If Religious belief were like a virus or mutation you would see it begin in one part of the world and then spread. Instead it appears to arise wherever humans form a society. IIRC there is some inconclusive evidence that Neanderthals had religious beliefs. Religion has always been part of being human.
If anything it is non-belief that is the mutation. Non-belief probably arose later than belief. Judging from atheists in recorded history, from Demokritos through Voltaire to Dawkins, atheism requires lesiure time to engage in critical thinking and a fair amount of education, as well as a cynical questioning personality. I suspect these were in short supply until fairly recently in human history.
I think it is a mistake to lump together a mass called “religion”. The secular idea is a relatively new concept, that there is something other than “religion”. There are plenty of atheist zealots out there trying to convince people that they are stupid if they believe in God. That’s coercion as well.
Also, it seems to me that people are easily duped by someone claiming a religion for political ends. I have a hard time believing that George W. Bush is all that Christian, his behavior does not reflect a Christian ethic, and I don’t think that Christianity is so nebulous and relative that anyone claiming to be a christian is a christian. It’s quite easy to learn a couple bible quotes and lie to people about your religious affiliation, as most people have very little knowledge of the tradition they claim to follow. Most people go to church are bored and twiddle their thumbs, hear out of context sermons that have no impact on their lives, and waste 2 hours every Sunday with an extreme lack of engagement. It’s quite easy to dupe these people who are mostly religious out of fear of social ostracism, rather than a true sense of faith.
That’s politics, not religion. Politicians will do anything they can to gain power. Its not a secret that politicians are often criminally unscrupulous. Pointing the finger at ‘religion’ is about as lacking in nuance as can possibly be had in any discussion. There isn’t a monolithic group called “religion”. You might as well be saying that society is the cause of all of society’s problems.
The thing I hate about modern secular atheism is this pretense that their morals and culture are not defined by the religions that spawned them. Empire has always been quite religious and dogmatic. How is democracy not dogmatic? We are sending tanks rolling through the deserts of the middle east in the name of spreading democracy. That is a religious pursuit. Democracy is based firmly in Christian ethics. Christ was a people’s revolutionary, he was sort of like the Che Guevara or Mahatma Ghandi of his age. He fought in an age where there wasn’t this idea of a seperation between religion and not religion, all things were part of the whole of society.
I find it all too easy for people to absolve themselves of “religion” as though it gives them some high ground to point the finger at ‘those other people’ causing all of the world’s problems. “If they only realized there was no God, then we’d all be at peace.”, how is saying that any different than saying, “If they only found Christ then we’d all be at peace?”
What if we all stopped trying to coerce each other through guilt and shame? Perhaps then we’d have peace.
Religion isn’t about survival of the fittest, if anything it has allowed people who would have been the first to be eaten by the bear to survive. The world is about survival of the fittest, and religion has been an attempt to unite people so that we all can survive nature just a little bit easier. And it works really well as long as the culture remains homogenous. It’s not until an alien system comes in contact with our own that a conflict ensues. It’s certainly true that if everyone were Christian and could agree on a mode of conduct that we’d have much less conflict. The same is true of Islam, and Atheism. If we all agreed on everything of course we’d have no conflict, that’s a truism.
Political will is not unique to any particular religion or philosophy. There will always be people who seek power, some for honourable reasons, some for dishonourable reasons, and it will go round and round, but singling out any one group and pointing your finger at them is simply juvenile and doesn’t tell us anything about the state of the world.
That only makes sense if you assume the spread started in historical times. If it started, say, twenty or thirty thousand years ago then we would see religion everywhere because it dominated the competition millenia before the earliest records.
It’s “coercion” if someone points a gun at your head or fines you or otherwise harms/threatens you for your beliefs. Calling you or your beliefs foolish or stupid is not coercion; coming from someone who calles atheists stupid, it’s also a rather hypocritical thing to say.
What’s so unchristian about him ? He’s ignorant, intolerant, selfish, close minded, militaristic, and wants to spread the True Way by any means he can get away with. Those are typical Christian characteristics for most of the religion’s history.
Religions do not spawn morals; they undercut them. We are not invading the Middle East to spread democracy; we want their oil. Christ has little to do with Christianity beyond the name; he’s just a propaganda tool. Christianity has always been the enemy of freedom and democracy; that is a basic function of religion.
The sheer cruelty and brutality of religion in history proves you wrong. When a single religious group dominates, you don’t have peace; they simply manufacture new enemies to torture and kill; the witch hunts in Europe and early America are a good example.
I have thought this for years as well. Religions like the Quakers which forbade pro-creation died out. Judaism, which does not prosletyze, stays about the same size. Religions which prosletye heavily, like the LDS, are growing faster.
I think the keys to a “fittest” religion include: active prosletyzing, tithing, not being tied to a particular nationality, encouraging lots of children, and a reward to the faithful (heaven, forgiveness, etc.).
The Catholic Church fit this for a long while, but their missions started falling off. Requiring priests and nuns to be celibate didn’t help with their recruitment.
Der Trihs: I was actually trying to be somewhat tongue in cheek about it, reversing the roles on the whole religion vs atheism debate. Generally the tactic for atheists is to tell people who believe in God that they are stupid, so I told atheists that they are stupid for not believing in God. Personally I just see it as a slight semantic difference that makes all the difference. Atheists believe that things are random, I believe that the words “random” or “chaos” just describe an order at a complexity beyond our comprehension. What is stupid is when atheists try to claim that the atheist arguments are “more rational.” When really it’s just a matter of how one chooses to define things.
As I said, Political Will is not limited to religion, and I disagree with your specious definition of religion. Too often atheists hide behind an areligious front, when in actuality the cling of the atheist to their godless dogma is quite religious.
Coercion doesn’t always require the barrel of a gun. Sometimes coercion can be a thread on a forum dedicated to painting 90% of the human population as “evil” because of a doublespeak version of the word “religion” that conveniently excludes you from responsibility for the world’s traumas.
And Christianity is based on love, if what you are doing is not loving, then it is unchristian, despite the fact that the Roman empire latched onto a people’s revolution, assimilated it and used it to go on being the same bloody empire they always were.
‘Christendom’ is the continuation of the Roman Empire, you can tell because the Emperor the Pope maintained the same capital seat the empire had for it’s entire history.
If you would read even the most superficial reading of the Christian faith, you’d realize that Jesus supposedly died to end suffering on Earth. Any suffering caused in Christ’s name is a perversion of those teachings. Paul was a bloody tyrant before he wrote the bible. Catholicism is the religion of Peter who denied Jesus in his time of need, and Paul who used it as a way to justify being a jackbooted thug. Politicians distorting the truth is not unique to any particular ethos. And I reiterate, I find the definition of religion as put forth by atheists to be completely dishonest as their irrational dogma fits the description just as well.
Somehow atheists have convinced themselves that Science is the purview of atheism despite the fact that a great deal of the scientists who are remembered for their contribution to society most definitely believed in God.
So I qualify as a horde now ? All by myself ? Not to mention I’m not much of a zealot; expressing a firm opinion on a messege board is not the same as zealotry.
Since when ? There is plenty of order in the universe.
No, it’s based on hate. “Believe or burn forever” is the heart of Christianity.
First, science is effective enough that people can have incorrect beliefs and be productive, as long as they don’t let them interfere with the science. Second, science ( not scientists ) is inherently the enemy of religion, because religion is about faith; science is the opposite of faith. It’s about reason and knowledge, two things that are the enemy of religion.
That’s Shakers, as I said above. Quakers procreate just fine. Larry, do you buy that particular religions spread in a meme-like fashion? All the ones we know of started in one place and grew, just like a mutation. Religion in general might be something else. Though it is too long ago to be sure, I think it came from our human need to find reasons for things (which definitely is advantageous.) It is not surprising that someone, noticing that men made and carried fire, would extrapolate that a big man (god) made and carried the big fire (sun.) That could well have happened everywhere, we just don’t know.
**Dan Blather **alludes to something I’ve always been curious about lately, and it’s the different procreative tendencies of various faiths or sects. Take, for example, the Amish – they do no recruiting, not even of the passive kind – and yet they are growing by leaps and bounds because they have such large families: seven children on average, various online sources say. Even with a little bit of falling off, that leads to a religion that is growing at a much faster rate than others. For the LDS too, procreation has been a major part of their success.
So how do we factor this into the discussion? (And as a side note, can we imagine an America of three centuries hence where the predominant religious groups are the Amish, the LDS, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews?)
Particular Religions, sure. Religion in general, not so much.
I think religion comes from several things. One is, as you mention, our need for reasons. Another is the conflict between our awareness of our own death and our fear of it, as well as our inability to imagine our non-existence. It just seems more plausible to me that this arose spontaneously in human communities rather than arising once and spreading across the globe. If the latter there should be some compelling evidence, even if this sweep happened millennia ago.
No, you have shown a completely irrational hatred and bigotry for religion. This is zealotry, not a firm opinion. When shown that many of the scientists revered for their work were deeply religious, you say that this is “despite” their religious beliefs. You tailor any information to suit your bias. That is not scientific or rational in any way. You are not a horde, you are simply one example of an atheist bigot. There are many like you, but this one is you.
Well, I will not argue this point then.
Revelation is a word with a stable meaning, it means something is revealed. Christ was attempting to reveal the light of love. Anyone that tries to twist it to justify hatred is getting it wrong, pure and simple, and is not the arbiter of christianity.
It is not an edict, it is a revelation. Open yourself to the light of love, and live in eternal bliss, or remain in ignorance and suffer. It’s not a commandment, it’s a revelation, thus the term “revelation”.
No scientist worth their salt that I have ever spoken to has made any claim as to science’s position on God. Science is about verifiable facts. No scientist claims that all facts have been verified. Your basic assumption here that is misguided and irrational is that God CANNOT be verified, simply because you cannot do it. I could go into depth about the mystic tradition, but I won’t for someone unwilling to give me the respect to listen without prior bias. Science and faith are not opposed. Faith is a synonym of trust. I have faith that what has been revealed to me is true, even though I cannot explain it to an atheist. I have little trouble explaining it to a theist. You are taking your experience, projecting it on others, and telling them what they are capable or incapable of experiencing and then claiming it’s rational, it’s not. Reason and Knowledge are not antithetical to faith. For instance, if I told you I believed people have decoded the genome, you’d probably be ok with that, yet I have no proof, the only proof I have is that someone who is a “scientist” has claimed to do it. I have FAITH that this is true, I have FAITH in those scientists who have claimed to map out the genome, however, if you do not know how to map the genome, you don’t believe it because of reason, you believe it because of trust in their reason. That is faith. Science and Religion are not in opposition they are parallel. It’s basically the difference between intuition and reason, both faculties are necessary to understanding anything. Intuition supplies us with a hunch, and reason helps us explore that hunch.
Erek
“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”
“I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
Is it irrational, or at least not justified? No. Tell me all the good things about religion. Now tell me all the bad things. In your book, one may be higher than the other. However, that doesn’t mean he can’t do the opposite.
Bad example. Einstein let his religious distaste for quantum mechanics ( “God does not play dice” ) overcome his scientific abilities; it crippled his ability to make any new discoveries. You make my point for me.
All I am saying is that people are taking all the ills of society and using them to define “religion”. That is not rational. Up until recently religion encompassed everything about society. Suddenly there is this modern secular atheism that knows everything and all the rest of society that has ever lived is stupid and wrong.
I disagree with the basic premise about religion. I think that religion is responsible for everything, especially science. Pythagoras, Newton, Einstein, etc… I disagree with the basic seperation between Science and Religion, I think it is a false dichotomy. I disagree with the way religion is being defined in this thread, and think that the way it is being defined is self-serving so that the atheist circle jerk can continue.
You, he, anyone can believe anything they want, I’m not going to force you to believe anything, the worst you’ll get from is a rolling of the eyes, which I receive readily from you as well.
So the things I would say that are good things about religion would be “Society, Consciousness, Science, etc…” Trying to seperate the idea of religion from society is impossible, they are integrally intertwined, and I feel that it is dishonest to claim that you exist in some kind of vacuum where religion doesn’t impact your viewpoint. All that any of us know is informed by that which our ancestors discovered.
Basically as I see it, we are all in this together, and hatred and bigotry is not limited to ‘religion’. I’ve seen plenty of hatred and irrational bigotry from atheists. The atheist solidarity thing is proof of it. Lots of atheists say lots of dumbass things, and you hardly ever see another atheist saying “Well that suonds like a load of horseshit”, though you’ll see ‘religious’ people doing that all the time.
Der Trihs goes on to tell me that Einstein was at the end a fool, when he practically proved that he could split an atom in half. In another thread Voyager claims to know more about what Einstein meant when he said “God” than I do. How is any of that rational? If you want to make the argument that atheists are rational, then lets see some rational atheists take these two to task for their irrationality. Until I see that solidarity breaking up, I am going to continue to view atheism as just another religion with it’s unquestioned dogma. Sometimes I see it breaking up, but not too often here on this board.
I see the same tactics that born-again christians use being used in the pro-atheism debate, so please bring someone out of the woodwork to show me that there are some rational atheists. I’ve only been arguing with people’s semantics in these debates. I’ve been disagreeing that words mean what people say that they mean. THen I am asked to “prove” it. Don’t just TELL me you are rational, prove it. Something none of you has done yet.
It’s perfectly rational to disbelieve in God because you have no frame of reference for God. It is NOT rational for you to tell me what the validity of my experience on the subject is, because you simply don’t know.
So either continue the circle jerk or realize that all the things that have been used to describe religion in this thread could just as easily be applied to the word “Society” or the word “politics”.
If such a thing was happening, then indeed, that would be wrong. People are saying that a lot of things have gone wrong, due to religion. Not everything, however. But, you see them making claims, and not backing up the reasons they believe what they believe. However, they do have non-knee jerk reason. They just are not explaning them to you.
Primarily, the main reason is that historically, religion has claimed to be necessary to goodness, and that does not seem to be backed up.
How do you define religion? Personally, I define it baised on how it defines itself, as interpreted by the Rabbis of my youth.
You are seeing a strawman, instead of what I said. Do all atheists have the same arguements? No, but you seem to think they do.
Tell me, how in hatred of religion irrational. Justlook at all the minor ways it introds unwelcome into people’s lives.
It is quite possible to be foolish about one thing, and not foolish about others. done yet.
You just keep on using that word in ways Og never intended.
Now, you may have had a personal experience that convinced you of the existance of god. It may also have conviced a sceptic.
However, until told otherwise, I will stick to believing that you have been raised Christian, and feel satisfied. No real proof needed. Not that you are being rational, when you mean to say reasonable.
P.S. The red shirted crewmember may have been taking it for granted that relgion has caused this, or that negative thing without showing proof. Howsever, that does not mean that proof does not exist, or that he is having a knee-jerk reaction.
I disagree with your representation of religion. It’s that simple. It’s not me making up an idea of religion. I think the atheist argument depends too greatly upon Religion being irrational as defined, which I completely disagree with. I only like speaking for myself, and dislike quoting what others believe words to mean.
‘Religion’ isn’t a monolithic entity, it is descriptive of a certain type of social organization. ‘Religion’ has claimed pretty much everything that can be claimed.
I define religion as a belief system. Hatred by it’s very nature is irrational. Hatred is born of ignorance.
I disagree with your assessment of my word usage. Despite what your atheist deity has to say on the subject. ;p
A sceptic knows that absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. They also know that corrolation isn’t causation.
Your intuition is partially correct. I was raised in a hodge podge of belief systems, the fact that I was born on Christmas Day however, does put Christianity pretty high on the hierarchy however. However, the society in which I live, being that I am American was heavily Christian. Ok, I will stop using the term rational and change it to say that the atheist arguments are not very reasonable.
Correct, and this statement can be applied to a belief in God as well. The point I am trying so vainly to make is that pointing at “religion” as causal to the world’s problems is meaningless, it’s the same as saying “Humanity causes most of humanity’s problems.” The answer is, yes that’s true. What is untrue is that ‘atheists’ are somehow operating under a different social paradigm, that they can excuse themselves from the responsibility for society and it’s problems.
The word ‘problem’ is neutral, it is neither positive nor negative. Certainly Religion is causal of many things, but the basic premise looking for some sort of positive or negative moral equivalency that we can place on a scale is ridiculous. Most of our western morals come from a combination of three very religious societies, the Jews, the Greeks and the Romans. So demonizing religion for not living up to the morals that it laid down for you in some great antiquity, is simply a flawed premise.