Because “Medicine, Justice, Engineering, Plumbing etc” are useful, while religion is destructive, not to mention factually incorrect and/or imaginary.
This is a statement of blind faith on your part.
The idea of Medicine is revered because it holds promise of universal Health.
The idea of Law is revered because it holds promise of universal Justice.
Religion hold promise of Spiritual well-being (“Salvation”). All matters spiritual are most intractable and difficult to rationalize, so there is a lot of confusion. Obviously, billions of people find religion useful. Are they all idiots?
No, it’s based on the evidence.
Err, no, it’s not “revered”; it’s respected because it works, and it keeps people alive longer.
It’s not all that revered; I see plenty of disrespect from most people. It doesn’t promise “universal Justice”; it’s simply better than constant violence.
Fools, predators and victims, not idiots.
Our enlightened atheist friends seem to have conveniently forgotten Soviet Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and a number of other supposedly atheist nations.
(Although Chinese communism was, to be honest, more or less a personality cult of Mao Tse Dong when he was around.)
This has been said a million times. When a gov. waves it’s hands and says of the populice, “You are know all good Marxist Atheists”, that does not make them an atheist country. Quite the opposite, in fact. Also, communism is not an atheist idealogy. Instead, it is just another religion.
D’oh! That should read, “You are now all Marxist Atheists”.
Atheism is just another form of religion, too.
No, it’s not. It’s not even close.
The funniest thing about these loudest advocates of Christianity is that if you read the Bible you’ll realise they’re exactly the kind of people Jesus was speaking against. If someone like Jesus were to appear in the US or UK today he would immediately be labelled a terrorist, probably arrested, held without trial and tortured.
If there is a god all these evangelical reborn Christians are going to hell.
They repaid the favour by engaging in persecution ever since.
New Iskander
They’re gonna get you on a technicality of rhetoric. They’re going to tell you that you can’t paint all atheists with one brush, even though these two in particular are willing to paint all religious people with the brush of fundamentalist Christianity and Islam.
So, don’t fall into their circular logic trap. While there is an atheist religion, and these two are card carrying members, others are atheists for other reasons.
For instance, a certain type of atheist, (the kind that starts, or participates in a thread like this one) needs no facts, but will claim they have many facts. They will use induction to put forth their point, while arguing for science (deductive reasoing) and claim that it’s of the highest virtue while ignoring it completely. Kind of like what Kayen said about Born again Christians.
This certain type of atheist will no accept that many of the great scientists throughout the ages felt that their science was a mystical pursuit and will claim that they made scientific discoveries ‘despite’ their belief in God.
In short, they will rationalize their disbelief in any way that they can, up to and including narrowly defining words in ways that suit their argument, and then will hound you with cries of “prove it” when you disagree with their interpretations of semantics. They will selectively use entries in a dictionary, only using the numbered definition that suits them. For instance, the word faith, they will only look at the definition that says a belief in God. They will completely ignore that it’s a synonym for belief and trust.
You are completely correct, atheism is a religion, but just as not all christians are Catholic, not all atheists subscribe to it. However, the two in this case will definitely argue with you for days that there is no religion called atheism, even though they themselves are prime examples.
You’ll notice how when Scott_plaid gave a monolithic definition for religion, and I pointed out how a good number of the world’s largest religions didn’t really fit that definition he completely ignored it.
They are very selective in the dogmas they choose to believe, and will continue to propose assertions that all religious people are “X”. They are unable to support it or even answer it when their statements are shown to hold no weight whatsoever.
I have this atheist tract around here talking about how there is no God. It’s really funny.
Again, to all of those atheists that do not fit the mold I am talking about, good lookin’. I am only talking about the atheists that are every bit as irritating as the born again christians they seem to hate.
Erek
The fact that religion serves particular human needs, and that some religions have been better fits for the needs of societies of their time than others, does not in any way inform us whether or not the tenents of those religious are accurate or not.
Part of being human, from prehistory on, seems to have included three basic needs:[ul]
[li]the need to understand, predict, and control the world around us[/li][li]the need to have a common base of postulates on which to justify the rules of the group[/li][li]the need to belong to the group and to set yourselves apart from “the others.”[/li][/ul]
Without some concept to fulfill each of those needs human society cannot exist. Religion doesn’t need to be the basis for any of them, but it historically it has fulfilled all three.
The tribe that used their folk science explanations of what the sun is, for example, to justify the rules of their group and to keep the group coherent, had an advantage. They prospered and won converts.
As society changed the needs of that society changed and the religions changed. The Romans needed a top down non-tribal religion that could provide a common base of belonging and rules across multiple cultures. Christianity was the perfect fit. Previous religions were tribal-based; Christianity could cut across tribes and unite them in a Big Tent. Like evolution, this is a non-linear process. Whether the concepts espoused are true or not is irrelevant. FAIK God could have made it all happen this way.
Some of those needs are now met by secular systems. We can potentially unite all religions under the bigger tent of secular axioms that include tolerance of others beliefs and human rights. The folk science of religious stories can be supplanted by real science. Group identity, aye there’s the rub. We still seem to have a need to have an us versus a them even if they be granfalloons. Religion seems to do that as much or more than nationhood. Some of what we see in the world today reflects religion as the basis for all three against secular systems as the Biggest Tent yet. Both the Islamists and the Religious Rights agenda are reflections of that struggle. If you think in terms of the selfish meme it is hard to see how anything but an ongoing stalemate will result.
When people finally understand that secularism is in and of itself a religious ideal, and has many dogmatic adherents, then maybe we can move forward. Until then, when people make these really fucking arbitrary distinctions as to what “religion” is, we’re not going to get anywhere. For instance Osama bin Laden has problems with secularism directly, it is two conflicting ethos, all based around this dumbass assertion of what religion is and what it isn’t. If secularism is so all-encompassing and all-embracing, how come so many “religious” people find it completely alienating? Secularism is the great white hope, just like Christianity and Islam. Secularism basically is taking Christianity and removing the God talk, that’s all it is.
People in this thread could really benefit from reading “Orientalism” by Edward Said.
Erek
Secularism a religion, atheism a religion, is their anything you don’t consider religion ?
Oh, and there’s a simple reason so many religious people find it alienating; namely the fundamentalists. Secularism is about tolerance and civilized behavior, and fundamentalism is barbarism; hatred and cruelty distilled and given God’s label. It’s not surprising the two conflict.
You really cannot define religion so broadly as to encompass any belief system, even ones that serve some of the same human needs that religions do.
And that is of course the problem that some religious people, in particular fundamentalists and literalists (be they Islamists or Christian fundamentalist or other), have with secularism. If one is to live in the modern world then one has to come up against the evidence that religion as folk science is just often wrong. That while religions have provided the basis for the axioms of secular multi-religious coexistance, religions are no longer required to provide the axiomatic basis of rules. Instead societies wanting to be part of the global community have agreed that certain axioms, such as human rights, are self-evident. Of course these axioms as dogmatic as saying that God told us so, and of course they were inspired by various religious texts, but the point is that it no longer demands any particular God concept to accept it. If different religious systems are memes then they woyuldn’t have lasted this long without the ability to defend themselves against other belief systems supplanting them. Whether it is because they have God on their side 
or not, thems strong memes that are unlikely to go away no matter how much secularism offers the world. And religion doesn’t want to get relegated to the passenger seat.
I don’t think human rights qualify as a dogma, but as a choice. Basically, if you don’t approve of human rights, you are essentially declaring yourself as a predator; someone who looks at everybody else as prey. Killing/imprisoning/restraining such people is not dogma, but practicality; if you don’t they will likely harm you or those you care for.
Right on, Kayen!
Hmmm. Failure to believe in what we today consider human rights in most of the world declares one as a predator. Sounds like you believe that idea to be pretty absolutely true even though there is no possibility of objective evidence for something that is essntially a value judgement. Of course I mostly agree with you*, but it must be noted that it is within recent memory that little of the world accepted that all humans had basic rights. Slavery has been common throughout human history, as just one small example.
*The qualifier being that the reason to respect human rights is not practicality and self-interest, but because it is right. It is a question of morality. Practicality would guide those in power to continue to ignore human rights as being in their self interest.
How could it not be true ? If your life and freedom mean nothing to me, am I not your enemy ? I’m not even talking about morality; I’m talking about the fact that my attitude makes me a danger to you.
Just because it was common ( near-universal in fact ), doesn’t mean it wasn’t stupid. Remember the quote :
That’s not a moral statement, but a practical one. The fact that so many people practiced rule by the strongest just made them vulnerable to exploitation by someone stronger. They did not cooperate against the predatory elite; they tried to be predators themselves and suffered for it. A more just system is better for almost everyone, morality aside.
True; this is why they were toppled by revolutions, or forced to change more or less at gunpoint. If they have the power, modern rulers ignore human rights. The more “civilized” ones aren’t much nicer, they’re just restrained by the larger culture.
Human rights are not about what I won’t let anyone else do to me; they are about I won’t let myself do to others. They are (to steal from a recent Terry Pratchett book) not on guard to keep the dark out, but on guard to keep the dark locked in.
Also Der Trihs, you are quite incorrect in your earlier portrayal of religion as not being “useful.” Individuals functionally care less about whether or not a concept is true as whether or not it is useful. Religion, whether or not it is objectively true, is useful and the proof of that is in the very fact that most people on this planet maintain some religious belief. They would not maintain it if it wasn’t useful to them. No doubt it is a bit less useful now than when science had little to show for itself and less yet that the average Joe was aware of, and a bit less useful now that much of the world accepts secular values in addition to their religious ones. But religion offers believers certainty (in their own minds at least) and that is a very useful thing to have. Especially in today’s very uncertain times. Science is about managing uncertainty and thus has much use too, but doubt remains and is unsettling to many. And science can not inform on questions of values. Secular value systems exist but are in debt to religious value systems for their origins.
You do no favors to secularism or to science by disrespecting the value and utility of religion in this world, whether you personally believe or not.