Religion is not the root of all evil

Chikombo

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I'm an atheist, since like 11 years ago.

And I have looked at alot of atheists that are famous like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins etc etc. And I feel like I don't agree with them about religion.

This doesn't mean I am religious but I'm not as against religion as they are.

The point I want to get to is, that Richard Dawkins almost called is book "the root of all evil".

Sam Harris philosphy is that if you are religious you can't be a scientist cus the two things contradict each other.

Basically religion is in direct opposition with a functional society.

People blame it for persecution against homosexuality, strict abortion laws and terrorism.



My thoughts on religion are not that religion is a direct impossibility, you should be allowed to believe whatever you want and have whatever values you have, if you want to believe the earth is 6000 years old or whatever, Adam and Eve were the first humans etc.

You can do that.

If you want to be against abortion then you can be against abortion.


What I don't believe in is that everybody else in the world has to follow your own beliefs.


There are people who do not view the bible/tora/Koran as a holy book, they don't care about religious traditions and scriptures.

They are intolerant to religion but you have to be tolerant to that intolerance.


You can't expect other people to have the same values you have or believe in the same things just because those things are important to you.

Because this is the root of the mob mentality, where everybody has to respect your own sense of law and if you don't you have no value and all bets are off, this leads to terrorism and fear.

This is not a process unique to religion, and tha'ts my point, if you yanked out religion, I don't think that's a good thing, like society would prosper or whatever like they show in an episode of Family Guy.

All of the stuff you blame religion for are human things that can and will exist without religion.

I don't think the bible is the book of God, so being against homosexuality, is not something that was written by God.
You can say it's unnatural but the source of those opinions are humans.

So I think that religion is not a bad thing, even though I'm not religious myself, and religion is not some kind of scapegoat for all the bad things in society or something that can't work in a functional society.
 

HowDidIGetPrem

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But there's a breaking point to tolerating different beliefs. An obvious example being tolerating the acceptance of murder, but not every instance of this is as obvious. In your own post, you shrugged off stances on abortion as if they were no more than a person's preferences of ice cream flavors. Abortion is literally the murder of babies in the eyes of many anti-abortionists. Even as a person that is pro-abortion, the thought that people think anti-abortionists should just roll over and watch as their governments legalize the murder of babies BOTHERS me. What you're truly advocating for is them to compromise their morals and accept the murder of babies. You're not trying to convince them that babies aren't being murdered.

Despite anti-abortionists being compromised of both religious and nonreligious people, there is still a takeaway. The severity of issues vary from person to person. But what happens when there's a guide that tells you the severity of issues? Some so severe that you deserve to suffer eternally? It gains the ability to turn preferences of ice cream flavoring(homosexuality being the most obvious) into matters of life and death. You can't just tell these people to simply roll over as immoral practices take place, because that request IS immoral. You have to attack the source, but the sources in such cases would be their God(s) & their scripture(s). Two things that are essentially infallible in the eyes of the religious. As in, there is no argument to be had. You just pray the morals of that religion loosens its grip as its done in the USA, where Christians are hardly Christian, and as its done in much of the EU, where religion is much sparser, OR that they start interpreting their shit in more favorable ways such as Christians who embrace "hate the sin, not the sinner."
 
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Chikombo

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But there's a breaking point to tolerating different beliefs. An obvious example being tolerating the acceptance of murder, but not every instance of this is as obvious. In your own post, you shrugged off stances on abortion as if they were no more than a person's preferences of ice cream flavors. Abortion is literally the murder of babies in the eyes of many anti-abortionists. Even as a person that is pro-abortion, the thought that people think anti-abortionists should just roll over and watch as their governments legalize the murder of babies BOTHERS me. What you're truly advocating for is them to compromise their morals and accept the murder of babies. You're not trying to convince them that babies aren't being murdered.

Despite anti-abortionists being compromised of both religious and nonreligious people, there is still a takeaway. The severity of issues vary from person to person. But what happens when there's a guide that tells you the severity of issues? Some so severe that you deserve to suffer eternally? It gains the ability to turn preferences of ice cream flavoring(homosexuality being the most obvious) into matters of life and death. You can't just tell these people to simply roll over as immoral practices take place, because that request IS immoral. You have to attack the source, but the sources in such cases would be their God(s) & their scripture(s). Two things that are essentially infallible in the eyes of the religious. As in, there is no argument to be had. You just pray the morals of that religion loosens its grip as its done in the USA, where Christians are hardly Christian, and as its done in much of the EU, where religion is much sparser, OR that they start interpreting their shit in more favorable ways such as Christians who embrace "hate the sin, not the sinner."
I'm not saying you need to agree with other people's opinions.

You have the right to fight for them and argue for them but you can't assume people are forced to acknowledge them just cus you think they are important.


I didn't fully understand the latter part, I'm gonna read it later maybe I understand it better and can respond.


As for abortion, I think it should be ok but I recogonize it's a sensitive issue and I don't think late abortions should be legal cus you have to take responsibility of the life you have created.


HOWEVER.

Life is really random, if a parent can't have kids or decided not to have kids that's also a murder of any potential kids you could have, if the another sperm reaches the egg faster another baby is born etc, so I don't believe in the inception of pregnancy as a real baby.

I didn't mean to be offensive, I knew the moment I wrote that that it would come off as dumb. I apologize for that.

BUT the abortion issue highlights what I'm trying to say, being against abortion doesn't make you an idiot, there are proper reasons to be against abortions.

So regardless of it being a religious tradition or not people can be for or against it regardless of religion so if you think it's stupid you can't just attack religion you have to actually debate the issue.



If I understand the second part, YES I think you CAN tell roll your eyes and tell people they are just dumb.

Because, if people can't tolerate other people having different beleifs and opinions then they are creating a forced theocracy.

Which only benefits one group of religious people.

Also life is like that, people insult you and call you an idiot if your ideals don't fit in.

It doesn't have to be religion, if you are in some politicla spectrum other people find stupid they are not gonna attack the source, they will attack you, and they won't be gentle and say you can fit in somehow, I saw an article saying a school forced people to eat during ramadan.

That's an extreme example but it happens with everything, if other people don't think your ideas of what morality or justice is fits in they will think you are a problem.

I could get angry at someone and snap, because someone hurt my feelings and so I murder the guy, in court nobody will say that the problem is some kind of source of my anger or philosophy of justice, they will say Im an idiot and they will put me in jail or execute me for being a horrible person no matter how much I think I'm justified myself.

You have to accept that life is cruel that way, you have to accept that life doesn't tolerate your own sense of beliefs.
 
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Sagebee

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I agree its dumb to blame world problems on religion if you believe all religions are manmade then all issues are manmade but by putting it like that pretty much saying religions and its faults are result of God. As for what's root all evil think it's just human selfishness and greed and other negative traits cause us to do harm.
 

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I agree its dumb to blame world problems on religion if you believe all religions are manmade then all issues are manmade but by putting it like that pretty much saying religions and its faults are result of God. As for what's root all evil think it's just human selfishness and greed and other negative traits cause us to do harm.
I think alot of people like to find a single scapegoat for all the problems in the world, because they think their opposing ideals are impossible to be correct in any way, so there is no place for them, they have no value and so they are the cause for everything miserable cus if you remove them everything would be fine.

For example, I think alot of people likes to blame everything bad on the left nowadays, it's not so much religion anymore, people are really into making the left seem completely pointless and associating the left with everything bad.




This might be hard to understand but for me it has been a struggle to justify religion at all, because I listen to all of these people who are convinced religion is nothing but a problem, I actually enjoy it when religious people fight back and win debates and stuff cus for a long time I was a bit depressed cus not that I wanted to be religious but religion which seemed like such an important thing for people was like the figurative devil, there was nothing romantic about it at all, it was basically impossible to be religious and fit in to a normal society it was like a mathematical formula dictating that as soon as you touch religion you are bound to be a bad person and everything bad is somehow related to religion, people even said nazism was because of christinanity.

Or that socialism in the cold war was essentially a religion.
 

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I think alot of people like to find a single scapegoat for all the problems in the world, because they think their opposing ideals are impossible to be correct in any way, so there is no place for them, they have no value and so they are the cause for everything miserable cus if you remove them everything would be fine.

For example, I think alot of people likes to blame everything bad on the left nowadays, it's not so much religion anymore, people are really into making the left seem completely pointless and associating the left with everything bad.
Agree people need conflict and create opposition and enemies
 
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chopstickchakra

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A lot of atheist have a borderline religious fervor towards science as a doctrine as if it's infallible despite scientific understanding continuously evolves as does our comprehensions.

I know it's meant to be satire but I loved It's Always Sunny's bit where Mac calls all the old scientists bitches
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Because despite the comedy of it there is some truth to the idea that our understanding and scientific "facts" are just our best guesses at the time given the limited knowledge we have and when new knowledge is gained later older "facts" are altered or proven wrong.

One of my favorite ironic things about scientific atheists vs religion is so many of them accept the simulation theory. For those unfamiliar the simulation theory postulates that this life we're in now is a computer program and all things that happen from the decisions we make to the things we see to me typing this is predetermined by code programmed by a person or team of people. Does this sound familiar at all? It's the scientific equivalent of Creationism. A being that exists in a realm beyond our reach and understanding has created all of us and everything we know and we act out a routine set by that being. How is that different than God created life and fate drives life?
 

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A lot of atheist have a borderline religious fervor towards science as a doctrine as if it's infallible despite scientific understanding continuously evolves as does our comprehensions.

I know it's meant to be satire but I loved It's Always Sunny's bit where Mac calls all the old scientists bitches
You must be registered for see medias
Because despite the comedy of it there is some truth to the idea that our understanding and scientific "facts" are just our best guesses at the time given the limited knowledge we have and when new knowledge is gained later older "facts" are altered or proven wrong.

One of my favorite ironic things about scientific atheists vs religion is so many of them accept the simulation theory. For those unfamiliar the simulation theory postulates that this life we're in now is a computer program and all things that happen from the decisions we make to the things we see to me typing this is predetermined by code programmed by a person or team of people. Does this sound familiar at all? It's the scientific equivalent of Creationism. A being that exists in a realm beyond our reach and understanding has created all of us and everything we know and we act out a routing set by that being.
the simulation theory is pretty much intelligent design lol.
 
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im more of a spiritual person myself...

but i agree, people need to just leave mofo's alone about their beliefs, like grow the **** up. if its not hurting you or anyone else, who gives a ****? like really. what that comes down to is subconsciously theyre seeking validation for their own beliefs from others, so if their beliefs arent projected back to them as valid. they have to prove theyre valid by trying to prove theyre superior in some way to the other

religion itself though isnt bad, it can be used wrongly like anything else. but if someone is using it to try and be a better person, why you buggin? let them be, at that point its more about you and your own ego, then trying to prove youre beliefs are valid. same with religious people who think theyre better than those who dont believe in god, like its emotional complex city in the streets. im all for healthy discussions but these validation complexes make people get toxic when discussing differences in beliefs. people that feel what they believe is valid, dont try and change or prove others wrong, their would be no point
 
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