Quote:
Originally posted by bermuDa
Religion is based on allegory, its only philanthropic goal is to teach us morals and make our lives here on earth better. It's when zealots take these allegories literally (and don't get me started on organized religion... spirituality for a stipend) do they undermine the intended function of religion, and instead focus on showing the rest of the world "the truth" by force if necessary.
Those of us with no faith have nothing to fear from the intelligent theists who understand the purpose of scriptures; we have a lot to fear from those who read the bible as non-fiction.
Man's greatest capacity is that of abstract thought and symbolic meaning, when we ignore that power, we're merely trained animals.
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That pretty much boils down everything I've been saying in this thread thus far very clearly. The only thing I would have some contention with is that some religions don't even concern themselves with making our lives here on earth better. Some simply concern themselves with what comes after this world because dealing with this world that we're in now is too difficult. I guess they would view this as making our lives better here, because it has the effect of mitigating suffering on a cognitive level (nothing can bother you that badly if you know that everything will be great after you die)... but I see that as different than making life
here better.