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Originally Posted by filtherton
I'm not sure where you get your definition of reason, because belief in a higher power can be perfectly reasonable. Being a christian, let alone a theist doesn't necessitate a literal interpretation of the bible, and even if it did, it isn't necessarily unreasonable to take the bible at face value. I know what you're trying to say, and it has nothing to do with the suspension of reason. It has more to do with you defining your way of making sense with the world as the reasonable one, and consequently those who come to different conclusions are by definition not completely reasonable.
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If you're a theist, then you believe in a literal god by definition, which is a person for which there is no evidence, therefore it's not reason but faith.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
How does the u.s. convince young men and women to die for their country? By romanticizing it and making it honorable. I think religion is just one of many ways charismatic people can gain power. I think your blame is misplaced.
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It's the biggest source of people suspending reason. Bigger than nationalism.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
If you mean to imply that religion is the root of all great acts of destruction you are wrong. "Reason" can just as effectively be employed to cause destruction as religion. Hitler's "final solution" was just as reasonable as the decision to bomb hiroshima and nagasaki, at least inasmuch as both were presumably not based on random chance or whimsy. Depending on your perspective either or both or neither was an atrocity, but none of the commonly cited justifications for these positions are necessarily unreasonable.
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The final solution was not base don factual evidence, therefore it wasn't reasonable.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
Reason is a funny thing, because reasonable people disagree; ambiguity and uncertainty can never really be eliminated- only ignored or assumed irrelevant. Except in math, which arguably speaks to things that don't really exist anyway.
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In a situation where reasonable people disagree, one of them is still wrong. There is still an error.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
I don't see how you can believe that a world without religion would be any less fucked up than it is already. If you think prevalence of religion reflects some sort of inherent unreasonableness in humanity (which maybe you don't) why would you expect the absence of religion to somehow make people reasonable?
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Because people wouldn't be born into it. It's easier to digest when it's delivered since birth. There are only really one kind of atheist that becomes a theist: old people who, in their old age, are cowards and think "err on the side of eternal salvation".