This board avowedly fights against all forms of ignorance. The conspiracy nuts for example who believe that the US government planned 911 and brought down the Twin Towers with explosives or those who believe the Moon landings were faked, all on no evidence whatsoever. We recognize that as ignorance and we fight it; these people have no rational basis for their beliefs. But how do such beliefs differ from religious beliefs? These too have no rational basis at all. There is no evidence for the existence of a god just as there is no evidence for the existence of aliens. Why should not both these beliefs be treated as equally silly and equally ignorant? Yet religion is approached with profound respect, even by many atheists, a respect which is not accorded to the guy who insists that aliens have inserted a probe into his rectum. Why should that be?
I submit that religion is one of the most dangerous forms of all ignorance as human history has amply demonstrated and the sooner it is extirpated the better. The sleep of reason breeds monsters and religion is the most fearsome of them all.
You got me. Even Jewish people, who don’t believe Jesus was any kind of god, seem to respect millions of people operating under that delusion. Even respect them *because *they believe something that Jewish people believe to their very core is wrong.
I’m happy to go with “silly and ignorant.” I can only rationalize it by assuming (probably wrongly) that no one really believes any of that crap.
Let’s put it this way, the ones who really believe that crap are among the victims of religion, not the perpetrators. It is the ones who use religion, and the cover granted by the belief of their followers to amass material wealth and power for their own desires, while justifying their actions by cribbing from a book of iron age fables who are the real danger.
For the record I’m an atheist who has no respect whatsoever for any religion.
The thing about fighting religion, though, is it’s a losing battle. People hold religion close to their hearts, the same way I am very fond of my left leg. Threats to their belief systems are taken about as well as I take threats to my left leg. And while stick and stones can break my left leg bones, mere words can harm a person’s tender sense of religion. And religious people react accordingly. It gets ugly, and basically isn’t fun.
And since my entire existence is devoted to personal entertainment, I generally have better things to do.
I disagree in that it’s very much a battle worth fighting. Organized religious beliefs are on the decline in western civilization. Atheism in on the rise. While you may not be able to sway a specific religious individual from his/her beliefs, on aggregate, fewer and fewer people are self identifying as members of an identified church or sect. “Spirituality” is becoming the more common modality of faith. Which is a step in the right direction.
Also, it’s a mistake to call all religious people ignorant. Many, apart from their religious beliefs, are very intelligent. So let’s not paint with too broad a brush.
It is entirely possible to be intelligent and ignorant. It’s also entirely possible to be informed on some subjects and ignorant on others. (I personally am ignorant about the Swedish legal system, among many, many other things.)
Perhaps interestingly, religion seems almost designed to facilitate belief in it by otherwise intelligent people. It discourages critical thought about only itself and subjects it speaks on. With the result that I’ve many a time watched a person’s reasoning skill and argumentative acumen actively and dynamically decrease as the conversation turns to one critical of their religion.
Ignorance just means that you are unaware of stuff.
People who use their religion to inspire themselves to be better people, to give, to help in their communities, there is no ignorance there.
People who use their religion to say that these words out of this book that was written before literacy rates were a thing are how we should live our lives, are ignorant.
Also, for every person who tries to validate their life through religion, I can show you another who does the same through conspicuous consumption. And another who craves power or influence over others rather than humility.
Maybe there’s all kinds of people working out how to get through this tangle.
Well, there’s actually gobs of ignorance there - it’s just ignorance that doesn’t encourage them to do mean things. A debatably helpful ignorance, as it were. (Very debatable.)
Of course, it’s probably worth noting that the ‘ignorance’ we’re talking about isn’t merely being ignorant of stuff - it’s also espousing beliefs that aren’t justified by available evidence. For example, believing that aliens walk among us isn’t really ignorance, per say - it’s belief that isn’t justified by the facts.
Probably not a great thing, but is outside the scope of this thread.
But when people do that secularly, they are called evil or selfish, when they do it in the name of god, they are called sacred and holy.
They’re not going to make it out alive.
I suppose what I meant is that many of these people aren’t really believers, not “true believers”, anyway. They go to church to sing songs and socialize and network with others. They like the stories that make them feel good. They may even have a slight edge of the fear of death taken off by not questioning the belief of an afterlife too closely. But, they act seculary. They do not think that the rewards from this life are to be found in the next. They do not base their life, or the lives of others, on the text of a book transcribed from oral history and translated several times badly. Most of them are perfectly fine with evolution and big bang and all that.
Religion is no more a form of ignorance than atheism. Scientifically-acceptable evidence of the divine may indeed be lacking, but by the same token, it’s also impossible to prove the negative.
At least the religious have some degree of evidence - testimony (x generations removed, of course) from those who claimed to have experienced communication with the divine. It’s not evidence that all would agree is reliable, but it’s something, however slight. It’s more than the absence of evidence that is all a true atheist has to hand their belief on.
If I find writings from long ago from someone who swears that he once saw a dragon, and more writings from someone else in a different time and/or place that claims saw a unicorn, and even more writings from someone else that claims that he conversed with a hippogriff, what exactly is that evidence of?
You use the term “divine” to make it seem as if all those supposed witnesses of yours are bringing forth evidence of the existence of the same entity(“The Divine”)…but that isn’t even remotely true, is it? At best, it’s a vain assumption that all those witnesses are inaccurately describing the same entity you believe in. At worst, it’s an obviously false co-mingling of different statements about different entities to create “evidence” to support your beliefs.
Are you kidding me? We’re not talking about “the Divine” in abstract terms. We’re talking Jesus walking on water, true or false? Noah building an Ark and putting all the animals on earth in it, true or false? Mohammad and whatever he is alleged to have done, true or false? The major religions believe specific supernatural things, and it’s hard for rational people to wrap their heads around it. If you want to say, “there is something bigger than us in the universe that we don’t understand” and want to form a nice society around that concept, fine.
It’s evidence that someone saw a dragon, and that someone else saw a unicorn, and that someone else conversed with a hippogriff. It might not be RELIABLE evidence, but that’s for the consumer of said evidence to decide.
Not at all. Obviously, there are writings referring to different events. Some of them may be true, some may not be true, some may even be mutually contradictory. Still, if these were written as factual, it’s a piece of evidence to be weighed. No more so than the Warren Report and the writings of JFK conspiracy theorists.
Neither. Each believer will believe the evidence that he or she feels is reliable. It’s not a co-mingling, it’s a belief in one (or one non-self-contradictory subset) and a disbelief in the rest. But willingness to believe in at least one is something that all adherents of “religion,” as the OP wishes to address, have in common.