Well, I looked at your post and one thing caught my eye:
I guess this is true if by ‘expressed it clearly’ he meant that every time he spoke of God he spoke of him as though he were a personal God. The point is, he believed in something; he even expressed a sort of admiration for Buddhism, which is clearly not atheist.
I think a lot of people on this thread are confusing religion and organized religion. I don’t think either one is a bad thing, but organized religion is only a part of religion.
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*Originally posted by jalopeura *
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Isn’t organized religion when 2 or more religious people get together?
By that logic, whenever 2 homosexuals agree on something, it constitutes a gay agenda. (And I’m willing to wager that most of the homosexuals who post here would deny the existence of such a thing.)
Organized religion generally refers to institutional churches: Catholicism, Mormonism, the Southern Baptist Convention, etc. It generally does not include religious people who don’t attend church. I would not lump small independent congregations in with organized religion, either - though some might.
I’m not anti-religion or even anti-organized-religion. A lot of bad stuff has been done in the name of religion, and I’m very against that. But I don’t think the world would be a better place without organized religion.
I think anyone who would do such a thing would be looking for a “cause” anyway.
I disagree. At least as a general rule. I don’t believe in original sin, but if you were to raise people without any ‘dogma and zealotry’, some would be moral and some not. Anyway, most atheists I’ve read have been pretty zealous and dogmatic in insisting there’s no God (if you mean to insinuate by your statement that the world would be more moral without religion).
And I happen to believe that there’s a (non-evolutionary) reason for that ‘instinct’.
I hadn’t thought of that, but I suspect you’re right: Most atheists come from the upper socioeconomic levels. Poverty (and other physical hardships) tend to make people turn toward God - not all people, of course, but most.
Okay, I was being a bit facetious. I just think the amorphous concept of “organization” has somehow become a scapegoat. The Unitarians are organized, but IMHO unlikely to launch a religious jihad in the near future. You never know though. ;]
As for gays - yeah, there are gay zealots out there. And probably atheist zealots (though I have yet to run across one). You wanna keep your distance from them too. But in general being gay or atheist doesn’t lend itself to zealotry the way religion can.
You’re assuming that religious zealots are representative of religious people in general - but then assuming that gay zealots or atheist zealots are a minority within their group. I hardly think that’s fair. Any cause at all can inspire zealotry - any cause. The vast majority of religious people (just like the vast majority of gays or atheists or whatever) are just normal people. Of course, you get the occasional crazy person who bombs an abortion clinic, killing doctors and nurses to prevent what they feel is murder, but you also get things like PETA, which transcends religious bounds, yet its members have been known to bomb buildings where animal testing was occurring. PETA itself is not responsible for such thigns any more than any religion or religion in general is responsible for clinic bombers.
The Inquisition and the Crusades, though, had the official sanction of the Catholic Church, and they were horrible. But the Holocaust was no less horrible, and that was caused by a nation, under one man’s lust for power, and not for any religion. (Although Hitler claimed to be a Catholic, he imprisoned nuns and priests in the concentration camps as well, so I doubt his faith was very strong - what he did had nothing to do with his being religious.)