• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

U.S. has closed 10 bases in Afghanistan since February

PureX

Veteran Member
The problem is not religion; it's arrogance, violence, and greed masquerading as religion, and as culture, and as politics, and as commerce. The same problem as everywhere else on Earth. No one is fighting over religion. Its all about wealth, power, and control. It's always about wealth, power, and control.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
It's part of the problem but you need to remember that the Taliban in Afghanistan is an anti-occupation insurgency. They're not going to go away, whatever their religious views are. So going on about religion when it comes to this is missing a big part of the picture.
I was thinking of how what the Taliban does to fellow Afghans...things based upon religion.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
The problem is not religion; it's arrogance, violence, and greed masquerading as religion, and as culture, and as politics, and as commerce. The same problem as everywhere else on Earth. No one is fighting over religion. Its all about wealth, power, and control. It's always about wealth, power, and control.
You believe that destruction of ancient Buddha statues
has nothing to do with religion? Or opposing girls getting
an education?
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Their "God" is wealth, power, and control. Same as with many humans all over the world. They'll do anything to get it, and anything to keep it. And all the while they'll justify it by doing it in "God's" name.
So why do they bother to invent the allah? Could they not just say "we want wealth, power and control"?
 

Audie

Veteran Member
So why do they bother to invent the allah? Could they not just say "we want wealth, power and control"?

Ya know, Christianity is true coz the martyrs would not die for a lie.

Ye Muslims-see the boys of 911, say-
would not either

While I don't much care for their motives means or goals, I'd say to dismiss such courage and self sacrifice as just being lust for power
Is unworthy of anyone making a claim to being a thinking person.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
It's part of the problem but you need to remember that the Taliban in Afghanistan is an anti-occupation insurgency. They're not going to go away, whatever their religious views are. So going on about religion when it comes to this is missing a big part of the picture.

A lot like the resistance in Vietnam to Chinese, French or American armed presence. Way less concerned with communism over democracy than national independence.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
Are you serious? Look up Marxist-Leninism and all the loons who have been inspired by that. I'm just saying that there's nothing about atheism or theism in of themselves that makes someone prone to fanaticism or tolerance. It's other factors that drive people towards one or the other. It's just a group psychology thing.


You seem to be confusing nationalism with atheism.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
So why do they bother to invent the allah? Could they not just say "we want wealth, power and control"?
Because they don't want to see themselves as what they are. Thieves never want to see themselves as thieves. Instead, they pretend they're somehow justified, or "owed" what they take from others. Abusers don't want to see themselves as abusers. Instead, they blame their victims for incurring their wrath. And so on.

Greed has to be couched as something else by the greedy. Ignorance has to be couched as something else by the willfully ignorant. Exploitation has to be couched as something else by the exploiters. And injustice has to be couched as something else by the unjust. People are always trying to hide their own sins and crimes against others, from themselves, to avoid having to face who and what they really are. And religions, and philosophies, and political ideologies, and even the amorality of science can be useful in helping them do that. So that's how they use (abuse) these things.
 

SigurdReginson

Grēne Mann
Premium Member
Are you serious? Look up Marxist-Leninism and all the loons who have been inspired by that. I'm just saying that there's nothing about atheism or theism in of themselves that makes someone prone to fanaticism or tolerance. It's other factors that drive people towards one or the other. It's just a group psychology thing.

One group tends to inspire more fanaticism than the other, I'd say. When I think of all of the countless, brutal wars waged in the name of god(s), and the wars waged in the name of a lack of god throughout history, one seems to be a little more likely than the other.

It's difficult to really get fanatical about not believing in the existence of gods. One has to inject other things, such as cultural differences, or political power plays. In religion, all it takes is dogma.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Because they don't want to see themselves as what they are. Thieves never want to see themselves as thieves. Instead, they pretend they're somehow justified, or "owed" what they take from others. Abusers don't want to see themselves as abusers. Instead, they blame their victims for incurring their wrath. And so on.

Greed has to be couched as something else by the greedy. Ignorance has to be couched as something else by the willfully ignorant. Exploitation has to be couched as something else by the exploiters. And injustice has to be couched as something else by the unjust. People are always trying to hide their own sins and crimes against others, from themselves, to avoid having to face who and what they really are. And religions, and philosophies, and political ideologies, and even the amorality of science can be useful in helping them do that. So that's how they use (abuse) these things.
Can someone lie to himself and believe that killing himself gets him wealth, power and control? Clearly there must be a point when they realise that their goals aren't compatible with their methods?
 

PureX

Veteran Member
Can someone lie to himself and believe that killing himself gets him wealth, power and control? Clearly there must be a point when they realise that their goals aren't compatible with their methods?
Apparently not. Some humans want these things so badly that they are willing to die, to get them (or keep them) in another "life".

Sadly, though, their goals are very often quite achievable by their methods, in this life. Lying, cheating, robbing, raping, killing, ... : these are all common methods we humans use to get what we want. And they work. We just prefer not to see ourselves as being the kind of people who do these things. So we like to employ ideological abstractions, and 'cognitive artifice' to create distractions, and delusions, and justifications for what we're actually doing to each other. And religion is a very easy, common means of doing this. Certainly not the only means, though. Just look at then endless brutality of capitalism.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
Isn't belief in "another life" some kind of religion?
Religions are collections of ideals, images, rules, rituals, and practices intended to help people live according to their chosen theological position. Fantasies and superstitions are sometimes a part of it, in the way wheels are part of a wagon, but are not the wagon.
 

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
One group tends to inspire more fanaticism than the other, I'd say. When I think of all of the countless, brutal wars waged in the name of god(s), and the wars waged in the name of a lack of god throughout history, one seems to be a little more likely than the other.

It's difficult to really get fanatical about not believing in the existence of gods. One has to inject other things, such as cultural differences, or political power plays. In religion, all it takes is dogma.
Wars over religion are rarely just about religion. Atheism or theism alone doesn't say much about you, even just believing in a deity. It's what you add on to it that makes the difference.
 

Secret Chief

nirvana is samsara
It's part of the problem but you need to remember that the Taliban in Afghanistan is an anti-occupation insurgency. They're not going to go away, whatever their religious views are. So going on about religion when it comes to this is missing a big part of the picture.
Religion is indeed often not the driving force of conflicts, but moreso issues of occupation, nationalism and ideology. We got lots of reasons to go a-killing.

List of wars by death toll - Wikipedia
 
Top