Caliann the Elf <calianng_graves at yahoo.com> writes: > > If religion is harmful, does it necessarily follow that the absence > of > > religion is beneficial? > > Relatively, yes. > > ************************************************************************************** > > Please elaborate on this, I may have misread it. Does this mean > that if we kill off everyone that has a belief in the supernatural > and burn every copy of any kind of scripture, we will have the > ability to achieve Utopia? No, of course not. Utopia means what it says (i.e. "No place"). I also don't think that forbidding, and actively rooting out, religion would have a good outcome, so I don't propose it. But I *do* think the world gets better each time a person gives up religion. On the average -- since some people are pretty crazy. > For me the real bottom-line argument is that religion, any religion, > is *false*. Basing your life on a falsehood is bad. > > ************************************************************************************** > So are you telling those in this forum that if they *do* believe in > a religion, there entire lives are false? If they disagree with > you, it's only because they have been brainwashed by religion and > are therefore "bad"? No, of course not. Believing some false things, even very basic ones, doesn't always and inherently make your entire life false. It's very unlikely that you didn't do some things for good reasons anyway, and perhaps some of the things you did for bad or stupid reasons are still good -- or you'll think they're good when you select your new value system. > Very mildly. But they're still encouraging people to believe things > on faith rather than evidence, for example, and that's bad. People do > far to little thinking. > > ************************************************************************************** > > Clarify this for me please, are you saying that those that follow a > religion don't think? Well, I wasn't. I was saying that religion encourages faith, meaning belief without evidence, and that belief without evidence is bad. And I was saying that people don't think enough -- that's people in general, not just religious people. > In fact, in all of them, you will find a LOT of > > teachings that can be effectively translated as "Will you PLEASE be > > NICE to each other? Thanks, this is your God." > > Then you've never looked at the bible, in particular. > > Many examples of the Bible either calling for harm > explicitly, or rewarding people for harming people, or punishing > people for not harming people. > > **************************************************************************************** > > I have a PhD in Theology, actually, even though I am not a > Christian. I have studied the Bible in Hebrew and Greek. I did not > say that ALL of the Bible taught peace and love, only that there > were many teachings in it that set forth these ideals. Especially > in the Greek Scriptures. (Commonly called the New Testement) In > college, we used to say that we were glad that Jesus came along, > because God sure was grumpy in the Hebrew Scriptures. What you actually said was: I have yet to see the Scriptures of a major religion propose violence and harm upon others, even those not of their religion. The Bible does not do so. I pointed to examples of the bible propose (in fact, call for) violence and harm upon others. > Religion encourages people to make decisions on "faith" rather than > evidence. > > ******************************************************************************************* > > I accept the existence of Pluto on faith, not evidence. I certainly > have never seen it. I also accept the existence of atomic particals > on faith, not evidence. I have yet to see an atomic partical. > <chuckles> Jastrow once said that it takes more faith to believe in > evolution than it does to believe in creationism, because at that > point, there was less evidence to support evolution. What's your > point? I'd say you accept Pluto on authority, rather than faith. You believe the people who say it exists. Furthermore, *they* say it exists because they have evidence for its existence. And they describe what and where it is, and other people who check there see it too. That sounds like evidence, if at a remove, rather than faith, to me. For atomic particles, I've observed some of them in person. I've measured electron charge, and I've followed decay pathways. That last, at least, is nonsense. There is a tremendous volume of evidence to support evolution. The argument is about details and mechanisms; nobody that gets taken seriously doubts the basic fact of evolution. Starting with the fossil record, and following through with our growing understanding of DNA, and the experiences of people doing selective breeding for millenia. Science teaches skepticism and the importance of reproducible tests. Religion teaches acceptance of authority, and the importance of authority. > Religion often introduces non-human scale issues into the > argument, which completely discombobulates most human thought > processes and leads to wrong results for the humans. > > **************************************************************************************** > > This is different than trying to hold a conversation with Mathmatics > professors in what way? Mathematics professors agree a lot more than priests do. > Right, and an institution that teaches beliefs and rules of action > should get no blame for bad effects of their teachings. Sorry, not > buying it. > > ************************************************************************************************* > > I just have to wonder, are you against religion...or the scriptures > religion tends to be based upon? Most of the bad effects that I > have seen perpetrated by so-called "religion" was AGAINST their own > holy scriptures. Not only that, it was *people* that twisted those > same codes into things that would serve their own purpose. Religion is a tool tailor-made for that purpose. > Is the Islamic religion to blame for the attacks of Sept. 11th, even > though the Islamic scriptures clearly say that killing innocents is > a grand way to get a one way ticket to Hell? Or are the leaders of > the offshoot cult to blame for deliberately twisting those > scriptures to gain themselves an army to feed their hate? I'd say the people who did the actual deed are to blame, and the people who financed them (knowingly) are to blame, and the people who helped them (knowingly) are to blame. I'd also say that, to a lesser extent, the leaders of mainstream Islam are to blame for allowing this perverted offshoot to exist among them (and, in fact, often *encouraging* it). And I'd point out that religion was a tool that they used to justify their actions and to motivate themselves for those actions. > ************************************************************************************************* > > Your tone on this particular thread is different from what I am > accustomed to reading from you. You really dislike opposition on > this topic, don't you? I'm so used to opposition on this topic I hardly notice it. It's something I've been thinking about for about 40 years, so I'm hearing less and less new, and finding it more and more annoying. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info