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I've noticed that some people on here are saying that religion is bad. Well, no one likes being fooled, and if you're an atheist, you're kind of sure that religious people are just messing with you.
However you can't say that religion is bad, because the motive of religion is to be the peacekeeper, to do good, it is, in effect, humanity's earliest ethics, an ethics that, in all forms of religion, has a supernatural punishment if you don't follow their ethics.
No form of ethics is bad, ethics is a force for good, if there is bad, then that bad is the cause of people, who do not understand their own ideas.
It's true that not everybody understands ethics. However if you are going to be an atheist, you still have to follow ethics. You must. Because you are an atheist your mind is free to explore every possible source of ethics that there is, and I beg of you to understand, religion is one of them. Since you are an atheist, you are free to explore every religion's ethics. I also recommend the Ender Quartet by Orson Scott Card to learn about ethics. There's probably lots of other people who have written about ethics.
You must remember ethics. Remember that it is good for your survival to have good ethics.
As of yet on this website, I have seen no ethics, just the anger of being tricked, just denial of something, and that isn't anything at all. But if you create a solid set of ethics, you'll be something, and no longer be free. So you must just be open to any form of ethics.
I think that most of my ethics comes from me. I want my ethics to encompass the entire world, and I want everyone on earth to respect and love one another. Sounds like miss america? Unreasonable? Who cares, that's ethics, that's why sometimes you need faith (the common sense definition), and things change, so maybe one day that will happen, if people believe in universal ethics.
As of now, I see lots of pain. Which is why as many people as possible need to believe in ethics, to be the force that tries to stop this pain, and help other people.
I don't believe in god. Never have never will. But say I don't believe in ethics, and you've got a fight on your hands.
Some religions can be viewed like a club where like minded people hang out share cakes and have a gossip.
Other religions force their views on others, retard human progress and start wars.
Its the latter I am against.
(October 14, 2013 at 1:24 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: Other religions force their views on others, retard human progress and start wars.
Its the latter I am against.
It's good to be against that, that's good ethics. But I'm sorry, you are wrong, religion doesn't do that, people do that, if they use religion as their tool, it is not religion's fault, because religion was created to keep good ethics, so they were using it wrongly.
(October 14, 2013 at 1:31 pm)Dunno Wrote: But I'm sorry, you are wrong, religion doesn't do that, people do that, if they use religion as their tool, it is not religion's fault, because religion was created to keep good ethics, so they were using it wrongly.
I think it is you who are wrong. Since most here believe that religion is a construct of people, then religion as it is practiced by those people IS the problem. For the very few church cultures that ONLY engage in creating a space for like-minded people to hang out, share cakes and have a gossip (I can't think of ANY that confine their activities to just these things, can you?), there are so many more who use their beliefs to create cultural divisions, assert moral superiority -- hell, superiority, period -- advance political agendas, kill and torture others, fight wars and generally impose their "ethics" on the rest of us. What the hell is ethical about THAT?
(October 14, 2013 at 1:21 pm)Dunno Wrote: I've noticed that some people on here are saying that religion is bad. Well, no one likes being fooled, and if you're an atheist, you're kind of sure that religious people are just messing with you.
I don't think that religious people are "messing with" me. I think that for the most part they genuinely believe and are dedicated to their religion or religious beliefs. If we consider some of the things religious people have done in the name of those beliefs, that is what makes religion bad.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
October 14, 2013 at 2:00 pm (This post was last modified: October 14, 2013 at 2:15 pm by Raven.)
Religion was not created for the purpose of ethics. Why would it be? People can come up with that without any of that attached to it. Religion is all about control. Ancient Israel was a theocracy, the priests had a lot of power and only their own were let in. Even with even less developed societies than that the local Shaman has a great deal of influence. The religious leaders have frequently been the only ones who could give the political leaders a hard time. How about the pope back in the days of the Borgias and Medicis? That good old ladie's man Henry VIII started his own religion to get around that. Control of the people is what it has always been about, nothing more. The best way to get people to behave the way you want historically was to scare the shit out of them with what the gods would do if they did not behave.
Kinda doesn't work so well anymore, but some still fall for it. Religion is just a crock, and no good can ever come of it.
“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”
― Christopher Hitchens
"That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject". - George Santayana
"If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed". - George Carlin
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg
Christian apologetics is the art of rolling a dog turd in sugar and selling it as a donut.
Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.
October 14, 2013 at 2:26 pm (This post was last modified: October 14, 2013 at 2:27 pm by genkaus.)
(October 14, 2013 at 1:21 pm)Dunno Wrote:
I've noticed that some people on here are saying that religion is bad. Well, no one likes being fooled, and if you're an atheist, you're kind of sure that religious people are just messing with you.
However you can't say that religion is bad, because the motive of religion is to be the peacekeeper, to do good, it is, in effect, humanity's earliest ethics, an ethics that, in all forms of religion, has a supernatural punishment if you don't follow their ethics.
No form of ethics is bad, ethics is a force for good, if there is bad, then that bad is the cause of people, who do not understand their own ideas.
It's true that not everybody understands ethics. However if you are going to be an atheist, you still have to follow ethics. You must. Because you are an atheist your mind is free to explore every possible source of ethics that there is, and I beg of you to understand, religion is one of them. Since you are an atheist, you are free to explore every religion's ethics. I also recommend the Ender Quartet by Orson Scott Card to learn about ethics. There's probably lots of other people who have written about ethics.
You must remember ethics. Remember that it is good for your survival to have good ethics.
As of yet on this website, I have seen no ethics, just the anger of being tricked, just denial of something, and that isn't anything at all. But if you create a solid set of ethics, you'll be something, and no longer be free. So you must just be open to any form of ethics.
I think that most of my ethics comes from me. I want my ethics to encompass the entire world, and I want everyone on earth to respect and love one another. Sounds like miss america? Unreasonable? Who cares, that's ethics, that's why sometimes you need faith (the common sense definition), and things change, so maybe one day that will happen, if people believe in universal ethics.
As of now, I see lots of pain. Which is why as many people as possible need to believe in ethics, to be the force that tries to stop this pain, and help other people.
I don't believe in god. Never have never will. But say I don't believe in ethics, and you've got a fight on your hands.
Are you kidding me with this? Have you looked around the forum at all? Because if you had, you'd realize how pseudo-philosophical and meaningless your "arguments" are. Even a cursory search of the philosophy section should be enough to show that the topic of ethics and morality have been examined quite deeply on this very forum.
Let's look at a few choice comments:
"the motive of religion is to be the peacekeeper"
Yeah, right! That's why so many religions have clauses like "kill the infidels". The motive of religion is to impose its ethical system onto as many people as it can. If that means starting a few wars or killing a few thousands - it won't have a problem with that.
"No form of ethics is bad, ethics is a force for good,"
That's quintessential circular reasoning. What is regarded as morally good or bad is determined by a particular ethical system. No ethical system is going to regard itself as bad by its own standards. So, in order to judge any form of ethics as "good" or "bad", you need to have already presumed another set of ethics - or, atleast, the function it is supposed to serve. Judging by your earlier statement about peacekeeping. if that is the role of an ethical system, then many forms of ethics would be bad because they do not condone peace above everything else.
"It's true that not everybody understands ethics."
This seems especially true for you.
"You must remember ethics. Remember that it is good for your survival to have good ethics. "
This seems to indicate a whole different purpose for ethics. Rather than peacekeeping, they seem to be required for our survival. Well, in that case, most of the religious ethics are bad because they denounce your survival here in favor of your afterlife.
"As of yet on this website, I have seen no ethics,"
Really? Because on the first three pages of the Philosophy forum, I saw atleast six threads about morality. Try looking harder.
"I think that most of my ethics comes from me. I want my ethics to encompass the entire world, and I want everyone on earth to respect and love one another. Sounds like miss america? Unreasonable? Who cares, that's ethics, that's why sometimes you need faith (the common sense definition), and things change, so maybe one day that will happen, if people believe in universal ethics. "
Who cares? If you want your ethics to encompass the whole world, which includes me, then I most certainly do care. Which is why I'm not going to take your so-called "universal ethics" on faith - especially if they sound this unreasonable.
"But say I don't believe in ethics, and you've got a fight on your hands. "
What the hell does "believing in ethics" even mean? I certainly don't believe in your ethics. If that means a fight - bring it on.
(October 14, 2013 at 1:31 pm)Dunno Wrote: It's good to be against that, that's good ethics. But I'm sorry, you are wrong, religion doesn't do that, people do that, if they use religion as their tool, it is not religion's fault, because religion was created to keep good ethics, so they were using it wrongly.
Actually, since the religion specifically dictates that, it is religion's fault.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
