Religion (split from Q&A)

[Haykakan]

I do not by any means suggest that it be exponged and for as much as i liked lord of the rings i cant imagine taking a class for it. The reason i partake in religious conversations is because people dont take religious issues the same way they do lord of the rings. You do not feel indepted to Froto for destroying the ring because you know it is fantasy and he didnt do it to save you or anyone else. Religion is a toatlly different ball game though, it is a fantasy which people take literaly thus we feel that Jesus really did save our souls by sacrificing his life and we feel indepted to him thus we worship him in ways we consider fit (nevermind what he may have thought this would be). This "worship" has included killing those who do not wish to participate in your fantasy also torturing them, reidiculing, discriminating, evicting , deporting... I cannot treat it like the lord of the rings and forget about it because it has real life implications since people either take it seriously or use it for their own agendas. When you answer the questions that you do, many of the people reading the thread really do believe literally everything, by claiming to have intimate knowledge about this subject you end up making yourself basicly a deciple of sorts to these people and this gives you power over these fools. I am not implying that this is your intent since i dont know one way or the other but i think you get my point. Studying chrystianity or any other religion for historic purposes is fine and dandy but i think you know very well thats not the way many people look at religion and they prefer to selectivly use knowledge to justify their beliefs instead of studying religion in a objective manner.

[jgk3]

Re: Christianity Q&A

I agree with the quoting part but you never know if while your writing something if someone else isnt going to post things before you do thus it could be confusing what i am responding to.
My problem isnt with christianity but religion in general, i mean here we are discussing something which is based on stories and fairytailes and makes huge claims as to the existence of things and consequences etc..non of which can be proven and most of it doesnt even make sence yet there are people who devote their lives to such things and some who are even willing to die for it. I wouldnt treat a thread on pagan beliefs with as much contempt because those beliefs no longer enslave the minds of my people and have been replaced by various chrystian beliefs yet if you know religion which you seem to know then it is very clear that chrytianity, judaism, islam are all derivatives of sun worchip where they have replaced the sun with a image of themselves while claiming that it is god that has created them in his own image instead. The more one studies religion the more aware one becomes that they all are a sham and that most of the major ones are all basicaly sun worship where the sun has been replaced by the son and thats really about it. It annoys me to think that we spend so much resources, energy, brain cells..on something which couldnt be more irrelavent. I am sure there are plenty of verses, rules and stories about chrystianity i do not know about and perhaps i would find some of them amusing but thats where my interest ends. Speaking in general tems this religion and all the other major ones revolve around worshiping solar energy, but today we understand solar energy and it no longer needs to be worshipped as a matter of fact if we found someone worshiping solar energy we would probably call him a nut yet here we are worshiping its derivative instead. I am sure you know a lot about religion and that you pride yourself on the knowledge that you possess because it took effort on your part to gather such knowledge and comprehend it and now to explain it to us but in all seriousness what perpose does it serve? How is knowing all the details of this derivative of solar energy going to do you or us any good? You would have been much more productive studying solar energy itself thus perhaps getting something usefull out of it instead of making this thread and thus compelling me to write this long ass reply. I am not writing this to insult you nor anyone else for that matter but the more you know religion (and you claim to know plenty) the more it become obvious that it is only rellavent because we force it to be.

Religion is not irrelevant to man, otherwise it wouldn't draw so much attraction and be invited to shape the life of an individual after an idealized model of the cosmos.

Though religions work on the basis of myths, those myths aren't useless. Though they can be fictional, they aren't lies. They tend to be ideas used to explain some aspect of reality that is relevent to our experience. People want to know where they came from, why their lives are ordered the way they are, what kind of moral standard will bring some sense of order in their lives, etc...

In the 21th century however, we stand in the bulwark of a tradition that has used a secularized social order to power its giant leaps in technology, to such an extent that we can hardly identify with those farmers, carpenters and herdsmen in Bethlehem or Jerusalem during Jesus' time. Our modern ideals about kindness and happiness might look to you like they can be addressed through purely material means: through entertainment, economic prosperity, civl order, etc...

But many people don't think so, and they will still turn to religion in order to address areas in their lives they don't feel can be satisfied by a purely secular existence.

Maybe people aren't just happy with knowing that 2 + 2 = 4. They want to know that 2 +2 = 4 because God made it so. They just need that God as part of the equation in order to relate to that fact about mathematics at a personalized level they can relate to.

[Haykakan]

Re: Christianity Q&A

Religion is as relavent to man as man allows it to become. What you are describing here is basicly a security blanket that many of us could not do without as childeren, we felt safe draging it around with us but in reality it provided no security, as a matter of fact it triped us up on more then one occasion. Religion provides us with the same false sence of security that many of us got via security blanket and this false sence of security is very dangerous because it influences ones judgements on many things. if 2+2=4 because god made it so then why didnt god tell us this like in the bible or something? It is demeaning to humanity to take credit away from it and its accomplishments and give it to a imaginery entity of our own making instead. Stand up and take credit for your accomplishments and blame for your misgivings instead of praising god or blaming the devile. Such behaviour is childish and a sure sighn of immaturity.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Christianity Q&A

Religion is as relavent to man as man allows it to become. What you are describing here is basicly a security blanket that many of us could not do without as childeren, we felt safe draging it around with us but in reality it provided no security, as a matter of fact it triped us up on more then one occasion. Religion provides us with the same false sence of security that many of us got via security blanket and this false sence of security is very dangerous because it influences ones judgements on many things. if 2+2=4 because god made it so then why didnt god tell us this like in the bible or something? It is demeaning to humanity to take credit away from it and its accomplishments and give it to a imaginery entity of our own making instead. Stand up and take credit for your accomplishments and blame for your misgivings instead of praising god or blaming the devile. Such behaviour is childish and a sure sighn of immaturity.

Religion has created the entire power structure that makes up the world. To claim it is irrelevant is like claiming every year is a new year and everything that happened prior is irrelevant.

[Haykakan]

Re: Christianity Q&A

Religion doesnt create anything, people do.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Christianity Q&A

Religion doesnt create anything, people do.

Religion was created to bring order and discipline to society. It is no different than discipline that is applied to martial arts. If anyone wants to argue whether or not Jesus, Mohammed, etc. existed, just follow the history, the population distribution of Christians, Muslims, etc. and sure enough you'll find the evidence to support it. We have a society that doesn't believe certain individual changed the world but will believe a news article that projects the future of the economy. It's rather mind boggling.

[Siggie]

Re: Christianity Q&A

Regarding the soul or anything else that "can't be proven or disproven," please note that that does not make either outcome equally likely. FSM cannot be proven or disproven either, but would you say it's as likely that he exists as it is that he does not? Think about that... that was created to illustrate the hypocrisy of the belief in a god, especially a particularly god in light of all of the different religions people subscribe to in the world.

The same goes for the soul. The lack of evidence against, does not at all act as evidence for... However, the soul is not one of these cases. If the soul was as it is claimed: independent of the physical body. Organic injury to the brain would not affect cognitive functioning as it does. This is evidence against the existence of a soul or consciousness outside of boundaries of the organic brain.

[gegev]

Re: Christianity Q&A

W/o religion world will be submerged into an absolute anarchy.

There are people, who are convinced that they know everything and are the only right ones. They would answer, without exception, any question one may ask

Religion makes people understand that always there are things that they don’t know and it makes them humble a little bit, preventing humanity from collapse.

We need to be religious, at least, in following situations:
When people become absolutely hopeless; there is God to rely upon.
Belief to the God makes the death a little bit bearable, eventually.
Etc.

[Haykakan]

Religion was created to bring order and discipline to society. It is no different than discipline that is applied to martial arts. If anyone wants to argue whether or not Jesus, Mohammed, etc. existed, just follow the history, the population distribution of Christians, Muslims, etc. and sure enough you'll find the evidence to support it. We have a society that doesn't believe certain individual changed the world but will believe a news article that projects the future of the economy. It's rather mind boggling.

I think you make my points rather well, it is people that change the world, religion is simply a tool they use to do it with. Religion was created by people to explain the unexplained then laws were made based upon these explainations. My argument is that we have a much better way of explaining the unexplained now (scientific method) and that laws need to be made based on this approach vs religion. It is really freaky seeing creationism etc being taught while evolution gets questioned in a modern country like the USA. It is a lot easier not to use ones brain and simply say it is so because god wanted it that way, vs researching why it is so and finding and testing the answers. The later method will often provide you with real answers which you can use to build,cure,create... while the former would like nothing better then a recreation of the darck age. Sure people like mohamad and jesus existed and they used religion to gather followers and have greatly influenced humanity, but i would argue this influence has a disasterous divisive effect which has pitted one group against another. Our closest relatives are the persians yet we have warred with them many times due to our religious differences.

BTW this post was in reponce to kanadahyes post, this is why i use quotes i guess ill have to start doing that again.

W/o religion world will be submerged into an absolute anarchy.

There are people, who are convinced that they know everything and are the only right ones. They would answer, without exception, any question one may ask

Religion makes people understand that always there are things that they don’t know and it makes them humble a little bit, preventing humanity from collapse.

We need to be religious, at least, in following situations:
When people become absolutely hopeless; there is God to rely upon.
Belief to the God makes the death a little bit bearable, eventually.
Etc.

I fail to see how religion "prevents humanity from collapse". I would actually argue the very opposit point, religion creates artificial differences which make us look at one another in a inhuman way. the rest of your post is the security blnaket argument i adressed earlier.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Christianity Q&A

I think you make my points rather well, it is people that change the world, religion is simply a tool they use to do it with. Religion was created by people to explain the unexplained then laws were made based upon these explainations. My argument is that we have a much better way of explaining the unexplained now (scientific method) and that laws need to be made based on this approach vs religion. It is really freaky seeing creationism etc being taught while evolution gets questioned in a modern country like the USA. It is a lot easier not to use ones brain and simply say it is so because god wanted it that way, vs researching why it is so and finding and testing the answers. The later method will often provide you with real answers which you can use to build,cure,create... while the former would like nothing better then a recreation of the darck age. Sure people like mohamad and jesus existed and they used religion to gather followers and have greatly influenced humanity, but i would argue this influence has a disasterous divisive effect which has pitted one group against another. Our closest relatives are the persians yet we have warred with them many times due to our religious differences.

BTW this post was in reponce to kanadahyes post, this is why i use quotes i guess ill have to start doing that again.

What would laws look like in a society based on scientific evidence?

Some argue that what is bringing the world back to the dark ages is a break down in collective intelligence due to increased crime, disease, etc. as a result of liberalism and lack of discipline. If you have discipline over all aspects of human nature, you should also be able to control your weight, smoking habits, etc. Mind over matter. Unless of course, your mind is out of your control.