What Are the Top Three Craziest Criticisms Of Religion?

[Booko]

You're assuming, along with most of the people participating in this thread, that religion is theistic.

Only because this is the West, and criticisms of religion here are almost univerally criticisms of theism.

If there's a need to get more specific, that's fine.

Theism is superfluous to many forms of Buddhism.

True, but it does not lack a belief in the supernatural, which many atheists would take you to task for. 25 years ago, I would've. Belief in a soul or in reincarnation, for example, is just as unfalsifiable as belief in God, and just as unacceptable.

The eminent archaeologist William Dever, though a convert to Judaism, is not a theist.

So I've heard. One wonders who he is praying to 3 times a day. :sarcastic

Many Unitarian-Universalists and many Quakers are not theists.

Their roots are firmly in theism, and the non-theism a recent trend. This might bear further discussion. Although at what point does a religion become a social group, I wonder?

Jainism is nontheistic.

Jainism has a belief in the soul, so it does not lack the supernatural, and would therefore be open to criticism. Some forms of Jainism have practices that are indistinguishable from mere superstition, at least to an atheist.

It's unreasonable to oppose religion to atheism, because religion and nontheism have large areas of overlap.

It's equally problematic to draw a firm line between religion and philosophy.

I think that's why I said my top crazy criticism of religion was when a person is really criticizing something about a segment of religion X, but applies it to all religion as if it were true of all religion. Which, as you point out, ain't necessarily so.

[quote EDIT: And I forgot to mention Taoism. [/quote]

Depending on who you ask, it's a philosophy or a religion. In practice, at least in Asia, it can be rife with superstition.

Criticisms of religion in general are rare, and even more rarely do they actually apply to all religions.

Well, criticisms that actually apply to all religion are rare. But I can assure you when I was an atheist reading up on comparitive religions I was not shy about criticizing any and all of them, though I tried to aim the criticisms more specifically.

If you'd like a sample of criticisms of religion in general, go hang out on Internet Infidels for a while. Not all of them apply, as you say, but occasionally you find someone rigorous enough so that the criticism does apply.

There's the criticism leveled by Richard Dawkins:

"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."​

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This is not much of a criticism. It merely shows that Dawkins is woefully ignorant of what some religions actually teach, and the demands that were made of many religionists early in the days of their religion. Heck, even Muhammad told his followers to seek knowledge everywhere, even unto China. And from the way early Islam went on to advance science, it looks like someone took him seriously.

And the one leveled by Bertrand Russell:

"Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm."
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That isn't a criticism of religion. It's a criticism of humanity. Hypocrites are hardly reserved to religion. Check out politicians sometime. And even philosophers of the non-religious sort would have the same problems "clergymen" can have.

I don't think that either of these criticisms is crazy; on the contrary, these are very real dangers that all religious people ought to be aware of and avoid.

I consider them general truths that would be important even if there were no religion of any sort.

Uh..if you want to get really technical about it, neither of them could be leveled against my religion. We have no clergy, and we are commanded to think for ourselves.

In practice, of *course* it's possible to find hypocrisy among us (duh....we're as human as anyone else), so the danger is there. And there is still a very human tendency for people to be intellectually lazy at times.

 

[Smoke]

Uh..if you want to get really technical about it, neither of them could be leveled against my religion. We have no clergy, and we are commanded to think for ourselves.

Well, mine too.

However, there are some Quakers who do have clergy (which seems to me like a drastic departure from Quakerism) and who require the acceptance of Evangelical Christian dogma. However, I don't consider the Evangelical Friends to share my religion, and I doubt they'd consider me to share theirs.

Any religion, though (even mine!), is subject to the same danger, which Krishnamurti warned against:

When Krishnamurti dies, which is inevitable, you will set about forming rules in your minds, because the individual, Krishnamurti, had represented to you the Truth. So you will build a temple, you will then begin to have ceremonies, to invent phrases, dogmas, systems of belief, creeds, and to create philosophies. If you build great foundations upon me, the individual, you will be caught in that house, in that temple, and so you will have to have another Teacher come and extricate you from that temple. But the human mind is such that you will build another temple around Him, and so it will go on and on.
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As he said, "Truth is a pathless land." It's not enough to realize we haven't arrived, we have to realize that we haven't even found the path.

 

[Booko]

Well, mine too.

However, there are some Quakers who do have clergy (which seems to me like a drastic departure from Quakerism) and who require the acceptance of Evangelical Christian dogma.

Yes, that is a bit unusual......

Any religion, though (even mine!), is subject to the same danger, which Krishnamurti warned against:

When Krishnamurti dies, which is inevitable, you will set about forming rules in your minds, because the individual, Krishnamurti, had represented to you the Truth. So you will build a temple, you will then begin to have ceremonies, to invent phrases, dogmas, systems of belief, creeds, and to create philosophies. If you build great foundations upon me, the individual, you will be caught in that house, in that temple, and so you will have to have another Teacher come and extricate you from that temple. But the human mind is such that you will build another temple around Him, and so it will go on and on.
​

As he said, "Truth is a pathless land." It's not enough to realize we haven't arrived, we have to realize that we haven't even found the path.

Oh my, I haven't run across that quote for over 25 years!

I think of it as one of the great "truths" of religion (pick any).

Baha'is use a shorthand and call it "progressive revelation" or that we pretty much screw things up over time and someone has to come straighten them out again. Well, that's the short version anyway.

 

[Sapiens]

That we don't like to function on the emperical plane.

I'm just guessing, but has it been a long time since you've functioned on the Empirical Plane?

 

[1robin]

What are the top three craziest, most misguided criticisms of religion that you routinely hear from the anti-religion crowd?

Why are they crazy criticisms?

1. That science contains evidence faith in untrue.
It is crazy because my faith has dominated science and science is used more than any other discipline by modern apologists. In modern science was the result of faith.

2. That appeals to the popularity of an experience claim is a fallacy.
It is crazy because that is what all societies do in law and I don't use it as proof which is what the fallacy assumes.

3. That if God created everything then who created God.
It is crazy because only what begins to exist needs a creator and it has been called the worst argument against God in western history.

 

[JustWondering]

If I don't have all the answers about all their quesitons, then God must not exist. (Who said we had to have all the answers anyways?)

The same tactic is used against atheists. For instance, if an atheist admits they don't know what caused the big bang some theists are quick to chime in with "my god did it!".

 

[Uberpod]

My favourite is "Religion is responsible for everything wrong with the world and without religion the world would be peachy keen."

I chortle every time I hear/read it.

Any links for that one. I'd like to Gaffaw!