And you think this is consistent with a God who loves us?
It doesn’t falsify any God, just the one they seem to believe in.
That’s what I meant to say. Me not hearing keys in Beethoven doesn’t mean they are not there. You could give a class of students a quiz on the keys of a piece, and I suspect most would get the same answers.
That I don’t have God talking me doesn’t mean he isn’t there either. If a whole bunch of people chatted with God, and got consistent messages, and learned stuff they couldn’t have learned in other ways, I might think I’m just God-deaf. But since this isn’t true, I rather suspect they are hearing things.
You know Bible literalists who do believe in evolution? Please tell. If you read the post again, you’ll notice he’s excluding non-literalists.
Or are you playing the old trick where an atheist says something about a subset of religious believers and the theist misreads it as saying something about all believers, and discounts it on that basis?
Fair enough. I withdraw my speculative remark.
That’s the standard routine for absolving religion of all the evil done in its name; claim that it doesn’t motivate people to do anything. As long as the “anything” in question is something bad at least; someone does good in the name of religion (or even not in the name of religion) and suddenly religion gets the credit.
Nor is it a claim that makes sense; people do things that are evil or stupid all the time that just makes no sense except in a religious context. If Catholicism and the Catholic opposition to birth control didn’t exist, would the people who would otherwise be Catholic lie in Africa about the effectiveness of condoms anyway for no particular reason? Without religion would people who in real life kill one another over religious difference be compelled to do so anyway? No doubt screaming “run, I can’t control myself!” the whole time as they are forced like automatons to kill people they have no reason to kill.
Beliefs do affect people’s behavior, and religions are not magically excluded from that aspect of human nature.
I like how Huck Finn put it (or was it Tom Sawyer): “Faith is believing in stuff you know ain’t so.”
To me, faith is taking as true things that might be false, but which make my life work. I have faith in the proposition that it’s best to be ethical. I can’t quite justify that with evidence, but it seems to hold up pretty well.
I believe that the reason most people have religious faith is simply because it works for them, it’s embedded deeply into their world view, and it would be a massive blow to come to terms with its loss.
I think you have a good point here. It’s well documented that our brains are incredible rationalization machines. For examples, there are studies of split-brain subjects. The subject is shown a slide on one side only that says “Get up and leave the room.” They do, and when asked why, they say something like “I had to go to the bathroom” or any number of other random reasons.
Billions of people HAVE to be wrong, because billions of people have mutually contradictory beliefs. What was your point?
People who aren’t convinced by any particular religion aren’t “wrong”. They’re just unconvinced. Any God who punishes them eternally for this it isn’t worthy of worship or the title of God. I have a really hard time respecting anyone who does worship such a being, but I try to anyway. I do not respect any mathematician who does! 
Please understand that I am in no way defending religion, but to single it out as the greatest single reason why people justify immoral acts is a bit of a misattribution.
People opposed to birth control would find some other reason other than Catholisizm to oppose it. Sunni’s kill Shiites and they are essentially identical religious doctrines. Protestants and Catholics both follow the teaching of Jesus but found reasons to kill one another in Ireland/UK.
Religion offers a comprehensive set of rules which is often used to commit injustices against fellow human beings, but I think we can show that if not for religion, the nature of people being what it is, we’d find other excuses to kill those not like us.
Surely you must agree that there are good believers just as there are good non-believers.
By extension, can we agree that if some people become better people because of religion, then others are better because of atheism?
Of course there would still be war if not for religion. But I seriously doubt there would be as much of it.
Believing that you are doing God’s work can make otherwise normal people blow up sky scrapers. Religion gives a sense of certainty that makes a lot of otherwise odious shit more reasonable.
That goes without saying. 
*Men grow crazy in congregations,
They only get better one by one.
*
- Sting
Gods cannot be bribed or reasoned with, they do not take council, and they never compromise.
Actually I didn’t. I believe it is, but that’s not what I said there.
Translation: Religion is perfect and cannot in any way be responsible for a single evil thing that’s done in its name. A standard defense of religion. You’re just demonstrating how anti-human religion is; you’d rather pretend humans are creatures of pure evil who oppress and kill one another for no reason at all rather than admit that they might be on occasion motivated by religion to do so. Religion demonizes humanity, it portrays humans as monsters in order to deflect blame from itself.
Only good by accident. Since they base their actions on false beliefs whether or not their behavior is good or bad depends on luck. A well meaning believer may torture someone to death to “save their soul”, while a believer who means harm may refrain from oppressing someone in the hopes that their “sins” will take them to Hell.
In my experience, at least as it comes to religious faith, there are at least two different types, and I think this is where a significant amount of the disconnect between the OP and some of the Christians in this thread occurs, but also as much between those Christians and other types of Christians. In fact, one of the things you’ll find often between those Christians in this thread, and others with similar thought, is that they started out with a very simplistic faith, went through a crisis of faith, possibly even rejecting it outright, but when they returned, their approach was different.
To this end, I actually think the analogy of Santa Claus is somewhat apt. Consider a small child who is told about Santa Claus, he just accepts what he is told, despite the fact that it flies in the face of all logic and reason, he simply accepts it because 2-year-olds pretty much accept anything that their parents tell them to be true. Then at some later stage, they start to see problems with that belief, or other evidence that contradicts their belief in Santa and they are stuck with a difficult problem of continuing to accept the world view or reassessing their world view. So, some kids figure out Santa doesn’t exist at a very young age, some come up with justifications like helper elves or whatever and hold on to an older age. And yet, despite the fact that virtually everyone who ever believed in Santa as a child knows it is a lie as an adult, many of them still celebrate the idea and then turn around and teach it to their own kids. Why? Because, to them, there’s a concept behind Santa that does have some value that they see worth holding onto.
I relate this analogy to religion in very much how I went through my beliefs. I was raised in a fairly heavy religious upbringing, simply accepted it as truth because it was what I was taught, and in my teens I started seeing contradictions and having issues where it didn’t jive with what I felt to really be the truth. I never outright rejected my faith, but really, I’m not sure I ever had much of it in the first place. But over several years, I reassessed and I realized that I was holding onto the wrong aspects and I found the value of what was really being expressed behind it. To this end, those who still have that idea that it is all literally true, see a challenge against Young Earth Creationism as a threat against their faith. But for me, I see it as a story with a purpose and the literal truth isn’t necessary for it to have some greater value. After all, Jesus himself regularly taught in parables.
And I also don’t even view the Bible as the direct word of God, but paraphrasing what someone quoted upthread, it’s very much a book written by men and guided by God. Reading the Old Testament and seeing a wrathful and angry God isn’t all that unlike hearing a 3-year-old talk about how mean their parents are and finding out it was just that mom said he couldn’t have a cookie before dinner. Our perspectives and understanding of God and nature, along with our cultures and their interactions, and growth overall as a species will change the perspective of people drastically over time.
To that end, I think it’s easy to “disprove” the type of God that the basic level of religious people accept, and sadly, many people never really grow out of that type of thought. You’re just not going to find very many Christians that believe in the literal interpretation of Genesis that are actually worth debating in that sense. I don’t have my faith because I’m looking for scientific answers.
So, what is faith really? To me, it’s a means of examining an entirely different dimension of questions that science and other disciplines just cannot begin to answer. For a lateral example, let’s imagine a painting. Science can tell us the dimensions of the canvas, the composition of the paint and the colors, maybe determine what tools and in what manner to apply the paint. But science cannot tell us why the artist painted it and what message he intended it to convey. It cannot tell us what emotions or thoughts it is supposed to evoke. Maybe it was intentionally and purposefully painted by a talented artist who intended to convey a complex message. Or maybe it was painted sloppily by a child who just wanted to paint a simple picture of a tree and didn’t have much depth to it. Or maybe paint was spilled on it completely by accident and there’s no intention or deeper meaning to it at all.
To me, all of creation is that painting. Science can measure it and tell us observable measurable facts about that painting as it exists, but religion and philosophy explore those other questions. If I believe a painting was painted by a brilliant artist and he was conveying a complex message, I’m going to observe it and evaluate it differently that if I think it was just paint thrown haphazardly at the canvas.
Now, sure, we can sit here and argue about how certain artifacts in that painting might mean one thing or another. Maybe a certain stroke looks like it could only be done by a master or one point looks like it had to have been done randomly. But that only really makes sense when we’re comparing many paintings. We have countless examples to compare paintings with and come to conclusions about style, skill, genre. I can say that certain artifacts are common in a certain genre or common to an artist and draw those conclusions. But in reality, we only have one universe to examine, and ultimately all these “this looks random” or “this looks intentional” are futile.
So, no, I’m not looking to faith to tell me the specific mechanisms behind how man evolved or to understand the laws of nature, that is precisely what science is intended to do and it does a great job of doing it. But science doesn’t help me feel purpose and direction in my life. It doesn’t help me analyze my base moral values. Sure, those are simple questions for those in that first stage I describe, just take whatever they were taught and run with it, but it can, and often does, get quite complicated, at least from my perspective. And, really, I think that’s the whole beauty of it, that ultimately the best way to really appreciate a work of art is to evaluate the entirety from both of those perspectives.
No, it doesn’t. It is almost never said, let alone implied, by those who claim Christianity makes some people better.
Excellent analogy. Let me extend it. For many years we debated the meaning of the painting. Then one day someone finds a video showing that the painting was actually created by a gorilla who dipped his feet and hands in paint and walked over it. We as humans tend to find patterns and cause in everything - but at this point it might be time to stop.
There are many ways of doing this which don’t involve any sort of mythology, including the study of ethics and various branches of philosophy, few of which pretend to be able to dictate an answer. And science does answer some moral questions, like that of natural evil. It is terrible that people die or are injured in natural disasters, but isn’t it comforting to know the reason is not malice from an all powerful being or as a result of some sin on their part?
Incorrect. It’s much worse than that. Human institutions are flawed to a lesser or greater extent. All of them. If you want to make the argument (and you do) that religious ones are particularly evil, that’s fine, I’m not going to play devil’s advocate. But don’t put words in my mouth. I never said all humans are pure evil. In fact, I’ve been saying quite the opposite. Additionally, I did state that religious organizations provide the framework for excusing bad actions.
I didn’t. You however put words in my mouth.
Hardly. You said that if it religion didn’t exist people would be doing the same evil things they do in the name of religion anyway. Which means you are claiming that people would slaughter and torture and oppress each other on a massive scale for no reason at all. That’s calling humans evil if anything is.
Pretty sure I’ve never said it either. In fact, didn’t my lyric quote serve to imply that we’re in agreement on the idea that religion doesn’t make anything/anyone better?
Oh, I’m pretty sure they’d come up with a reason.
Which in no way implies: all humans=evil.
It most certainly does.