The Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[Lockeownzj00]

Originally Posted by TheSpacePope

It is a matter of trust as Nique said. Again, it is just a statement that people should not look at their personal viewpoint as more correct as someone else when it comes to matters of the faith. It is fine that you think that they are wrong, but it doesn't make you more right than they are when you don't know how the final hand is dealt either.

Look. You boiled the argument down and swiped it aside quite deftly, but unnecessarily. Just sticking "it doesn't make you more right" in there really provides no counter-logic. All you're saying is that you disagree in a more long-winded fashion.

Originally Posted by TheSpacePope

You simply cannot know, because you have not experienced the phenomenon, to use Asizens science to make the point.

We're agreeing. And once again, atheists' arguments prevail, because theirs makes the least assumptions. Atheists assume that since one's body and brain, the center of consciousness, shut down, they cease to exist, and that's the end of it. A religious person believes in a world of milk and honey that follows death. These ideas are not on equal playing ground. One is reasonable and the other is beyond conjecture. The one you should be telling this argument to is the religious.

Originally Posted by TheSpacePope

They believe what they believe, it is only when religion is used as a pretext towards violence that it no longer has anything to do with faith and falls into the realm of politics.

This is a colossal canard. I defy you to explain how people strapping bombs to themselves in the name of Allah is politics. This line of reasoning is so vague and undefined and no one gets called on it. People are encouraged to do these things because of extreme religious faith. They hate the people they are committing acts of violence against because of religious faith. Even if they are being orchestrated by a massive political machine, people can only be orchestrated in the name of God if they believe in God. Religion, above all else, because there is no standard of skepticism or criticism towards it, is considiered essentially exempt from any logical discourse, and it's why it's so 100% successful in getting people to blow themselves up.

Originally Posted by TheSpacePope

That religion is supposed to be a noble cause, one to teach men how to treat each other and how to live.

Be careful. I did not call religion or spreading it a noble cause. I called spreading truth a noble cause, which is what the religious are doing in principle. This is an admirable trait: in the case of religion I simply think it's terribly misguided.

Originally Posted by TheSpacePope

I harbor no Ideological Bias, and do not judge people based on their religion, just as I do not judge based on race, that is hardly equal in comparison to racism or alchemy.

The point of that passage was to say that no sane person (these days) disagrees that racism is a flawed ideology and that alchemy is patently false. There is no such thing as being "ideologically neutral" towards them because we know them to be irrelevant ideas. We have established that in the collective realm of thought. Yet in religion, we see this apologetics, which I propose need not be.

How does that sarcasm contribute to the discussion?

First of all: this thread needs a little laugh here and there.

Second of all: I think the sarcasm was warranted. The Invisible Pink Unicorn is an established parody of religion. Its use is to metaphorically portray the brazen preposterousness of belief.

Krylo: massive applause for the presentation of a much-needed point through the Boogeyman.

[quote=TheSpacePope]I just would like to talk about a constructive way to bring people together that wont sacrifice their faith.[/url]

And here's where we ultimately disagree. As Krylo has pointed out, religious convictions necessarily affect one's worldview. The inherent flaws and pitfalls of religious belief are too great to ever unify people--indeed, "without sacrificing their faith" simply isn't possible. Theoretically--theoretically, it may be. But again, once again, I fall back on the most likely solution:

1) Peoples of the Earth, through intense discussion and council, finally realize the errors of their ways and unify all their beliefs in a glorious amalgamation of faith, from Buddha to Jesus. Religion ceases to interfere with scientific advancement, no longer causes social harm, and all religious wars become the stuff of legend.
2) Humanity will, in the next century or so, hit a brick wall, where it realizes the very nature of its being is based upon scientific advancement. While religious faith has been waning, the choice between retrograde or progressive becomes clear. Humanity, as a social construct, slowly realizes the essence of humanity is building upon scientific discovery. It is forced to realize the inadequacies of religious belief (with a few stragglers, but a downward trend) and grows out of its "godliness."

Will this be an easy transition? Not necessarily. I believe those with extreme religious convictions will see themselves the end coming, and become even more virulent and violent (warning: incoming Hitler analogy. please to not misconstrue; Godwin's Law does not apply in this case). Like the Nazis in WWII, who in the last days only increased the intensity and extent of their genocide, the "fundamentally religious" will go out with a bang (quite literally); a violent spasm which may very well cost many human lives but will still be a spasm of death, not revival. My prediction is also contingent on humanity surviving. Something could clearly come up and screw us out of a future, and much of that has to do with our own cultural and societal in-fighting: the end of humanity would not be a galactic cataclysm, but a petty civil war.

Originally Posted by TheSpacePope

I respect that person that needs their faith, that it drives them, because Life is beautiful, and if you have a lens to focus that beauty, it helps you see it up close.

Be careful throwing around ideas like "life is beautiful." I completely agree with you but if we start mucking up the debate with even more subjective words like that it will go beyond repair.

I yield the floor to Mr. Harris once again:

Originally Posted by Sam Harris

...The fact that unjustified beliefs can have a consoling influence on the human mind is no argument in their favor. If every physician told his terminally ill patients that they were destined for a complete recovery, this might also set many of their minds at ease, but at the expense of the truth. Why should we be concerned about the truth? This question awaits its Socrates. For our purposes, we need only observer that the truth is of paramount concern to the faifthful themselves; indeed, the truth of a given doctrine is the very object of their faith. The search for comfort at the expense of truth has never been a motive for religious belief, since al creeds are chock-full of terrible proposals which are no comfort to anyone and which the faithful believe despite the pain it causes them, for fear of leaving some dark corner of reality unacknowledged.

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Actually, that's not exactly true. People are hurting people over religion right now, which is in now way different from all the people hurting each other over land, food, water, drugs, race, shoes, politics, wedding dresses, and even the very concept of true love.

...The difference being that land, food, water, politics, love, and shoes are necessary facts of life. I might side with you on drugs, and maybe wedding dresses, but the point is that while religious conflict in the end is still conflict, it is needless conflict. It is conflict that can be logically and should be logically avoided. There is no good reason to let ourselves succumb to it, and if we did away with it, if we grew out of it, a huge chunk of our conflicts would wither away.

Originally Posted by POS Industries

If a person is the type that's going to kill someone for any given reason, they're going to come up with a reason to do it whether that reason is religion, the last piece of pie, or whatever-the-hell.

That's not strictly true. I suggest Paradise Now as a great movie that follows the tale of two suicide bombers and what they go through before the attack.

The point is that religious faith and conviction changes people. Perhaps what may have existed before Yoosef's faith came along was an extreme attentiveness and deep conviction to whatever task he was provided with. Paired with religion, he became a killing machine. It is still religion which is at fault. It is religion which poisoned his mind with delusions of grandeur: salvation, martyrdom, and infidels, which is not the stuff of fundamentalists, but the Koran itself. Religion, in numbers (perhaps a tautology), turns otherwise unassuming or at the very least "normal" people into fanatics.

This is how cults work. Cults are distinctly different from say, serial killers. A serial killer is a crazy going crazy. A cult is an infectious disease, a toxic meme that spreads and consumes even the most reasonable of people. All religion is, really, is a worldwide cult with lots of cells, each with varying degrees of conviction.

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Now, it's nigh impossible to have B without A, but very easy to have A without B, and much more pleasant.

Much more pleasant, perhaps. Ideologically baseless? Still pretty much the same deal. It's just religion with fewer words, a lot of waving of the hands, and empty words like "something" and "spiritual."

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Belief in a god has caused a great deal of strife in the world, but it does a lot of good for a lot of people. Religious organizations have fed, clothed, and given shelter to the homeless, found families for orphans, aided the sick in underprivileged countries.

These acts in and of themselves are "good," but since the Nazis were the first to discover that smoking is cancerous, it does not follow that the Nazis are good, too.* Acts of kindness that truly stem from religion, indeed, are the most morally deceitful, because they do not originate from some independent and personal wish to be altruistic, but a desire to either a) follow the tenets of one's faith/please god b) give religion a good name c) not go to hell. None of these involves selflessness.

Originally Posted by POS Industries

To say it's religion's fault that crazy people go crazy and kill each other is no different from blaming video games for doing the exact same thing.

Yeah, last time I checked, World of Warcraft wasn't purporting itself to be a harbinger of absolute truth in this world and the next.


*again, misconstrue analogy = no. Not saying religion = nazism, using Nazism as a doctrine that is accepted to be flawed and false and obsolete which we all immediately recognise