The majority of people have been religious. You could use the same logic to claim that right handedness is the source of human progress.
Indirectly; by helping to support the idea that being religious is intellectually respectable, they help prop up and excuse more directly dangerous believers.
Generally, by holding it back.
:rolleyes: Christianity is ALSO nothing but superstition; and not even packaged all that well.
They killed people because they were communist, not because they were atheist. That’s why people who want to claim that atheists are just as bad as believers need to keep coming back to the communists.
Atheism is just the absence of a belief; it can’t impel you to do anything. It doesn’t even say that being an atheist is better. You can’t realistically compare it to a full fledged belief system, like religion or communism ( which is basically religion that doesn’t admit that is is religion, in my view ).
Oh, cut the shit. A man can’t hate something because it causes immense harm to other people? There has to be some personal story behind it? I hate religion too, and I’ve never been injured by a car bomb or felt up by a priest.
Actually, no. The reason the institutions are rightfully hated is because they are always, always used for corrupt purposes. I try to be moderate in most things, but organized religion is one of the worst inventions of mankind. The concept of God has been abused and perverted by sociopaths in search of power since the first civilization rose.
I got nothing against a higher power. I got something big against the wastes of life who purport to speak for it.
I think it’s less about his hatred of religion than his foaming at the mouth, screeching and making extreme generalizations. (He’s the same way about political conservatives)
Look, I don’t care about his beliefs so much as I care about how he (or anyone, for that matter), expresses them. And Der Trihs tends to be an asshole about it.
What a delightful pile of steaming garbage. No one can be flat out pissed that the Catholic church’s squeamishness about concraceptives has led to spreading of AIDS in Africa? Or pissed that we have whackjobs blowing up trains in the name of religious lunacy? Or over the fact that religion is all out dumb, and encourages people to believe whatever nonsense is presented to them based on some silly thing called “faith”? How is that good for humanity? We can’t come to hatred unless we have personally contracted AIDS or been blown up?
Ah but you say religion is totally opposed to science by your logic we should still be riding ox carts by now.
No religious people can be intellectually respectable? Say there was a brilliant medical researcher who invented the cure to AIDS but he also happened to be a Southern Baptist or a Roman Catholic; would he be less “intellectual” than a conspiracy theorist who claims aliens control the world but is atheist?
Occasionally yes but usually this has been due to moral consideration (ie stem cell research).
They used such excuses as “Religion is detrimental to progress” or “Religious people are in cahoots with the capitalists” for persecution. Many religious dictators you talk about have persecuted people for similar reasons.
How is communism better? Also if atheism is true that would it be better than “false” systems of belief.
Curtis, at the risk of hijacking this thread, the USSR example isn’t a good one, all right? In this case, Der Trihs is right – it wasn’t about religion.
Either way, you might want to quit while you’re ahead.
It lost. The history of human progress to a large degree has been about constantly shoving religion back; pushing it into ever narrower, ever less important areas of society. It lost because it IS illogical and ignores reality, and therefore has inferior performance to more rational, fact based appraoches to life. The more a society is infested by religion, the less competent and less just it is going to be.
He’d be intellectually inferior to a scientist who cured AIDS and was atheist. Also, he’d be more likely to pull it off; religion is a scientific handicap. And he’d be more likely to actually try, instead of rooting for the virus.
In other words, by the evil and stupidity of religion. By something that holds a few cells to be more important than saving the lives and health of people.
I didn’t say it was better. I said that it was pretty much the same thing.
But truth being superior to falsehood is not atheism. Atheism is simply disbelief in gods; not about a value judgement of belief in gods or whether or not their nonexistence is good or bad. That is precisely why atheists are so poorly organized; there isn’t necessarily much in common.
Religion does not ignore reality. Indeed it has very much adapted to reality. Most of Christianity for example has accepted or at least quieted down about evolution.
That is nonsense. Virtually no religious person “roots for the virus” except for the really NUTTY people who are basically cultists who claim that “Jesus will cure everyone” or something to that effect.
Or for an another example they may not wish to use advanced weapons which cause mass destruction.
Sorry that was a typo, I mean “How is Communism a religion?”
What are your opinions than of thse prominent atheists:
Richard Dawkings
Samuel Harris
Christopher Hitchens (Who BTW sends his kids to a Quaker school)
Madalyn Murray O’Hair
After a long drawn out fight that is still not over. It “adapted” because it lost. Because science and practicality beat it down.
“Let those dirty, disease-infested, sinning queers die!” – John Ashcroft. Unlike you, I was around when the AIDS virus first became known, and I watched as millions of good Christians like you cheered it on.
What does THAT have to do with stem cells?
And it’s not like being religious make someone less willing to use WMD; especially not Christians, who think the end of the world is a great idea.
It’s founded on faith, ignores contrary evidence, is a dogma based world view, and is hostile to all competition. It looks like a religion; it acts like a religion.
Dawkins is a biologist who wrote about atheism as well as some interesting books on evolution; I don’t know the other two offhand, and know little about O’Hair but the name and her role in ending forced school prayer. So if you are going the **ITR Champion **route and trying to discredit atheism by bashing its supposed prophets, I don’t care. I’m not a follower of anyone.
I’m not sure I agree. Most people who are not blind to religion’s irrationality and its overall destructive, and too often, dangerous head-lock on most of the world, its societies, and its politics choose to remain civil toward theists and other pushers of religion. I think mostly that is because they would not be personally comfortable going beyond that. But I think there is definitely a place for the Der Trihs of the world.
We all have to choose our battles in life. I share many of **Der Trih’s **views about the inherent foolishness of religion and the delusion of most of the religious (note: almost all religious people are, to some degree, delusional in their religious beliefs–NOT necessarily about anything else). If engaged in earnest conversation/debate on the topic I’m willing to go pretty far, but I generally leave the religious folks IRL pretty much alone. Ultimately it is they that have to face their own folly–not I.
Unfortunately, the “cancer” of religion ends up affecting me and everyone else whether we participate or not. It is all around us, always in our face, and plays too much of a part (i.e.–any at all) in public policy and world affairs. I would do almost anything I could to rid the world of this gigantic millstone. It is (almost) entirely non-productive at best; downright evil at worst. If I thought more insulting invective would help, I would be more insultingly invective. But for me, I can only go so far.
Der Trihs is willing to go a lot further but IMO, he mostly tells it like it is. He is like the kid who is willing to point out that the Emperor Has No Clothes while everyone else shushes him. I am glad that there are people like him that are willing to go so far. Only rarely do I feel he goes too far but I’d venture that most folks here–atheist or not, believe the opposite.
This is supposed to be a board that fights ignorance. That is what Der Trihs is doing each and every time he goes on about the ridiculousness of (most) organized religion.
I know there are people on this board that are both intelligent and rational and also religious. Yet I am puzzled (logically speaking) why the question of the existence of God or gods is even up for debate on a board as intellectual as this one. (And yes, I know religion does not equal God, but they do manage to get pretty well knotted-up).
The irrationality sometimes expressed on this board vis-a-vis religion is not totally unexpected, but frustrating at the same time. I think Der Trihs’ frustration with this and his frustration with the existence of religion in general moves him to express himself as he does. Impolite? Often? Insulting and uncalled for? Sometimes. But his general view on this subject, if not the way he sometimes chooses to express it, is almost always spot on.
Is it all right to hate things that are oppressive? To hate things that are harmful and counterproductive? Please supply a list of acceptable hate-targets.
Well, when it quiets down about everything else, I’ll be happy. It can keep mysticism and myth, but stay outta science and politics, please, or anywhere else rational people are trying to get their work done.
It is easy for me to say I Love… I even wrote a book about it… well Vol. I anyway, I’m working on Vol. II.
Seriously though–sometimes “hate” is driven by utter frustration. Because of it, an intense inner anger seethes. The inner-voice says something like: “I can’t believe people still believe the world is flat and they won’t shut up about it! They’re always all up in my face about it and no amount of reasoning will make them stop derailing human progress and encroaching on people’s personal freedoms!!!”
That, I think, is a bit like the “hatred” Der Trihs expresses.
(I put *hate *and hatred in quotes because I wonder just how much Der Trihs truly hates individuals–not institutions–that are religious. He may say he has real hatred for those individuals, but I am free to opine that I’m not completely convinced).
One thing religion does provide, is answers that science, at least up to this point, cannot.
Why are we here?
How did the universe get started?
What is the purpose of life?
Is there any existence beyond death?
As an atheist, I realize that I may never have these answers, and have to be content with that. Some people are uncomfortable with not knowing the answer to these profound questions, and religion gives them what they need to make some sense of the world.
Astronomy in particular used to really give me the heebie jeebies. Most people don’t even comprehend the immensity of the universe beyond the idea that the stars are very far away and the universe is very old. But the numbers, once understood, are so extremely humbling, that it is hard not to feel totally insignificant and unimportant. Religion gives comfort by saying that you ARE important. God sees every sparrow that falls, therefore he cares about you as well.
