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Comment by password54321 | Hacker News Reader

>It assumes African Christians only hold their faith because of colonizers and denies us our own agency.

And they would be correct. Most people never "chose" their beliefs. It was systematically embedded by people who have had power over them.

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Slightly nonsensical to apply modern discourse about European colonisation to events of 1,700 years ago, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum#Religion

"And they would be correct. Most people never "chose" their beliefs. It was systematically embedded by people who have had power over them." - nothing about this statement is isolated to modern discourse about European colonisation. It is sometimes true in other contexts and noted in those contexts. Although you can always argue about how systematic something is.

You choose your religion on a daily basis or we wouldn’t see anyone ever convert from one to the other.

People have agency.

Where you are born and your ethnicity largely determines your beliefs, conversion is rare. But agency over ones beliefs is becoming more prevalent as religion holds less influence as it once did (at least in some parts of the world).

Not everyone believe in religious freedom, and even those who in paper do might discriminate against those who convert

Yea, and in the face of violence agency is reduced or neutralized but that doesn’t make saying that activities of colonial powers that ended decades before most living people in the region were born gets rid of agency a defensible argument.

And that’s before unraveling whatever the OP of this comment chain meant by Muslims and Christians are only fighting because of colonizers when Islam and Christianity were colonial ideologies in the first place with there emphasis on converting all of humanity.

Not really, that's not how worldviews work. On top of that, religions and cults are very good at embedding themselves into your social/family life marrying leaving the religion with leaving or estranging a large part of social life.

At this point, it is indeed still a choice, but hardly a daily or conscious choice.

Renouncing/converting exists but is rare, life changing, and sometimes dangerous.

I’ve changed my worldview massively over the years. I don’t think it’s impossible for others to do so and I wouldn’t say they have no agency in keeping with their status quo.

That's nice but none of that is what I said.

Do you change your worldview daily, on the level of opting in or out of religions? Do you think most people do? Do you think we can expect them to?

How did you chose your religion?

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