Religion: Is it cool?

[Jerrod]

it provides an extremely convenient tool for people, especially uneducated people, to be manipulated into doing horrible things regardless of what the religion says.

Check it out. I can change one word and use the same logic to say that religion is a good thing.

It provides and extremely convenient tool for people, especially uneducated people, to be manipulated into doing compassionate things regardless of what the religion says.

Religion isn't required for anything to happen. Some people will be jerks and some will be awesome no matter what. Dumb people will follow jerks and awesome people no matter what. It's just not a logical argument. The only thing knocking that out of balance is that religion actually teaches people to do the good stuff.

If religion isn't required for anything to happen then why have it at all?

[turso]

Your statement displays parts of what I see as the real underlying problem...Dogmatic belief systems..."Root of all evil", "not agreeing with that is being as deluded"...Those sound a lot like that which you seem to hate (religious dogma). Don't get me wrong, I'm an atheist/science minded individual, but I owe a lot of my social values(humility, care for others, there is something going on in the world/universe more important than myself) to growing up going to church, so it's not all bad and different people react to it differently. Things aren't so polarized. I'm not even sure science would exist without religion.

I was using "root of all evil" just as a figure of speech since it saves lots of work from typing, and it's very close to the truth anyhow, if a bit overstated. the "not agreeing" part is a bit aggressive I admit, but seeing people killing people among many other things just makes me very, very sad and angry. Following church blindly and without no logical reasoning for it is rather deluded, or at least very very mentally numb activity. I do understand that most people are still brainwashed into the belief system from the time of their birth, which should give them benefit of a doubt I admit, but most of them are defending their belief just because. I'm sure you didn't mean it, but saying that you got your humility and other good values because you grew up around churchy people makes it seem that you don't believe that it's possible to be humane or "good" without religion, which would be fallacious thinking.

[turso]

it provides an extremely convenient tool for people, especially uneducated people, to be manipulated into doing horrible things regardless of what the religion says.

Check it out. I can change one word and use the same logic to say that religion is a good thing.

It provides and extremely convenient tool for people, especially uneducated people, to be manipulated into doing compassionate things regardless of what the religion says.

Religion isn't required for anything to happen. Some people will be jerks and some will be awesome no matter what. Dumb people will follow jerks and awesome people no matter what. It's just not a logical argument. The only thing knocking that out of balance is that religion actually teaches people to do the good stuff.

If religion isn't required for anything to happen then why have it at all?

In the olden days, and I mean very, VERY long time ago, religion was a sure way to control masses and lead your tribe to a brighter future, but those weren't organized religions, they were very local, tribal beliefs. Nowadays religion is there mostly to support the unbelievable riches of the "high religious elite", and wield power over huge masses of people. It has no REAL use, if only people would not be brainwashed into believing it or be actually too simpleminded to realise that there's no need for it, but that's too much to hope for.

I had something else to say too, but I forgot what. =P

[Jeronimo]

For the record, I only made that "bigot" post because it was in response to a bigoted statement. The reason I said nothing else was because exercises like these are lessons in futility. Why did we need to make a thread about all of this?

[discspeed]

I'm sure you didn't mean it, but saying that you got your humility and other good values because you grew up around churchy people makes it seem that you don't believe that it's possible to be humane or "good" without religion, which would be fallacious thinking.

I was just making the point that I learned those things largely from church, and when I was older and became educated in many other ideas and philosophies, those were the things that I got from religion that I decided were good and that I would continue to espouse. I cannot know whether or not I would have gotten those values the same way with different experiences. My parents are not really intellectuals and I don't know if they would have ever taught me about those values through any way but example, so I'm sure it helped me. I can say, as a teacher, I did notice that many kids, especially those from uneducated/impoverished families, seemed not to receive such values in the absence of a social institution (such as church) to introduce such concepts. It doesn't have to come from church, but there aren't that many other places that teach any type of social morality if kids do not get it from family/community.

[Frank Delicious]

For the record, I only made that "bigot" post because it was in response to a bigoted statement. The reason I said nothing else was because exercises like these are lessons in futility. Why did we need to make a thread about all of this?

Well I had a couple of people ask to have the religion part of the DKG thread moved or deleted and I don't really like deleting posts unless they really cross a line so here we are.

[Mr. Plow]

Frank, people asked you to do this? What a bunch of pantywaists.

For the record, I only made that "bigot" post because it was in response to a bigoted statement. The reason I said nothing else was because exercises like these are lessons in futility. Why did we need to make a thread about all of this?

I agree with you about the exercise in futility. But here goes anyway...

Most of you are making really glib interpretations of what you think religion is, which are in no way based on real knowledge of the subject (which seems to be Christianity). Jubuttib is the only person who even quoted a religious text in an effort to make his point. The world is evil, period. It has nothing to do with religion. There are zealots in any belief system (including science based dogma. Al Gore anyone?) who misrepresent the message they purport to be promoting. Many of you are looking at these zealots as the true representatives of their "faith" or what have you, when clearly they are a small minority. It is akin to looking at the rash of drug related disc golf arrests and saying "all disc golfers smoke pot/sell drugs". We know this is not the case, but how would anyone else know this when it is all they hear about lately? This is the same thing you guys are doing. Somewhere along the lines someone from Europe even cited fifth person hearsay from the US to make a point. Seriously? Until you spend some time at the local church/synagogue/temple etc. and really get to know the people there you are all just pretty much talking out of your @$$.

[Frank Delicious]

Well I understand where they were coming from. That thread is about a brand of DG discs in the equipment section. Not really the spot for a religion debate.

[Leopard]

Well I had a couple of people ask to have the religion part of the DKG equipment moved or deleted

fixed

[Jeronimo]

Well I understand where they were coming from. That thread is about a brand of DG discs in the equipment section. Not really the spot for a religion debate.

You made the right call, though if I was the mod I would have deleted the religion posts. Including my own.

[Frank Delicious]

^^naw, people can knock themselves out debating religion on a disc golf board for all I care. Another mod might see it a different way though so if you see this thread disappear talk to someone else.

you should really put equipment in quotes.

[jubuttib]

jubuttib is the only person who even quoted a religious text in an effort to make his point. The world is evil, period. It has nothing to do with religion. There are zealots in any belief system (including science based dogma. Al Gore anyone?) who misrepresent the message they purport to be promoting. Many of you are looking at these zealots as the true representatives of their "faith" or what have you, when clearly they are a small minority. It is akin to looking at the rash of drug related disc golf arrests and saying "all disc golfers smoke pot/sell drugs". We know this is not the case, but how would anyone else know this when it is all they hear about lately? This is the same thing you guys are doing.

The point about those quotations was that I can not in right mind support any group of people who support those kinds of views, even if most of the time it is only lip service. And the only point where I was talking about any believers per se was when I agreed that believers have done great things in 3rd world countries etc. Other than that I've been talking about (admittedly primarily Abrahamic) religions in the abstract. The zealots don't really interest me, they're not the point of any religion, and they do not represent a significant portion of believers (apart from a few sects). My beef is that at their core, even though they do a lot of good, most of the major religions harbor some very harmful, dare I say evil stuff. Us humans are perfectly capable of evil shit ourselves without the added authority of an omnipotent being telling us to kill each other. And it's not just limited to the natural bastards. I've met plenty of otherwise nice, sane, pleasant people who turn vile and hateful when (usually) atheism or homosexuality comes up. And their only arguments are "because god says so". I hate it. Yes, the world is evil. It's evil enough by itself that it can certainly do without the systematized hate of most religions, however minute they may be.

Somewhere along the lines someone from Europe even cited fifth person hearsay from the US to make a point. Seriously?

2nd person hearsay, to be precise, from the victims to me. And I can quote 1st person experiences in Europe as well, doesn't have to be in the States.

Until you spend some time at the local church/synagogue/temple etc. and really get to know the people there you are all just pretty much talking out of your @$$.

I actually did grow up in a (somewhat) religious family. And what I learned at different church functions was that 95% of the people didn't really give a damn. It was more a force of habit than anything else. Which does again raise the question of the futility of it all. The 5% that were more into it unfortunately harbored pretty much all the standard narrow-minded views you'd expect them to.

[BrotherDave]

Did you know?:

That 99.9% of people with Christian bumper stickers and related car adornments drive like complete jackasses? This never fails.

[turso]

Most of religious people are as jubuttib said, pretty normal until it comes to the contemporary questions of difference, what religion DOES do on a large scale, which it shouldn't, is hate difference and change from traditional values no matter if it'd be to the greater good or not. It reacts SLOWLY to change, and they change SOME of their earlier big things when the resistance from the crowd is too great towards it, suddenly god's word changes to something else, how very convenient. Most recent funny things are their attempts to give their own intepretations of carbon dating, and partially agreeing that there might be life outside our globe. God's word seems to change for the convenience of the church, the catholic one in these cases(which is one of the major religions, and one of the most "evil" ones, so it counts).

For the record, I only made that "bigot" post because it was in response to a bigoted statement. The reason I said nothing else was because exercises like these are lessons in futility. Why did we need to make a thread about all of this?

Yeah, I do agree that it's futile to try to reason with believers, but discussions about futility of religion isn't futile, at least not completely. One conversion at a time hopefully will change the views of the world, I won't be here seeing when it happens, but meh, it's fun to debate.

[sunspot]

you all crack me up