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Former Green Bay Packers Quarterback Aaron Rodgers Suggests Religion Is Used To Manipulate People
(wisportsheroics.com)
this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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Well, duh.
Here's a thing: so are sports.
You can play sports and not be manipulating people.
You cannot lead a church and not be manipulating people, even if unwittingly.
That's a false comparison. You can't lead anything without, to a point, manipulating people. You can manipulate them transparently and for their benefit, or you are manipulating them for your own. The people who lead and run sports leagues are definitely not doing it out of a sense of charity.
Plenty of churchgoers and even pastors are in it to serve people with no real personal benefit. The same can't be said of professional sports players.
At some point in an ecclesiastical hierarchy someone is manipulating people for their own benefit, knowing they're doing so. They profess miracles while knowing there are none.
Above a certain level all you'll find are charlatans.
The only religions that do not operate like this are unaffiliated churches, mystical, or nontheistic religions like Buddhism, Jainism etc.
If you profess a god and have a hierarchical structure your leaders manipulate you for their own gain or prestige. They do not believe.
If you think Buddhists and Jains aren't hierarchical or corrupt oh boy
those big temples and libraries aren't built by prayers but cold hard cash
they've also been doing this for thousands of years
but yes I agree with your point overall just nitpicking your choice of counter examples
Sigh.
People use sources of power for their own benefit. I'm not arguing otherwise. What I'm saying is there's a chance a churchgoer or a pastor is doing it for selfless reasons, where that is never the case for sports.
And your use of superlatives only displays your own ignorance. I've met people in power from several denominations, and many just want to help people. Plenty of denominations teach servant leadership. No doubt many people exploit religion. But at least religion generally tries to teach otherwise.
You really should expose yourself to more real people before just parroting what you hear from loudmouths on the internet. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing.
I never said otherwise.
But the whole point here is we're talking not about selfishness we're talking about manipulation.
Manipulation of others to do ones bidding is not the purpose of sports. Panem et circenses sure but not "do my bidding proles"
And I'm extremely aware of how people act and grow up in religions: I grew up in a very hierarchical religious structure and have seen the well intentioned abuses that people earnestly trying to help inflict on others. Manipulation is manipulation, ill intentioned or otherwise. And when you get higher up in a hierarchical structure that professes faith you will reach a point where everyone knows it's fake and chooses to act otherwise.
That's cute that you think sports aren't about manipulation.
Growing up in a single denomination is hardly a varied experience.
I would argue that the Baha'is manage that one pretty well. They don't have clergy, so the person leading Sunday/Saturday Classes is a different person each week, and you are required to thoroughly research the topic that you've been assigned. The assignments.are handed out by the Local Spiritual Assembly, whose members are voted in every year. The primary requirement of being an LSA member is that you don't want the job. This requirement extends to the National Spiritual Assembly, as well as The Universal House of Justice.