Loved that movie…
-XT
Religion makes many people happy and generally doesn’t hurt anyone else. In light of that, I don’t see what the problem with it is.
Not all religions are equal . . . I heard a quote from Alan Watts on the radio the other day: “You mustn’t think of spiritual practice as, say, thinking of God while peeling potatoes. Zen spiritual practice is simply to peel the potatoes.”
Of course, you can do that if you’ve never heard of Zen – so, what is the value of the dharma?
IMO, people who make claims like that simply haven’t put much thought into the matter. Basically, they start with “religion does nothing good” as a premise and then arrive at it as the conclusion.
I wonder if you’ll still hold to that stance the next time your fellow atheists plead with you not to speak on “their” behalf.
Religion got me a seat at a crowded bar tonight. That’s something.
Religious organizations have never founded schools, colleges, and universities? They’ve never provided scholarships or built research facilities and hospitals?
What did a Methodist or a Buddhist or a Taoist ever do to you, Der Trihs? Your responses are so overblown and repetitive from thread to thread that they smother chances for other exchanges.
Genetics was once a new idea. And it sprang from the mind of a monk who had time, thanks to his monastary, to conduct research. Fr Gregor Mandel discovered the basics of heredity and became known as the Father of Modern Genetics. His ideas were a contribution that religion fostered about something that we didn’t already know.
I see many excellent points in this thread. I hate to see them overlooked. Paul has an excellent list.
Thank you ever so much for your concern on our part, but as long as he doesn’t try to legislate our lives to suit the voices in his head, I think we’ll be just fine.
Heck, modern science itself finds its origins in Christian thought, as emphasized by historian Stanley Jaki, among others. Religion-bashers like to act as though science and religion are inherently at odds, but that’s a shallow and overly simplistic (even childish) notion at best.
And you’re entitled to that view. As you probably remember though, liberals and skeptics have asked him to tone it down, complaining that DT makes “them” look bad. Would you be similarly understanding of their viewpoint, or would you likewise say to them “Thank you ever so much for your concern”?
At any rate, my point – which I suspect you would have apprehended with a bit of thought – was that if religion is indeed to blame for the distinctions between “us” and “them,” then how should one respond to atheists who complain that DT makes “them” look bad? Should religion be blamed for the fact that these people identify themselves as a group?
Well, yeah. If a religion decides that a group of people does not fit in, and casts them out, then that group of people might just gather together to form a community. It’s basic self-defense.
yes
You forgot the “unjewish”, which, if I understand the stories correctly, created christianity in the first place. As I understand it (and I’m not sure of this… I’m on a quest of my own to understand the Dogma), Jesus was Jewish, so if every jew believed he was the real messiah, son of God and all that, there wouldn’t be Christianity, right? There would just be Jews and Muslims. And hindus. And scientologists.
Question for you. You seem to have a consistent rage against Christians in particular. How were you raised? In an environment completely devoid of religion? This isn’t a judgement, I’m genuinely curious.
And just so you know, “us” and “them” would exist without religion. We use countless things to divide into “us” and “them”.
How you function in your one-dimensional world fascinates me.
Regardless of what religion may or may not have done in that past, we certainly don’t need it now.
But who have done far less damage since they’ve never been interested in converting the whole planet like Christians and Muslims. The Jews didn’t destroy culture after culture across the whole face of the planet; they lacked both the desire and the means. Christians and Muslims did destroy those cultures.
No, I was raised to be Christian. And no, I wasn’t mistreated. It isn’t some personal trauma that makes me despise religion; it’s the worldwide behavior of religion. Everywhere I turn, past present and probably future I see religion inflicting evil on the world. And when I hear people talk about the supposed good that they insist must have come from religion, it comes across like people trying to claim that racism or sexism has been the source of a lot of good; ridiculous and pointless.
But not as much, and seldom to as much an extreme.
The only things which have worth are those that have given us an idea? That makes for a life filled with a lot of pointlessness!
It stopped my mother from committing suicide.
That’s good enough for me.
(Not that I believe any of it)
What difference does it make if it is ‘wrong’ or ‘inconvenient’? We would still place appropriate sanctions on murderers.
And anyway, in the absence of religion, we would reach the conclusion the same way that the founders and followers of religion ‘know’ that killing is wrong / not wrong. It’s not as if Moses received the ten commandments from God on tablets of stone. Some other prophet (possibly also called Moses) worked it out for himself.
Christians or Jews or Muslims or Buddhists have not been consistent in deciding if their religions are for or against killing anyway. It’s a reasonable conclusion to infer that societies decide if they are against killing first, and then create the religious justification for it second.
And what Bryan said.
There’s no reason to think that religion makes people behave morally anyway beyond the assertion of believers that it must be so. The few studies I’ve heard of examining the subject (like the one mentioned here) have found a correlation between religion and less moral behavior; not more moral behavior. Which I expect is why there are so few studies of the subject; this is not something most people want to know the truth about.
That is a deeply silly site on so many levels. It handwaves away the signficant developments in science and mathematics by non-Christian countries such as Persia, India and China which were later adopted and furthered by Europeans, ignores those incidences of Christian opposition to scientific developments (evolution, anyone?) and plays up the few demonstrable instances of genuine Christian promotion of experimentation.
I am not denying the importance of the Augustinian *oeuvre *but it seems to me that you are (or at least the person at your link is) attributing scientific advancements to specific religious beliefs which owe much more to socio-economic and cultural changes.
And I don’t know what to make of this, from your link:
Really? Really?
Religion and science frequently are at odds in many ways. Religion, at least from a formalized hierarchical POV, requires adherence to a certain amount of unchanging dogma. Science, at least in theory, requires that all assumptions be testable and, if proved false, changeable. Would the church change its mind if some major tenet of Christian faith was scientifically shown to be false? There is always the potential for conflict.
Science and religion are not necessarily mutually exclusive. There have certainly been many, many scientists who were (and are) people of faith and have in one way or another reconciled that faith with the scientific method. There have also been scientific dogmatics who have clung to their pet theories in the face of strong disproving evidence. But claiming that modern science (by whatever definition of “modern”) is directly attributable to Christian thought? That’s a pretty tenuous link.