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I'd have to agree with this. Worship of anything or anyone is insane unjustified deification, whether it be a god, a pope, a celebrity or a parent - because no one is perfect.
I agree with this as well, with one caveat. Religion does make good people do good things, but the question is why are they doing it? Is it due to devotion, or some fear of a terrible afterlife if they don't do it, or is due to genuine heartfelt warmth, intelligence and conscience? If the former then there is the risk that they could be misguided in the future by some zealot. If the latter, then there is less risk. The same applies to any idealogy.
That's where education comes in. Education of as many people as possible is the most important thing we can do, so they can intelligently question any idealogy. Also, people must be given an opportunity to have a decent, dignified life, as I've said before.
Germany today is a good example. The population is very intelligent, educated, well off (generally income distribution is better than other advanced economies) and hard working, for the most part, but with a social conscience.
I would also like to add that the idealogy that I am most concerned with these days, and which seems to be as out of control as radical Islam, is unbridled, radical trickle down capitalism.
I just find all this extreme anti-religious stuff a bit deluded.
It was reported in the Guardian yesterday that the UK is probably one of the least religious countries in the world. So the discussion any Brits on here are having is taking place in a very unusual context. Most of the rest of the world does not have the same views. And it's really important to remember that you don't convince any one by forcing your own orthodoxy down other people's throats. The middle east is not going to go from being highly religious to secular overnight. You have to recognise that if you want to even allow secularists and aetheists the space to breathe in much of the middle east, there is a long road to travel. You need to counter the extremists and support moderates who will tolerate dissent.
I find it as objectionable as any one else that there is so much religious intollerance in the Middle East (although, having said that, it was actually quite a diverse place until relatively recently) but you're not going to change that by telling people to renounce their religion overnight. It's not even the beginning, let alone the end of the conversation that needs to be had.
Here is the Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/12/uk-one-of-worlds-least-religious-countries-survey-finds
Interesting that Thailand is one of the most religious countries, and yet their serious internal problems seem to have nothing to do with religion.
Another interesting article on the Grauniad about angry (and not so angry) aetheists: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkeman-column/2015/mar/03/are-atheists-all-angry
So basically what I'm saying is, feel free to push your own minority aethesit/secularist views, but don't expect too many people to be listening. My view is that it's actually much more productive to support and engage with people who are expressing constructive, tollerant views, regardless of their religion, than obssess about imposing a global aetheist hegemony. Challenging religious bigotry amongst ordinary non-extremist Muslims is certainly important, but there is a time and a place for that, and northern Iraq in 2015 is probably not it.
But regarding institutions doing good work name me one social reform that could not have been done through secular forces or one charity that could not work if secular. Religion is at best peripheral to social progress. At best. As it very often opposes it.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/13/us-france-surveillance-idUSKBN0N40VC20150413?irpc=932
Well, since I don't believe in God it comes as no surprise to me that there are bad people in the church. Just as there are bad people in every organisation.
And obviously all these goods works could be done by non religious organisations as well - and often are.
who has claimed that atheists lack prejudice?
Re moral codes , nobody is claiming that society does not need norms and values in order to operate effectively but it would be nice to work things out for ourselves rather than have them sent down on slabs of stone from the big guy in the sky. What a dreadful and hopeless view of humanity that we are so thick that we cant work out for ourselves how to behave. Presumably, atheists think its perfectly OK to kill people for example? It is possible to work out that murder is not a good thing without reading an old book of fairy tales.
Whether that money is ultimately spent on things we'd consider worthwhile is another matter. But yes, I think there's quite a lot of evidence to show that those who go to church give away more of their money to what they regard as good causes.
Regarding morality and where we get it from, I don't think religions have a monopoly on morality or that the world will fall apart without religion, but it's notable that it was the ideologies that rejected God in the 20th century that went on to find justifications for mass killing on a scale the world had never previously seen.
The notion that getting rid of religion automatically stops people killing or murdering is just fantasy I'm afraid.
Who has proposed that notion?
There are lots of others and lots of different spins on what it means. Apparently if you remove the sense of religious obligation, apparently Christians give less, but then the obligation is the whole point.
Hence religion is at best utterly irrelevant to goodness or social progress. At best.
Islamo nutters happen to be the baddies of the moment but before that it was Commies, and before that Nazis. And one day it will be something else.
I am not saying religion is the only evil of this world. And evils are not mutually exclusive. Religious people as a whole are not all bad, but at its core religion is based on blind obedience, belief over reason, and that is before we even start thinking about its more nefarious influence. It can and should be criticized, questioned and challenged.
Yes, Islamo nutters are now the most important threat ti civilization. But the Christian fundies are also a threat, a threat kept at bay thanks to the vigilance of secularists like us, who openly call them on their BS. Oh and the Nazis of yesterday happened to be Christians too.
My main argument with religion is that it prevents people from thinking and encourages faith over reason in many cases. That can be beneficial in some cases (when helping people to cope with the currently unexplainable for instance - like sudden deaths in the family or catastrophes) but it is potentially dangerous because faith is in essence 'blind' imho.
The human mind is very susceptible to lack of reason & irrational thinking as it is, even when we think we are being rational (recent behavioural economics studies have shown this - Daniel Kahneman's work in particular, for which he won a Nobel Prize), so anything that compounds this is potentially dangerous, no matter what its good intentions.
However, if one is deeply religious in the literal sense, then at ones core there is a belief in concepts that are essentially irrational and to some extent idiotic - no matter how smart one may be on other matters.
It is impossible in my opinion to properly reconcile this personal irrationality with intellectual reasoning (about humankind's origins or what happens after death for instance). It's either one or the other - it cannot be both. If anyone can explain how it can be both, I'm ready to hear it.
Here are some quotes from that famous idiot, Albert Einstein. I'm not saying I agree with him (I don't) but I can't dismiss what someone of Einstein's intellect has to say on this matter:
“The divine reveals itself in the physical world.”
“My God created laws… His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking but by immutable laws.”
Clearly Einstein's views on the divine and God did not fall into easy categorisation in terms of religion, but he also said
“I am not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist.”
The last quote makes it clear that he believed in a single superior power of some kind.
And one more quote from Albert relevant to this conversation:
“Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source.”
If as fine a mind as Einsteins could conclude that their is a divine order and superior intelligence/power behind the universe then I find it hard to dismiss that point of view as inherently nonsense. I don't personally share the view, but it would be arrogant of me to say that his beliefs were irrational hocum.
So I see religion as partly expressing a long-standing belief in the divine, that even Einstein embraced.
I think this actually confirms my point. I'm assuming these quotes were his responses when confronted on religion or god?
There is nothing in the above statements that suggested he had an opinion on the subject either way. Just that he didn't know. He may have had a suspicion or an assumption (e.g. that there is some sort of order to the universe - his comment on immutable laws governing it for instance), but he did not appear to have a firm conclusion on it either way - which is the proper scientific answer given we don't have all the facts yet (it's an ongoing learning /investigative process, and hopefully the recently restarted large hadron collider gives us more answers shortly). That's different from being firmly religious and believing in chosen ones etc.
I do agree with his statement on fanatical atheists though - as I said some pages back, fanatics come in all guises and cannot be reasoned with, whether they be religious fanatics or fanatical aethists.
I'm not an expert, but the Shia in Islam, so I understand, see the Koran very explicitly as a text that has to be interpreted by humans and applied to a changing world. The interpretation is not static and so laws and rules can change over time. That wouldn't satisfy me if I was living in Iran, but it's a very different approach to the view of and extremist Sunni salafists and wahabists who want 'go back' to some imagined medieval pure form of Islam.
My point from earlier though is that if one considers oneself devoutly religious, then by definition it will be impossible for one to reconcile religion with common sense, because one then has to accept the good with the bad - one then cannot pick and choose. This was mentioned in an earlier post as well - that it's not possible to be a 'good' religious person (of any faith) without accepting the most fundamental fallacies intrinsic to it. I don't think there is such a thing as moderately good religious. So there has to be at some level (even if it is subconscious) an acceptance of the inherent misconceptions in faith beliefs - i.e. to be at some level illogical. US presidents (who have to pledge their allegiance to the flag and to Christianity), are also guilty of this, which to me is scary. Either people haven't thought deeply enough about this, or they are just ignoring that fact.
Having said that, I'm personally not suggesting, like some here, that we have to be so harsh in our criticism of religion and completely ostracize & marginalize it. I understand why it's necessary for some, and it does serve a good purpose as well - of that there is no doubt.
My view however is that we have to be more clear in asking religious people to confront the delusions inherent in their faith. As an example, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Western governments asked moderate muslims to do that within the Islamic community in order to marginalize the Islamic radicals - that's a start and I say that has to be expanded to all faiths, including Christianity. We should also cut off funding for faith based schools etc.
Religion in our western world is still a force that slows down any equality and humanity even if it has lost a lot of ground, we are still being governed by a two thousand year old collection of tales [most of them very much borrowed from even older religions] that is constantly being misused by preachers and their ilk for monetary reasons and manipulation of people always for the gain of power and money. Which has been the case through most of our human religious history even further back than Christianity, Islam & Judaism goes.
Religion or believe is an integral part our of human psyche as is violence, I am not sure how we can lose either of them because masses of people tend to react different from single persons.
No I'm saying that faith is irrelevant to moral and that worship is not to be confused to morality.
Actually no they are pretty much a minority now. And even for Einstein it is debatable whether he was a theist or not. Even if he was that would be an appeal to authority.