Burdened with a very religous upbringing, gifted with reason, and exposed to education, religion is something I have given a lot of thought to, and finally rejected.
Here are some of the reasons why I find religion ridiculous:
If we are talking Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the basic belief is in a supreme being that can do anything (but does nothing), knows everything (but says nothing), that is present everywhere (but conveniently invisible).
Anyone who tries to explain the workings of an automobile with the presence of a supernatural being would typically be considered in need of psychiatric treatment. If on the other hand a large group of people explain the workings of the universe as a whole as a result of the will of a supernatural being, they are religous, and their thoughts must be respected.
Not surprisingly, nothing (outside the realm of psychology) can be proved to have been achieved through prayer. Quite to the contrary, things get done, when people ignore religion and start thinking for themselves, roll up their sleeves and get busy.
Religion, which the religous usually refer to as the root of good behaviour (ethics) has been used to justify some of the worst crimes in history.
The fact that religion is practiced in a multitude of ways and is constantly developing, while most of the practitioners claim, that their way of worshiping, their beliefs, are the correct ones, show that most of them must be wrong. Why not all of them, since no religion has achieved anything, and no religion has been able to stay the same. Either God changes his mind a lot, or all of the people who claimed to know his will were liars, or he exists only in the mind of a more fickle creature - man himself.
The rise of religion is quite understandable in a historical perspective. I assume that human beings have always wished to live safe lives with sufficient food to procreate as much as possible. With an unmathematical approach to chance, bad luck and good luck must have seemed to represent some sort of underlying forces with minds of their own. What would be more natural than to shape the most interesting of these phenomena into supreme beings and then suck up to them in order to gain some sort of controle over them? The reduction of this multitude of divine beings into one, seems mostly to be the result of good thinking: Why sacrifice 12 goats, if you could make do with one? Thus, monotheism seems simply to be a first attempt to rationalise some messy procedures. Why not go all the way, and do away with it altogether? Save the last goat for some hungry people, so to say?
By forging ahead and ignoring the outcries of the religious people, who for some strange reason find new ideas incompatible with their omniscient God, we are creating a world, where people can be safe from the calamities of nature, with plenty of food for our offspring. Not by praying, but by adding lightning conductors to our houses and fertilizers to our fields.
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Of course religion can have an important effect on people, but as you mention yourself, the effect is psychological in nature.
I don't claim, that a conversation with an imaginary (and all-powerful:) friend can't help you focus. I am claiming that that is all that happens, and the same result might be achieved without buying into a pre-packaged religious view of the world - be it based on holy scriptures, the word of a toothless bloke who claims a direct connection to God or whatever.
Yes, religion has been abused. In my experience the people who feel the closest connection with THE ULTIMATE TRUTH, are usually the people least likely to question the basis of said truth and most likely to react in a violent manner, when their truth i questioned.
I am definitely an advocate of change, but then I don't claim to have direct access to a divine truth. My point is, that if a Christian of the 14th century claimed that homosexuals go to hell, and a Christian of the 21st century claims that they don't, they can't both be right. This means that on of the two isn't really a Christian in the sense that God feels is the right way. Or that the omniscient God has planned to change his views on homosexuality in accordance with predominant views in society or simply that there is no such thing as God - or if there is, he is ignoring us and noone has any idea, what he/she/it is thinking.
I read you loud and clear on love and respect, but in living your life with these things as a driving force, it seems to me, that religion is more of a hindrance than a help. For every Mother Theresa, you'll find 100 Osamas, who use their direct insight into the will of God to try to controle not only the lives of their fellow men, but their very thoughts.
By all means keep communing with God, if you feel it helps, but if a burning bush starts ordering you around - seek help:)
The simple and clear views you have expressed re: religion(of all kinds)is both satisfying and incisive.
Veronika's comment is well meaning but misguided and ignorant of the past history of religion and its immediate present. If "we act the way we ought to according to the religion we claim to be a part of" the past and present genocides(to say nothing of multiple anti-social behaviors) will pale next to the future atrocities etc. that will be intensified and committed in the name and guise of religion throughout a misguided and corrupt future.
I loved the responses to the article almost as much as the article itself. I always have to ask the same question of those that support religion, especially the main stream fairy tales such as Christianity and islam. The obvious question is HAVE YOU REALLY READ YOUR HOLY BOOK? Come on - get real! Talking snakes, walking on water? God endorses many things we thinking people now reject, but must have seemed like the thing to do in the first century, like selling your daughter into slaver! Oh and if you want to use the old line that Jesus abolished alot of that when he arrived on earth, save your breath, he did not. Read your bible. He said (paraphrasing) that not one law from his father is void and that all need to be obeyed. All those stupid rules. Stone me to death - I work on Sundays - that is what the bible tells you to do. I am a Paramedic and I have NEVER seen prayer save anyone! A defibrillator has, a syringe with medicine has, but I have come into homes where they were praying like crazy, the loved one was still dead, until the science I used saved him. Teach a man to pray for food, he dies of starvation. Teach a man to fish and he eats. It is just that simple. Why are we here? What happens when we die? Who knows and what can we really do about it? Let's get rid of myths and fairy tales (except in kids books and movies) and use the HUMAN SPIRIT to help each other. The holy books we have make no sense and anyone who really critically reviews them must come to the same conclusion. So if there is some superbeing or creator, or whatever you would like to call it, what if it thinks that anyone stupid enough to believe in that crap goes to hell and those of us that question and use reason go to heaven? Hmmm, is it getting hot in here or are you just clutching your bible too tightly? Think about it.
Cool blog...very very interesting. My belief is that religion is very very evil. Take Mormons...these brainwashed kids go door to door bothering and converting people.Any critical examination of the book of Mormon(and an excellent one is done by Mark Twain in Roughing it)must lead any sane person with average intelligence or better to dismiss mormonism as a hoax. While the old and new testament stand out as decent literature, they are also suspect. But, at least the old and new testament make some interesting reading. Twain describes the book of Mormon as "liquid chloroform." Catholicism has severe sexual hangups such as Virgin Birth and pedophilia.
But sexual hangups are not unique to Catholicism. Many religions cannot tolerate their gods or icons being born normally.This ain't rocket science. The way the ancients figured it, to have a god-man on Earth, a story needed two things. 1.A source for His Godness, and 2. A source for His humanity.
Of royal descent, Jesus was born of a virgin.Dionysus was born of the virgin Semele; his father was the supreme god Zeus. Some sources say he was placed in a manger and reared in a cave ( Zeus was also reared in a cave).Horus was born to a virgin (who remains eternally virginal), Isis-Meri, on December 25 in a cave or a manger.
Isis, the goddess of motherhood and fertility, was called 'Mother of Heaven', 'Regina Coeli' (Queen of Heaven) and 'Stella Maris', as is Mary, the mother of Jesus, even today in the Roman Catholic Church: "Graeco-Roman culture was particularly enamoured of [Isis] and called her the Stella Maris (star of the sea), represented in the heavens by the north star ... [Mary's] portraits with the Christ often bear a striking similarity to those of Isis with Horus."
Tammuz was born to a virgin, named Mylitta, on December 25. I don't remember my birth so it wasn't traumatic for me. But, evidently it is too traumatic for the gods.
The Freudian approach is that religion is to replace the father figure as the father figure security blanket recedes.
The Buddha was of royal descent. Born of the Virgin Maya (“the Queen of Heaven”) on December 25th, announced by a star and attended by wise men.Lao Zi was born of a virgin. Attis was born to the virgin Nana on December 25.
"... a daughter of the river Sangarius, they say, took of the fruit and laid it in her bosom, when it at once disappeared, but she was with child. Heracles was born on December 25 to a virgin who refrained from sex with her until her God-begotten child was born.Heracles was born on December 25 to a virgin who refrained from sex with her until her God-begotten child was born
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) begins each chapter with an aphorism from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar," including: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." "There is no humor in heaven." "The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds." Twain's sardonic humor increasingly coated indignant social criticism. He called the Book of Mormon "chloroform in print." In 1907, he wrote Christian Science, exposing Mary Baker Eddy's "desert vacancy, as regards thought." In the late 1890s he became a passionate critic of American imperialism, opposing the Spanish-American and Philippine wars. Twain suffered many personal tragedies, from his brother Henry's tragic death in a steamboat accident in 1858 to the death of his baby son, Langdon, at age two, the death of his beloved daughter, Susie, from meningitis at age 24, and the premature death of his daughter, Jean, in an institution, during an epileptic seizure. His wife, Livy, died in 1904. D. 1910.
“I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious--except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.”
-- Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Notebook 27, August 1887-July 1888, edited by Frederick Anderson (1979). Cited by James Haught in 2,000 Years of Disbelief.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) begins each chapter with an aphorism from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar," including: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." "There is no humor in heaven." "The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds." Twain's sardonic humor increasingly coated indignant social criticism. He called the Book of Mormon "chloroform in print." In 1907, he wrote Christian Science, exposing Mary Baker Eddy's "desert vacancy, as regards thought." In the late 1890s he became a passionate critic of American imperialism, opposing the Spanish-American and Philippine wars. Twain suffered many personal tragedies, from his brother Henry's tragic death in a steamboat accident in 1858 to the death of his baby son, Langdon, at age two, the death of his beloved daughter, Susie, from meningitis at age 24, and the premature death of his daughter, Jean, in an institution, during an epileptic seizure. His wife, Livy, died in 1904. D. 1910.
“I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious--except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.”
-- Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, Notebook 27, August 1887-July 1888, edited by Frederick Anderson (1979). Cited by James Haught in 2,000 Years of Disbelief.
Irrational is bad. Humourles is bad. Humourles and irrational is bad squared and unfortunately humourles and irrational is a fair description of a good many religious people.
Imagine these two statements coming from the same person:
1: "X is love!" (For X read the fantasy being of your choice).
2: X says death to all Y-people!" (For Y-people read people with different attitudes towards sex, drinking, eating or whatever).
Now, in a normal context you would either think, that the person speaking had misunderstood something or that you were talking to a scizophrenic. In a religious context THIS is normal.
The worst problem, as I see it, is not that religious people spout gibberish. Lots of people in free countries actually believed that communism would work, but they were cahllenged when they said it. And this challenge in combination with the obvious fact, that communism was NOT working ANYWHERE meant that communism was marginalised.
The worst problem is that non-believers to a large extent let believers get away with this nonsense without challenging them. This allows religion to spread at the cost of freedom, individual choice, rational thinking, rational behavior and diversity.
Religion can either have a positive or negative effect, Jesus did acts that to a marginal degree helped people, but to our time and in his future was most likely a very strong negative influence, Hitler was religious and used it as an automatic negative, hurting people in masses than. This isn't to say religion can ever be completely positive, in fact I find that Jesus was extremely negative on the earth up till now, he himself and his friends of his time were happy, thus ignorance truly is bliss. Religious people tend to amount in masses to overcompensate or what religion has taken from them, logic, thus they try to appear more intelligent by having more representatives, though they never seem happy with what they have, they want more power over people each day, when all it does when they have this is start wars and shunning of the intellectual.
the way i see religion, is that it was created to act as law or explanation for the everyday. the reason the ancient greeks created their mythology (basically their religion) was to explain natural phenomenon like lightning and earthquakes, as well as human nature like love and war. this is pretty much all the bible, and other religious texts do as well. they give a code to live by and better understand the world. but now, since we have created democracy and discovered science, religion is no longer needed, at least not for those things. however i do agree with others that religious beliefs can afford comfort to individuals in times of hardship, but this is purely a psychological belief that "everything will turn out ok" or "when people die they go to heaven" and things such as that.
when you think of religion as stated above, then you can easily denote government and science as a collective religion. the two combined give a rule and law to live by and explanations of natural phenomenon and human nature. the only difference between the old world religions and science is that science is material and is not so much speculation or belief in a higher power.
i feel the major problem with religion is that there are so many different ones. there's christianity, buddhism, islam, ancient mythology, pagan religions, native american beliefs, egyptian beliefs and countless more. i also find it a pattern that most of these religions originated independently of each other which shows that every group at one point had their own rule and law. however, once religions started to come into contact with one another, this caused confrontation, anger, and bloodshed for ages. and this happened regardless of the "love thy neighbor" or whatever clause in the religious law. i guess what i'm trying to say is that religion was all fine and good as law back when they were separated and nobody knew about another religion. but now it's used as an excuse for murder such as the inquisition or jihad.
anyway, i think religion as a whole is fading for the most part. and at the very least, we can only hope that most of the radical beliefs that cause hatred and destruction will die off. if you look up religion using gallups polling, you'll see that by and large it is felt that religion is losing its influence.
the way i see religion, is that it was created to act as law or explanation for the everyday. the reason the ancient greeks created their mythology (basically their religion) was to explain natural phenomenon like lightning and earthquakes, as well as human nature like love and war. this is pretty much all the bible, and other religious texts do as well. they give a code to live by and better understand the world. but now, since we have created democracy and discovered science, religion is no longer needed, at least not for those things. however i do agree with others that religious beliefs can afford comfort to individuals in times of hardship, but this is purely a psychological belief that "everything will turn out ok" or "when people die they go to heaven" and things such as that.
when you think of religion as stated above, then you can easily denote government and science as a collective religion. the two combined give a rule and law to live by and explanations of natural phenomenon and human nature. the only difference between the old world religions and science is that science is material and is not so much speculation or belief in a higher power.
i feel the major problem with religion is that there are so many different ones. there's christianity, buddhism, islam, ancient mythology, pagan religions, native american beliefs, egyptian beliefs and countless more. i also find it a pattern that most of these religions originated independently of each other which shows that every group at one point had their own rule and law. however, once religions started to come into contact with one another, this caused confrontation, anger, and bloodshed for ages. and this happened regardless of the "love thy neighbor" or whatever clause in the religious law. i guess what i'm trying to say is that religion was all fine and good as law back when they were separated and nobody knew about another religion. but now it's used as an excuse for murder such as the inquisition or jihad.
anyway, i think religion as a whole is fading for the most part. and at the very least, we can only hope that most of the radical beliefs that cause hatred and destruction will die off. if you look up religion using gallups polling, you'll see that by and large it is felt that religion is losing its influence.
Christianity: the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so that he can remove from your soul an evil force.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPBiGtVmir4
Many people who have religion in their lives are driven to try to convert those of us who don’t. Apparently we non-believers affect them like a mosquito bite; they can’t resist scratching every now and then. Sometimes it is a frontal assault, but more often it is more of a Chinese water torture approach; frequent references to their god, an assumption that we will join them in prayer, maybe a tract included with a birthday card.
Of course, all of this is for our own good. If we who choose to live without faith would only realize that our choice is wrong then we too could share the joy that comes with turning all of life’s problems over to an enigmatic all-powerful being whose very existance is completely unproven and whose capricious actions are too complex for us to understand but who loves all of us and is taking really, really good care of us even if that care sometimes looks suspiciously like sadism.
Choosing to live without religion is sort of like being a duck in a shooting gallery; anybody can take a crack at you and you don’t dare shoot back. Because if you do take exception to those constant attempts at conversion then you are - gasp! - ANTI-RELIGION. And we all know what that means, don’t we? A person without religion is an uncivilized barbarian. A person without a god to teach him right from wrong must be thoroughly immoral, held back from a life of continuous crime and constant depravity not through any sense of decent conduct but only by the cold calculation that he might be caught and punished. Probably a closet Nazi.
People who need a god have made a choice, and that is their right. I don’t go around asking religious people to give up their belief; it is none of my business how they explain the universe to themselves. But I do expect equal consideration. If you are happy with your higher power, fine. Chant, pray, writhe on the floor, whatever floats your boat. Indoctrinate your children, if you must (poor things). But don’t insist that I share your superstition.
I just cannot understand how this day and age, you can get so many people into religion. I find it strange when I hear an intelligent people speak of religion. I have people close to me with religious views and you cannot have a rational argument with them. I asked questions when I was in school and the answers were rubbish. I learnt early in my life that religion causes problems. I PLAIN JUST DON'T GET IT.
Barring the fact that I'm responding to what is probably a dead blog...
"The worst problem is that non-believers to a large extent let believers get away with this nonsense without challenging them. This allows religion to spread at the cost of freedom, individual choice, rational thinking, rational behavior and diversity."
Part of the problem here is that non-religious people appear to be a minority. That is, they tend to be socially ostracized; they are the "weirdos" -- the "deviants" from the norm.
And the reason they're viewed that way is because many religions have a cult-like view of those who don't follow their religion: They tend to push the idea that "outsiders" will not be saved, should die, will burn in hell, whatever the extreme may be. This perpetuates a fear to speak out against the "norm" (religion) or cause dissent among the "peaceful" religious people.
The obvious hypocrisy is that many take no issue with those within their religion evangelizing the beliefs and "converting" vulnerable people.
I won't say religion has no value, but the design of religion scares away opposition with fear and I think any truly righteous god would be appalled by such a close-minded attitude.
Book of Mormon=Chloroform in print. Mark Twain....Mitt Romney=Chloroform in pants.
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