RE: Any other atheists just feel an acute intolerance for religious people?
February 4, 2017 at 1:58 pm
(This post was last modified: February 4, 2017 at 2:03 pm by Homeless Nutter.)
(February 4, 2017 at 10:22 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(February 4, 2017 at 7:39 am)Whateverist Wrote: Well .. natural provided they are indoctrinated at birth at least.
I don't think so. Religion is as old as time.
LOL... No, it demonstrably isn't. The Big Bang happened 13.82bn years ago. Religion dates back tens of thousands of years at most.
(February 4, 2017 at 10:22 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: All the civilizations across the world have had their form of religion/god.
All the civilizations that we know of - perhaps. But that's being very generous, by classifying all the different systems of belief and spirituality as what we now call "religion". The kind of religion you know is a fairly recent development and we can never know how our ancestors saw spirituality and rituals in the context of their lives. Largely because of all the thousands of years of continued indoctrination.
(February 4, 2017 at 10:22 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I think it's intrinsic to human nature. Though there are exceptions.
Also - all the civilizations across the world have had their form of sexually transmitted diseases. That's not because it's "intrinsic to human nature", but because diseases and parasites evolved with humans and "learned" to exploit our sexual behaviors for their benefits. Similarly, an argument can be made, that religions and religious organizations evolved to pray on the common weaknesses of human mind.
And just like with parasites, bacteria, and viruses - you can't become "infected" with religion, unless you have contact with it. Humanity developed immunity to countless microbes, which have since become extinct, or harmless - just as we developed immunity to many spiritual ideas.
"Old time" religions are losing influence fast. They may never completely disappear, but hopefully - in time - they'll become a minor inconvenience at most. Sure - dumb people will probably always give money and power over their lives to some opportunistic charlatans and demagogues, in exchange for some pleasant nonsense to believe in. That's just unfortunate effect of having a brain, that only just evolved to the point of consciousness and can't really deal with it.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw
