I take it you're being tongue in cheek in that last paragraph? Or do you really believe that all religious belief is "dangerous folly"? If so, you're really as bigoted as they (the fundamentalists) are.

(Edited by Funky Monkey 23/03/2006 17:23)

Looks to me that the Atheists the Communists of the 21st century

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The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one’s exposure to diversity, education and political orientation—with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts.

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What a surprise In other words if you are a religious nutter who lives in a town with people of the same disposition and never bothered with any decent education and your idea of high-quality entertainment is a six-pack and a bug-zapper, you aint gonna be very in favour of people that are different..... I'm shocked Who would have thought.

Just wonder if many of those people actually knew what etheist means or if they are the kind of people that think that a coma is a punctuation mark.

(Edited by Chambler 23/03/2006 17:38)

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by Funky Monkey
I take it you're being tongue in cheek in that last paragraph? Or do you really believe that all religious belief is "dangerous folly"?

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Sure religion is a terrific way of explaining what we cannot explain at the time and comforts a lot of people to think that if they die they won't really be dead. This gives people (false) strenght, but besides that what good has it done us? If I just look through ancient and recent history religion has mostly brought us troubles. Destruction of everything science for over 200 years in the dark ages... inquisitions.... violent supression of ideas like "the world is not flat and the earth aint the center of the universe", not to mention the general surpression and extortion. If I look more recently, no condoms in Africa, no abortions (not even for rape victims), no possibility of euthanasia not to mention all the crap kicking of in the middle east having its base in religion (placing the Jews back after WOII in a piece of land that they haven't lived on for 1200 years - if we started doing the same in Africa for each and every tribal war we would have our hands full for another 3000 years). And don't forget the wars going on (at least 7 at any time in recent years) between religious factions fighting for domination over the others.

So if you ask me we would have probably been better off without religions.

Its one thing to say that 'holding' a religious belief is a dangerous folly, which I dont think is implied, anther that the sum total of religious belief is a dangerous folly. As the saying goes, a 'person' is smart, but 'people' are dumb!

Would I prefer to see a wholly secular world? Sure. Do I think like Richard Dawkins that a truly enlightened society wouldnt have religion? Sure. Does that make me a bigot? I dont think so, but if it does, guilty as chaged and proud of it!

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by Funky Monkey
I take it you're being tongue in cheek in that last paragraph? Or do you really believe that all religious belief is "dangerous folly"? If so, you're really as bigoted as they (the fundamentalists) are.

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It's totally sincere. The essence of any religious faith is a willingness to belive something is a fact without requiring the necessary evidence. If you don't need evidence to justify your beliefs, you can use your beliefs to justify anything. How is that not dangerous folly?

Unlike the fundamentalists I neither define someone by their religious belief nor support discriminating against them on that ground alone. But I do believe the notion of faith threatens any chance of real human progress. A bigot is someone who doesn't tolerate whatever they disagree with: but tolerance only requires you suffer something's existence, it in no way requires you pretend it has merit.

The false consensus that makes the act of faith itself immune to criticism is what allows religious extremism to flourish, and innacurate uses of words like bigot to maintain it doesn't help anyone.

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by Wobag
Its one thing to say that 'holding' a religious belief is a dangerous folly, which I dont think is implied, anther that the sum total of religious belief is a dangerous folly.

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Actually I meant exactly that, which I realise will offend some people, but then they'd no doubt consider many of my beliefs to be dangerous follies.

The concept of faith, which makes belief without evidence not only possible but virtuous, cannot be divorced from the sum effect of religious belief. This comes from someone of a Christian upbringing who used to hold strong religious faith, and has seen the malign consequences of faith first hand. Some would say (and I used to) that's only people abusing it, but now I feel the problem lies with faith itself.

(I wasn't a Catholic fortunately, you think I have strong opinions you should hear a lapsed papist!)

So you're saying all faith is bad, correct?

The question of 'is faith a bad thing' is totally dependent on how you answer it.

OF COURSE an individual can use religion in a positive way, but the two questions it raises is...

How many people does it take to use a belief system in a positive way before the belief system is seen as a good thing? if just one person can say 'see im good', does that override the actions of any number of people who miss-use it? Can you hold up an example of someone who went off to build an orphanage because their god spoke to them as 'proof' that their beliefs are a good thing, while thousands die in religiously motivated wars?

...and how many 'bad' uses of a belief system does it take before a belief system isnt 'good' any more? Just one? Half? Almost all?

The answer of the religious man is 'my belief system is inherently good, because it defines itself as being so', and therefore anything bad that happens in its name is just people using the belief system as an excuse.

Bollards.

No other 'organization' has this right. No company can sight the good things it does as evidence of how good a company it is, but just say that any bad things that happen are just things its employees do that use the company as an excuse, its responible for everything its people do in its name.

I say only people that DONT belong to a belief system have the right to judge where the overall effect of a belief system is positive. It doesnt matter how many individuals hold up their hands as shining examples of virtue.

Itll never happen, but the day I gain respect for organised religions is the day religions either chose to own up to motivating both good and bad acts (read 'responsible for...)

...or accept that since there are good and bad people in the world, if its not resposible for the bad, then it cant claim credit for the good.... in which case, whats the point?

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by Alan
So you're saying all faith is bad, correct?

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Yep. Faith in rock'n'roll of course excluded.

WooHoo...and I thought I might have trouble sleeping tonight till I found this

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by Wobag
The question of 'is faith a bad thing' is totally dependent on how you answer it.

OF COURSE an individual can use religion in a positive way, but the two questions it raises is...

How many people does it take to use a belief system in a positive way before the belief system is seen as a good thing? ... Itll never happen, but the day I gain respect for organised religions is the day religions either chose to own up to motivating both good and bad acts (read 'responsible for...)

...or accept that since there are good and bad people in the world, if its not resposible for the bad, then it cant claim credit for the good.... in which case, whats the point?

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My own take is that, sure, faith can inspire good things, but the nature of that inspiration, irrespective of the results, is bad.

Example: when evangelicals suddenly decided slavery a Bad Thing, God, not weighing-up the ethical case, changed their mind. Of course they did weigh up the ethical case as God is a figment of the imagination/subconcious, but their belief that God was in the driving seat made them act with absolute certainty. Good when you're freeing slaves, rather less good when you're queer-bashing or invading Iraq.

Justifying yourself with a fictional sky-god stops you developing the ability to draw strength from the merits of your own conclusions. Your own moral sense atrophies. Result: the wining side is the one with the strongest faith, not the strongest argument. Witness how messianic lunatic Blair, despite his barren case, tramples his opposition because he Has Faith.

Christ Almighty (see what I did there ) It always ends up with posts being about Tony Blair and your moronic nicknames for him

Anyway, that's besides the point I actually came in here to make that being:

Isn't Atheism an absolute faith in the fact that there is no God in any way shape or form?

Being Agnostic is the one where there is no belief in any form about religion.

Whilst I do not follow any religion and find the extremists of all religions pretty distasteful I do believe that there is a worth in the core values of all the faiths that I have any knowledge of and some people who consider themselves Athiests could learn alot from learning from some Faith teachings.

Personally I think that almost everything that has gone bad in the world can be attributed to religion, and the sooner that man evolves beyond the need to believe in mythical omnipotent beings the better.

Any organised religion is just a way to control people and no matter how well intentioned it is it only needs a few 'bad seeds' to make the whole thing farcical.

Not even gonna put my 2cent worth but this thread did remind me of a quote from That 70's Show....

HYDE: While I respect the Judeo-Christian ethic, as well as the Eastern philosophies and of course the teachings of Mohammed, I find that organised religion has corrupted those believes to justify countless atrocities throughout history. If I were to attend church, I'd be a hypocrite.

Made me laugh my ass off if only I had that quote when my mum was making me attend sunday school.

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by Sydney
Isn't Atheism an absolute faith in the fact that there is no God in any way shape or form?

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Actually very few Atheists say they know with absolute certainity God doesn't exist. More common is having a policy of assuming something doesn't exist in the absence of evidece for its existence, so until evidence for a sky-god is produced, they'll assume he/she/it doesn't exist.

Rarer is my position rejecting the very concept of a god.

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Being Agnostic is the one where there is no belief in any form about religion.

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Well it can be, and it can be uncertainty about religion, or saying it's impossible to call it one way or the other about the existence of a god.

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Whilst I do not follow any religion and find the extremists of all religions pretty distasteful I do believe that there is a worth in the core values of all the faiths that I have any knowledge of and some people who consider themselves Athiests could learn alot from learning from some Faith teachings.

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Equally there are some people who consider themselves believers who could learn much from secular teachings.

Of course there are decent values in to be found in religious texts as some of history's premier-league thinkers have contributed, but there isn't anything unique about them. There are equally fine values in secular philosophy (many of Jesus' teachings derive from ancient Greek philosophy and the Stoics) without the supernatural baggage. Seeing value in religious teachings based on their own merit is entirely different from believing them because God told you to.

I've never said the Bible doesn't contain much worthwhile teaching (alongside much so-so teaching and much hateful, racist codswallop). I've said the mechanism of religious faith is dangerous.

(Edited by Byron 23/03/2006 20:32)

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by bipolar
Made me laugh my ass off if only I had that quote when my mum was making me attend sunday school.

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My parents used to make us go to Sunday school and now I'm older I realise that it was so they could have sex

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by Teresa
My parents used to make us go to Sunday school and now I'm older I realise that it was so they could have sex

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Oooh might have to add this to the list of "positive" bits about religion

We Atheists are a non Prophet organisation.....

I have no problem with people beleiving in God, Gods, trees, small animals or the all Powerful Force, how ever my problem begin when people feel the need to force onto others. I think the American states banning the theory of Evolution in favor of creationism is tantamount to brainwashing the youth of those states. I don't believe that it shouldn't be taught, but I do believe that children should be alowed to make their own decision on something like this and not to have some narrow-minded biggot decide it for them. I was forced to go to Church frequently when I was at school, and now I have shunned religion completely. I don't criticise people for having religeon,but I resent anybody who tells me that I have to beleive because they do.....

And calling someone wrong because of their religieos beliefs is how wars start...

I will never force any child of mine to go to church and I will inform any school they go to that they will not be forced to attend any form of religieos services... Everyone should make their own choices, not allow a small collection of people to decide for everyone...

Especially as the most powerful man in the world claims that 'God' told him to invade Iraq......

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by thelostsailor
Especially as the most powerful man in the world claims that 'God' told him to invade Iraq......

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Well I guess it's the best comeback he could come up with after a handful of people from a land 99.9% of America had never heard of before 9-11 plowed down two of the biggest towers in the world in name of their 'God'.