and yet you ‘walk alone’ and ‘do not have religion’ and are not any of those things.
What do you offer the world?
what have you replaced this stuff with?
the irony - it burns.
No, it creates divisions and hatred that wouldn’t exist without it.
An insane voice, the voice of evil and madness.
Nonsense, the effect of religion on the “youth” is primarily torment and abuse.
Loners don’t want “fellowship”, and they certainly aren’t going to get it from religion.
No, religion corrupts morality; it is a source of evil, not good. Genuine moral behavior requires that religion be rejected or sidelined.
I’m linking this thread again, because it provides answers that there do exist atheist organizations that provide some of the benefits Mickiel has attributed to organized religion, including fellowship and a moral compass.
Of course, they don’t claim to speak for all atheists, but no church/temple/whatever claims to speak for all theists, either.
Abortion rates generally appear to roughly equivalent to the United States.
Hard to say. It’s been going down as birth control becomes more commonly used. I found a stat from the Health Ministry from 2007, giving the abortion rate as 9.3 per thousand women. (In the 1950s, it was 40-50 per thousand women). This compares to a rate of 19.5 per thousand in the US in 2005, and 18.2 in England and Wales.
Official statistics can be misleading, though, because doctors don’t always report abortions, partly because some do them under the table for cash, and partly because if it’s a teenage girl or an unmarried woman, they don’t want that getting out and affecting the woman’s reputation.
Speaking as an atheist, I find your analysis insightful.
None of those are unique to religion, and not all of them are even beneficial.
Worst. Turing Machine. Ever.
Agreed.
You have to admit that amongst any given congregation, there is tremendous potential for strong unity. This could prove to be a bad thing, even without the spectre of militant action. When you unify a group, it becomes that much more difficult for even mild dissenters to stray (think independently). Which is to say that unity itself may not be a net positive.
That is a bit extreme, there are crazy people in all walks of life, we should seek to treat the cause of insanity (which is not always religion). But, as pertains to unity above, one has to wonder on whose behalf that voice is being raised, and to what ends.
While it may not always be obviously bad, there are also subtle effects of belief that cause problems for young people (and the adults they become). In the end, we all have to deal with your children, they belong to society, it is not entirely clear why some people think they should control their children’s growth in ways that can leave those children emotionally scarred, confused and sometimes dysfunctional. My personal experience, FWIW, illuminates religious teaching as tantamount to child abuse, the churches desperately need to be kept away from all preadolescent humans – let them view it on balance and make a rational choice about what to subscribe to.
Quite a bit of disunity, as well. At any rate, we have no lack of secular tribal markers, from nationality to which football team you support. This is a need that can (and already is) easily be filled by wholly secular means.
Religious groups certainly wield a lot of power in government, but this is not a positive in and of itself. The ends to which that power is put is what matters.
I’m not sure what you mean, here. If it’s just “Religions have a lot of money,” well… so what?
Not sure what you mean by this. It makes people feel good, and gives them good ideas? You can get that from Star Trek reruns.
There are plenty of secular youth groups out there.
Likewise, there are a lot of hobby and special interest groups out there. I’ll grant that this may take more of an effort on behalf of the loner, though.
I’ve never noticed a lack of morality on behalf of atheists. Or a particular surplus of it on behalf of theists.
Well, I can’t quite bring myself to say “ditto”, since my post was more articulate than yours.
I don’t think it a stretch to hypothesize that English is not Mickiel’s first language. This is not a statement on his (?) intelligence, but on his phrasing and spelling.
Again, atheists or atheism, not “Atheist”.
And again, nothing. Atheism is the lack of belief in deities, not a structured philosophy. Just like ‘not being a communist’ is not a political organization.
None.
You’re still a young man, right? Let me introduce you to a very valuable concept: Catholic school girls.
This is encountered more and more. People are coming of age that don’t know how it was just a couple of decades ago, when Religion did rule the daily lives of people. Priests coming round your house interfering in private stuff, forbidding marriages between protestants and catholics. Clubs that you could only join if you were of the right religion, even official functions, etc etc…
They see the last innocent remnants of what used to be a very intrusive and segragating power of evil and ask themselves what’s so bad about such a harmless phenomenon as religion.
I’m not sure I fully take your point, but it was almost three decades ago when I was in high school and discovered the truth about Catholic school girls and fornication. I did end up marrying one, and it was not forbidden, except that we had to do pre-cana classes and I had to make promises I had no intention of keeping.
There are of course variations and degrees in all countries.
In Europe the Black Crows have all but dissapeared, and that is a good thing.
Then what difference would it make if religion rules the world?