You might as well believe or have a faith in the fairies at the bottom of your garden.
Religion, what's the point?
- Thread starter TheRedFlag
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If believing in fairies at the bottom of your garden helps you live your life, then sure. In reality, I suspect it would be quite an isolating thing. Whereas religion is generally something that brings people together. As well as giving them hope, comfort and purpose.
Interesting having the word 'reality' in the same sentence as religion.
I understand how religion can be a crutch but why can't people just get together in hope, comfort and purpose without involving this mumbo jumbo?
I understand how religion can be a crutch but why can't people just get together in hope, comfort and purpose without involving this mumbo jumbo?
Seriously?
I suppose you could say people tend to need common ground for that. In times where fables were king, stories of a creator and his son looking down on us protecting us and promising a heaven in death, you can understand religion was such a necessary thing to bring people together.
It's harder.
Sharing belief draws people together. It's easier to feel hope and comfort if you think there's an almighty being who loves you. It's easier to have purpose if you believe in an afterlife, as opposed to nothingness.
Yeah. What are you suggesting?
Yea but the whole point is there is really no such thing as hope comfort and purpose. We here because of an accident, there's not deeper meaning to life than having a good time (if you're lucky enough and can afford it) and then you're dead, and eventually the entire universe will collapse or implode or whatever, and there will again be nothingness like it was before. Sounds awesome.
Well no, it's bloody not. Religion can be seen as a system of laws and regulations by which a society is organised and by which it functions. Religion can be seen as a source of a people's identity. It can be seen as a nation's constitution and define its political and economic structure. Religion can give you the moral and ethical framework by which which a society can understand the standards according to which the individual or the collective should govern itself/themselves. Etc etc. Aren't people getting tired of this ridiculous, over-simplified bullshit such as "there was a fire burning and the primitive cave man was scared so he made up God who can hug him and comfort him. And then there was a storm, and then there was thunder..." FFS man.
I've just given a quotidian example of an irrational belief that isn't true - ie blind faith.
Of course it fecking well is. Read Frazer's 'Golden Bough'. All primitive people used the same old, same old to help the conquer their fear of nature. Judeo-Christian bollox is just a sophisticated version of the same old crap.
What?See, you're the one doing the over-simplifying there. I don't think the evolution of the modern Abrahamic god was a simple thing at all, there would've had to have been a complex series of revisions, additions and rewrites that happened over tens of thousands of years, from initial curious enquiry about the surrounding environment, through basic superstition to more complex polytheistic ideas (and many shades in between).
Of course it is. The only 'principle' that's worth recording is 'do as you would be done by' which is extant throughout antiquity, the rest is fanciful bollox (see Norse sagas etc). When you've dealt with the problem of evil come back and have the debate.
The bit about the camel and the needle is pretty good, I reckon.
"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn." (Rabbi Hillel, 110 BC - 10 AD)
Don't get it. How am I doing an over-simplification? I'm arguing exactly for the opposite.
That's the social control bit (one of the big lies) - don't kick up any shit about being disadvantaged, your reward is in the hereafter. Bollox.
I can see no relevance in debating the problem with someone who doesn't even believe that a deity exists. What exactly would be the point? To discuss why god isn't the way you would want him to be if you were to believe that he existed?
Matthew 19:24 - And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
The point is to discuss the logical impossibility of an omnipotent, all-merciful god who allows evil to exist in the world. Doesn't make logical sense = can't be true.
The books are only evidence of what men have written down, not truths of any kind.
Under the guidance of God.
I think there was a bit that didn't make the bible about Jesus turning someone into a frog because he was annoyed with them. I can see why they left that one out.
You were over-simplifying the view against your own (attacking a strawman, in other words).
If it was written under the guidance of god why are they so badly written and full of hypocrisies?
Not to mention one of the better known stories about the new testament is that it was written decades after Jesus died.
Sorry Im still not getting what you're saying, might be because it's damn late and Im already half asleep. My point was that religion is a much more complex thing than what most on this forum are making it to be. Religion lies at the heart of a civilization and encompasses so many different, complex constructs such as identity, law, ethics, politics, etc etc. It's the opposite of an over-simplification. The over-simplification comes from those who think religion is just bollox and how a scared-to-death bloody caveman invented a deity because he was scared of thunder. Which is what I'd call bollox.
Can't we all just get along and leave everyone to believe what they want 
It doesn't lie at the heart of civilization, it's more like that uncle who's always a couple of centuries behind modern thinkers.
I'm probably not phrasing myself that well either. My point was that, I don't think it's a particularly common view that "there was a fire burning and the primitive cave man was scared so he made up God who can hug him and comfort him. And then there was a storm, and then there was thunder...", as you initially said. I think that's a big over-simplification of the actual position of those against yours. I think it grew into being what you said of it, "[lying] at the heart of a civilization" etc, because by that point it was as normal a thought as eating, it had been around so long. But I think it had very simple, and crude, beginnings. Likely many tens of thousands of years ago, and borne out of human (or even pre-human?) curiosity as much as any other emotion/desire.
Fundamentally it's a big lie. Of course, since it has been a ruling ideology it has accreted power, social influence etc etc. That doesn't make it any more true, it just explains why people used it to exercise power.
Yea, the NT collection of biographies, letters, apocalyptic writings, etc were written a few decades after Jesus died. So?
And what exactly is badly written? The Hebrew? The archaic Greek? Not happy about the alphabetic acrostics? Hate the prose narrative but prefer the parallelisms in poetry?
Badly written is a matter of opinion. We're all entitled to ours but it is no more than that. As for hypocrisy, is there much? Aside from discrepancy between the old and new testament. I know there's contradictions, I think the gospels is a famous example, but I'm unaware of these frequent hypocrisies, you speak of.
Bollox. Fundamentally it's a big truth which is being distorted over time. Doesn't make it any less true only because you're unwilling or incapable of grasping it.
It really does. The vast majority of people live in a world that is massively influenced by religion.
Big truth my arse. Your Judeo-Christian god is a logical impossibility on His own terms.
Including science in fact, plenty of massive discoveries in the past were made by clergymen, who in general had the free time and funds to try and further the understanding of the world.
It's boring as balls man.
The entire old testament for a start depicts god as a bit of a cock - why's he preaching peace?
Well, they're influenced by what their leaders expose them to - one of these things just happens to be religion. That's different from lying at the heart of civilization, because nothing really lies at the heart of civilization.
"Boring as balls", thanks for highlighting the enormously intellectual level of the current debate. I'll try to phrase my responses accordingly.