Religion MUST be evil

[Specforces]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

See, you can't be mad at Cen, because he gives a no bs straight answer without any really annoying emotions. Thanks for contributing Cenright.

[talisman]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

You know, for a long time (as an atheist) I missed the point of religion. I got caught up, as many here seem to have, in the details of what the religion teaches, the apparent absurdities or illogicalities in a given religion's depiction of, for example, the beginning of the universe or the beginning of mankind, or whatever.

What alot of you need to realize is that this is all relatively unimportant. Is it really that shocking that people can either be A)made to believe something or B)make themselves believe something? Sure, the close-mindedness might offend our sensibilities, but this in no way should be surprising, nor is it critical to understanding a given religion.

What religion is really "about" or, rather, I should say what makes religions popular, is largely the sense of belonging. It's evolutionary. If you belong to a given group which shares your beliefs, then faced with threat there will be more people to aid you, and faced with hardship there will be more people to support you. And you're probably going to raise your offspring to believe the same beliefs, so that they too are protected by the group. In short, belonging to a group of people with similar beliefs is evolutionarily advantageous. (now of course, there's a competing force of individuality that always expresses itself [especially in times of high resource availability and lack of outside threat] and eventually leads to the splitting of groups once they become too large... but no need to get into that here).

The danger of religion (and of all forms of groups... socio-economic groups, nations, races, hell even a high school clique) is outgroup bias. This is the tendency to view others who don't share the beliefs (or really any other characteristic) of the group as threatening to the group. This leads to conflict, squabble, and eventually can escalate all the way into war.

So am I saying religion is the culprit of all wars? Well, it's probably responsible for a lot of the wars that have existed, but that doesn't mean the wars wouldn't have happened if religion didn't exist. Conflict will always exist when there's a scarcity of resources.

So... religion evil? No, the evil aspects of human nature are evil, and humans tend to make up the membership of religions and pretty much every group.

[Specforces]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

Talisman, I agree with you 100%.

[Anticrombie0909]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

lol jesus freaks itt

btw Laharl you are not a missionary sent from God, stop acting like one you pretentious twat

[ddr_dude]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

I agree with most of you guys here. I dont know about you but as a kid it was hard for me to see this giant robed, bearded man sitting there watching over us. It didnt make sense, I always wanted to question it but was nervous that I would get in trouble for questioning religion. When I was always told; "God's always here and works in mysterious ways" or "God will fix everything" but the older I got I looked for clues to his existance and found nothing. And now with all this war and attacks going on, if "God" was infact real you would think he/she would have shown themselve by now to stop all this bs going on in the world.

[Laharl]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

Being religious in and of itself has nothing to do with following the religious morals that are actually healthy, such as being kind and turning the other cheek. The percentage of "religious" people who follow these morals is pretty much a low single-digit number.

Fault of humanity, not religion. It's not like you're a saint yourself. You just think that it's okay because you don't proscribe to believe in anything higher.

You prove it yourself by being all fanatical about your religion, and yet exploding into textual fire at Spec as soon as he insults you.

I haven't said a damn thing about my religion in this thread. You, sir, believe I am fanatical about it, because I'm a very intense person and my disdain for people like you somehow equates to being a fanatic. I also spit fire at Spec any time he opens his mouth, because people hail him as being some sort of genius, when I haven't seen anything remotely thoughtful by him in years. He's used and hurt two people who I have been very good friends with. I plain don't like him. Pardon if I'm edgy when he opens his mouth.

Religion is instant ultra-hypocritcalism, and is behind pretty much every major war in history.

YAY FOR IGNORANT LIBERAL MEDIA IDEAS.

This is exactly what I've been talking about this whole time.

Name one. WWII? I suppose some could ARGUE that it was fought over religion, but the causes for WWII was basically Germany's feelings of being shafted after they lost WWI, which try as I might, I can't find anything to do with religion that started WWI either. Korea? Vietnam? Religion doesn't have anything to do either of those. The current conflict in Iraq? Despite the fact that Bush is an openly religious man, this war has nothing to do with religion. I suppose one could argue that it does because of the militaristic cult of Islam that decided to attack our country on our own shores, but then again, a cult is a cult is a cult and will believe what they will believe, proscribing religion as the reasons for their actions or not.

So let's go back in time!

Why did Rome conquer Greece? Didn't have anything to do with religion. Why did Rome fall to the barbarian hordes? Hm, didn't have anything to do with religion either. Let's skip forward to something people commonly use when talking about war and religion being inseperable: The Crusades. BUT! At that time, politics and religion were one and the same, and it was all centralized in one body. Corruption of power at it's finest. Those in charge wanted Israel. They used the faith of people to point them in the wrong direction, for political reasons. That is more of a sign why a single entity of control is evil, not religion in and of itself.

Basically, I just proved you wrong. In case you didn't notice.

Nothing wrong with that WHATSOEVER. That's what the human species was DESIGNED for. The "traditional family" (which isn't actually traditional) is FAR more unhealthy and uncommon, and always has been.

...Right.

Which is why statistics have shown people from "traditional families" have longer life expectancies, do better in schools, and eventually make more money than those from broken homes. Oh, and crime? The majority of crime is from people that grew up without a father or a mother, depending.

Traditional families are totally unhealthy.

Anyone who would sacrifice their happiness in the long term to fulfill someone else's expectations is a complete tool and is pissing away their life.

Anyone that acts in life with complete disregard to everyone else, soley focusing on themselves and their own ends, is "pissing away their life" because in the end, they will be alone, and humanity is a social animal. Why do you think so many celebrities completely self-destruct after becoming famous? They get cut off from normal social contact. Elvis is a prime example. If he and his band were at a hotel, he would have to stay in the room while the rest of the band could go about and do what they wanted. He would have been mobbed and probably injured. So he got to be alone, and when one is forced to be alone, they start to do self-destructive things.

I'm sorry, did you just imply that Spec is going to do poorly in life because he's not religious? You're retarded.

Spec is going to do poorly in his life because he's a pretentious twat that will always, always be alone. I won't be surprised the day he breaks down.

[Laharl]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

You know, for a long time (as an atheist) I missed the point of religion. I got caught up, as many here seem to have, in the details of what the religion teaches, the apparent absurdities or illogicalities in a given religion's depiction of, for example, the beginning of the universe or the beginning of mankind, or whatever.

What alot of you need to realize is that this is all relatively unimportant. Is it really that shocking that people can either be A)made to believe something or B)make themselves believe something? Sure, the close-mindedness might offend our sensibilities, but this in no way should be surprising, nor is it critical to understanding a given religion.

What religion is really "about" or, rather, I should say what makes religions popular, is largely the sense of belonging. It's evolutionary. If you belong to a given group which shares your beliefs, then faced with threat there will be more people to aid you, and faced with hardship there will be more people to support you. And you're probably going to raise your offspring to believe the same beliefs, so that they too are protected by the group. In short, belonging to a group of people with similar beliefs is evolutionarily advantageous. (now of course, there's a competing force of individuality that always expresses itself [especially in times of high resource availability and lack of outside threat] and eventually leads to the splitting of groups once they become too large... but no need to get into that here).

The danger of religion (and of all forms of groups... socio-economic groups, nations, races, hell even a high school clique) is outgroup bias. This is the tendency to view others who don't share the beliefs (or really any other characteristic) of the group as threatening to the group. This leads to conflict, squabble, and eventually can escalate all the way into war.

So am I saying religion is the culprit of all wars? Well, it's probably responsible for a lot of the wars that have existed, but that doesn't mean the wars wouldn't have happened if religion didn't exist. Conflict will always exist when there's a scarcity of resources.

So... religion evil? No, the evil aspects of human nature are evil, and humans tend to make up the membership of religions and pretty much every group.

Thank you, that's more or less what I'm getting at.

You've shown an ability to, basically, not care what another person believes. If you think they're illogical, you just shrug and continue on being sociable regardless (or at least I hope.)

As I have said, go ahead and don't believe. I don't particularly care. The moment you come preaching to me how I'm stupid and illogical having spent my life in pursuit of a goal, I am gonna flip a wig. (And if this thread isn't proof enough, I'll probably go right back around do the same thing right back. =\)

I suppose something I've been trying to get across is more or less, live and let live. I want people to stop riding me about my beliefs because they don't understand why I think the way I do. I understand why some people choose to be one religion over another or simply choose to not believe in God, and that is why if somebody demonstrates a well thought-out reason as to their own beliefs, I don't say anything to them.

This whole group clique mentality at FFR is strangely reminisent of high school. There's a couple "big names", or rather, popular people, and in order to be popular, you agree with what they said. Free thought is discouraged. Proof of that is if a poor kid mentions in another thread he's Christian, people will jump down his throat about why they feel he's an ignorant chump, and if a guy says God doesn't exist, he gets a pat on the back from 15 other posters.

[Afrobean]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

regarding cults: The only difference between a cult and religion is social acceptance/amount of practicing members.

And actually, those who attacked us on September 11th were religious extremists, not cult members. That said, the attacks of 9/11 have absolutely no real connection with the war in Iraq. The government gave bogus reasons of "durr iraq aided terrorists" but then later stopped saying such things when they realized the people saw through it as bull****. Remember how halfway through it changed from "they helped terrorists and they have weapons of mass destruction" to "let's liberate Iraq because Sadam is evil."

And if you don't think the war in Iraq had any connection to religion, then I feel sorry for your parents, teachers, mentors and anyone else who ever tried to teach you anything, because clearly, they failed.

Free thought is discouraged.

Irony.

[BluE_MeaniE]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

I think something many people are missing is the purpose of religion.

No, religion isn't about power or anything. It's only about explaining the unexplainable. It's not philosophy because it doesn't so much deal with purposes, but it deals with the bigger picture. It deals with the how and why.

Now, here's the problem: much of what couldn't be explained before can be explained now with the ever-increasing knowledge of science.

Taking the Judeo-Christian faiths, we have creationism, the shape of the earth, the spread of languages and all that stuff that used to be explained by the Genesis story and whatnot. Now we know better.

The way I see it is when you start ripping down all these stories of, say, the bible, why believe the rest of it? Why would I believe in the bible when I know that Genesis is all wrong and when Exodus is all wrong and when Revelations is all wrong?

Maybe it could be a metaphor. Sure. I'll give you that. But if that's the case, it's not really real and therefore just a philosophical guide. So I choose not to follow it. Especially because the morals in the bible suck. (Of course, this is up to debate. I'll give you that.)

On another note--too much tolerance is not a good thing. I won't tolerate something I think is wrong. Even something I'd bet my eternal soul on. Neither should you in what you believe in. Difference is--only one of us can be right. I hope it's me.

On a third note, I get the implication that everyone should let everyone else believe what they want because everyone else's belief is equally valid. I just get that feeling. That's wrong too, like above. Orthodox Jews believe that fleas (or is it ticks?) are made from sweat because it says so in of their god-sent texts. That's wrong, guys. Everyone knows that, but they MUST believe it otherwise they're cast out as heretics. So not everyone's belief is okay.

Lastly, the idea that you have to be religious to be moral is poppy****. Morals just...are. They come from the question "what's the best choice?" "What has the lowest risk and highest gain?" The best thing for me (or anyone, it seems to me, but that's more of a philosophical debate) is to be moral--that's why I am.

[Kilgamayan]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

I won't tolerate something I think is wrong.

Given world history, I hope you realize the ramifications of a statement as broad as this.

[BluE_MeaniE]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

Oh, well, sure. No, I mean you should keep your mind open, but not open enough that your brains fall out.

Of course I'm open to the fact that I'm wrong. I just meant that modern super-tolerance is too much.

Yes, that statement was way too broad. Sorry, thanks, sorry.

[DemonicGamer12]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

I won't call you racist. I won't call you anything. I'll just call you a moron. Sorry.

[Neviathan]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

I won't call you racist. I won't call you anything. I'll just call you a moron. Sorry.

That doesn't work. It's like having a gear system with a number of contact points equal to the number of gears in the system. It just doesn't work.

[banditcom]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

I'm always going to do poorly in my life because I'm a pretentious twat that will always, always be alone. I won't be surprised the day I break down.

Fixed.

[Specforces]

Re: Religion MUST be evil

Laharl, you swear you can tell a lot about a person over an internet message board. These "two people I hurt." You've got to be ****ing kidding me. One I've never met, and the other I've met once. You liked both of them and you couldn't attain what I had, their affection. Alone, never. Pretentious, yeah I can be pretentious at times. But at least I'll never be pathetic like you. I've already accomplished a lot in life, and I have a lot more to do.