Religion is stupid

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Mr. Hamtastic, Mar 17, 2009.

  1. Mr. Hamtastic whackawhackado! Registered Senior Member

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    Think about this: what is religion?

    From what I can tell it's a bunch of rules and rituals based on some deity and it's need for worship.

    However, I stop there. I say that the "faith" or "relationship with God" is seperate from Religion. Ever hear of the freemasons? Is their order so different from religion? I say no. Religion would and will stand alone, with or without a faith in X.

    Why? Think about how it calms the ignorant masses, gives people a sense of community, and an idea that an offender will "pay before God".

    Take away paradise/heaven/whatever, it would still survive.

    Now. This is not to say that faith is stupid. It is the man-made institutions to "worship" that are stupid.

    Just my opinion.
     
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  3. mikenostic Stop pretending you're smart! Registered Senior Member

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    That's an interesting way of wording it.

    This is the key phrase right here:
    Humans are social animals. We need a sense of belonging. Ever see people with few friends (that want more), or that spend way too much time alone and are lonely? Being by yourself/lonely takes a toll on a person.
    Religion seems to be that one crutch for people who can't seem to deal with reality very well.
     
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  5. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Families are stupid. What makes one set of DNA more significant than another?

    Society is stupid. So is indoor plumbing, cooked food and living in ecologically unsustainable societies.
     
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  7. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Money the family has aquired or any wealth it may have accumulated along the way.
     
  8. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Religion is - for all religions and various worshippers - a force that makes them feel contentment or connects them to a higher power.

    There's nothing inherently wrong with that - again, since some people are very closely watching me for any sign of non-orthodoxy

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    - for any given religion.
     
  9. Liebling Doesn't Need to be Spoonfed. Valued Senior Member

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    Sadly, I've seen perfectly intelligent individuals rationalize being involved heavily in their religion. They use God as a barrier to understanding, instead of working through rationalizing exactly what is going on in the world.

    It's much easier to believe that there is an outer hand guiding our behavior and the happenings in the world. It's simple, and we can say, "Well, that's God's plan" and move on without having to think it through further. I can see how people would adopt this method because they have other things they want to focus on and get through. It's also an easier set of rules to live by, when you believe that there is a power above that will exact some kind of retribution or reward for abiding or breaking those rules. We are a results oriented species, in that we want to feel like we are being rewarded all of the time. We feel better when we have a sense of someone's approval for our actions. Hence things like the WWJD paraphernalia, which makes people think about how their particular God or Gods would react to their actions and act accordingly to get favour from that God or Gods under the premise of doing good, because then good will come to you. We can earn divine rewards simply by following the rules and being good to each other. That sounds fabulous.

    Mike is right that it's also a sense of belonging to something, but in the bigger sense for some people, God is the ultimate parent and the ultimate giver and receiver of unconditional love. Everyone wants to be loved, so here is the ultimate power of love and if we just believe and abide, we can have that love not only in this life but in the next one or in heaven as well. And we even rationalize our temptation and sin by blaming it on an arch-enemy of our God or Gods, so that we can say that we were under the influence and were weak for a brief moment in time and make small reparations to our God or Gods to get back into favour. It is a lot easier than analyzing our actions and taking responsibility for our choices and actions in this life. No one likes to spend too much time in self-reflection because we don't like to examine our flaws too closely. Under a microscope, our intent could become clear and surely that would make our God love us less. And no one wants to feel like they are not loved, it's an awful feeling. I think that Jesus was a man, just as Buddha and Mohamed were men, and his intent in claiming that he was the son of God was to try and get people to realize that we are all the same and that a walking talking man, was no more a God than you or I. He has a lot to teach people, and he tried very hard to get people to love one another not because of God but because we were all in this together. It was the people of that time that deified him to the point of reverence, but I don't think that was his intent. Much like the Buddha and Mohamed, he did not intend to be worshiped as a God, only to enlighten people to the right path good or bad.

    Religion is a trap not for the less intelligent, but for the weak willed. For those unwilling to spend the time to be better people just to make a better world. It becomes an addiction that is introduced and fed at a very young age to the masses in hopes that it will make people abide and feel loved. It works for a lot of people, and I would even argue that for those people, it's detrimental to their mental health and the safety of society in general. I think there is a reason that criminals in particular come to find God during their incarcerations. It helps them cope with the ills they have done, and allows them to bridge to a better life even if it is just faking it. Sometimes even allowing those people to replace their bad intent with the good intent of religion is beneficial to society as a whole. There are a lot of religious sects that have some very harmful ideas that effect not only their parishioners but others outside their religion. They vilify each other, and condemn each other in the ultimate show of hate fests built on shame and egregious oneupmanship. Through fear, and shame they keep people in line to receive God's ultimate unconditional love, and when they feel it... it feels like a million bucks. It's a good high for a lot of people. And even in some cases, it's not suggested that it be taken away.

    A lot of people can't work through the idea of having good intent just because we should. That doing no harm to others begets no rewards at all. That there is no such reward as heaven and no influence of evil in their life that makes them do bad things. They just can't quantify it all, because it's too much work. Religion isn't a bad thing for some people who are weak willed, but it's definitely dwarfing to people with above average intelligence, it actually keeps them from understanding society and humanity as a whole. It continues to put people in neat little labeled boxes so they don't have to deal with the chaos that is reality.
     
  10. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    All that is very good in theory. But in practice, there has never been a society that has come into being without religion and once religion breaks down, so does the society.

    This is evidence for the importance of religion as a basis for all societies.
     
  11. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    This is an unsubstantiated hypothesis.
     
  12. Liebling Doesn't Need to be Spoonfed. Valued Senior Member

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    Well, in a nutshell, that is what I am saying.

    For the less intelligent and/or weak willed... a society without religion is doomed to fail because it does not support a rewards based system and people need to be rewarded. To feel like they are special and loved. To take that away from society could be detrimental.

    But to say that it has to be a basis for all societies may also be a fallacy. Just because it has always been that way from our written history, does not mean that it must be so or society will fail. It's always been a way for the powerful to control the masses under them, and it's worked so far out of fear and shame. Religion is a replacement for a system built on personal responsibility and accountability, but that doesn't mean that society would collapse without it. My entire family unit exists without religion and our house is peaceful and responsible to one another. Everyone pitches in, and works together and doesn't blame outside influences. Sure it's small scale, but in an intelligent society it could easily work on a larger scale. The problem being that all the stupid people are breeding and all the smart people who see society's bigger picture are not having kids at all, thusly causing evolution to be going in reverse on the rational intelligence vs religion scale.
     
  13. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    The decay of religion has historically preceded the deterioration of civil society and is a major cause of irreligion

    As Ernest Crawley has noted:

     
  14. PieAreSquared Woo is resistant to reason Registered Senior Member

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    Religion is what cause the decay...but it sure does have some wonderful warm and fuzzies
     
  15. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    I could just as easily say that you live in a society set up by religionists and hence are simply enjoying the benefits of an established social, moral, ethical and familial setup.

    There are other societies present, set up by those who think religion is futile and unnecessary. Perhaps a short stint in those societies would be educational.
     
  16. Liebling Doesn't Need to be Spoonfed. Valued Senior Member

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    Strawman.

    Please cite when this has happened, and the details please. I am fairly sure that the decay of religion was not the underlying cause.
     
  17. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    How does a religion decay? Take Islam, for example. It is codified. It has an invariant set of holy texts. How could it decay?
     
  18. Liebling Doesn't Need to be Spoonfed. Valued Senior Member

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    Well, that would be easy for you to rationalize sure, especially coming from a higher religious and moral place. Right? It's simply not fathomable to religious people that people can exist without their moral code. That it must be a religious moral code that they are living by. That because our laws are loosely based on religion, that we aren't intelligent enough or well intentioned enough to come up with our own moral code. That's where the anger comes from, because religious people OWN the higher moral ground. It's theirs to preach from and to base all of their assumptions from. It's simply not possible for people to exist without divine intervention. And that makes it impossible for anyone to argue otherwise against their entire strawman army.
     
  19. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Sure. Look at any civilisation that has collapsed and you will find a breakdown in the social institutions that religion has traditionally protected.

    We've discussed this before

    http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=89038

    At least my rationalisations are supported by history.

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    Compare the Islam of the century of Mohammed with the Islam of today. From jihad and ijtihad, we have come to sharia and bidaa'h. Thats a substantial amount of decay, in fact, opposing notions. And its reflected in the stagnation of the society.
     
  20. mikenostic Stop pretending you're smart! Registered Senior Member

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    Really? I don't think the thriving/booming societies in the countries of Denmark, Norway, Japan, Germany and France ever got that memo (as each has at least 40% athiest populations).
    Oh noes! Those countries are almost w/o religion. Standy by everyone, Germany, Japan, Denmark, Norway and France are about to break down. Better get any money you have invested in any of those stock markets out as soon as possible. The athiests are coming to crash them.

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    *anxiously looking forward to whatever b/s reply sam concocts for this*

    Just like sugar pills are evidence of the importance of physically non-effective sugar pills for hypochondriacs?

    Yeah but most theists are too ignorant to see that most gods are just arrogant condescending pricks. If there were a galactic or universal Child Services Division, they would come and take earth away from god for being such a fuckin horrible parent.
     
  21. Liebling Doesn't Need to be Spoonfed. Valued Senior Member

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    But those were societal breakdowns and there is no evidence at all that there was a decline in religion at all. I am asking you to cite the evidence of less people attending church or participating in religion actively under minded and brought down a society.

    There is no support for this in written history. A breakdown of the family unit does not equal the absence of religion. It's a strawman argument.

    And Scandinavia doesn't seem any worse for wear, does it? There is evidence there of decline of religion, please cite where this is causing society to fail.
     
  22. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    You're confusing ritual with religion. Whether people stand in line for the flesh of Jesus has no relation to following what Jesus said.

    And this is a common predicament of estimating atheism. I am a theist, I follow the Quran to the best of my ability. However, in religious surveys, I always check "Do you attend church?" with "rarely" Apart from the fact that I am a Muslim who would also check "do you pray five times a day" with "rarely", the emphasis on one ritual as an indicator of religiosity is biased by overlooking practical considerations.

    To answer your question, those societal breakdowns were replaced by new societies who were more religious.
     
  23. mikenostic Stop pretending you're smart! Registered Senior Member

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    Sounds like a case of the previous society not learning its lesson.
     

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