It wasn't written by one person and much of it was ripped off from earlier myths which also pander to basic human needs, insecurities and fears.
Religion, what's the point?
- Thread starter TheRedFlag
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The bible is a multicultural book it hasn't been written in one block and it comes from the Torah. It is centuries of manipulation.
Hope you're not talking about Golden Bough there?
You know, you can be a free man and adhere to a faith as well.
That is a fallacy. You believe in organised religion makes you a prisoner of that dogma you're following.
A free man follows no dogma, but follows his own free thoughts. This includes the questioning of god and the ridicule of prophet muhamed.
Religion is like drugs. Once you're hooked on it it's hard to let go. But, once you let go it feels like ecstasy to feel free again.
It's remarkable how The Golden Bough demonstrates how similar primitive religion, magic and superstition were worldwide, or perhaps not, just early man trying to come to terms with death and powerlessness.
Ok, so let's say I am born an atheist and I live my whole life as an atheist up to the age of 25. At 25, I sit down and question my existence. I research it, read up on it, collect and collate a wide variety of evidence from different faiths, and I come to the conclusion that God exists. After coming to that conclusion, have I automatically lost the right to call myself a free man?
Exactly, Polytheist religions were created to cope with that, but monotheist religions have been created to control people and gain money around that.
You don’t need religion to explain or replicate your experiences. It’s possible to do that entirely without religion in a much better way.
Most religious text are ambiguous so once people follow these texts you´ll get a wide spectrum of different believes and a significant part of this spectrum will cherish highly immoral nonsense.
We have to change our view on education. It’s not healthy that parents indoctrinate their children with religious nonsense. It’s nothing you can change by law, but society shouldn’t just accept it unopposed.
We are never free, our fears will always control us.
I won't disagree about your personal experiences nor will I go asking everyone to turn atheist. It is every individual's choice. If you find mental peace through religion and as long as you don't forcefully enforce on others, it is OK. My point was, the religious institutions are not always working with best intent but have ulterior motives and I gave example for that. You overlooked or avoided the example. I was not saying that all people who are religious are fraud but one can't trust the institutions which in name of God promise to work towards 'better society' but carry out other activities backstage which are not right. Of course, not all are like that but one can't blindly trust a religious institution to make world a better place. If one trusts his own rational mind, and everyone does it, world can still be a better place to live.
Nobody is born an atheist, just like nobody is born a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew etc. There are no Christian, Muslim, Jewish children in the world just Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Scientology parents who indoctrinate their kids with their misguided ideologies.
I think you're both (intentionally) missing my point here.
My question was, if I am an atheist, and I follow my own free thoughts, as a free man...I then research and evaluate different religions. This research period brings me to the conclusion that God exists.
Does confirming that, with my own free thoughts, and own free mind, lose me the right to call myself a free man?
Of course you don't have that freedom any more, you lose it because you've been indoctrinated into a religious cult, this isn't your personal belief but the belief of others and by reading their propaganda and falling for it you lose your freedom whether that be Scientology, Christianity, Muslim, Buddhist, Nazism or otherwise. You've started living for an afterlife and not for the here and now, you've got to ask yourself if a person is truly free if they're forever living for tomorrow?
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People are so precious about material things, about living forever, about eternity that they forget to enjoy what's around them in the present. I have to question the intentions, no matter how good, of someone who is doing something because their religion has told them to do it, it reeks of self indulgence and falseness - they're not helping because it's what they want to do or because they're genuine people.
It was my niece' Christening last week and I must say, I found the ceremony in the Church quite difficult to sit through as somebody who dislikes religion with a passion. The thing is, my brother isn't even religious, but his partner who I never witnessed doing anything to do Christianity beforehand called the shots on it. I just don't understand why, in 2015 people still allow themselves to be fed the rubbish that priests of a blatantly corrupt organisation spout out. It does my head in.
He was brought up as an Ashkenazi Jew, although his family was not very religious. His agnostic views developed later in life, which is the case for many thinking people, however in the past because of fear most of them wouldn't have advertized it.
If you are persuaded that something exist by someone, when he never saw this thing himself, then you have been indoctrinate.
For example if god exist then Hell and Paradise exist in the sky and inside the earth, but it's not the case
If god exist (in our monotheist religions) the earth is the center of the universe and everything gravitate around it, that's not the case.
The simple fact that religious orders are able to adapt their belief in accordance to scientific discoveries (not theories but observations) prove that their belief is not based on something tangible.
And another thing, if you do your research thoroughly 99% of your readings will be polytheist, animist, fetishist, ...etc and for them the only god doesn't exist.
Ok, I need a bit of clarification-you say of course not (i.e. I don't lose the right) but then say I lose the right...?
So far I've come to the conclusion through my own separate reading and research that God exists. I haven't prescribed to a specific faith, nor have I had any interaction with anyone else. My own free thoughts has brought me to this conclusion. The point I'm trying to highlight here is being a free man is not just believing in nothing. You can be a free man and believe in something greater than the period from birth to death.
For clarification: of course not in that you don't have that freedom you were mentioning any more.
That is false though, you have had interaction with someone else, albeit someone who lived centuries ago but by reading their material you have interacted with them.
Being a free man is believing in what YOU want to believe in, not what others want you to believe in.
A belief can't be made up on research as you'll have been influenced by others, being free means the opposite of this - being free means making your own mind up. Your argument would hold better if no material was used and you'd just sat and thought about things yourself.
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What's also remarkable is that a book that's been largely discredited by academia continues to be held in such high esteem.
Man's own free rational thought can lead him to believe God exists, just in the same that it can lead another man to believe that God doesn't exist.
You have taken the evidence you've seen/read/heard/whatever and come to that conclusion by yourself. Conversely, another person can come to a different conclusion. The point is you've used your own thoughts and rationale, and evaluated what you discovered and come to that conclusion freely.
Now, if man has used his own free thought to believe that God exists, that doesn't mean he no longer is a free man. His own free choices have led him to that conclusion. He is still free to go out and do whatever he wants with his life. However, if he wants to go out and do good because he believes that God exists and he wants to live a good and fulfilling life, that's still his choice. He is still free in behaving that way.
You're missing the point, what you describe is not free thought, read my previous post - through research you're indirectly being manipulated whether you believe you are or not.
Free thought would be sitting down and thinking about it yourself and perhaps through some miraculous insight coming to the conclusion that "wow, there is a God and he's a giant purple octopus" and having done this without touching any material.
I already told you that we are not free, the first man was a free man, after that we used his experience, and the experience of our ancestors.
If you believe in something that you can't see or touch, you are not free.
You're missing the point, what you describe is not free thought, read my previous post, through research you're indirectly being manipulated whether you believe you are or not.[/QUOTE]
This is where your argument doesn't make sense. If I use my own free thought and rationale to believe in God, this doesn't make me any less of a free man than someone who doesn't. Irregardless, if I read or not, I could easily wake up one day and believe that God exists. It's my own thoughts and my own rationale that have brought me to that conclusion.
What you're saying doesn't stack up. If anyone reads or tries to research into it, and they change their beliefs according to what they've researched, then they've already become indoctrinated and are no longer free. The man who doesn't believe in God would have been 'indirectly manipulated' in some way to come to that conclusion (using your own logic).
I can't see or touch time, but I believe in it.
I can't see or touch air, but it exists.
That logic doesn't add up.
But I do agree with you, we are largely a by product of everything that happened before us, and nothing is truly original or unique, but that's a different debate.
It's a figure of speech, the difference is that air and time are notions who come from observation. The only god comes from fiction, and does not respond to a new problem, the polytheist religions were already dealing with our existential problems.
Ok, so from observations, some people believe that rather than coincidence, or happenstance, there was a Creator. Or even a finger that prodded the events that led to the Big Bang.
From observation, have you seen two particles moving towards each other at such fantastic speeds to give birth to creation as we know it? I doubt it. But you believe that took place because it is the most logical explanation. And that's fine.
You're taking what scientists have determined on faith. And that is 100% fine.
So, what I'm saying is, there are people who believe in God, even though He is not tangible, and can't be observed scientifically, on faith as well.
By the mere fact that religion is ones personal belief then if it is influenced by anyone else (including material written by someone else) it's then not personal any more, that's indoctrination into someone else's belief.
I'm afraid YOU are missing the point, Rudie. To paraphrase The Specials, you have failed!
A man is free to believe or not believe anything he wishes. The act of consciously decided to believing in fairies, virgins in heaven, minotaurs or pentagrams can be, but is not necessarily is, itself a manifestation of our conscious freedom to believe what he wishes.
Many people are indoctrinated to believe in God's existence and many believe are indoctrinated to believe God does not exist. But many people do give give God's existence and God's nonexistence -- and what that might mean in terms of "higher truth" -- serious thought.
You have every right to mock people with whom you disagree on questions relating to God/gods, but it is a logical fallacy to argue that anyone who believes in a god or many gods is necessarily being manipulated by people with whom he agrees on questions of God/gods.
In other words, agreement with you that God does not exist does not define a "free man".
Everyone gets to choose for himself what he believe and should be free from denigration for doing so, short of those beliefs causing harm or suffering to others.
I personally believe that random cosmic forces created the cosmos billions of years ago and that we when humans die, all we are is worm food (or buzzard food, for those who are familiar with Josie Wales). But it would be absurd for me to suggest that anyone who doesn't see the world exactly as I do as not a "free man". It may well be the case in true reality that a really old dude with a long beard and a hippie son created the universe; do any of us really for a FACT that this is not the case? I have serious questions about the viability of this epic series of accounts (an evil serpent, a flood, chariots in the sky, a crucifixion, miracles and so on....and that's before we recall the human rights abuses over centuries committed in the name of this god) but I would be a madman were I to suggest that I possess complete knowledge of the exact nature of the universe and the meaning of life.
We are all free men in choosing to exercise our freedom by inquiring into the nature of reality and coming to one's own conclusions -- or even in choosing NOT to undertake this inquiry -- so long as in the exercise of our freedom we respect the freedom of others to pursue their happiness as they wish. The minute we embrace a dogma without seriously contemplating it -- whether the dogma or atheism or any particular theism -- then whether we are truly free, may be questioned.
@Gannicus -that is exactly the point I was trying to make.
I believe in the intellectual process behind science, i don't believe in everything in science. For example in some theories we are in a verbatim of an original dimension, who is developing simultaneously.
I'm indoctrinate by science, i have no problem with that, i have no problem with most polytheist religions, i have no problem with most religions, i have no problem with judaism because there is no proselytism.
I have a problem with the two other religions who invented the principle of crusade.
And in science there is a lot of theories, but very little facts, most scientist will never try to force you to read and believe in their researches.
They are free to believe what they want but that doesn't make them free themselves, citizens of Nazi Germany were prisoners as much as those in the POW camps, they had the freedom to believe what they wanted to by your definition.
If you believe in the things you've mentioned there are no demands that you live your life one way or another - they weren't created for the all intent purpose of creating a religion (unlike the Abrahamic God), if I decide to believe in minotaurs then that is a belief and I am free to believe in them but minotaurs are not a religion, I think you're confused.
There is no religion based around this belief either, again confusion between believing in something and indoctrination into a religion that someone else has made up.
This isn't a belief, you either believe or do not, you can not be "indoctrinated" (persuaded is a better word) into not believing in something, you need to read the definition of belief:
belief
bɪˈliːf/
noun
- an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof.
"his belief in extraterrestrial life"
I'm not sure what the rest of your post is getting at either to be honest, I think you've missed the context completely which was:
Whether an atheist who has researched God (my presumption was the Abrahamic one) and then believed in him after concluding their research was truly free.
My point was that this isn't a free choice as it was influenced by someone else without evidence (whomever wrote the material) contrary to what Uzz was claiming and therefore whomever follows that God isn't truly free.
I'll think you'll find that was "Rudy", to paraphrase The Clash: Rudie Can't Fail.
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Of course you can touch air - stick your hand out of the window of the car next time...
If anything doesn't add up it's the ridiculous religious logic you like to defend so much.
Describe to me what touching air feels like.
describe me how touching your shoes feel ?
That example doesn't really work as I can physically look at and touch the shoe.
You can physically look at and touch air!
Can you see water when it's a gas. Do you think that gas exist ? Do you use Lynx Africa
?Edit: You can't see or touch your farts, do you believe in them ?
This reminds me of the situation in the USA after slavery was abolished - many slaves chose to stay with their former masters and continue to live the same way as servants. They were free to choose freedom, but didn't. It's the same with religion - people are free to choose freedom of the mind, but they choose to enslave it. Does that make them free?
So, describe to me what air looks like and what it feels like to touch.
Can you see water when it's a gas. Do you think that gas exist ? Do you use Lynx Africa
Edit: You can't see or touch your farts, do you believe in them ?
Yes, you can see water as a gas. It's called steam. We used to run trains on it.
The point here is that you're argument of "If you believe in something that you can't see or touch, you are not free" frankly, farcical. You believe in gases, as do I, yet you can't see or touch them. You believe in infra red and ultra violet and all the other colours of the spectrum we are too limited to see, yet you believe them. I'm sure you believe in anti matter etc and so on and so forth, and I could continue listing the things you believe although you can not have any physical or sensual verification of them.
So, this just shows how ridiculous and illogical your argument is.
@Momochiru -I am still waiting for a response.