I’m assuming that when the aliens come, we’ll all convert to Scientology and follow John Travolta and Tom Cruise into battle. We’ll tear down the Cathedral in Washington and replace it with a 200 foot tall soup can.
(A) That presumes it is something you can actually isolate in the hardware/firmware, as it were, as opposed to a phenomenon emergent from the process of [imagination/pattern recognition/existential awareness/drive to ask “why”].
(B) And in the second, bolded sentence, you just explained why I’d find it absolutely terrifying to aspire or look forward to the possibility of what you posit in the first. Would we next want to go into their heads and fix the “defects” of patriotism or material ambition? What keeps the proverbial Them from “fixing” whatever makes someone gay or whatever makes you prefer individual to collective betterment? It must be painful for you to feel you share a planet with six billion borderline schizophrenics, but I’d rather go with Dio and others down the road of greater education and more rigorous examination of whether religion accomplishes anything.
On what basis do you make this assertion? Erroneous beliefs frequently persist in the face of evidence of their error. Indeed, it has been shown that definitive proof of error can tend to reinforce belief in some significant proportion of believers.
Cite? I thought they were more often absorbed through syncretism. Christmas = Midwinter, Easter = Equinox = Lupercalia, etc. The Romans were particularly adept at this, naming local gods as aspects of their own.
True, I suppose. The point of both my post an Iannaccone’s article was simply that while many people are absolutely certain that religiosity will decline whenever education and science become more common, it’s a flatly untrue claim, and the data that we have say as much. Now it may be the case that there’s a parabolic relationship, but you’d have to agree that Occam’s Razor wouldn’t lead anyone to such a complex conclusion when the much more simple conclusion is simply that education doesn’t give people any reason to reject religion, and often gives people a reason to accept it.
It’s more like the previous indigenous aspects bubble back up and reassert themselves in disguise, despite attempts to impose a state religion. Those things can then be retroactively syncretized to fit with the official religion (worship of mother goddesses being retrofitted as veneration of the Madonna, spring fertility celebrations are now Paschal (Easter) celebrations, the death and “birth” of the sun at the winter solstice becomes a celebration of the birth of Jesus, etc. It wasn’t pagans just deciding they liked Christianity better and fusing it with their own traditions. They had Christianity imposed on them and found ways to continue traditions they liked in Christian garb.
Sometimes that was true, mostly it was not. Christianity wasn’t imposed on Viking Scandinavia. It was adopted freely, first by the king and later by the people – but not with much if any force. The same can be said for most other Germanic people. Gibbon, who had little love for Christianity, describes how when Julian tried to repaganise the empire, his efforts were in vain because the people had lost interest in the old religions. Later some Christians became rather more nasty, but that was only after it had already become the dominant religion.
To name but one of many, during the past year, I attended my best friend’s father-in-law’s funeral and two memorial services for my father. They may not do much for you, but the words and rituals that religions have for such times give comfort to many, including people like myself who aren’t that religious.
If you don’t think that ameleration of grief is a legitimate need, then you must be a being from another solar system.
Actually, Dio, pagan religions have absorbed dieties from other religions without imposition of a state religion or the use of force.
Ishtar became Astarte became Aphrodite became Venus.
Our Lady of the Wild Things (Britomart, I think) became Artemis became Diana, a diety some Wiccans worship today, if I’m not mistaken.
I don’t know if recent research has supplanted her conclusions, but Edith Hamilton observed in Mythology that Zeus had so many lovers because, as his worship, he became conflated with other, minor storm gods and took over their wives.
Lil late, the airplane just landed. I’d say your in denial of your beliefs. If you were so “down to earth” and didn’t need faith as motivation, then you wouldn’t be calling it crap. You would also have a good understanding of why people choose and need faith. No facts from me I think some people are forced to choose religion just to make it in this world. I’d also guess faith has played a large part in our advancements in this world. Shocking enough, I don’t do religion either but I sure don’t think it’s crap.
To answer your question directly, I don’t think you can get billions of people to lay back & chill through life. If you believe in evolution like I do, you’d assume that without faith, humans would just become animals and the world would become a little more unsafe. I think its a good system
On the contrary, it has been a relentless enemy of all forms of progress. Faith is one of the first things that needs to be overcome in order to advance, because you can’t advance when you are focused on fantasy instead of reality. Faith is about stagnation and lies and delusion; not progress of any kind.
Well, you are wrong; it’s all “crap”. That’s much of the point; if something is true, if something is rational or moral or just in general a worthwhile idea then it can stand on its own merits without claiming the privileged status of religion. People slap the religion label on something when it is worthless, stupid or outright evil; then they can defend the otherwise indefensible by screaming about how it’s religion and criticism of it is wrong. If it’s a good idea on the other hand they aren’t going to bother. Religion is the moral and intellectual garbage heap of humanity.
More nonsense. Faith doesn’t make people more moral; it corrupts. Genuine morality requires that you either reject faith or sideline it, because genuine morality requires that people care about actual people and actual consequences; not about imaginary things like souls and gods. Nor is obeying arbitrary rules supposedly created by an imaginary god morality; it’s just mindless obedience. Faith is the enemy of moral progress as it is for all other forms of progress.
And “believing” in evolution is a lot like “believing” in gravity. Nor does it imply that we are any more or less moral.
You’re right, religion is just brain washing material. I guess I should have just answered the OP with a “You won’t see it happen so don’t worry about it.” I should also advise to be careful when and where you call someone’s belief crap. A trained killer may believe barney is god but are you gonna tell him he isn’t? Belief is all people got and there won’t be any year AD that we will all believe the same thing. Life would be pretty boring if we did, just a bunch of robots abiding by rules, perhaps adding a couple more inches to the tv each year through technology advances.
I say if you don’t believe in a god then you are a pretty smart person. That’s just my belief though. Another belief of mine is that if your are so advanced to dismiss religion as crap then you should also be well enough advanced to accept it. Personally, I’ve never understood it until Trihs came along but I find no point in understanding it because in the end, I just got to accept it. Somethings just aren’t worth being upset about.
I wouldn’t be surprised that the popular myths/religions would be replaced by a new religion. One not based on “divinely inspired” writings, but more like “The Secret”.
A lot of people like to be sheep. And why not? You always get “fed” something or other that others say thanks for.
Get ready to hear “Praise the Secret! It is true!” Ugh.
If you’re more concerned about when the US will drop christianity, it depends when we build the big bridges, or get cheap commercial flights over the ponds. 
I’m not trying to give you anything to “work” with. What I AM doing is saying that your atheist ideas are just as stupid as the “true believer” ideas you detest so much. YOU are the one responding with your knee-jerk reaction of defending your position with nothing other than “the facts” and “scientific proof” with no actual cites to actual definitive studies, just as the believers do.
BTW, I just looked in the local yellow pages and there are over two or maybe even three HUNDRED churches listed. When you say ALL religion is bad/evil/corrupt does this mean that you’ve throughly investigated all of these churches? Or is it (as I believe) that you have taken a quick position and proclaim it from the rooftops as the TRUTH (just as the believers do)?
You are the best example I’ve ever seen of the expression, when you point a finger, you have three pointing back at you.
Ah, there’s a classic one! “Your side is just as bad as mine!” A favorite of right wingers and religious believers; both groups that suffer from the problem that their side has no good arguments for themselves. So instead they try to pretend that both sides of the argument are equal, instead of arguing for their side.
What facts are you looking for? How about the laws of physics - those rule out the more typical versions of gods. I certainly can’t give you any “definitive studies” until you produce a specific claim for me to argue against.
And the believers claim things that are illogical, that contradict known facts, and have zero evidence for them; atheism doesn’t; atheism unlike religion fits everything we know of the world and doesn’t make any baseless or illogical claims. Your attempt to equate the claims of atheism and religion doesn’t hold up.
And, as has been stated over and over again, the logical default is disbelief. Just as it is for vampires and fairies, God should be disbelieved in until evidence that such a creature is even possible is produced.
Religion is “bad/evil/corrupt” by nature. That is one of their defining characteristics, because they are by definition baseless, delusional and irrational. They cannot be anything else without ceasing to be a religion.
You are, again, engaging in a standard religious/right wing well-poisoning technique. You are insisting that I have to meet a completely impossible standard before I am allowed to condemn something, in this case religion. What you are doing is nothing more than trying to rule out any criticism of religion whatsoever, since no one can meet your ridiculous standard of knowing every single religious group on the planet. It’s not necessary to do so in order to validly condemn religion any more than it is to study every racist organization on the planet before condemning racism. Racism and religion are both wrong because they are irrational, factually incorrect and destructive; it isn’t necessary to meet some ridiculous standard where I know every possible permutation of their wrongness before I condemn either of them.
I took time to read some of the thread. Der Der, what advancements do humans need to make? We are there buddy, we have everything on lock. There are few things we need to accomplish, a couple cures, an extra planet or two for comfort, and flying cars. Most advancements we’re making are just alternatives, most come out of boredom. I’d guess there a few religious people working at microsoft and nasa. I don’t think it affects advancements.
I just can’t believe my fellow atheist takes religion so seriously. Accepting there is no god is a privilege. Your so pro-“no god” that you could never cross someone “into” atheism. The way you attack believers, you make it seem like you don’t want others to “join” atheism. Obviously, people who believe have trouble accepting death but your basically calling them stupid for that. Being as advanced as you are, becoming upset shouldn’t be the outcome.
To top it off, to think your reality is the superior reality (don’t worry cause most people do that), shows ignorance. You may fit into a group of people who perceive most things alike but ultimately no ones reality is the same. Understand that its lonely at the top, sometimes people dumb it down on purpose.
Nonsense, there’s an enormous amount of technological and social progress that needs to be made. There’s an immense amount of suffering that theoretically could be prevented right now, much less what could be done with better technology. There’s life extension, intelligence enhancement. And there’s the distinct possibility that if we don’t advance as fast as possible our civilization will simply collapse due to its own errors.
More silliness. The believers won’t leave other people alone. Religion isn’t something that can be ignored as harmless; its efforts to warp the world in its insane image, to spread and destroy are relentless.
That’s nonsense. There’s only one reality for everyone. There is no “my reality” and “your reality”; there’s only reality.
I would say that religion will pretty much disappear when the reasons for it are solved in other ways. I was thinking about this and it seems to me that if the following were to occur, then religion would probably drift away:
- Personal immortality. If science figures out a way to extend the human life span indefinitely that would drastically take the punch out of one of the reasons people turn to religion - the fear of death.
- Purpose for life. It seems to me that many people find that religion fulfills a purpose. Their religion gives them value and this sustains them. I’m not entirely sure how this could be ‘solved’ and it would seem that if “1” were to occur, then this would take on more significance.
- Religious experience. I realize that religious experiences can be explained through altered brain states. I think that if this were more common - like say a video game you could play - then this ‘reason’ for believing would no longer have purchase.
Out of these three, I think number 2 presents the most problem (at least, as far as I can tell), since I can’t think of anyway to really address it (I’m an absurdist I suppose). While personal meaning is enough for me, I’m not sure that it’s enough for everyone else.
There are probably more reasons, but these are what came to me off the top of my head.
It would be part of evolution if we did collapse, right?
You have got to figure out a way to rephrase that cause no one will take it seriously, even if it is true, you make it sound like the world is under attack this very moment and we all should take cover. Quit worrying, atheist?.. It’s not that serious… You may as will join them.
You should take that one to general questions. I’m just curious how many replies it would get. And who would have proof of any answer provided. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to find proof with some participation.
When Hell freezes over.