McBell
Resident Sourpuss
Really?
And what is going to keep all the theists who flat out admit if it weren't for their religion they would be out there a raping and a murdering and their god only knows what all else?
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What would the world be without religion ?
- Thread starter psychoslice
- Start date
And what is going to keep all the theists who flat out admit if it weren't for their religion they would be out there a raping and a murdering and their god only knows what all else?
psychoslice
Veteran Member
Yes that can be a problem, but isn't that sad that they would do that, is religion really just a mental hospital ?.
So- let's cut to the chase- What are you going to do about it?
It's all very well saying "religion starts wars". Assuming I accept that premise at face value, if you want to eliminate religion- your either going to have to assume religion will be eliminated "naturally" by scientific progress or else use force or hope a combination of the two will do it.
In order words, you've probably just started a war of extermination over religion, even if you tell yourself it will be a war to end all wars. Won't any of the good intention behind it be negated based on the sheer destructiveness of its consequences?
How many books do you have to censor? How many churches, mosques and synagogues, do you have to demolish or use for secular purposes? Do Priests have to be killed or under go "thought reform"? How many people get put in a mental hospital for the "sickness" of religion to be cured? Will you destroy the Sistine chapel or da vanci's last supper because it's religious iconography that may spread religious illusion? Take children away from their parents based on claiming that religious indoctrination is a form of child abuse? Or ban the teaching of religion in schools? How much of human history would have to be rewritten or how much of human knowledge, culture and society would have to be destroyed to achieve this? Will you end up totally perverting this to the point of killing Jews to eliminate religion whilst also saying religion is bad because it "caused" the holocaust? What does it take to kill God or religion as an idea?
Take a step back and think not of what your intentions are, but what the practical steps that could be taken to eliminate religion and what the consequences of these actions would be. Could you really say it would actually be better? It's a different conversation entirely from the one happening in this thread.
it's worth giving this whole thing some perspective because-whatever you say about religion- it's unlikely you'd actually endorse any or even most of the above.
psychoslice
Veteran Member
Yes as I have already said, it will not happen over night, in fact it would do a lot of damage if we did do it over night, its something to work towards, teaching everyone that we are all equal, that we are all One, the the Cosmos is what we ourselves are, in time we would drop the idea of a god standing over and judging us, for this is childish conditioning, yes we need to grow and mature, for we have been acting like stupid and unintelligent people for too long.
psychoslice
Veteran Member
I thought this talk was very interesting.
that's not what I asked. What I said was "what are you going to do about it?"
I realise it may seem obvious and it makes you feel a hell of a lot better if you think you can sweep all the corruption and moral impurities away. But, Religion isn't simply an idea. Nor is it just a book or a building or even a work of art. It is people and their lives. If you want to destroy an idea how long will it be before you try to destroy the people who believe it? There is a progression here and you need to question the simplicity of your solution that you can simply get rid of "religion" without also having other escalating implications.
Whatever your intentions, The consequences of this won't be a clear cut moral choice. If you want to eliminate religion, you are going to go "beyond good and evil" because those concepts are themselves religious. Don't take anything at face value.
If we are equal and we are all one as you say you want us to believe- it includes religious people. It includes the people we despise. As a religious extremist in the Middle East once said, "love thy enemy". You are sleep walking with the moral certainty your convictions.
Augustus
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The world as it truly is is one in which myths are necessary to our species.
Here is a myth you are promoting, see we can't live without them..
And I wish people would stop assuming that criticisms of religion in general only apply to Abrahamic religions.
If you want, we can get into some of the horrible things enabled by or done in the name of Dharmic religions. As I mentioned earlier, it seems like Buddhist monks and teachers in this part of the world have their own child sex abuse scandal going on.
And BTW: more than half of the people on Earth are either Christian or Muslim. They're not aberrations; they make up the bulk of what "religion" entails at the moment.
And I've never heard anyone say that they couldn't be good themselves without their religion. IMO, this claim tends to get made for other people.
BTW: the people who abuse theur spouses because they think God approves don't call what they do "abuse".
Do you always assume that things you aren't familiar with don't exist?
Since that "myth" isn't religious whether or not it is a myth, I'm not sure what it would have to do with whether the world would be better without religion.
I guess I would have to learn something about that before commenting.
In any case, I stand by what I said. The proselitist monotheism that made those two doctrines succesfull by some yardsticks also compromised their functionality to an apparently irreversible extent.
I know. It is so sad when the aberration becomes the norm.
Augustus
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Something for you to think about then. If you go back and read the context for that comment and the discussion it was contained in then you might be able to work it out.
Here's one recent article:
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/...-who-investigates-abuse-in-buddhism-1.3718010
And I think that, in large part, criticisms like this are just attempts to carve out an exceptionalist niche for themselves and their personal religions.
When talking about the overall impact of religion, to see how reasonable arguments are, I like to mentally translate it into a discussion of the overall impact of car culture to see how it holds up.
Imagine if someone responded to an argument about how a car-centric culture is bad responded with something like "but you're American! You've probably never even seen a Geely, Daihatsu or Holden! None of the traffic problems on your highways are created by the make and model of the car I drive, so your criticisms don't apply to me." Would you think this response was reasonable?
When it's the norm, by definition it isn't an aberration.
The impact of religion on the world today is mostly the impact of Christianity and Islam. Add Hinduism and Buddhism into the mix and take out the ~15% of people who are non-religious and you end up with four religious groups that represent about 85% of the impact - positive and negative - of religion on the world. The impact of any religion other than those four (with the possible exception of Chinese traditional religion, which has its own issues) amounts to less than the rounding error on the impact of the Abrahamic and Dharmic religions.
To use the car analogy again, when we're considering the overall impact of religion on the world, we no more have to explicitly take into account smaller religions like Paganism, Sikhism, or the special snowflake religion that one person came up with himself than we have to take into account Hummer stretch limos or steam-powered antique cars when trying to measure the overall impact of the car on our transportation choices.
Even if virtually everyone's religion isn't the religion you would personally pick, this doesn't mean that the vast majority of religion is all made up of outliers.
I'm sorry, but from what you've posted in this thread alone, never mind things you've posted here over time, it screams "I hate religion." If you don't mean to communicate that, perhaps there need to be some adjustments to how you are communicating. If I am "projecting" hatred it is because it's kind of hard for anyone to be filled with love towards an ideology that wants them eradicated. That, and I see where this leads. @Laika 's post #104 spells some of it out.
Religion is always personal, despite the attempts of many to claim otherwise.
The impact of religion is felt well beyond the individual believer.
Very true. I did not mean to imply otherwise.
Proselitist Abrahamic monotheism is an aberration because it is inherently at odds with itself and with the reality of the world. All the more so because it benefits demographically from its own collapse of credibility, due to a peculiarity of social psychology.
In a nutshell, Christianity and Islam have survived and become influential because they are so damaged that people keep doubting that they understand the doctrines correctly and fix them internally in various ways.
Servant_of_the_One1
Well-Known Member
There comes a time when muslims wont be on earth. This happens before short time left of judgement day. So when the believing monotheists leaves the world, only the wicked will remain. They will fornicate on public and do every shameful act.
The signs are ready today.
Ugh. What a prejudiced thing to say. Are you truly saying that non-monotheists are "wicked"?
I am sorry to say that you are presenting only a disrespectful caricature of non-monotheists. It is not a statement that deserves any respect, and I hope you realize that.