There are no "Religions of peace".....

[Brian37]

No worries, it's damn sexy. I know I'm probably related to Stalin in some ways. I didn't make the claim I was nothing like him. I do base my personal morality judgements of others on observable action. I also base them my understanding of said magic book. I also base them on circumstance, societal norms, laws and a few other things.

My overarching point being that your assertion that humanity as a whole has a tendency for compassion and good is askew. While I agree there's the ability for that, I don't believe the drive is from the same place you do, nor headed in the same trajectory.

Um no, you are not "probably related" you ARE related. DNA proves that all human beings are the same species.

You not liking his behaviors does not change that. I hate Stain too. Some human beings are simply disturbed monsters. But there is no sky hero allowing it, or blaming us, or a ground troll causing it. Some human beings are simply vile piles of shit.

The good part of our species, while some are worthless pieces of shit, there are also lots of compassionate humans too. People like Martin Luther King Jr, Malala and Ann Frank.

But again, I do not assign any good or bad that other human beings do, to being allowed by, or caused by, to a super natural cognition. Just like don't assign what humans do to Yoda or Darth Vader.


Saying Stalin was a homo sapient isn't claiming humans should behave like he did.

You can look at human beings just like weather. Each day is different, and some storms bring needed rain that feed crops, and make rainbows, while other storms can end up in tornados and hurricanes. 

Humans are simply one species, and can be either compassionate or cruel as individuals. But Thor does not explain why rainbows or tornados happen.

[tackattack]

I agree with your statements Brian and I am related to Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pedophile Priests, serial killers, etc.
back to the point.
Your thread title and OP seem to imply that religions can't be peaceful, or it's particularly Religions fault for dismantling peace, which is the only reason I piped up into your thread. If your only point is that people doing good or bad things isn't dependent on or caused by a supernatural creator daddy, I would actually agree.

[Brian37]

I agree with your statements Brian and I am related to Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pedophile Priests, serial killers, etc.
back to the point.
Your thread title and OP seem to imply that religions can't be peaceful, or it's particularly Religions fault for dismantling peace, which is the only reason I piped up into your thread. If your only point is that people doing good or bad things isn't dependent on or caused by  a supernatural creator daddy, I would actually agree.

Please stop reading into my posts what you want to hear.

I didn't say religious individuals could not be peaceful. I am disputing where humans think our behaviors are coming from.

Martin Luther King Jr, Malala, and Ann Frank are all EXAMPLES of the empathy and good our species is capable of. They certainly would claim that religion is the cause of their good. Not the point. 

Saying humans are capable of doing good is not the same as having evidence for a super natural divine source of that ability to do good.

Religion has no magic power to make an individual only do good. That is what I mean by "there are no religions of peace".

There are peaceful individuals  that point to their religion as the cause yes. But religion is not a universal cure to bring worldwide peace. If it were, we should expect to see one universal religion, and only one religion.

What we do see in human history worldwide is that every part of the world since the first human writings, is that not one part of the world has been 100% violence free forever. Every part of the world has had it's conflicts. And I have said before, every nation, both friend and foe alike, have hospitals and prisons.

That says to me that religion isn't the cause of peace. 

Humans point to their respective religions as the cause of peace. I am not arguing that. 

I am simply saying that is not really where our ability to get along is coming from. There is no super natural reason we fight or get along.

You cannot look at this and should not look at this as singling out any one religion on my part. I am not. I am saying that humans behaviors are not in holy books, mythology or fictional beings. 

If a Christian does good, it is because that individual is good. If a Muslim is good, it is because that individual is good. If a Jew does good, it is because that individual is good. If a Buddhist does good, it is because that individual is good. If a Hindu does good, it is because that individual is good. That says to me once again, that there is no magic to the labels we ascribe ourselves, because there are prisons also in every nation in the world.

Just like there were no written religions 200,000 years ago, one could expect, in 20,000 years, if humans don't blow ourselves up, we can expect humans in the future to do what we have always done both good and bad. And we can expect today's current popular beliefs to morph into something unrecognizable and or simply die out and in the future be replaced by another religion where today's would be considered dead mythology in the future.

That is what I mean by "There are no religions of peace". There are only peaceful individuals, regardless of what they attribute it to. I only argue that humans are doing it, and nothing we do, good or bad, war or peace is the cause of the divine.

[tackattack]

OK, I'm sorry if I misread between the lines. Thanks for clarifying. Let's go with that.
So for clarity let's see if I got your gist:
So good people are good because the individual acts good, not because he's acted upon by a supernatural God? Religion isn't a source of peace because we see a history of systemic unrest and we don't see a universal religion?

People act on their beliefs, Their beliefs are informed by their experience

Are we in agreement on these three things?

[Brian37]

OK, I'm sorry if I misread between the lines. Thanks for clarifying. Let's go with that.
So for clarity let's see if I got your gist:
So good people are good because the individual acts good, not because he's acted upon by a supernatural God? Religion isn't a source of peace because we see a history of systemic unrest and we don't see a universal religion?

People act on their beliefs, Their beliefs are informed  by their experience

Are we in agreement on these three things?

"He's"? Females are also part of our species population.

Um no we are not in agreement.

1. Yes people act on their beliefs. But again, that is not evidence that the source of their behaviors are from a super natural source. It only means they believe that.

2. Yes, their beliefs are informed by their "experiences". But again, filling in the gap is all that is doing. It is assuming an answer, it isn't evidence that it is correct. If a kid gets told the covered olives in the dark kitchen at the Halloween party are eyeballs, that is also an "experience", but the kid is believing they are eyeballs and not olives because they are uninformed and too trusting of the parents putting that idea in their head. With religion, most humans get sold the social norms of their parents prior to formulating adult critical thinking skills. It is very easy for most humans to gap fill, and assume a perception  is true when it is not. Again, the ancient Egyptians TRULY AND FALSELY believed in their gods which were never real. The passing of those social norms were real experiences yes, but not real provable gods. One can be told prayer works by others, one can see others believing it, and based on that, falsely buy into what others sell them. 

Again you keep missing my point.

Humans do good because we observe them doing good. Humans do bad because we observe them doing bad. Just like a rain storm can provide nutrients to crops, while another storm can produce tornados. But funny how you don't assign either to Thor.

[The Grand Nudger]

There were religions of peace.  But there aren’t any more.  Such is the nature of any world where religion is allowed to flourish.

Same thing would happen if we locked some hippy pacifist in a box with a violent psychopath and just one candybar.  Two men enter...one man leaves...and it aint gonna be the nice guy.

Every extant religion has either in the present or in it's past experienced some conflict point where their continued survival or ability to outcompete the other guy depended powerfully on their willingness to be the nastiest asshole in the box.

[Brian37]

And @tackattack

I can also again, go back to my childhood when I didn't know better. The dreams of seeing my dead grandmother and dead father were real dreams, yes, but DREAMS only. There was nothing super natural going on. Point is, you can have a very real false perception because you don't understand really what is going on. Much like a dog will bark at it's own reflection in the mirror.

[tackattack]

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OK, I'm sorry if I misread between the lines. Thanks for clarifying. Let's go with that.
So for clarity let's see if I got your gist:
So good people are good because the individual acts good, not because he's acted upon by a supernatural God? Religion isn't a source of peace because we see a history of systemic unrest and we don't see a universal religion?

People act on their beliefs, Their beliefs are informed  by their experience

Are we in agreement on these three things?

"He's"? Females are also part of our species population.

Um no we are not in agreement.

1. Yes people act on their beliefs. But again, that is not evidence that the source of their behaviors are from a super natural source. It only means they believe that.

2. Yes, their beliefs are informed by their "experiences". But again, filling in the gap is all that is doing. It is assuming an answer, it isn't evidence that it is correct. If a kid gets told the covered olives in the dark kitchen at the Halloween party are eyeballs, that is also an "experience", but the kid is believing they are eyeballs and not olives because they are uninformed and too trusting of the parents putting that idea in their head. With religion, most humans get sold the social norms of their parents prior to formulating adult critical thinking skills. It is very easy for most humans to gap fill, and assume a perception  is true when it is not. Again, the ancient Egyptians TRULY AND FALSELY believed in their gods which were never real. The passing of those social norms were real experiences yes, but not real provable gods. One can be told prayer works by others, one can see others believing it, and based on that, falsely buy into what others sell them. 

Again you keep missing my point.

Humans do good because we observe them doing good. Humans do bad because we observe them doing bad. Just like a rain storm can provide nutrients to crops, while another storm can produce tornados. But funny how you don't assign either to Thor.

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I'm not trying to be pedantic, it was the "royal" he.
So using your own words we can agree that:
1. People act on their beliefs
2. People's beliefs are informed by their "experiences".
3. We observe humans doing good/bad.

So how do you inject cause into this formula? How do you relate Religion into the equation?

[The Grand Nudger]

Religion informs peoples expectations and frames their experience.  Insomuch as a religion informs some shitty expectation and frames subsequent experience in a detrimental way, it's a contributing factor to any end product of nastiness.  We could always suggest that there were other factors, but this is just a kid pointing at his friends and saying "but timmy hit him too, mom".  

Conceptually, it works the same way for any positive outcome attributable to a persons religion. 

The trouble is in isolating some positive thing unique to any religion, whereas a given religions specific shittiness is among the set of known knowns.

So, for example, any monotheist who justifies their shittiness by reference to someone else's polytheism is expressing a gripe that requires their monotheism, whereas the same monotheist laying claim to positive outcomes has the polytheists ability to produce those same outcomes to contend with. In this, polytheism is intrinscally more inclusive than monotheism, and while there is a range of nasty and nice things shared between them, there is a range of shitty things that is solely possessed by the zealous monotheist.

Or, you know, the short version is "a history of the world since the assumption of monotheism", lol. We kindof went off the rails in the transition from monolatry to where we are now as a product of fanatics doing what fanatics will invariably do. In our defence, and echoing my previous statements, it's not as if there aren't powerful motivators compelling the respective monolatristic camps into the actions we've seen.

[Brian37]

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"He's"? Females are also part of our species population.

Um no we are not in agreement.

1. Yes people act on their beliefs. But again, that is not evidence that the source of their behaviors are from a super natural source. It only means they believe that.

2. Yes, their beliefs are informed by their "experiences". But again, filling in the gap is all that is doing. It is assuming an answer, it isn't evidence that it is correct. If a kid gets told the covered olives in the dark kitchen at the Halloween party are eyeballs, that is also an "experience", but the kid is believing they are eyeballs and not olives because they are uninformed and too trusting of the parents putting that idea in their head. With religion, most humans get sold the social norms of their parents prior to formulating adult critical thinking skills. It is very easy for most humans to gap fill, and assume a perception  is true when it is not. Again, the ancient Egyptians TRULY AND FALSELY believed in their gods which were never real. The passing of those social norms were real experiences yes, but not real provable gods. One can be told prayer works by others, one can see others believing it, and based on that, falsely buy into what others sell them. 

Again you keep missing my point.

Humans do good because we observe them doing good. Humans do bad because we observe them doing bad. Just like a rain storm can provide nutrients to crops, while another storm can produce tornados. But funny how you don't assign either to Thor.

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I'm not trying to be pedantic, it was the "royal" he.
So using your own words we can agree that:
1. People act on their beliefs
2. People's beliefs are informed by their "experiences".
3. We observe humans doing good/bad.

So how do you inject cause into this formula? How do you relate Religion into the equation?

1. People act on their beliefs. I agree. Still does not make their beliefs fact. It merely means they believe it. 

2. People's beliefs are informed by their "experiences". BUT AGAIN see my prior posts. A dog can have a very REAL experience of barking at their reflection in the mirror and still not realize that they are really barking at themselves. Tell a kid at a Halloween party that the covered bowl of olives are human eyeballs, odds are they will believe you if young and gullible enough.

3. We observe humans doing good/bad. Yes, and we observe storms bring rain and rainbows, and also tornados and hurricanes. But you don't assign storms to Thor do you? 

I don't see cause as supernatural. I simply see nature as a collection of events that lead to an outcome without a super cognition causing it. I don't see humans caused by a super cognition anymore  than one should claim that cockroaches pray to a cockroach god.

I see religion as nothing more than a superstitious attempt to explain nature.

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My earlier harsh comments aside, I think there's some confusion between 'religions of peace' and 'peaceful religionists.'  Take Jainism as a hypothetical example.  Jainism is pretty explicit in its rejection of all forms of violence - you must not kill anyone, nor must you cause another person to kill someone, either directly or indirectly.  Your motivation for violence doesn't matter - if you commit an act of violence deliberately or through carelessness, you have damaged your soul.

Now, imagine that a self-described Jain (for whatever reason), goes out one day and beats twelve people to death with a steel dildo.  He has committed acts of violence, no possible question about it.  But his actions don't change the fundamental Jain tenet against all forms of violence.  What you've got is a bad Jain, but his actions don't alter the fact that  Jainism is STILL a 'religion of peace'. 

Boru

I don't care. 

You don't need Jainism or Buddhism or Christianity or Hinduism or any religion to say, "Don't get violent with other humans".

Jainism didn't invent peace anymore than any other religion. And just like the Amish, funny how it is easy to claim a minority religion with no majority would claim to be peaceful. Problem is majorities worldwide in our species history don't have to worry as much about the welfare of a minority. So any given minority worldwide can easily market themselves as peaceful, when the the reality would be, that if they were the majority, and not the minority, they probably would not be so accommodating.

Again, this is not for me about Jainism, or Amish, or Jewish or Muslim, or Rasta or Muslim or Christian or Hindu.

It is very easy for humans as they unfortunately do a majority of the time, to forget that while they can be an oppressed minority geographically depending on history, does not mean they will always be the underdog and will always be kind to others. 

There is only a species regardless of label, capable of compassion. But our ability to do good or bad is not based on a label. Our species failure is assuming that a label is a cure all. Our actions are a solution, but our respective labels are still in no way universal and have no magic powers.

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Imagine any label the 100% belief of the world.

Imaging 7 billion Jains

Or 7 billion Buddhists

Or 7 billion Sikhs

Or 7 billion Rastas

Or 7 billion Muslims

Or 7 billion Jews

Or 7 billion Hindus

Or 7 billion Christians.

Or 7 billion atheists.

There is not one sane person that could argue in any one of those examples that human divisions would suddenly go away and 100% of the world would have no violence for the rest of our species existence.