chavos

Any ideology can be used...any religion, or lack there of. I don't make any claim about the immorality of atheists...was one for many years, and it's time I don't regret. That said, I don't think that it's unreasonable to claim that religion has a value in society of moderating people away from effective but immoral means. For evidence, I would point to the cessation of the West African slave trade, beginning with Britain. Religion, and specifically the theology of Bartholomew De Las Casas, played a crucial role in this. To me...this is one of the shining examples of how religion did what it was supposed to: to override our profit motive, and reminded people of their moral obligations to each other.

Please. You cite a time when governments killed, claim WITH OUT PROOF that religions are like that government and then expect that you've shown religion is equal to Hitler. I don't even know where to start with that mess.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GodwinsLaw

That’s for starters….Using rank emotionalism to tie religion to Nazism is just about as irrational as it gets...and this is what I’m talking about when I say atheism can be just as dangerous.... You mix enough fear and hate with an ideology and it's going to get lethal.

You think they don't have evidence? You think that faith is some random event? No...faith happens when people see something and find inner meaning in those events. For some, they may realize something about life on the top of a mountain in deep mediatation...others think God loves them when they win the lotto. Some experiences are probably more valid than others...but that's not the point. Societies across time and space have all explored the meaning of life with religious imagery and thought...and it's my assertion that there is something to that. Call it God, call it "being" call it whatever you want...but there is a reality that is shown in our religious life. Saying there is no evidence for God is like saying there's no evidence for Freedom. Some people don't understand freedom, some people don't experience it...and some people hate it...but nobody can physically prove that it exists. Believing in that must be horribly irrational, and by your logic, dangerous.

Now, I’m not here to say I’m special because I have experienced faith in my life. I consider myself lucky, but that’s because this vocabulary, this world view works for me. If atheism is how you address the problems of human existence, and it works for you, then that’s peachy. But hating on people because you think their faith is irrational is no different that me telling a Muslim or a Jew that their faith is stupid and that they should believe in Christ.

I love how easy it is for you to skip over my entire post. I prove to you the non-authoritarian nature of several faiths, and you just keep talking like I didn't answer you at all. People follow faith because it works for them...because they have used the vocabulary of faith to talk about things that are important to them. I acknowledge the problem of authoritarian faiths....there is a lot of "or else" that gets said in some circles. But that is hardly a fair summation of the entirety of religious thought...it's a crass proof by anecdote.

No. No. A thousand times, NO! There's just no proof for this....and I don't know where you get the idea that you can say this. It would be accurate to say that in some religions that this is prevelant. But all? Please. There is no possible way to prove this, because it isn’t true. Some of the greatest minds the world have known have been religious thinkers, making great contributions both based in and in contradiction to the traditions that they were a part of.


Again...you are making a huge, and incorrect assumption. You're promoting the dualist view, that states that whatever is God is not human, and whatever is human is not God. this is certainly not the main view of many religions, especially the Eastern faiths, which often stress the human climb to perfection. Nor does worship of God preclude thinking, rationality, or human free will. Being humble before God does not mean taking orders from anyone who claims to be holy.

Your logic is really thin at this point. You claim that religion ALWAYS claims it is right to the COMPLETE EXCLUSION of all other truth. Then you concede that some religions accept truth from other places. Then you claim your original argument is undamaged.

It’s like bitching that someone has a favorite poem about love. He knows that other poems are out there, and that many say something very true. But he grew up with this poem perhaps, or maybe he read it at a special time in his life…and it will always be a part of how he reflects on love. As many others as he reads, he does not have to give up the truth he finds in that poem…there is no monopoly on truth when it comes to love. I have a favorite poem about the meaning of life. You really want to complain about that?

Really? It doesn’t help me and billions of others reflect on the meaning of life, the realty of human achievement and shortfall, the nature of forgiveness, the value of justice, and the mysteries of consciousness? It doesn’t do these things? If you said fundamentalism is bad for you, or listening to Jerry Falwell, or being a Whabbist Muslim, or a hyper-Zionist Jew, or hardline Calvinist…yeah, these things are damaging in many ways. But it’s like saying all politics are evil because there have been bad politicians. Religion is a human enterprise in which there will be both truth and fiction, good and evil. Seeing just one side is the real problem…

It’s the 21st century, and religion is still progressing, just as science is. The point is that science is really quite ill equipped to answer questions of ethics, interpersonal relations, and things of that nature. I don’t ask God to explain why the sun shines. I don’t ask science to explain why I should forgive someone.