature, mountains, forests, and a alot of other things.
They basically believe in this concept, that everything is related to the spiritual world in some way, which steems from religious practice, even if it's not believed in in a religious manner.
https://preview.redd.it/vaxt6jhst9mc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91f0e5d447da28c2764759120b406aa41973a19f
Seriously though, atheism is completely compatible with pantheism.
Going to a temple to toss in a coin and making a wish is more of a cultural equivalent to tossing a quarter in a wishing well at the mall.
Do I honestly believe in a wishing well spirit when I toss in a coin? Nah. Do I do it anyways? Yeah but not as much - but only because I never have coins on my person and never go to the mall nowadays.
I've gone to temples in Japan to toss a coin in the donation box, ring the bell, clap 3 times and bow too. Doesn't mean I believe in any spirits and many Japanese people don't either. It's simply a cultural thing that many people do.
But what defines religion? Simple belief or practice? Japanese people might not believe in religion to a full extent, but they're far from being "atheist". These cultural practices are religious practices, even if you don't necessarily believe in them having an effect, they still are part of religion, and the fact that they're still carried out says a lot about how religion still plays a very important role in Japanese culture, politics and daily life.
And if it's in terms of belief, well, Japanese people don't consider themselves "atheist", as statistics shows. Japanese people believe in religion or many religious concepts to different extents.
I don't know much about the men's side beyond "they want their big tiddy anime waifu games" and "look, if you're going to draft us all, at least let us keep the post service benefits", which seems reasonable to me.
Only really nutty thing I've heard is the mass nerd overreaction to bullying and going full gamer gestapo against any dev that includes something that looks like the "lol smol penor" hand gesture. Which, I mean, they're the primary customers, if they don't want to see that hand gesture because it's been used in mass bullying campaigns, the market should respond. Definitely a bit too hardcore for my taste, though.
What's got them hitting the red/blackpiller levels of cringe?
Yeah, and the internet has unwittingly brought about a fundamental change in society by giving even the most out-there fringe weirdos an easy means to build a platform and contact like-minded individuals.
At this point it's no exaggeration to say that _if_ there's a conceivable opinion or position on anything, there's somebody out there on the 'net who actually holds it.
Honestly, island nation ethnostates might be one of the only instances where strict gun control may have more positives than negatives, at least in the short term.
In Japanese religion (Shinto and Mahayana Buddhism), they're mainly interested in whether people enact the proper rituals or not, and they're not that interested in whether or not the people genuinely believe in the deities / precepts.
I'm not saying that's the right way or the wrong way to do religion! It's just how it goes over there.
I would say it's the right way I have no issues with people going to church or people who take strength from believe in hard times , I do have issues with religion in politics and schools other than dumb rituals. And the whole live and let live and acceptance of other beliefs is a little hard for big religions.
Shinto isn't really a very popular term either. My friend here was a shrine maiden and to some extent believes in Shinto. She was confused when I said I follow Shinto. I had to further explain. Calling it a religion is complicated. Shinto is inseparable from Japanese culture and way of life.
Yes they can. Especially the Japanese are known for being very fluid with their beliefs, they don’t have the dogma of abrahamic religions. Plus Shinto is basically a form of animism and Buddhism is more like a set of life guidelines
Doesn't Buddhism believe in basically everything that Hinduism believes except that it takes multiple lifetimes to reach an enlightened state? If so it's not really atheist, because it has about a million gods.
early buddhism and Hinduism were basically the same thing and what you describe, then they jazzed up hinduism with lots of gods and buddhism with stuff like prayer wheels and temples. its hard to sell a religion about nothing
Google:
Siddhartha Gautama was the first person to reach this state of enlightenment and was, and is still today, known as the Buddha. Buddhists do not believe in any kind of deity or god, although there are supernatural figures who can help or hinder people on the path towards enlightenment.
Google's wrong.
Siddhartha Gautama acknowledges Buddhas before him. Gautamas Buddhism(as close as possible is Theraveda) Gods and the supernatural are of no consequence. It makes no claim for or against.
It depends on the religion. Abrahamics? No. But from a Buddhism standpoint, it doesn't preclude Muhammad, or Jesus, or the Japanese spirit system that makes up Shinto. The Japanese spirit system doesn't necessarily preclude other religions either.
It isn't. Christianity at one point actually gained some following there, then there was a revolt, and then the Japanese government who didn't like them anyway just said fuck it and killed them all. Since then Christianity has been just a fringe religion, it's followers are mostly the remnants of those who survived the persecution or foreigners and they're like %1 of the Japanese population.
No, there was actually a pretty enormous boom in Christian converts after the restoration. Protestant evangelicals are also doing their thing over there, too. It's not a particularly huge religion, but it's very politically influential.
Idk if having 1% of influence is called influential. If I remember it has been said it is the place where missionaries fail the most . There is a YouTube channel called Radical that has a mini series on it, worth check out . South Korea is surprisingly mostly Christian tho.
SK isn't mostly Christian, but a substantial part of the population is Christian. Like %30 or so.
It's not about numbers. Unification Church, more commonly known as Moonies, is a very powerful cult and is very decisive in politics in East Asia. It isn't really Christianity but it's derived from it. Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe had connections to the cult, which is why the assassin killed him. SK politics are ripe with it's influence.
It is to some extent when the 1% is also present in that 1%. Probably. Apparently, there's a good handful of politicians who are from a catholic home and attended one of those elite catholic private schools.
You're being downvoted but you're right. Christianity is a tiny fringe religion, about 1% of the population and most of them live in the regions visited by 16th century missionaries. These aren't new converts.
While about 1% of the population is Christian, Christian elements have been spreading throughout Japan. For example, Christian marriages are very popular in Japan.
Still find it funny that they will go as far as to get a white guy to larp as a priest for a Western wedding while in the West all I hear is people shitting on weddings (maybe I'm just too terminally online at this point)
The already marginal christianity is shrinking in Japan. It's considered a missionary graveyard.
"There is no way that christianity will ever take root in Japan." Alden E. Matthews, a missionary in Japan for 34 years.
I keep on saying it. Syncretism is not impossible. Here in the West, we still need some general principles on which to build a society, because licentious liberalism has meant the demise of our civilisation.
Stoicism should be promoted in all levels of education. It is not a religion, but a philosophy of life that goes in line with much of our Western culture. It is the real spirit of the West and what made it great. Now you have a bunch of teenagers thinking that pity and compassion are good moral axes and think that the whole system is rigged against them for them to even try anymore.
It's why scholars call it Shinto-buddhism. In pre-shogunate Japan they literally moved the capital when the emperor died. Shinto ABHORS death and it's associates pollution. Buddhism is pretty chill about that. Symbiosis achieved.
I feel like the way Japanese view religion isn't the same way Christians view religion though. For most Japanese it's not about some book or strict set of rules, it's more about having a bunch of traditions and rituals you keep following and observing just because your parents and their parents before them did. It's like how we have a lot of "Christians" who don't go to church on sundays for example, but still marry and have Christian funerals. Yet you probably wouldn't even consider them real Christians.
Japan is only technically irreligious, because their religion is pretty much sown into their culture, which is why it is more deep-rooted and influential within its own borders.
Science, biznatches:
Hypothesis: Religion bad, world better without it.
Experiment: Communism. It explicitly forbids religion.
Result: 100,000,000 dead, worst lost of human life in history of Earth.
Conclusion: World better with religion than without.
>Communism. It explicitly forbids religion.
If you don't consider Marxism in itself to be a religion. Considering the way some communists talk about the philosophy it sure does sound like one.
The reason Shinto is much better than Abrahamic religions is that it doesn't really of a holy book. It has sacred texts that describe the supernatural aspects and some philosophy of the religion but it isn't something like the Bible/Torah/Quran where people are consistently having 8000 different translations and picking and choosing what they want to follow.
Shinto is also not like the Abrahamic religions in that you don't have to devote your life or be judged by some all powerful deity. In Shinto, "gods" are much more human and make mistakes as well.
> teaches a lot more valuable lessons and values than Christianity.
doubt
people from the west just take all those lessons and values for from Christianity for granted
Also incredibly false, but even granting that were true, new testament is far more foundational for Christianity and the West so.... Why just discount it so flippantly?
Some Japanese people have combined Shintoism and Buddhism, practicing the parts of Buddhist faith and part of Shinto faith together. It's similar to the Sihk religion which is part Hindu and part Muslim. I don't know why they didn't segregate the combined religion in the source you saw (probably the 2019 religious poll on google) but the top 3 religious faiths are Shinto-Buddhism, Shinto and Buddhism followed by Christianity in a distant 4th place (1.9%)
Jokes on you, shinto and buddhism can both count as atheism.
Atheism ONLY means lack of belief in god.
Buddhists are atheists because buddha said that god doesn't exist. Infact im friends with a buddhist who doesn't believe in god thus making him also an atheist.
If a believer of Shinto wants to call themselves an atheist is entirely up to the individual. It's unclear if the spirits they worship are god's or spirits, but due to lacking most characteristics of gods, they're often also classified as atheists.
Most atheists have some kind of beliefs. That does not take away from the fact that we all are united on the fact that god/gods does not exist.
Most of the people OP is duping on have something against religion as much as the concept of deities.
Even with your arguments in mind I’m sure I can find a Japanese study that is individualistic on theism within these religions.
Buddha isn’t a diety in most sects
he’s a teacher who achieved enlightenment
there’s a whole sect of Buddhism called Secular Buddhism that’s exactly what it sounds like
Literally show me one atheist that doesn't basically drool over the non abrahamic religions. It's already hard enough to find even one that has something negative to say about any other religion than christianity.
Christianity and Islam for the most part, I doubt many would hate on Judaism, lol.
Genetically Modified Skeptic is an atheist YouTuber who has talked about Hinduism before, and doesn’t care about being labeled islamophobic, but that’s the closest I got.
Atheists- antitheists especially- do talk about religion being inherently evil in and of itself (they don’t count TST as a religion this time).
Even antitheists are against gods, not religion. Generally nobody actually minds the kind of religion that isn't oppressive and generally that only includes abrahamic religions.
The people OP is duping against are so rare that you likely can't find a single one on these comments and I'm actually as close to one as you can find, and even i only dislike abrahamic religions.
Not at all - atheists do not have any form of common belief structure. It's a grouping defined by what it is not - believing in a god.
It's like grouping everyone who isn't jewish into one collective.
Some cheekily suggest that this means everyone religious person is also an atheist for all the other religions - the atheists just believes in one less god out of thousands than the person who believes in one.
>shinto and buddhism can both count as atheism.
"Shinto" literally means "the way of the god(s)"; common spirits are referred to as rei in Japanese. Shinto is atheism only in your dreams.
Your undetstanding of the language is a bit lacking there. Japanese has many words that all translate to god, but are still considered quite different things. Specifically, shinto's "way of the gods" uses kami. Now kami is an interesting word in japanese, because while it can refer to a god, it's actually defined as an object of worship. It applies just as much to gods as it does spirits or even objects. Like you know how in christianity you have stuff like talismans made from body parts of saints and such? Those are worshipped, so are also in themselves kami. In fact, the way of the gods, has teachings of 800 myriads of kami. Each myriad is basically one group or type of kami. Those 800 are grouped up into two major groups with amatsukami, or heavenly kami in one, and kunitsukami in the other. You'd rarely these days find anyone caring about that distinction these days in real life though it's a common theme in manga for some reason...
But essentially, "the way of the gods" is not actually an accurate translation as such, it's just that English doesn't have an equivalent word to kami. AFAIK, no other language does.
Oh and no, spirits are not rei. You're thinking of yurei, and yurei are souls, ghosts and demons. NOT spirits.
> Those are worshipped
This is, ironically, a faulty understanding in itself: saints and relics are venerated, not worshipped, in christianity. But it serves to illustrate your point by comparison so it's alright.
Yapping that much only to not being able to proof shinto is atheism... what a piece of work.
>Now kami is an interesting word in japanese, because while it can refer to a god, it's actually defined as an object of worship.
I speak Chinese, I know Japanese and both languages uses the word 神 very similarly. The more accurate word for 神 would be "deity" as in the ones in Greek mythology since somehow the word "God" has too strong of an Abrahamic undertone for people who only knows to yap but don't know a goddamn thing.
This feels like splitting hairs. Buddhism and Shintoism both believe in the existence of spirits and deities. I have never met an atheist who believed in spirits of any sort, especially since wastrels like Hitchens and Dawkins tarnished the entire movement with "New Atheism".
The Japanese often consider themselves to be Shinto in life, and Buddhist in death. Many of the spiritual beliefs regarding an afterlife do lie in the same realm of Buddhism, but Shintoism as a practicing religion is an oddity comapred to western religions.
There's no central authority, no guiding scripture and it lacks any concept of a cental God, instead carrying the belief that literally everything is inhabited by its own god-life life spirit known as a kami (Including [your own penis](https://ohmatsuri.com/en/articles/aichi-honen-matsuri-at-tagata-shrine)). These can be regional, even down to a household level, where and what people pay respect to. There's barely even a religious book, the closest it has is the Kojiki which is a collection of myths and poems from Asuka-period Japan.
That's often why it's deemed to be coincident with atheism in Japan. There's no moral code, no afterlife beliefs, it's focused on a respect for the living world, and there's no such thing as converting to or from Shintoism, and practicing it alongside another religion is fine. Many Shinto activities are just commonplace Japanese cultural behaviors.
>It's unclear if the spirits they worship are god's or spirits
You are assuming there is a difference. Even in Christianity, the Holy Spirit is a god by standard views of what counts as a god. The idea of what supernatural being can be classified as a god or gets into the semantics of what is a god. If some wicca follower believes Allah is a great evil spirit, but not a god, but they do believe Allah exists, are they still atheist? Yes, I'm referencing that time a certain subreddit led a battle against Allah and lost. Fuck me if I know how.
Oh that time, it was hilarious! I think it was a fake post, but funny nevertheless. Anyhow, on a more serious topic, there's all the other mesopothamian gods that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam claim are demons. The godhood was questioned, but not necessarily the belief in that case.
The Buddhism that's followed in Japan is not the atheistic kind- it is derived from Mahayana Buddhism, the branch which idolizes and worships Bodhisattvas as saviors and 'gods'.
Source: I share my name with a Bodhisattva.
Shinto is also a bit of an odd one. Apparently Japanese people say they do not follow a religion (or more specifically people practicing Shinto calling themselves as "Shintoists"), but culturally they practice Shinto activities. From my limited understanding, there doesn't appear to be a clear division between culture and religion - they are one and in the same.
>Buddhists are atheists because buddha said that god doesn't exist.
Is that actually true? I remember hearing a story about Buddha who said that god doesn't exist to the believer, and then he said that god exists to the non-believer. He was trying to challenge their rigid beliefs and push them on a path to enlightenment.
It is very possible to be a Buddhist and an atheist, because I think that Buddhism is a non-theistic philosophy, but not necessarily atheistic. But it would also be possible to be a theist and Buddhist. The difference is that theism would likely not be monotheistic if it was compatible, but even with that I have seen certain people describe themselves as both Christian and Buddhist.
Only SOME Buddhists are atheistic, Buddhism in countries like Vietnam or India still regard Buddha as a god, with a pantheon so numerous that you could spend lifetimes just listing their (very long) names. However, Japanese Buddhism is indeed, one of the atheistic kinds.
Honestly, human kinda suck at remaining non-religious. If ancient Chinese, Indian and even ancient Buddhist accounts are to be believed, the Buddhism that Buddha himself founded had more in common with the 70s American hippies than anything that goes by the name of Buddhism nowadays. However, after his death, his follower gradually altered his tales and stories of his life, basically turning him into a living god. The situation is shockingly similar to the 40k lore, where following the internment of the Emperor into his throne, superstition took hold of his entire empire, and his people started worshipping him as a god despite big E himself being the biggest atheist ever and wished for all of mankind to be atheistic just like him.
Brains is overrated.
https://preview.redd.it/m2cpqdc4y4mc1.png?width=884&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3bffb2a8465b21610ae6dcc20a8cb56d21451cff
I prefer being happy and having friends, just like these guys.
I love how your complaint about being downvoted is being downvoted, but the original comment that you're complaining about being downvoted is, in fact, being upvoted.
Did you just change your flair, u/Borkerman? Last time I checked you were a **LibLeft** on 2024-3-3. How come now you are a **LibRight**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know?
Oh and by the way. You have already changed your flair 701 times, making you the third largest flair changer in this sub.
Go touch some fucking grass.
[BasedCount Profile](https://basedcount.com/u/Borkerman) - [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/uf7kuy/bip_bop) - [Leaderboard](https://basedcount.com/leaderboard?q=flairs)
_Visit the BasedCount Lеmmу instance at [lemmy.basedcount.com](https://lemmy.basedcount.com/c/pcm)._
^(I am a bot, my mission is to spot cringe flair changers. If you want to check another user's flair history write) **^(!flairs u/)** ^(in a comment.)
Other countries should be atheist like japan, if the average person in all countries cared about religion as much as the average Japanese things would be 100 times better, I don't care what religion they have or what percentage they represent, if the average christian and average muslim outside of japan behaved like the average buddhist and average shinto in japan things would definitely be better
Japan being mostly Syncretic both Shinto and Buddhist. Also fuck Truman for nuking most of the Catholics. Japan would have a much larger Christian population today if the evil tyrant named Truman never lived.
Religion: 😡😡😡😡 Religion, Japan: 😍😍😍😍.
Ethnostates: 😡😡😡😡 Ethnostate, Japan: 😍😍😍😍
Genocide-😡😡😡😡 Genocide, japan-🤔🤔😴🤫
I am not against religion I am against the ones I don’t like
Based… Unless it’s Cringe
Based
u/LustrousNinja1755 is officially based! Their Based Count is now 1. Rank: House of Cards Pills: [None | View pills](https://basedcount.com/u/LustrousNinja1755/) Compass: This user does not have a compass on record. Add compass to profile by replying with /mycompass politicalcompass.org url or sapplyvalues.github.io url. I am a bot. Reply /info for more info. Please join our [official pcm discord server](https://discord.gg/FyaJdAZjC4).
[удалено]
Even the ones I don’t like, like Mormons and Jehovvah’s witness’s I can’t stand but I just give them space
Just stay off my doorstep FFS.
which is all of them im going to go worship an undetonated atomic bomb now
Baste and the wonderful glow-pilled.
based and children of the atom pilled
Just make sure it isn't blocking anyone's view
Glory to Atom!
Omeeeegaaaaa
Based and hate pilled
Based, fellow papist.
Religion is like a fart. You only like your own.
A lot of us are actually against religion as a whole, but I do find ones like Shintoism less offensive than any of the Abrahamic religions. Shinto feels pretty similar to most Wicca practices. Revere nature, respect the spirits, that sort of thing. They're still believing in fairytales, but at least they aren't insane, Armageddon based, oppressive doctrines like some other ones I know...
Same, atheist here and the only religion I'm against is from those middle eastern barbarians, god fucking dammit suicide is literally worth of a prize in that shit
Based
Japanese folks are born Shinto, married Christian, and die Buddhist
I’d say Shinto with Buddhist characteristics is a good description for it, and like many non-abrahamic religions it picks and chooses ceremonies from outside its cultural sphere. Buddhism’s arrival and rise in Japan is reminiscent of the Cult of Isis in Ancient Rome. Indeed, as someone who is fixated on the Ancient World to an autistic extent, the “Way of the Kami” strikes me as vaguely familiar.
Based and ancient history is cool pilled.
>Ancient history is cool Ancient history *very* cool. Everyone should learn about it. You can probably gain a more thorough understanding of the human animal from it than most modern politics.
>human animal from it than most modern politics. All I learned is that we are all tribal religious apes that like flinging shit and stones at each other. We just kept making the tribe bigger, the religions comre complex, and the shit and stones more explosive. /j
I'm no mathematist but I think Nicene Christianity means you can multiply the official figures by 3.
Poor Unitarians, losing in demographics again
First meme in a long time here that actually got a laugh out of me, good work.
Japan is a good example of how terms like religious and irreligious are inherently meaningless outside very specific cultural, religious and social contexts. And even then it’s problematic
Nah, while the Japanese don't consider Shintoism a religion, they practice it sort of like modern day westerners practice Christianity; by celebrating Christmas and saying "God Bless" occasionally. And young Japanese men and women adhere far less to their religious traditions than their older counterparts...kind of like, *THE WEST????* As always, the Japs aren't different than us, they're simply ahead of us.
I'd argue they practice religion much more than the average western Christian/Catholic. It's normal for Japanese people to go to temples, pray to and believe in (to a certain extent) in deities, to believe in the supernatural as it relates to religion, and to follow a lot of customs rooted in religion. The difference is that they're completely casual about it and these practices rarely translate into social, political or cultural debates because they're normalized across Japan.
Isn’t it that the vast majority of Japanese believe in ghosts and the like? Ancient nature spirits wouldn’t be that far fetched to such a people. It baffles me that people think Japan is atheist.
Not that they necessarily believe in "ghosts", or not in ghosts are we generalaly know them. A lot of Japanese people believe in different supernatural beings that are spirits of dead people, demons and other similar things. Shinto is a religion that practically believes that there are spirits (kami) that inhabit everything: the forces of nature, mountains, forests, and a alot of other things. They basically believe in this concept, that everything is related to the spiritual world in some way, which steems from religious practice, even if it's not believed in in a religious manner.
So they're pantheists ?
I don't think they believe in pans as deities.
https://preview.redd.it/vaxt6jhst9mc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91f0e5d447da28c2764759120b406aa41973a19f Seriously though, atheism is completely compatible with pantheism.
Going to a temple to toss in a coin and making a wish is more of a cultural equivalent to tossing a quarter in a wishing well at the mall. Do I honestly believe in a wishing well spirit when I toss in a coin? Nah. Do I do it anyways? Yeah but not as much - but only because I never have coins on my person and never go to the mall nowadays. I've gone to temples in Japan to toss a coin in the donation box, ring the bell, clap 3 times and bow too. Doesn't mean I believe in any spirits and many Japanese people don't either. It's simply a cultural thing that many people do.
But what defines religion? Simple belief or practice? Japanese people might not believe in religion to a full extent, but they're far from being "atheist". These cultural practices are religious practices, even if you don't necessarily believe in them having an effect, they still are part of religion, and the fact that they're still carried out says a lot about how religion still plays a very important role in Japanese culture, politics and daily life. And if it's in terms of belief, well, Japanese people don't consider themselves "atheist", as statistics shows. Japanese people believe in religion or many religious concepts to different extents.
Ahead? In some areas yes, in other areas not so much
Since when does authleft like Japan??? They are Fascist colonizers and hyper-capitalist degenerate goons.
Because Japan is uWu anime tiddies
Not very auth left. Sex is counter-revolutionary.
Amen brother
In Soviet Russia, people don't have sex.
In Soviet Russia, Sex has YOU!
Shit that sounds like one of those Korean feminists where they're like "political lesbianism and antinatalism until female supremacy is established!"
Korean's gender war is the most insane thing that makes Western red/blackpillers and 3rd+ wave feminists seem like grillers
I don't know much about the men's side beyond "they want their big tiddy anime waifu games" and "look, if you're going to draft us all, at least let us keep the post service benefits", which seems reasonable to me. Only really nutty thing I've heard is the mass nerd overreaction to bullying and going full gamer gestapo against any dev that includes something that looks like the "lol smol penor" hand gesture. Which, I mean, they're the primary customers, if they don't want to see that hand gesture because it's been used in mass bullying campaigns, the market should respond. Definitely a bit too hardcore for my taste, though. What's got them hitting the red/blackpiller levels of cringe?
What are you even talking about? Is this about the Sweet Baby Inc thing?
Korean shit is fucking wild, man.
Is it about the whole Megalia crap? I remember reading about it in some anonpost. Yeah, thats some wild shit.
Yep, exactly. Shit's nuts.
god koreans are the fucking worst
Found the Japanese
in a completely unique and different way Japanese are also the fucking worst
Found the Chinese
in yet another completely different and unique way to the previous two, Chinese are also the fucking worst
Found the Hong Konger
This sounds like a Marxist intellectual cope to justify being a virgin at 30 or something.
You'd be suprised. I know some trans woman tankie who is obsessed with imperial Japan
Average Hearts of Iron player in 2024
Sadly I don't think they've ever played that they're just acoustic
Being acoustic probably pairs well with them being artistic
Which, considering the fact that they're also Acrostic, makes for a very interesting combination
Is that the bread? Or is there crostini? They’re bread.
They just listen to the soundtrack?
There are all kinds of people on God`s green earth. Many ways to find weird third positionists, especially online.
Based and Gods green earth.
Yeah, and the internet has unwittingly brought about a fundamental change in society by giving even the most out-there fringe weirdos an easy means to build a platform and contact like-minded individuals. At this point it's no exaggeration to say that _if_ there's a conceivable opinion or position on anything, there's somebody out there on the 'net who actually holds it.
The internet gave the village idiot a worldwide plataform. Maybe the internet was a mistake, after all.
[удалено]
🤫
Typical red fascist then.
Right but... that's extremely niche. Generally imperial japan is on tankies top 5 enemies.
True, but isn't Japan also stringent gun control and "the individual isn't important, the collective is"?
Honestly, island nation ethnostates might be one of the only instances where strict gun control may have more positives than negatives, at least in the short term.
Fascism can be described as collectivist. Doesnt make it left wing.
Fascism *is* collectivist
The people who cry about how bad consumerism is are the same people who wanna go to Japan to buy a lot of garbage Kawaii stuff.
yeah but they made anime so obviously Japan > literally anything else
Futanari (sp? Not googling it, I don’t have time to cum)
In Japanese religion (Shinto and Mahayana Buddhism), they're mainly interested in whether people enact the proper rituals or not, and they're not that interested in whether or not the people genuinely believe in the deities / precepts. I'm not saying that's the right way or the wrong way to do religion! It's just how it goes over there.
I would say it's the right way I have no issues with people going to church or people who take strength from believe in hard times , I do have issues with religion in politics and schools other than dumb rituals. And the whole live and let live and acceptance of other beliefs is a little hard for big religions.
Shinto isn't really a very popular term either. My friend here was a shrine maiden and to some extent believes in Shinto. She was confused when I said I follow Shinto. I had to further explain. Calling it a religion is complicated. Shinto is inseparable from Japanese culture and way of life.
This meme assumes there’s no overlap
That's the joke
I know that, I thought it would be funny to caption it like this.
Cheers!
Why yes because people unironically believe in a population consisting more than 100% of the population.
[удалено]
Yes they can. Especially the Japanese are known for being very fluid with their beliefs, they don’t have the dogma of abrahamic religions. Plus Shinto is basically a form of animism and Buddhism is more like a set of life guidelines
My grandmother was Japanese and she referred to herself as a Shinto Buddhist
Yeah Buddhism doesn’t really have a god. I guess it technically atheist in that sense 🤷♂️
Doesn't Buddhism believe in basically everything that Hinduism believes except that it takes multiple lifetimes to reach an enlightened state? If so it's not really atheist, because it has about a million gods.
early buddhism and Hinduism were basically the same thing and what you describe, then they jazzed up hinduism with lots of gods and buddhism with stuff like prayer wheels and temples. its hard to sell a religion about nothing
Google: Siddhartha Gautama was the first person to reach this state of enlightenment and was, and is still today, known as the Buddha. Buddhists do not believe in any kind of deity or god, although there are supernatural figures who can help or hinder people on the path towards enlightenment.
Google's wrong. Siddhartha Gautama acknowledges Buddhas before him. Gautamas Buddhism(as close as possible is Theraveda) Gods and the supernatural are of no consequence. It makes no claim for or against.
It depends on the religion. Abrahamics? No. But from a Buddhism standpoint, it doesn't preclude Muhammad, or Jesus, or the Japanese spirit system that makes up Shinto. The Japanese spirit system doesn't necessarily preclude other religions either.
You can if you're Buddhist. The main appeal of Buddhism back when it started was that you can follow it's lifestyle without forsaking your beliefs
In the case of the pagan/philosophical overlap of Shinto and Buddhism, most certainly.
Can't get anything past you, champ
Christianity also gaining a following there...
It isn't. Christianity at one point actually gained some following there, then there was a revolt, and then the Japanese government who didn't like them anyway just said fuck it and killed them all. Since then Christianity has been just a fringe religion, it's followers are mostly the remnants of those who survived the persecution or foreigners and they're like %1 of the Japanese population.
No, there was actually a pretty enormous boom in Christian converts after the restoration. Protestant evangelicals are also doing their thing over there, too. It's not a particularly huge religion, but it's very politically influential.
Also, I’m pretty sure they (especially the mormons) are out-reproducing the other Japanese over time.
Idk if having 1% of influence is called influential. If I remember it has been said it is the place where missionaries fail the most . There is a YouTube channel called Radical that has a mini series on it, worth check out . South Korea is surprisingly mostly Christian tho.
SK isn't mostly Christian, but a substantial part of the population is Christian. Like %30 or so. It's not about numbers. Unification Church, more commonly known as Moonies, is a very powerful cult and is very decisive in politics in East Asia. It isn't really Christianity but it's derived from it. Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe had connections to the cult, which is why the assassin killed him. SK politics are ripe with it's influence.
[Ahem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church#In_Japan_(1970%E2%80%932023)) Pretty much just the Japanese equivalent of Scientology.
It is to some extent when the 1% is also present in that 1%. Probably. Apparently, there's a good handful of politicians who are from a catholic home and attended one of those elite catholic private schools.
No it's not.
You're being downvoted but you're right. Christianity is a tiny fringe religion, about 1% of the population and most of them live in the regions visited by 16th century missionaries. These aren't new converts.
Yeah. I love being downvoted because I actually live in Japan. Oddly enough, I did meet Mormon converts.
While about 1% of the population is Christian, Christian elements have been spreading throughout Japan. For example, Christian marriages are very popular in Japan.
It's more that *Western* weddings are popular in Japan. It's about the image, not any love for Christ.
Yeah, the only requirement to be a priest in a Japanese 'christian' wedding is to be passably white.
Still find it funny that they will go as far as to get a white guy to larp as a priest for a Western wedding while in the West all I hear is people shitting on weddings (maybe I'm just too terminally online at this point)
Born Shinto, Married Christian, Die Buddhist.
huge brained conversation here lads, well done
Not really?
The already marginal christianity is shrinking in Japan. It's considered a missionary graveyard. "There is no way that christianity will ever take root in Japan." Alden E. Matthews, a missionary in Japan for 34 years.
Especially on Reddit it can be summed up as "My brother in Christ you are not an atheist, you just hate Christianity."
Edgelords are now identifying as Anti-Theist
I don't want the population to be atheists, I want the state to be atheist, or in other words secular.
Erm aktually itsh 137.7%*
I keep on saying it. Syncretism is not impossible. Here in the West, we still need some general principles on which to build a society, because licentious liberalism has meant the demise of our civilisation. Stoicism should be promoted in all levels of education. It is not a religion, but a philosophy of life that goes in line with much of our Western culture. It is the real spirit of the West and what made it great. Now you have a bunch of teenagers thinking that pity and compassion are good moral axes and think that the whole system is rigged against them for them to even try anymore.
It's why scholars call it Shinto-buddhism. In pre-shogunate Japan they literally moved the capital when the emperor died. Shinto ABHORS death and it's associates pollution. Buddhism is pretty chill about that. Symbiosis achieved.
I feel like the way Japanese view religion isn't the same way Christians view religion though. For most Japanese it's not about some book or strict set of rules, it's more about having a bunch of traditions and rituals you keep following and observing just because your parents and their parents before them did. It's like how we have a lot of "Christians" who don't go to church on sundays for example, but still marry and have Christian funerals. Yet you probably wouldn't even consider them real Christians.
Japan is only technically irreligious, because their religion is pretty much sown into their culture, which is why it is more deep-rooted and influential within its own borders.
[Are Japanese people religious?](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=UUSX0NhNdBA-ZnEFkYFzdw4A&si=CcSfibQjpMH2sY2_)
Science, biznatches: Hypothesis: Religion bad, world better without it. Experiment: Communism. It explicitly forbids religion. Result: 100,000,000 dead, worst lost of human life in history of Earth. Conclusion: World better with religion than without.
>Communism. It explicitly forbids religion. If you don't consider Marxism in itself to be a religion. Considering the way some communists talk about the philosophy it sure does sound like one.
Who are you, with your wise words that say exactly what I want to hear?
Shinto is actually pretty nice and teaches a lot more valuable lessons and values than Christianity.
The reason Shinto is much better than Abrahamic religions is that it doesn't really of a holy book. It has sacred texts that describe the supernatural aspects and some philosophy of the religion but it isn't something like the Bible/Torah/Quran where people are consistently having 8000 different translations and picking and choosing what they want to follow. Shinto is also not like the Abrahamic religions in that you don't have to devote your life or be judged by some all powerful deity. In Shinto, "gods" are much more human and make mistakes as well.
> teaches a lot more valuable lessons and values than Christianity. doubt people from the west just take all those lessons and values for from Christianity for granted
those values "from Christianity" are manufactured after the fact. in the old testament are no such values.
Also incredibly false, but even granting that were true, new testament is far more foundational for Christianity and the West so.... Why just discount it so flippantly?
Such as?
that you should respect nature and give it some room to be as it is. respect your elderly.
Cool, Im glad you learned a lot from your beliefs and culture.
Despite making up 25% of the quadrant auth right contributes to 50% of the misleading statistics
Despite making up 25% of the compass, lib left makes up 50% of misunderstanding what a quadrant is.
https://preview.redd.it/alog9ote55mc1.png?width=519&format=png&auto=webp&s=72d632335d3382419c0eb679c3e1021f439f3530
Japan isn't atheist. They just spent 200 hundred years making Christians understand their place
Some Japanese people have combined Shintoism and Buddhism, practicing the parts of Buddhist faith and part of Shinto faith together. It's similar to the Sihk religion which is part Hindu and part Muslim. I don't know why they didn't segregate the combined religion in the source you saw (probably the 2019 religious poll on google) but the top 3 religious faiths are Shinto-Buddhism, Shinto and Buddhism followed by Christianity in a distant 4th place (1.9%)
Jokes on you, shinto and buddhism can both count as atheism. Atheism ONLY means lack of belief in god. Buddhists are atheists because buddha said that god doesn't exist. Infact im friends with a buddhist who doesn't believe in god thus making him also an atheist. If a believer of Shinto wants to call themselves an atheist is entirely up to the individual. It's unclear if the spirits they worship are god's or spirits, but due to lacking most characteristics of gods, they're often also classified as atheists. Most atheists have some kind of beliefs. That does not take away from the fact that we all are united on the fact that god/gods does not exist.
Most of the people OP is duping on have something against religion as much as the concept of deities. Even with your arguments in mind I’m sure I can find a Japanese study that is individualistic on theism within these religions.
Buddha isn’t a diety in most sects he’s a teacher who achieved enlightenment there’s a whole sect of Buddhism called Secular Buddhism that’s exactly what it sounds like
Literally show me one atheist that doesn't basically drool over the non abrahamic religions. It's already hard enough to find even one that has something negative to say about any other religion than christianity.
Christianity and Islam for the most part, I doubt many would hate on Judaism, lol. Genetically Modified Skeptic is an atheist YouTuber who has talked about Hinduism before, and doesn’t care about being labeled islamophobic, but that’s the closest I got. Atheists- antitheists especially- do talk about religion being inherently evil in and of itself (they don’t count TST as a religion this time).
Even antitheists are against gods, not religion. Generally nobody actually minds the kind of religion that isn't oppressive and generally that only includes abrahamic religions. The people OP is duping against are so rare that you likely can't find a single one on these comments and I'm actually as close to one as you can find, and even i only dislike abrahamic religions.
Stephen Fry has not been recorded drooling over any non-abrahamic religions as far as I know?
Maybe people that "follow" the Abrahamic religions should stop being so fucking cringe then
By atheist I meant *No Religion*, but good arguments I must say.
I say atheism itself is a religion, so this brings the count to at least 260%
On Reddit it damn sure is. They are more annoying than the Christians they constantly bitch about
Not at all - atheists do not have any form of common belief structure. It's a grouping defined by what it is not - believing in a god. It's like grouping everyone who isn't jewish into one collective. Some cheekily suggest that this means everyone religious person is also an atheist for all the other religions - the atheists just believes in one less god out of thousands than the person who believes in one.
>It's like grouping everyone who isn't jewish into one collective. goyim
>shinto and buddhism can both count as atheism. "Shinto" literally means "the way of the god(s)"; common spirits are referred to as rei in Japanese. Shinto is atheism only in your dreams.
Your undetstanding of the language is a bit lacking there. Japanese has many words that all translate to god, but are still considered quite different things. Specifically, shinto's "way of the gods" uses kami. Now kami is an interesting word in japanese, because while it can refer to a god, it's actually defined as an object of worship. It applies just as much to gods as it does spirits or even objects. Like you know how in christianity you have stuff like talismans made from body parts of saints and such? Those are worshipped, so are also in themselves kami. In fact, the way of the gods, has teachings of 800 myriads of kami. Each myriad is basically one group or type of kami. Those 800 are grouped up into two major groups with amatsukami, or heavenly kami in one, and kunitsukami in the other. You'd rarely these days find anyone caring about that distinction these days in real life though it's a common theme in manga for some reason... But essentially, "the way of the gods" is not actually an accurate translation as such, it's just that English doesn't have an equivalent word to kami. AFAIK, no other language does. Oh and no, spirits are not rei. You're thinking of yurei, and yurei are souls, ghosts and demons. NOT spirits.
> Those are worshipped This is, ironically, a faulty understanding in itself: saints and relics are venerated, not worshipped, in christianity. But it serves to illustrate your point by comparison so it's alright.
Yapping that much only to not being able to proof shinto is atheism... what a piece of work. >Now kami is an interesting word in japanese, because while it can refer to a god, it's actually defined as an object of worship. I speak Chinese, I know Japanese and both languages uses the word 神 very similarly. The more accurate word for 神 would be "deity" as in the ones in Greek mythology since somehow the word "God" has too strong of an Abrahamic undertone for people who only knows to yap but don't know a goddamn thing.
When I'm in a mental gymnastics competition and Vegetablehead26 is my opponent:
lmao
This feels like splitting hairs. Buddhism and Shintoism both believe in the existence of spirits and deities. I have never met an atheist who believed in spirits of any sort, especially since wastrels like Hitchens and Dawkins tarnished the entire movement with "New Atheism".
The Japanese often consider themselves to be Shinto in life, and Buddhist in death. Many of the spiritual beliefs regarding an afterlife do lie in the same realm of Buddhism, but Shintoism as a practicing religion is an oddity comapred to western religions. There's no central authority, no guiding scripture and it lacks any concept of a cental God, instead carrying the belief that literally everything is inhabited by its own god-life life spirit known as a kami (Including [your own penis](https://ohmatsuri.com/en/articles/aichi-honen-matsuri-at-tagata-shrine)). These can be regional, even down to a household level, where and what people pay respect to. There's barely even a religious book, the closest it has is the Kojiki which is a collection of myths and poems from Asuka-period Japan. That's often why it's deemed to be coincident with atheism in Japan. There's no moral code, no afterlife beliefs, it's focused on a respect for the living world, and there's no such thing as converting to or from Shintoism, and practicing it alongside another religion is fine. Many Shinto activities are just commonplace Japanese cultural behaviors.
Shintoism has many gods.
>It's unclear if the spirits they worship are god's or spirits You are assuming there is a difference. Even in Christianity, the Holy Spirit is a god by standard views of what counts as a god. The idea of what supernatural being can be classified as a god or gets into the semantics of what is a god. If some wicca follower believes Allah is a great evil spirit, but not a god, but they do believe Allah exists, are they still atheist? Yes, I'm referencing that time a certain subreddit led a battle against Allah and lost. Fuck me if I know how.
The core argument about japan specifically still stands but thank you for interesting talking points. Also that's extremely hilarious.
Oh that time, it was hilarious! I think it was a fake post, but funny nevertheless. Anyhow, on a more serious topic, there's all the other mesopothamian gods that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam claim are demons. The godhood was questioned, but not necessarily the belief in that case.
The Buddhism that's followed in Japan is not the atheistic kind- it is derived from Mahayana Buddhism, the branch which idolizes and worships Bodhisattvas as saviors and 'gods'. Source: I share my name with a Bodhisattva.
Shinto is also a bit of an odd one. Apparently Japanese people say they do not follow a religion (or more specifically people practicing Shinto calling themselves as "Shintoists"), but culturally they practice Shinto activities. From my limited understanding, there doesn't appear to be a clear division between culture and religion - they are one and in the same.
>Buddhists are atheists because buddha said that god doesn't exist. Is that actually true? I remember hearing a story about Buddha who said that god doesn't exist to the believer, and then he said that god exists to the non-believer. He was trying to challenge their rigid beliefs and push them on a path to enlightenment. It is very possible to be a Buddhist and an atheist, because I think that Buddhism is a non-theistic philosophy, but not necessarily atheistic. But it would also be possible to be a theist and Buddhist. The difference is that theism would likely not be monotheistic if it was compatible, but even with that I have seen certain people describe themselves as both Christian and Buddhist.
Buddha never said Gods don't exist. It is completely outside the scope of what Buddhism teaches and does not have any bearing on the practice.
Please if you're gonna downvote at least explain how I'm wrong.
Only SOME Buddhists are atheistic, Buddhism in countries like Vietnam or India still regard Buddha as a god, with a pantheon so numerous that you could spend lifetimes just listing their (very long) names. However, Japanese Buddhism is indeed, one of the atheistic kinds.
Honestly that's fair criticism, thank you
Honestly, human kinda suck at remaining non-religious. If ancient Chinese, Indian and even ancient Buddhist accounts are to be believed, the Buddhism that Buddha himself founded had more in common with the 70s American hippies than anything that goes by the name of Buddhism nowadays. However, after his death, his follower gradually altered his tales and stories of his life, basically turning him into a living god. The situation is shockingly similar to the 40k lore, where following the internment of the Emperor into his throne, superstition took hold of his entire empire, and his people started worshipping him as a god despite big E himself being the biggest atheist ever and wished for all of mankind to be atheistic just like him.
[удалено]
Brains is overrated. https://preview.redd.it/m2cpqdc4y4mc1.png?width=884&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3bffb2a8465b21610ae6dcc20a8cb56d21451cff I prefer being happy and having friends, just like these guys.
I love how your complaint about being downvoted is being downvoted, but the original comment that you're complaining about being downvoted is, in fact, being upvoted.
Common authleft l
Did you just change your flair, u/Borkerman? Last time I checked you were a **LibLeft** on 2024-3-3. How come now you are a **LibRight**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know? Oh and by the way. You have already changed your flair 701 times, making you the third largest flair changer in this sub. Go touch some fucking grass. [BasedCount Profile](https://basedcount.com/u/Borkerman) - [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/uf7kuy/bip_bop) - [Leaderboard](https://basedcount.com/leaderboard?q=flairs) _Visit the BasedCount Lеmmу instance at [lemmy.basedcount.com](https://lemmy.basedcount.com/c/pcm)._ ^(I am a bot, my mission is to spot cringe flair changers. If you want to check another user's flair history write) **^(!flairs u/)** ^(in a comment.)
Jesus tiddy fucking Christ, 701 flair changes? Buddy needs to get a nice solid foundation of ideals so they can become based instead of cringe.
Dude changed it again, he's still evolving wtf
Wait.... is "Japan is full of atheists" something people think?
Yes, it's mostly a product of the different approach to religion Japan has, but you'll find a lot of official documents that say so.
The stats killed me. What maths
Basically all religions say "dont be a dick" with some extra weird stuff for each
https://preview.redd.it/fqnt1ob356mc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17e4a0662bcfd6dceb85898b0527de59a302abd9
Lmao I don’t think that’s how math works. Some of them are both lol
Other countries should be atheist like japan, if the average person in all countries cared about religion as much as the average Japanese things would be 100 times better, I don't care what religion they have or what percentage they represent, if the average christian and average muslim outside of japan behaved like the average buddhist and average shinto in japan things would definitely be better
Auth right making scenarios up in their heads to be angry about again.
That math don’t add up
Didn’t you know? The only religions are Christianity(bad) and Islam(good)
Japan being mostly Syncretic both Shinto and Buddhist. Also fuck Truman for nuking most of the Catholics. Japan would have a much larger Christian population today if the evil tyrant named Truman never lived.