Really? Seriously?
We need to spell out the destructiveness of religion to you? Really?
Ever been a pariah in your own town? Ever receive tons of hate mail and receive physical threats directed at you and your family? How do feel about being on the national news, triggering people from all over the country(and some religious organizations) to “strike a blow against persecution”?
An atheist spelling out the “destructiveness of religion” is a lot like an anarchist spelling out the “destructiveness of government”.
You can demonstrate how people have used religion as a tool of oppression, just like an anarchist can demonstrate how people have used government as a tool of oppression. But that will not prove anything regarding the de facto value of religion or government. It will only prove that humans use all sorts of means of power to oppress each other.
The issue is, how can you claim that religion is the problem per se unless you can provide an alternative example? What is the “no religion” alternative? What is the “no government” alternative, and what do they look like?
Then you have been greatly cheated.
Or provide authentic evidence, apparently.
Actually, Luke kinda more crashed than landed.
If I’m parsing you right, your position is ‘no places (large enough that I count them) exist without religion (only counting complete universal atheism here, not European disinterest) and thus, lacking a functioning perfect alternative to compare against, religion cannot be criticized’.
Is that close? If not, please explain what is barring us from evaluating the influence and effects of religion.
No, religion can be criticized. But unqualified assertions/wholesale condemnations of religion like those I quoted in Post #34 are absurd. I am waiting for someone to show me otherwise.
Nothing. I am all for evaluating the influences and effects of specific religions, though I don’t know if it’s possible to evaluate “religion” in and of itself, because what are you evaluating it against?
The similarity to religion is simple: we don’t all agree on whether or not we should teach either a particular religion or the Santa myth to children. Since neither fact-based, there is no principle of teaching facts that is involved. As such, it is considered outside the domain of teachers to teach.
The difference is why we don’t think it is the teacher’s purview. With religion, people think being taught the wrong one at an impressionable time is dangerous. (This includes atheists, BTW. The wrong one just happens to be any of the God-based ones.) With the Santa myth, it’s the opposite: it’s considered a bit of harmless fun, and we don’t want others to ruin it for those who wish to teach it to their kids.
The main reason it causes ire is that people remember how much fun they had as kids believing in Santa. People enjoy the idea of a childhood where you can believe things that you have to stop believing as an adult. They find this experience to have been pleasant or even beneficial to them, so they want to preserve it.
Societies have taboos. Consider how upset parents would be if the teacher swore in front of them. We have a custom that such words are not to be used in front of children. And we have a custom that you don’t spoil Santa Claus. Parents, of course, are free to agree with their own kids.
I read assertions such as those as brief summaries of positions, not the whole sum argument for the positions.
I compare it against all the instances where religion isn’t having an effect. As I don’t live in a cult compound such situations aren’t hard to come by. In fact it’s possible to compare people with different levels of religious belief and observance and observe different levels of effect - there are some things where a mild amount of religion seems to function as a good thing but cult-level amounts do not, such as its role as an opportunity to meet people and build societal relations.
Oh, and in my area “religion” means Christianity, all flavors. This may vary for others.
Its possible, but religion is negatively correlated with wealth, education and intelligence.
The kinds of people who live in societies where people are wealthy and stable enough to celebrate christmas are probably more prone to secularism to begin with.
I think one reason santa isn’t believed is we know santa isn’t real. If your parents don’t put presents under the tree, then the presents don’t go there. But you can’t prove or disprove god anymore than you can prove or disprove there are giant squids living in the 6th dimension. Theres no way to prove or disprove a deity.
Simple. No creation myth. 
Why would there be a need to disprove something that doesn’t exist?
It don’t take a lot of folding green to celebrate christmas. It just takes it to celebrate well. Where “well” is defined as “secularly”.
Christian deities are easy to disprove, because the dude has “never lies” built into his definition. There are so many easily disprovable claims made by christianity that I’ve never met a branch of it that didn’t fold like wet paper under all the disproofs.
It’s true that you can’t disprove all theoretical gods if that includes not defining what a god is - for example I’m a god, and so is my desk fan, and I defy you to prove that either of us don’t exist. But the big famous gods that all the fuss is made about, with all the creation myths and spectacular claims? Easy targets. Easier than Santa Claus, actually, because one can always claim that Santa is doing his magic somewhere else where you haven’t looked, whereas gods tend to have a lot of fiction on record in established and examinable places.
How so? You’ll have to actually make a case for me to respond to this.
I don’t disagree with you necessarily, but I guess it depends what you mean by “cult - level”.
If we’re specifically talking about Christianity; a religion with a definite beginning and historically traceable growth and development, then the question: “Has Christianity made the world better or worse” is a topic that can and should be debated.
You said: “You’re convinced someone magical is out there. He knows everything you do. He’ll reward you if you’re good and punish you if you’re bad.”
I’ve never heard a Christian philosopher describe God as “magical”. God knowing everything that humans do is only a necessary condition of God-ness. Since God must by definition be the ultimate source and sustenance of reality, if a being could be unaware of an event in that reality, than it could not be God.
Similarly, God must by definition be the ultimate source and standard of justice and righteousness. If a being failed to reward good and punish evil, then it would not be just and therefore not God.
The OP begins from several dubious premises:
If a teacher were to tell his/her infant students that “God does not exist”, there absolutely would be considerable outrage and likely a firing.
So even if it made sense to put these two entities in the same bracket, this would be demanding consistency, the *opposite *of hypocrisy.
Firstly from a empirical point of view, they both potentially exist; it is just that no good evidence has been presented. And it makes sense to assume non-existence until such evidence materializes. And that, in an ideal world, would be the end of the debate.
But in terms of proveability, at least Santa just requires new physics to exist. There are gods which are self-contradictory and we are safer assuming don’t exist than Santa.
[bolding added]
Yes there is a big difference between what an adult can say to another adult, and what a teacher can say to his/her child pupils.
I am surprised that you are surprised by this. There is considerable scope for creating threads of the type “How come I can say <X> to an adult, but there’s outrage when I say it to a group of children that are in my care?”
I’m sure they don’t, since that would make the scam too obvious. But Christians 500 years ago believed in magic - otherwise they would not have believed in witches. Is a witch walking on water magical but Jesus walking on water not magical?
If God does miracles, he does magic.
If we were socially committed to Santa, we could say that no presents is for the best, or that the kid was bad and therefore no presents, or the kid didn’t pray/wish hard enough. Or that Santa works in mysterious ways.
They all work for God, after all.
You can disprove specific deities, like a tri-omni God, and God could probably prove himself beyond reasonable doubt if he cared to do so. You can’t disprove all gods since that is not a well defined set.
Fascinating map. Tennessee and Louisiana make it look like an Ishihara plate.