Religion as socially-accepted mental illness

The only way religion will be eradicated, and indeed IS being eradicated, is thru education and socialization of individuals beyond their local tribe or microculture. I see the WWW as the biggest factor for the decline of the religious worldview as it is opening each new generation to a more intelligent worldview than the one they might have been raised to accept. To survive in the modern world you have to be non-judgmental, open-minded, rational, empirical, multi-cultural, and not easily persuaded by mere authority or tradition. All these traits are the opposite of those fostered by religion.

 

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Reagan entertained many possibilities. He even suggested a scenario of alien invasion once. I seriously doubt he believed these things religiously though..

 

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No one ever said getting rid of religion would solve the world's ills. And killing people over land or disagreements will never stop, but killing people over superstitious beliefs should, and it's something we can address. Superstition is a mark of ignorance, so it's one that is correctable.

Your fatal flaw here is the assertion that because the end of superstition won't stop all violence that we shouldn't bother to end superstition. That logic doesn't fly.

 

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I can't imagine you watch too much of anything if you think Hitler was an atheist.

 

He said he did. Perhaps he was lying - but then again you could claim that anyone who says they are very religious is lying, and thus there is no problem.

 

"A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying."--Sam Harris (Letters to a Christian Nation, 2006)

 

I think think your statement mediocre and coming from you even worse . Are there not more religious people in the world then your kind ( in therm of sheer number )

 

No, he didn't say he believed it. He merely offered a momentary speculation as he often did. That hardly makes him a bible prophecy evangelical. You may think so, but you'd have a hard time proving it from his biographies.

 

But to your point - they didn't say they believed it. They merely offered the expected observations/platitudes about God. That hardly makes them believers in the Devil, the Apocalypse or divine retribution. You may think so, but you'd have a hard time proving it from what they say,

 

A person who believes irrational things about God and the bible believes irrational things about God and the bible. EOS.. Do you have some inside info about this hypothetical that Sam Harris missed when he posed it? Or did you just forget to take your ocd meds today?

 

Uh, right. But as you said before, just because they say they believe it doesn't mean they really do believe it. You used Reagan as an example. Were you wrong?

 

I never said that. I said just because someone speculates doesn't mean they actually believe it. But you knew that didn't ya?

 

That was the point. I think you missed it entirely. Read it again.

 

Nice qualification there. Completely, if trivially, true, considering ~80% of the world is religious. Although the percentage of non-religious on drugs surpasses that of the religious.

 

I would not be surprised, they are much less harmful than religion.

 

statistics on violent crime tends to suggest otherwise

 

What statistics suggest what?

 

drugs and harm vs religion and harm of course

I would have thought it quite apparent .. all withoutthe need to pull numbers out of one's arse .... which is what I assume spidey will do any moment now

 

In a democracy, it is quite the opposite of "terrifying" that the majority has a majority representation in the government. It would be genuinely terrifying for a democracy to be otherwise.