Religion, what's the point?

It's not relevant. What's relevant is whether God instructed it or whether it was instead just a philosophy of man's own invention.

It's obviously the latter and you're delusional if you think otherwise.
 
Ubik said:
It's all just empathy, all stuff people on every corner of the globe have been saying for millennia (and doing for even longer) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule. The word "love" is incidental, it all means the same thing, "treat others as you'd treat yourself".
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I don't think love is incidental here. It's not just about the actions. To treat someone well out of a sense of moral duty isn't the same as to do so out of love. It may be for them but it isn't for you.

I also don't think people have carried it out the "Golden Rule" to it's full extent for millennia, or that they ever have, or that they ever will. As I said earlier, I think people can only try to adhere to such as much as possible, whilst keeping enough self preservation to protect themselves. Even that is a very difficult thing that is easy to lose sight of. I think religion can and does play a role in encouraging many people to strive as much as they can towards it.
 
Redlambs said:
That's a good point. I personally don't know why anyone would want someone to drop their faith, but obviously there are plenty of people out there who want that.
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It is like if someone sincerely thought that COD was a better game than Deus Ex. It doesn't make a difference to me or to that particular person if they feel that way, but at the same time it's such a ludicrous and obviously baseless view that you're going to challenge it, because it's an opinion that is frankly an insult to the intelligence of our species (not that that was particularly high to begin with).

There's also the fact that close-mindedness is the single worst quality of the human race. It's our biggest barrier to progress as a society in every respect. Religious belief (NOT spirituality I must stress) is almost the quintessential aspect of close-mindedness.

There's a good quote I heard somewhere: "I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs." I certainly don't dislike religious people, but their beliefs really do annoy me.
 
Phurry said:
Oh FFS, now you're simply not reading the posts that you're replying to, just trying to be clever.
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Sorry, you said the book of Leviticus has been changed over time so I was wondering if this is the adaptation you're talking about, the priestly vs. non-priestly sources with the latter (so called H) being embedded within the pre-existing structure. Unless that's not what you meant?
 
Silent_Running said:
It is like if someone sincerely thought that COD was a better game than Deus Ex. It doesn't make a difference to me or to that particular person if they feel that way, but at the same time it's such a ludicrous and obviously baseless view that you're going to challenge it, because it's an opinion that is frankly an insult to the intelligence of our species (not that that was particularly high to begin with).

There's also the fact that close-mindedness is the single worst quality of the human race. It's our biggest barrier to progress as a society in every respect. Religious belief (NOT spirituality I must stress) is almost the quintessential aspect of close-mindedness.

There's a good quote I heard somewhere: "I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs." I certainly don't dislike religious people, but their beliefs really do annoy me.
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I have to remember to respond to this post, it's brilliant!! Thank you for being so clever and informed. And for not disliking religious people totally, I think that's very good, and important.
 
Forgive me if you already have, but would you mind clarifying exactly what it is you believe in? We haven't spoken before, and I'm not looking for a fight. I was merely trying to explain to Redlambs (who I also haven't engaged with up to this point) why some feel the need to debate so voraciously on this subject.
 
That was kind of a joke because I know Redlambs loves his computer games.

I was just trying to be friendly.
 
You got it right I'd say. My own reply follows much the same line:

Ciderman90210 said:
Because religion is one of the leading causes of oppression worldwide. Religion is the passionate perpetuation of ignorance; ignorance holds us back academically and passion causes us to fight for our own specific thread of ignorance. It's my opinion that in order for the human race to enter the next stage of development we must first unburden ourselves from the costly shackles of ancient superstition and make believe. The world is gradually waking up to reality and we're going to be a whole lot better for it once the remaining oversleepers come around and stretch off the delusions of our primitive ancestors.
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Silent_Running said:
Forgive me if you already have, but would you mind clarifying exactly what it is you believe in? We haven't spoken before, and I'm not looking for a fight. I was merely trying to explain to Redlambs (who I also haven't engaged with up to this point) why some feel the need to debate so voraciously on this subject.
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There's a number of things from your original post that Id strongly disagree with but I'll address it tomorrow as I have to get up early tomorrow.

PS, ignore Ciderman, he's drunk most of the time.
 
I think the word "religion" can be misleading in this debate. What it boils down to (for me anyway) is the problem of belief without (sufficient) evidence. Unjustified claims of the sort that thrive in the religious sphere would be - and indeed are - immediately dismissed in any other context by any reasonable person. Fundamentally, the only thing being advocated here by "our" side is that religious claims be subjected to the same rules of conversation that govern every other area of discourse, in which we don't (or at least we strive not to) tacitly accept outrageous claims unsupported by evidence.

I don't see how believing things on bad evidence brings anything to the table in the moral domain, or in any other way contributes to the progress of our species, and I'd love to see someone try to argue that it does.
 
Mihajlovic said:
Sorry, you said the book of Leviticus has been changed over time so I was wondering if this is the adaptation you're talking about, the priestly vs. non-priestly sources with the latter (so called H) being embedded within the pre-existing structure. Unless that's not what you meant?
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The "final" version of the book, disregarding the various adaptations, is dated from sometime in a 200 year range between 300 & 500 bc according to scholars. That's only about 1,000 years after it was supposedly written....
 
Saliph said:
I think the word "religion" can be misleading in this debate. What it boils down to (for me anyway) is the problem of belief without (sufficient) evidence. Unjustified claims of the sort that thrive in the religious sphere would be - and indeed are - immediately dismissed in any other context by any reasonable person. Fundamentally, the only thing being advocated here by "our" side is that religious claims be subjected to the same rules of conversation that govern every other area of discourse, in which we don't (or at least we strive not to) tacitly accept outrageous claims unsupported by evidence.

I don't see how believing things on bad evidence brings anything to the table in the moral domain, or in any other way contributes to the progress of our species, and I'd love to see someone try to argue that it does.
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What exactly do you mean by progress of our species? From a purely evolutionary context whether we progress as a species or not is completely irrelevant. It’s not as if we necessarily must and have to progress. It’s not as if there is some sort of objective that must be achieved. At the same time ‘our species’ is facing so many problems: greed and corruption destroying economies, low wages, high unemployment, organised crimes, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, numerous problems in the education and health sector, most of this evident in the UK, for example- so can you please explain how all of the above mentioned problems that we’re facing as a ‘progressive species’ are further hindered by people believing in God?! How’s religion negatively impacting any of those issues? In what ways would we ‘progress as a species’ if we would eradicate religion?
 
Equality, for a start, is handicapped by those who preach hateful things and more often than not the people who preach those things are socially conservative fundamentalist religious types. I don't know about the other atheists here, but I wouldn't care what you guys believed if religion didn't seek to involve itself in the lives of others.
 
Phurry said:
The "final" version of the book, disregarding the various adaptations, is dated from sometime in a 200 year range between 300 & 500 bc according to scholars. That's only about 1,000 years after it was supposedly written....
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Apart from the fact that the contents were quite obviously transmitted orally until the time they were written down, exactly what argument are you making? The book itself nowhere claims it was composed on a specific date.
 
Mihajlovic said:
Apart from the fact that the contents were quite obviously transmitted orally until the time they were written down, exactly what argument are you making? The book itself nowhere claims it was composed on a specific date.
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I'm not making an argument, I'm pointing out that your question about context is impossible to answer. Herein lies the issue with relying on the bible as a source of truth....no one knows what was real and what wasn't, it was re-written, edited, filtered so many times during its creation that what is written in the bible now is unlikely to bare any resemblance to the original words.

And I'm not just referring to the Council of Nicosia some 300 years after the supposed events of Jesus where they arbitrarily decided what would go in the NT; Even when Leviticus was "finalised" over 2,000 years ago they were already trying to figure out what was fact and what was randomly made up.
 
Silent_Running said:
That was kind of a joke because I know Redlambs loves his computer games.

I was just trying to be friendly.
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:lol: Fair enough. Though I didn't question Cider's motives, he's made himself clear and whilst I wouldn't go as far as he does our thinking on religion is on the same lines.

Oh and ignore Cider, he's usually drunk.
 
Mihajlovic said:
What exactly do you mean by progress of our species? From a purely evolutionary context whether we progress as a species or not is completely irrelevant. It’s not as if we necessarily must and have to progress. It’s not as if there is some sort of objective that must be achieved. At the same time ‘our species’ is facing so many problems: greed and corruption destroying economies, low wages, high unemployment, organised crimes, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, numerous problems in the education and health sector, most of this evident in the UK, for example- so can you please explain how all of the above mentioned problems that we’re facing as a ‘progressive species’ are further hindered by people believing in God?! How’s religion negatively impacting any of those issues? In what ways would we ‘progress as a species’ if we would eradicate religion?
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First of all, I never said religion is the only source of conflict or the only source of problems in the world, so that's just a straw man. Second, I'm obviously talking about moral and scientific progress, and both you and I know it's painfully easy to point to examples where religion has been an impediment in those areas throughout history. Stupidity always has been and will be. Third, it's trivially easy to point to examples of where religion is negatively affecting several of the areas you mentioned, like education (stultifying children, creationism, filtering out facts and filtering in superstition, denying children (girls) a proper education etc.), health (not giving people/children proper medical care because of religious beliefs, religious practices like exorcisms in place of real medical care, the Catholic dogmas against condoms, not vaccinating children, impeding medical science by banning stem cell research etc.), domestic violence/violence against women, and so forth.
 
I've not heard of him before but there's some nice stuff on his Wikipedia page:

Jewish "guilt", the Holocaust and the gas chambers' "holy smoke"

Rajneesh claimed that Jews "are guilty people, and their guilt is very great" because they crucified Jesus; out of this guilt, they are "always in search of their Adolf Hitlers, someone who can kill them". He asserted that only when Jews "reclaim Jesus", "they will be healthy and whole, and then there will be no need for Adolf Hitlers".

He also believed that "living in poverty is far more dangerous, far more suffering than dying in a beautifully, scientifically managed gas chamber in Germany", and claimed that "Hitler’s violence was far more peaceful" than (for example) the violence which erupted in India after independence from the British Crown; Hitler "killed people in the most up-to-date gas chambers, where you don’t take much time. Thousands of people can be put in a gas chamber, and just a switch is pressed ... Within a second, you evaporate. The chimneys of the factory start taking you, the smoke – you can call it holy smoke [laughter in the audience] – and this seems to be a direct way towards God."


Homosexuality as perversion; segregation and relocation of homosexuals

During the years before his move to the United States Rajneesh supported (and encouraged) homosexual sannyasins: "No condemnation, no judgement, no evaluation. If you are a homosexual, so what?! Enjoy it! God has made you that way". However, during the early to mid-1980s he arrived at a less-tolerant, more-judgemental assessment of homosexuality: "homosexuals, because they were perverted, created the disease AIDS." Rajneesh suggested that homosexuals should be isolated: "They can live in their own world, in their own way, and be happy, but they should not be allowed to move in the wider society, spreading all kinds of dangerous viruses". When asked by gay sannyasins to explain his new view of homosexuality, he replied "As a homosexual, you are not even a human being ... You have fallen from dignity."

He never changed (or retracted) these public pronouncements.
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Giggzinho said:
you only read the bad parts
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You're right, I did, and perhaps that was somewhat unfair since I know humans aren't perfect and that somebody holding a few truly awful opinions may nevertheless also hold a wealth of beautiful wisdoms. I haven't given this guy a chance, choosing instead to focus on his awful output in order to make a mockery off him, and perhaps that was wrong of me.

In contrast though, I know that God is an omnipotent and infallible being – or at least, I'm told he is such by those who believe in him – so when God seemingly displays those same awful opinions I cannot simply look past this and dismiss this as evidence of small imperfections in an otherwise beautifully wise God.

Thus, either God truly hates homosexuals, he isn't truly omnipotent, or he does not exist at all.

Which is it, do you think?
 
To be fair, I didn't know about them comments. I have only recently started reading more of his literature.
 
Ciderman90210 said:
Thus, either God truly hates homosexuals, he isn't truly omnipotent, or he does not exist at all.
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NOTA.

He loves homosexuals. He loves all his children and wishes us to love them all too. Clearly, we can't do whilst putting homosexuals to death, so that part is to be ignored.
 
DiseaseOfTheAge said:
NOTA.

He loves homosexuals. He loves all his children and wishes us to love them all too. Clearly, we can't do whilst putting homosexuals to death, so that part is to be ignored.
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That part is to be ignored? Are you serious?

God gave us multiple passages in his holy text meant to guide us into heaven which we were supposed to ignore? Do you know how stupid that sounds?

How do you explain that?
 
Ciderman90210 said:
That part is to be ignored? Are you serious?

God gave us multiple passages in his holy text made to guide us to heaven which were supposed to be ignore? Do you know how stupid that sounds?
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He clearly has his reasons for putting in parts he didn't mean, given he's omniscient. He loves us, so it was clearly for the best, whether that's something we can understand, or not.
 
DiseaseOfTheAge said:
He clearly has his reasons for putting in parts he didn't mean, given he's omniscient. He loves us, so it was clearly for the best, whether that's something we can understand, or not.
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Ah, God works in mysterious ways, huh?

On the strength of God's word Homosexuals are suffering global persecution, often suffering imprisonment and even execution for loving a member of their own sex, all because your God works in mysterious ways.

Why should anyone worship this terrible, incompetent and cruel deity?
 
Ciderman90210 said:
Ah, God works in mysterious ways, huh?

On the strength of God's word Homosexuals are suffering global persecution, often suffering imprisonment and even execution for loving a member of their own sex, all because your God works in mysterious ways.

Why do you worship this cruel deity?
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He's not cruel. Every decision he makes is for our own good, however much it may seem otherwise, in our eyes.

Moving away from the theology... I do have significant doubts that these passages play a large role in the persecution of those who practice homosexuality. I'm sure I've made the point before that those who claim the passages are the basis of their belief homosexuality is wrong, do not live their lives in accordance with other passages. I don't know if you believe that homophobia is largely caused by religion. I'd certainly wish to believe that, as the message of many preachers is becoming decreasingly homophobic, sadly I'm not sure that is really the case.
 
Either everything in the books is true, or everything isn't true. When the bible tells us to kill homosexuals, the only two options are that we should kill homosexuals or say that bible is false and should be ignored. There's no middle ground where you can ignore passages, because then you're bastardizing a work considered infallible, as inspired by a supposedly all-powerful source. So we can chuck that line of apologism out the window.
 
Silva said:
Either everything in the books is true, or everything isn't true. When the bible tells us to kill homosexuals, the only two options are that we should kill homosexuals or say that bible is false and should be ignored. There's no middle ground where you can ignore passages, because then you're bastardizing a work considered infallible, as inspired by a supposedly all-powerful source. So we can chuck that line of apologism out the window.
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I don't see why it all needs to be true for its message to be true.
 
Silva said:
The whole thing is the message.
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I disagree. The message is of loving God and loving each other. The rest is only relevant as part of those, so I think it sensible to disregard passages that you feel obeying would conflict with them.
 
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