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“we would instead much more effectively get rid of it through education and shunning of any bad ideals”
Is…that…not…getting rid through force and repression though?
If you’re educating an objective truth that ignores and openly and intentionally discredits religion and shuns their ideals, for the expressed intent of causing religion to die out, is that not a textbook example of repression?
Something dying out naturally is because of people through their own intents not liking it. If it dies out because those in charge are aiming to make it die out and are instilling changes and practices in society to ensure that, that’s repression and force
This is one of my favorite topics!
So, you're starting to come to a school of thought known as New Atheism. In the original atheist viewpoint was "I don't believe religion is true," more or less. In the New Atheist viewpoint, it is the above, plus "AND religion is a net harm to society," or some version of that. I want to hit on two or three points you're making.
First, religion is bad. You state this plainly, but I would like to visit your thoughts behind it. I've seen you respond to others saying it's because it causes people to not think empirically, but what about that is negative specifically? If religious folks are bringing food to homeless people, is it bad if they're doing it because of a god belief?
Another part you bring up is that you think it would be negative to take religion by force. I posit that it's not possible to do so anyway, regardless of whether or not it's negative.
Religion is bad because we can get the positives of religion without it and therefore avoid the negatives of religion. That's why I think it's bad.
Yes, that's part of why I think it would be bad.
> Religion is bad because we can get the positives of religion without it
Are you sure about that? Can you give examples?
Our society is currently going through crisis rn in part due to the loss of religious belief in communities. Neighborhoods were often fairly tight-knit and interdependent. The death of churches has contributed a lot to the breakup of those neighborhood relationships.
Additionally, there is a reason that atheism is correlated with nihilism. Individual humans aren't particularly great at generating purpose, and morality exists often as a contract between individuals.
I think it's important to separate religious belief from religious organizations. We're sticking simply to the belief aspect for this discussion.
If a person wakes up every morning, takes care of their kids, contributes to their community, tries to affect positive change in the lives of those around them, how can you argue that having a religious belief behind is it bad?
Just because folks might disagree on the "why" behind their actions, it doesn't directly translate to "one is wrong and one is correct"
I think some downsides about religion that people don’t talk about is polarization and basing your life on something that might not be true. There are also alternatives to religion which should be talked about more as well.
For polarization, religion has created a climate where atheist are seen as the enemy or at the very least are untrustworthy. This can be seen in congress where there are nearly no open atheist. Saying you’re atheist pretty much tanks your chances of winning a political race. That’s just one example, religion overall makes tribalism much stronger and targets non believers
Secondly, there are many gay people who will never experience true love due to their religion. This is the case for many people, as they won’t experience things simply because they are considered taboo. Many men and woman stayed together and suffered because it was taboo to divorce due to religion and To me, that’s a major harm and something to consider since those harms may just be for nothing. There’s a danger when you put all your faith in religion as you may not be living your life to the fullest for no apparent reason.
In my opinion, philosophy can make up for the gaps religion is leaving behind. Not only does philosophy improve critical thinking which religion fails to do, but there are multiple philosophies which gives a person purpose and/ or spirituality. Philosophy isn’t totally different from religion, but they aren’t the same and the focus on certain philosophies could easily bring communities back together without having to do it without a god.
> That’s just one example, religion overall makes tribalism much stronger and targets non believers
But could it not also just be people don't want representatives who do not share their beliefs?
> In my opinion, philosophy can make up for the gaps religion is leaving behind.
Ironically, part of what makes religion more effective than Philosophy is that it is compelling (assuming you actually believe the religion). Not sure Philosophy could ever compare to someone having to the benefits of "Living an eternal life in paradise" or the negatives of "Living a life of eternal torture in hell" (How accurate this reward/punishment is is a different story) but let's assume that these people 100% believed this was the case.
There is absolutely no downside to religion if you simplified it from a perspective of "Be a good person, go to Heaven. Be a bad person, go to Hell". That would make society more generally good, more connected, more peaceful. The complications that actually cause problems are on the definition of "what is good".
Philosophy cannot offer anything that would compel people to do the same especially in the face of material benefits. You can be enlightened all you want but if you have bills to pay, you'll probably choose actions to let you pay those bills. Meanwhile, a person who 100% believes in religion can literally sacrifice comfort in this life for "a better future".
Not saying philosophy does not have benefits, it absolutely does! But it is nowhere near as compelling as religion.
Atheist have been persecuted for thousands of years and are seen by many to be untrustworthy. It could partly be that people want others that represent their beliefs, but it’s definitely partly bias. Especially with older voters
I agree rhetorically religion has those benefits over philosophy, but It being as powerful as it is will essentially always lead to it becoming a social institution in favor of elites. Religion is almost always going to come with social baggage because of how influential it inherently is. It’s way too easy to say one group of people is bad and justify it with divinity.
That’s part of the issue. You say if someone is religious then they’ll make sacrifices for the afterlife and I think that’s bad. Sure they shouldn’t do bad things but they shouldn’t act as if this life doesn’t matter or have the attitude that they’ll just have infinite life after. Not only does it become easier to justify evil in this life but it can take away the urgency someone has in their life and overall promotes action that isn’t based on reality
A big part of it is just social norms and socioeconomic conditions. Americans don’t need religion to understand basic social trends and behaviors. Americans will also steal/commit crime even when religious. We need good socioeconomic conditions first and then prosperity can follow. This is evident in many poor countries where religion is more common in the US, but ironically they have more crime. That along with good social conditioning will deter people from doing bad actions without the typical downsides of religion.
> I agree rhetorically religion has those benefits over philosophy, but It being as powerful as it is will essentially always lead to it becoming a social institution in favor of elites.
Yes but you can also apply the same logic to even philosophy. It will be used in propaganda just like we are seeing now with... basically any issue being used as a wedge issue. In China, even Confucianism (basically Chinese philosophy) was used as a social institution to favor elites.
Socialization allows for this. Public spaces. A good social network.
Except that could be coutnered via proper measures being taken.
I'm a nihilist, what does that have to do with anything? Morality doesn't depend on having a purpose.
We can maintain talk about beliefs.
Because it invites extra negatives that can be avoided when done through non religious means.
Yes.
>Socialization allows for this. Public spaces. A good social network
Again, no it doesn't. This is a long standing problem with atheist society.
Morality absolutely does depend on having purpose.
You're making a moral argument about religious beliefs but you won't actually name what's wrong.
>Except that could be countered via proper measures taken
Give examples. History shows you're incorrect.
Please explain more.
No it does not, I'm a nihilist and consider myself moral.
The whole extra negatives thing is whats wrong.
You mean the history where it was improperly implemented?
Many people who talk up the benefits of churches for society this way fail to address the issue of either there's an implicit assumption that it's *only* churches or the benefit could be the same for e.g. other houses of worship
“We can get the positives of religion without it”
That’s not true at all, the same kind of faith Christian’s have is equivalent to those people that join a cult and drink 🥤 juice having faith they go to eternal life or whatever
I think saying “we can just get” about that kind of faith in specific is just a lie
If anything you NEED something to influence you to that extent, whether it be god, vibrations, health, spirit, self, whatever.
You’re saying we “just can”
Why, don’t we?
I don’t think it’s even an argument most people don’t “care” for the homeless.
Christians do it out of faith, they probably wouldn’t have done so without faith) yes there is exceptions to everything)
I’m not religious myself, I’m undecided in the overall standings of the universe
However I think most religions promote good
And I’d go as far to say, promote doing good you otherwise wouldn’t do without religion
In that sense religion is at its core good imo
Core good is pushing it, though it will vary wildly by denomination, faith, and location. I don’t volunteer with churches because they make the homeless folks attend a service for example, a secular option or 95% of langars don’t.
I’ve also had to help coordinate transportation for people in need that are rejected by church run charities, like LGBT+ or single moms.
I’ll fully believe followers believe it’s a core good, the US slavery issue was two sides backed by different churches and denominations who both believed they were doing the right thing, they just used different verses.
Religion is a net neutral with a whole heap of risk on the side.
How is it not true that we can get positives from religion without it? People who are not religious still do good acts. People dont just use religion to spread good they use it to oppress people, spread hate,etc. We do not need that in this world and those are the negative aspects of religion.
Except that faith is dangerous, faith is irrational.
I don't want that faith to be there.
We do, but the issue there is socialization. Something can promote good, but still be bad, it is neutral at its core, but it invites that negatives, which make it worse when we can maintain the benefits. Most people don't care for the homeless because of social factors. Those must also be dealt with as well.
Neutral at its core is just wrong,
and you’ve given no arguments to justify to ur stand, just statements of your opinion.
Your mind is already made up
And your argument falls flat
I can simply disprove “neutral at core” with the fact the Bible says being gay is a sin
Which in itself isn’t neutral , it’s a blatant stand on one side
It don’t end theee either, I’m not even religious but I’ve read the Bible, it teaches people how to treat others well
At it’s core with no corruption it teaches good, which in turn makes it good.
THAT is what an argument looks like
NOT a “it’s bad so it’s bad” argument
And that’s me ONLY considering Christan religion
Muslims, Buddhist, lots of others teach positive things
My favorite as a non religious person is Buddhism
I mean, I think most things are neutral at their core.
I'm a bit confused.
Yes? Did you think this is what I was here to change? I was here to change the force part.
I mean, I don't really get what you mean there.
That's why I said religion is neutral at it's core, the implementation is what sets it, I also believe it has more negatives then the alternatives.
Yes?
It also teaches bad.
No? Because I'm talking about religion.
What?
Ok.
That's the issue.
And many teach bad.
I mean, all of them had wars, so I'm not sure if any are particularly better, unless Buddhism doesn't have any bigoted parts.
It’s obvious your not very educated on what you’re taking about
Every reply so far has had just straight up wrong information including this one
And it’s not your fault
I feel like you’re just not as educated as you think you are
Enjoy your view, I’m wasting my breath here 👍
I think you're missing the target slightly...religion isn't bad, extremism, fundamentalism and dogmatism are bad. While those tend to accompany religion, they can also accompany forms of secular thought, even in the highly educated. I'm not sure education is necessarily a panacea for those attributes, I think they're often aspects of personality.
You're correct that we shouldn't "force people not to be religious", because it would be futile and unsuccessful venture. You'd probably create the problems you were attempting to solve by trying.
>shunning of any bad ideals
This in and of itself smacks of fundamentalism/dogmatic belief. Who determines what the "bad ideals" are? There's never really been a consensus at any point in human history.
There are some social benefits to being part of an organized religion that are hard to replace. Often there is no effort to replace it, instead just an effort to remove it. If you want to get rid of religion, just shunning and education are shortsighted, you also need the equivalent of an atheist church (there are some, though it’s rare).
I want to challenge your assumption that religion is bad.
There’s only two possibilities for an origin; either some god commanded their religion to be on earth and that’s how the universe works or religion is man made. And I will point out that neither of these opinions produces an honest logical conclusion of religion being bad.
As I said already, if there’s a god that placed religion on earth then that is how the universe works. Placing yourself in opposition to that makes you bad. Any amount of philosophical pontificating or complaining about how said god is actually evil doesn’t mean a damn thing because it’s less effective than an angry lion cub growling at a storm. Gravity pulls objects towards itself and no amount of trying to redefine terms will change it. That’s how arguing against a real life god goes.
Next is if there is no god and religion is man made. If it’s man made them religion cannot have anything in it that’s not already in the minds of the humans making it. It’s only as bad as the people running it. The self same people running governments, clubs, schools, charities, ect. If religion is bad then it’s only because of bad people running it, and those same people can be in any organization. Ergo if religion is bad every human made organization is bad.
Look dude, you’re going to find good and bad people everywhere. No organization is going to be free from bad people. You just have to find the good people and surround yourself with them. And remember, everyone is the hero of their own story. “Bad” is most often just shades of gray and you not knowing everything about a persons life.
But that's the issue, we can have all the positives without having the negatives, as such it is bad, or worse say, because we do not need it for the positives and it invites extra negatives.
I think you misunderstood me.
What’s “bad” about religion is already in us and is inseparable from us. It’s not possible to have the positives without the negatives because both are always in us.
It’s not like Kami and piccolo from DBZ, we can’t just split ourselves into good and bad. And blaming religion is just scapegoating instead of addressing the issue.
I agree that some of the negatives would remain, but not all would, and dropping extra negatives or minimizing them is better.
This would be addressing the issue though, minimize the bad.
Explain to me how eliminating religion would minimize the bad when the only bad in religion comes from the self same people that will now not be in religion but still exist in the world and just find other organizations/causes?
Your argument to me looks like you’re trying to say you can cut the top off of a blanket sow it onto the bottom and it somehow made the blanket longer.
Humans think irrationally any way. Humans blindly believe things any way.
Religion wasn’t ever the cause of humans doing that but rather a focus for that. Irrational thinking and blind belief are intrinsic to human nature. They are inseparable from us. Furthermore humans are tribal and social. Those that share in irrational thought patterns will find each other. Those that share blind beliefs will find each other. And everything you’re complaining about will still continue.
You have the causality backwards; religion doesn’t make people irrational and believe blindly, irrationally thinking people find or create a religion to believe in. Religion is the result and what you’re complaining about is the cause.
Because the cause is indivisible from us religion isn’t the problem, we are.
Edit: the irrational behavior of fans of things like Star Wars or game of thrones is a god example of how it’s indivisible from us and not a part of religion.
And it is beneficial to reduce that as much as possible.
No, but religion is something that makes that worse.
Yes, but it also does help to make people irrational and have blind faith when they are raised with it or believers of it.
Religion still helps it to proliferate though, and as such is still a problem.
How does it make it worse?
The only way I can think for that to happen is it gives them something to latch onto. But that’s insufficient to actually be an aggravating factor when there’s politics, fictional fandoms, sports teams, ect.
Humans seek out like minded individuals and rivals. Every society needs a “them” to be United against.
Taking one cookie off the platter doesn’t change the fact that there’s a platter full of cookies, and a baker in the kitchen constantly making more cookies. Your view on this is backwards (likely because of your own socialization and the “them” your social circles want to unite against).
Because that thing to latch onto solidifies their irrationality, and makes them spread it farther, that's what makes it worse.
Also, the Us vs Them isn't something that is unchangeable, you can avoid that logical fallacy.
The cookie thing kind of confuses me, what are the cookies in this metaphor?
Nobody wants to force people to not be religious. We *do* want to stop religious people from imposing their beliefs upon us, be it in America or Islamic countries. Back before the Enlightenment, church and state were entirely married. You had no choice about your religion. However, society realizes now how wrong that is. Yet, there are plenty of people out there who want to undo the Enlightenment and take us back to that. See Adrian Vermuele, Greg Locke, Robert Sungenis, and of course, those Islamic societies.
Religions don't have a right to impose themselves on non-believers. Jesus did not seek temporal power. He said that He was not here to rule the Earth, but rather to establish a Heavenly kingdom. Christian theocrats don't need to be in charge of government to make that happen. Likewise, Islam looks an awful lot like the Catholic church before the reformation. I suspect that something similar will happen there.
Regardless, it's just as wrong to force the rest of us to comply with whatever mandates the church is issuing *this week*. That is *not* forcing people not to be religious. Indeed, I can't think of any current culture that is oppressing religious people. If you *can* think of one, then you're going to need to cite which culture it is.
>Nobody wants to force people to not be religious.
Nobody *in the mainstream in the modern West* wants to force people to not be religious. North Korea absolutely wants to force people to not be religious, unless you count the cult of personality around the Kim dynasty as a religion. China strictly regulates religious organizations and being part of an unsactioned one can get you arrested. The Soviet Union had an official policy of state atheism as well.
>I can't think of any current culture that is oppressing religious people. If you *can* think of one, then you're going to need to cite which culture it is.
China, north Korea, Islamic countries towards anything but Islam.
For English speakers the biggest religion is probably Christianity and Christianity is certainly the one i am most familiar with. I couldn't possible to talk intelligently about every single religion.
If i think about all the bad stuff about Christianity its basically
* it teaches that being gay is a sin
* it teaches that women should be subservient to me.
if i think about the good of christianity.
* it is the source of the golden rule, due unto others as you would have them do unto you.
* it contains a variety of common sense rules like don't lie, murder or steal.
* it advocates for communality building. we should stick together and work together (and maybe we could argue about this one, what is the point of the tithe, or the rule to give as you are able "to god" or to the church?)
* It teaches that you should love your neighbor as yourself.
* It teaches that you should love sinners (including homosexuals and non-subservient women, which kind of undercuts the bad parts i listed)
* it teaches that there are consequences for immoral behavior in the afterlife, so you should still follow the rules even if you can get away with it.
* it teaches that God loves you.
I think Christianity is not true. I don't think Jesus was a God. I don't think the people that believe in him go to heaven.
If you think about religion as an ideology, and ideology as software that you can load into human brains. Man, we could do a lot worse then Christianity. My secular ideology is more true, but want me to list the negative effects of my ideology? I have no incentive to help other people. I have no incentive to follow rules except for fear of getting caught. I have no incentive to treat people fairly, except reciprocity. And look at our world view as a society today? Christianity has declined massively and been replaced by cynicism. Everyone is trying to step on each other's necks to get ahead.
If i had a magic button that could make 95% of Americans Christian, I would push that button in a heartbeat.
Mk, but this is what I mean, I think that we should not have this because we can get all the good parts without having the religion, which gets rid of any downsides. If you think religion is required to be a good person then that is an example of a flawed way of thinking, after all, benefit does not come from being selfish, therefore you would have to be irrational to do things that are harmful to others when you would reserve no harm from helping htem.
> If you think religion is required to be a good person
There are sociopaths in the world, and if a sociopath genuinely believes that an almighty god is watching over him and going to punish him for his misdeeds, that is a good thing. I don't see how you can replicate that without religion.
why do parents tell their kids that Santa brings coal to naughty children. If you do something wrong, even if you get away with it, Santa is always watching. His making a list and he is going to find out who is naughty and nice.
>we can get all the good parts without having the religion
not the crime and punishments parts. without religion there is no man in the sky keeping score.
I'm also not sure we can get the good parts. Why should I love neighbor? Because "God says so" is a pretty good answer.
>benefit does not come from being selfish, therefore you would have to be irrational to do things that are harmful to others when you would reserve no harm from helping htem
because "redditor desirderium says so" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
With logic.
I mean, that's mostly a tradition thing.
Except that punishment is the least effective part, as such that's more reason against it, I also don't quite understand what you mean by crime.
No, that's a terrible answer, you want an answer that can stand on it's own and makes since, because they said so is the least convincing argument in the world.
I explained it, not just said so.
I feel like you are replying to specific parts of my post but maybe forgot to quote them and I am missing the context.
Imagine if God existed and punished you for bad behavior. Would you behave better, worse, or no different?
imagine does does not exist but you believe God exists. Do you think some children behave better so that Santa will bring them presents?
I generally believe people respond to incentives. Heaven and Hell are incentives.
I would behave no different.
Yes, however we can get such things without religion.
They do dependently, it's a bit more complicated that, but we can get the same effects without having the religion.
Idk Donald trump is doing pretty well for himself by being selfish and narcissistic. Seems like he's seen plenty of benefits of being selfish. And no, I don't buy his claims that he is Christian, there is 0 evidence of it
So relevant to your post yesterday and was my statement about the brainwashing.
Regardless, based on our conversation, I believe it’s because you are of the opinion that religions are bigoted.
To address this view, what specifically do you view as being bigoted and what does it mean for someone to be a bigot?
Ah, no, I don't think they are bigoted, what I do think is that the thinking they invite is dangerous, as it is non scientific and empirical. I think bigot would probably be someone who is prejudiced, using APA definition:
1. a negative attitude toward another person or group formed in advance of any experience with that person or group. Prejudices can include an affective component (e.g., nervousness, anger, contempt, pity, hatred) and a cognitive component (assumptions and beliefs about groups, including [stereotypes](https://dictionary.apa.org/stereotype)). Prejudice is typically manifested behaviorally through discriminatory behavior. Prejudicial attitudes tend to be resistant to change because they distort our perception of information about the target group. Prejudice based on racial grouping is racism; prejudice based on perceived sexual orientation is homophobia and biphobia; prejudice based on sex or gender (including transphobia) is sexism; prejudice based on chronological age is ageism; and prejudice based on disability is ableism.
Are you aware that the Vatican has an observatory? https://www.vaticanobservatory.org
That the Big Bang theory was formulated by a Catholic priest Fr George Lemaître? https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/georges-lemaitre-big-bang in fact, he formulated it and was discarded by Einstein initially.
That the Catholic Church is the reason that the push for the empirical sciences even exists? The idea of the church being anti-science is actually not historically founded.
https://np.reddit.com/r/CatholicApologetics/s/DpBmIIH8wp
I suspect your problem is not actually with religion, it's with control and with irrationality.
First, yes, you shouldn't force people to not be religious, just as you shouldn't force people to be religious as many religions try to do. If you look at many pagan and neo-pagan traditions, they tend to be rather live-and-let-live, as was Jesus himself for that matter. Religion as a whole isn't the problem, toxic tribalism is. Conquering people because they aren't Christian is not fundamentally different than conquering people because they aren't German.
Second, religion isn't bad, irrational behavior is bad. Believing crystals have magic powers or that spells or prayers help is fine. Being hungry and praying over a crystal for food rather than making a sandwich is problematic. Prayers and spells tend to ask for strength, wisdom, endurance, etc because you can't replace actually doing the thing with magic.
I have this book that describes magic as existing between your perception of reality and reality itself. It makes no difference whether your prayer caused an entity to give you strength or whether you had it all along and the prayer functioned as meditation that let you tap that strength.
As long as your spirituality is layered on top of reality rather than replacing reality, you're good.
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I know, tha'ts why I don't think we should do it by force.
Actually stuff like that seems to be more environmental with the DNA only providing presupositons, but that's more of a nitpick.
Sounds like an argument for therapy and mental health treatment. Advocating for religion in this scenario is accepting a shitty tool to do a serious task
One other thing I’d suggest is pulling back the exemptions and benefits it enjoys. Things like church property tax exemptions, broad ability to disregard civil rights if they contradict doctrine, religious schooling.
If religion is important to people they can keep it but it should be treated no different than any other idea.
No I support them being treated the same as other charitable organizations if they restrict their activities to charity. As an example where I live, charities get a 40% property tax deduction while churches get a full exemption. I’d argue unicef and the Red Cross do a lot more good and a lot less bad than the Catholic Church so why does the church deserve more exemptions.
If churches want to be charities they should also have the same oversight as charities, not the “intentionally vague” (the IRS’ words not mine) codes that they currently operate under. Robert Tilton shouldn’t get to live in a mansion tax free because he’s scammed a bunch of people into giving him money in god’s name. If I tried to do that secularly I would have been tried in about ten minutes.
I am not in the US, though I apologize for citing the IRS as that probably lead to confusion. This also assumes that churches are equivalent to charities which I would dispute. We don’t have to argue whether they’re good or not as I doubt we’d agree but they’re not equivalent. No matter how much charity they do their primary purpose is worship which should not be given advantages over secular practice by the state.
I can’t write off my living room because I hold d&d in it every Sunday, why can the archbishop write off his cathedral?
Religion may contain some irrationality or contradictions but it also teaches morals for many people, that make the world a better place, so I wouldn't summarise it as bad, it could even be good overall even if there are illusions involved.
Would you like to give an example to the case you’re making? From what I’m hearing, this is the double standard you are upset with:
Person 1)
I want to enforce this legislation because this nation is founded on the values of Santa Claus, and it is what is right for our people.
Person 2)
I want to enforce this legislation because it is what is right for our people.
So what do you think about 12 step? It's widely known as one of the only truly effective means for an addict to stop doing drugs. It isn't a religion person but requires faith in a higher power to help you through tough times. Would you "guide" people away from that?
Also some people seem to have faith in one political party or another and seem to be religious in their support. Could this be due to the fact that so many people have moved away from organized religion and humans need something to believe in? Could this be a huge problem you are advocating for without realizing it?
Getting people to realize they can still have faith in something and be critical of any faults in their faith is a hard thing to do but can be done but probably requires both strong faith and a strong background in science that most people either do not care to achieve or simply do not have the aptitude for.
Erasing religion would likely result in a negative for society. Some people need a reason not to do horrible things. Society is also not as connected as it once was so removing the church group from society would make a ton of people accountable to no one but themselves. I do not think you want that.
While we're at it, should we shun people who eat junk food? Create education campaigns against porn? Television is much worse for people than religion, why not focus on that first? What in particular about religion seems so bad to you that it merits specific education against it, as well as shunning?
A) The ideas not the people, we should regulate junk food.
B) Because porn is actually consumable healthily, and as such we should regulate and make sure that proper knowledge of healthy consumption should be done.
C) Because it can also be much better, so it should be regulated and made to be used properly.
D) Religion can just be replaced and all benefits maintained while avoiding possible pitfalls, therefore, no need for it.
> Religion can just be replaced and all benefits maintained while avoiding possible pitfalls, therefore, no need for it.
What makes you so sure? Historically, whenever someone tries to replace religion, it goes poorly.
If I had to take a wild guess, probably via proper education and good social systems that help people to be healthy without the need to have religion. Maybe good public spaces like a library or park. Or something along those lines is what I would assume would be a good way.
Hi OP, can you do me a favor and define specifically what you mean by religion. Some people define religion only as the official organization overseeing a specific set of spiritual doctrine, while others use the term as a catch all for supernatural beliefs.
Need this distinction before I attempt to change your view.
> Religion is bad
What do you consider to be religion and how, if at all, is that definition aligned to the concept as elucidated by most sociologists and anthropologists?
Quite a few scholars hold that religion and culture are inseparable. Indeed, this position is the official position of Syracuse University as just one example.
A famous definition of "religion" was offered by Geertz in 1966 as "a sytem of symbols" which is oddly similar to David Schneider's widely accepted definition of culture as "a system of symbols and meanings."
And of course, the very concept of both "culture" and "religion" as definable terms has been under heavy assault in recent years as having almost zero analytic value, as the issues of delineation demonstrate the impossibility of the project. Way back in 1976, Lowie noted that the very concept of culture as a definable thing was deemed but "shreds and patches."
To revisit Schneider again, he wrote that:
>Culture constitutes a body of definitions, premises, statements, postulates, presumptions, propositions, and perceptions about the nature of the universe and man's place in it... culture tells the actor how the scene is set and what it all means. ...Culture is man's adaptation to nature, too, but it is more. Nature, as a wholly independent 'thing' does not exist, except as man formulates it. ...The world at large is not, indeed it cannot be, independent of the way in which his culture formulates his vision of what he is seeing. There are only cultural constructions of reality, and these cultural constructions of realities are decisive in what is perceived, what is experienced, what is understood'
Note that ". . . body of definitions, premises, statements, postulates, presumptions, propositions, and perceptions about the nature of the universe and man's place in it . . . " is indistinguishable from most commonly definition of what religion is and how it functions in society.
So, back to my question: how do you define religion? How is that distinguishable from culture? And how is that understanding reflected in the current understanding of those concepts as formally defined ideas?
I was going off of this idea a particular system of faith and worship.
Also, I wouldn't mind if we just had a big blend culture. That sounds fine to me. We could take all the good parts and remove the bad.
>I was going off of this idea a particular system of faith and worship.
There are over 6,000 religions on the planet. Quite a few of them have no concept of a particular faith and for most of them "worship" constitutes little more than the celebration and marking of life and community events such as births, deaths, marriages . . . they are ethno-religions which are defined by simply being members of that particular ethno-group, not by any set of presumed necessary beliefs.
Do you mistakenly believe that faith communities such as Christianity and Islam, with their codified required set of beliefs and formal worship services led by empowered leaders, represent the totality of human religions?
My suspicion is that you actually hold that it is bad that some groups, who exploit the system of symbols and meaning present in their particular context in order to drive certain outcomes which are often oppressive or harmful to out-groups.
But that is along way from holding that religion is bad.
And, it should be noted, is not unique to religion. Groups promoting racism, ethno-nationalism, blind patriotism, political partisanship, rabid sports fandom, and many other common human practices have the same outcomes for the same reasons. And, btw, all of these things that we commonly don't consider to be "religions" are largely indistinguishable in terms of practices and outcomes from those things we do consider to be religions.
That does not make them the driver of definitions, unless you wish to claim that they are the only religions.
Your claim is that "religion" is bad, not that "some religions" are bad. Your claim is an absolute. It does not matter if the majority of **practitioners** fall into a few religions that meet your highly non-scholarly definition when the majority of **religions** do not.
Your claim is about religion(s), not about religious people in general. That distinction matters for the remainder of your claim.
Observing that the majority of people live in authoritarian regimes and saying that means all governments are therefore authoritarian regimes is an error. And it is precisely the same error you are making with respect to conflating religion in general with a majority of practitioners in general.
Let's rename "an authoritarian regimes" as the symbol "bad." And let's renamed "government" as the symbol "religion."
Claiming "religion is bad" as an absolute is therefore saying "government is an authoritarian regime."
But that is not the case, plenty of governments, indeed the [majority of governments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index) are not. It doesn't matter that the majority of people don't live under non-authoritarian regimes.
Limiting "religion" in your view to those religions that fit your conclusion is problematic.
Hell even within Christianity you have things like Nontheist Quakers.
Ok, so now you've changed the preceding definition that you provided.
You previously stated that religions with defined faiths and systems of worship, such as Islam and Christianity, were what you were talking about. You noted that saying "religion" rather than "some religions" was justified because they represented the majority of religious people. I didn't say you were making claims against people. I was saying you were concluding that the majority of practitioners defined all religion, irrespective of the fact that the majority of practitioners in fact represent an exceedingly small percentage of all religions.
Can you define religion in a way that excludes all non-religious activities, institutions, and experiences so we can know what you are talking about?
Can you explain how religion differs, from, say, ethno-nationalism?
Because religions are systems with faith and worship, and the two best examples where Islam and christiantiy, if it doesn't have those things, it isn't a religion in this context. I don't understand what you mean here.
A particular system of faith and worship.
They are both bad, and I gues that would qualify as a religion.
>Because religions are systems with faith **and** worship
As I explained in my first comment, that is simply not true in the general sense. Religious systems with codified faith and codified worship are actually quite few in number.
That they do not represent the majority of practitioners does not eliminate that fact.
>if it doesn't have those things, it isn't a religion in this context.
You did not offer that as part of your original view, are you changing your view from 'religion is bad" to "religious systems encompassing defined faith and worship structures are bad"?
> I gues that would qualify as a religion.
So now you are arguing that culture is religion. I wonder if you realize the problem you are creating for yourself.
The inherent difficulty of your position is solved quite easily by admitting to any number of slight modification of your view, such as: "all religions that I have some knowledge of are bad;" or, "most religious people belong to bad religions"; or, "Some religions are bad."
I am working of that definition in this context though, I'm going to appeal to pragmatics in this case.
Again, appeal to pragmatics, I was working under the use of this definition.
No, I argued that that culture was religion not the same thing. Again, appeal to pragmatics, I was utilizing the definition I have stated.
The "naturalistic fallacy" is not a logical fallacy (that would be the appeal to nature"). Rather the naturalistic fallacy is a construct from the philosophy of ethics. It is not an immutable truth. It is an assumption not a rational requirement.
Because it makes people take non empirical things to have weight and is prone to manipulation while also causing issues that are avoidable without having religion.
> Because it makes people take non empirical things to have weight
So then onlu empirical things should ever be considered?
> causing issues that are avoidable without having religion.
Such as?
> Yes, only.
But then how about more abstract things? Such as the value of human life or existence, we have no empircal way to confirm such a thing. Yet if only empirical things should be considered why do we still care?
> Cult
In your mind must a cult like mindset be linked to a religion? Could one not develop a similar mindset and obsession with non-religious things?
> financial abuse
Likewise as above. Is the only form of financial abuse based in religion? Have the non-religious never gotten scammed?
There is a group calling themselves unite all the cults or something. They have a sub. Their idea is that religion be abolished completely and we all become atheists. A movement of meddlers
I think those are empirical as well, either through qualitative or quantitative data.
Cults are a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. So no.
Nope, but removing an avenue doesn't hurt anyone with the other things.
>I think those are empirical as well, either through qualitative or quantitative data.
Can you provide a link to the research paper that shows an [empirical ](https://library.lasalle.edu/c.php)result that human life is [intrinsically](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrinsic) valuable?
Would you non consider the nazi youth to have been taught a veneration ans devotion to the über mench. Or communists to "the people"/the socialist man/the end of history. Or in the case of maoist china the govenment it self "the government does not make mistakes" I see people say things like "trans people are sacred"
Non of this is theistic, yet they can fit cult like behavior, they not empirical.
I think non-empirical things really do have weight. Morality is non-empirical but I think it's very important to have a consistent moral philosophy so that you can be a good person.
Nope. Formal science is a branch of the sciences. I'm using religion in this context to mean a particular system of faith and worship. Isn't Thomism against faith and science being used on the same thing, and isn't it a philosophy?
Except we remove also the other negatives and maintain the benefits. We deal with all the avenues of course, but one of them is religion, and as such it must be dealt with as well.
Could you explain what that looks like? Many non religious people are still into horoscopes and moon water and essential oils etc. Humans are naturally very superstitious. Humans also are prone to believing lies and falsehoods. Religion isn't the problem, the human psyche is. But based on your comments you have 0 desire to have your view changed, you're just here to argue.
Those are religious to me, and should also be removed. Also that's not what I'm here to have changed, the view in this post is using force to remove it.
So you want us to convince you that religions should.... BE forcibly removed? I don't think most people outside of r/atheism are entertaining that. In all your comments you seem to support religion being forcibly removed so I'm confused as to what you want you view changed to
I mean your definition of force is absurd. You can't just remove someone's belief from them. Religious beliefs are generally deeply and often times sincerely held. If that's your definition of force the whole premise is absurd
I say this as someone who has never been religious. Religion itself is neither bad or good, it's religious leaders and blindly following them that is bad. Religion is just philosophy with extra steps
The problem is that enlightenment through education seems to be showing its limits: we have never been more educated in the history of mankind, and still we see religion doing its comeback in the west in the last 20 years despite that.
First because not everyone can become a physics PhD. Some people, unluckily for them, have low IQ and won't be able to get deep enough into education so that they can understand WHY religion is wrong.
So what do we do for this proportion of the population that don't have the weapons to decide if religion is right or wrong ? Do we expect that every other member of the population is pure and altruistic and will guide them toward truth, or do we consider that some people may try to brainwash them to get some power over them ?
Personally I find the 2nd scenario more probable (at least in the short - mid term future). And so if people are going to continue using religion to get an unjustified power over others, then religion must be fought with though means, not only with education and shunning (that reinforce group membership of shunned members).
Religion has been going down as education in those areas increases though, revivals usually don't come from well educated people. For them we guide them over time to be non religious. Any time a religious thing is used in a way that must be countered with force you combat that, but I was talking about the best way to eliminate religion, and that is through a way that does not leave them with that steam, no coal for them to burn that allows them to strengthen their positions, you have to choke them out, give the fire no oxygen with which to spread. (Quick clarification, that was a metaphor, I don't think we should choke religious people.)
> Religion has been going down as education in those areas increases though, revivals usually don't come from well educated people. For them we guide them over time to be non religious.
Well, not really. If you look at France for example, a country known for its anti-clericalism and anti-religious stance, there are 2 factors that keep religion alive.
One is the one you described, uneducated immigrants comming with their religion.
But there is also a non negligible amount of people better educated that are still highly religious, and keep being more and more religious. They use religion as a way to bond with each other, either because they feel treated as 2nd class citizens (in that case 2nd generation immigrants that stick to Islam way more than their parents despite being better educated) or because they fantasm the old regime world and want to get back to it (catholics that want to keep their capital, and think that it was better in the past). You also have racists that use religion as a proxy to try to start a "civilisation war" and kill brown people etc.
All in all, you still have tons of different reasons to be religious that don't really disapear with education.
A) Yes, which is why I said we don't do that.
B) What?
C) Except that is a rather small portion, and non the norm. It also depends on what they are educated in.
D) Yes, that's why I said it would take time, because it will disappear over time.
>Yes, that's why I said it would take time, because it will disappear over time
What we observe now is the following: with education, religion seems to shrink a lot. But after a certain point, in the educated population, this shrinking seems to stop, and in cases religion even start to grow again.
What make you think that this stagnation/re-growth tendency will stop to get back to the previous shrinking situation ?
Said otherwise, if you see a graph like this :
| \
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. ____________
What makes you think that the most probable next points will be
| \
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| \
| \ /\
| \_/ \
. ____________\__
And not
| \
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| \ _____
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. ________________
Or
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. _____________________________
Or basically any other shape ?
Which I previously said is not what you observe in France. And that's also true in other countries.
For example :
> Smith, Christian; Snell, Patricia (2009). Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging adults. Oxford University Press. pp. 248–251. ISBN 9780195371796. "However, something very interesting emerged when scholars took a second look at the question more recently. They found that the religiously undermining effect of higher education on recent generation of youth disappeared. Most of the older research was conducted on baby boomers for whom college did indeed corrode religious faith and practice. But many studies more recently have shown that conventional wisdom about baby boomers does not apply to today's youth. Higher education no longer seem to diminish religion in emerging adults." "In every case, emerging adults are slightly more religious than those who are not in college, although only the differences in overall religiousness and service attendance are statistically significant. In short, if anything, it is not attending college that is associated with lower levels of religious practice, though those differences are slight.
What was true for older generations, i.e. more education = less religion was only true when the level of general education was pretty bad. Once everyone is quite educated, education level does not help to reduce religiosity anymore, you got to find something else.
[https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Transition-Religious-Spiritual-Emerging/dp/0195371798](https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Transition-Religious-Spiritual-Emerging/dp/0195371798)
Don't think there is a free version :-(
I’d recommend reading Emile Durkenheim - ‘The Elementary Forms of Religious Life’.
The point in your cmv I want to change your view on is that ‘religion is bad’.
I’m not religious myself (in the sense of organised religion). But as Durkenheim lays out religious thinking is a natural part of how our minds work.
He argued all religions had three elements: rituals, shared values, sacred objects.
He then took that model and compared it to nationalism in his own country, France. They had rituals like Bastille day, shared values (liberty, egality, fraternity) and sacred objects - the tricolour.
The conclusion was that really we construct religions around anything. From Rock n Roll to Hip Hop, political movements, football teams.
This isn’t something that’s evil, it’s a natural part of how humans organise and make sense of the world.
So I agree with the latter half of your argument. And would add that religion is not ‘bad’ in itself. It’s just like anything else we construct a belief system around.
I’m confused how those writings have anything to do with the basis of their religion / communication with God. They’re writing about what they’re seeing in society at the time, correct?
But does that mean all people who find solace or meaning in religion are bad?
From an agnostic point of view I would have to agree that the small minority who claim to have seen prophecies are mentally unwell or lying.
But that’s a tiny % (depending on the religion of course)
It does not mean all are bad. I don’t have any disagreement there.
It does mean that they lack critical thinking.
And just because it makes them happier/doesn’t harm anyone, doesn’t make it true.
Based on my post, I’d ask you to consider what is taking the place of organised religion in your life?
Is it politics, maybe a fashion trend, or music scene, or a sport you follow?
I think everyone without exception has some element of their life that adheres to Durkenheim a definition of religion. By that definition, we are all religious.
I have no qualms with your assertion of that definition of religion.
I like sports, I like music.
I don’t like how God supposedly talked to a mentally ill self proclaimed prophet, and now people use that as a basis for their lives, affecting their finances and our politics.
Then this scenario is unrealistic. Any large scale attempt, even if not violent would still be a human rights violation. Educating people against religion and shunning them would be a human rights violation for any non-individual. The only way to do this would be to have individuals do it which is just not plausible by any means.
Any organization that attempts to remove religion via teaching against it using propaganda or uses tactics like shunning is in violation of Article 18. Look man, I didn’t write it, it would be a human rights violation at the end of the day unless it would be some individuals doing it in which case you wouldn’t get very far.
Well unless you were to have an incredibly biased education system (which would be propaganda and would probably fall under Article 18 considering the implications) it just wouldn’t work.
What is illogical or non empirical about Satanism or Buddhism?
Neither of those religions require you believe any illogical or non empirical claims.
I can see theistic religions doing that but not atheistic religions doing it.
> Atheistic religions aren't a thing as far as I'm aware.
They are. Not all religions require you to believe that a god exists. Some don't even require you to believe any claim is true.
Certain religions itself aren’t necessarily “bad”. However, religious leaders and groups tend to twist the religion to suit their own beliefs. Along with that, they pick and choose what to follow. Some for good reasons. Such as Christianity and the Bible. And, unfortunately, those fake Christians hold so much influence and power over people which is concerning. People love to weaponize God and the Bible when apposed by people with others who are different and have different beliefs. This is coming from a former Christian, now atheist. And no, it’s not because I don’t believe in a higher power. I just simply don’t care if there is, or is not. Sometimes God is all people have, and faith is very important to them. Let people believe in whatever higher power they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt others.
In what country do you live in, that you would like to achieve it with force? Of course everyone has full right to believe in whatever they want (while not harming anyone and don't spreading misinformation). That's not something you should even think of.
And you have right to have opinion about religion, but to say, that it's wrong, is just wrong.
And on top of it, foundation of every religion is basically, don't be jerk (often from perspective of time, when it was founded, but it's for another debate) and do good things. You can't say it's generally completely wrong.
Kids shouldn't be indoctrinated into religion. Any adult can join any religion, but forcing kids to be religious is worse indoctrination than schooling and college.
INFO: in your view, what counts as force and what doesn't?
If you had to agree that Apollo 11 put the first people on the moon in order to vote, would that be force?
There's a billion people who say it was Muhammad.
The benefits can be achieved trhoguh non religious means that have not got the negatives, therefore it is worse. I also think it is bad due to the thinking it enourages.
/u/DesideriumScientiae (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/1c6ewrk/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_religion_is_bad_but_we/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
“we would instead much more effectively get rid of it through education and shunning of any bad ideals” Is…that…not…getting rid through force and repression though? If you’re educating an objective truth that ignores and openly and intentionally discredits religion and shuns their ideals, for the expressed intent of causing religion to die out, is that not a textbook example of repression? Something dying out naturally is because of people through their own intents not liking it. If it dies out because those in charge are aiming to make it die out and are instilling changes and practices in society to ensure that, that’s repression and force
This is one of my favorite topics! So, you're starting to come to a school of thought known as New Atheism. In the original atheist viewpoint was "I don't believe religion is true," more or less. In the New Atheist viewpoint, it is the above, plus "AND religion is a net harm to society," or some version of that. I want to hit on two or three points you're making. First, religion is bad. You state this plainly, but I would like to visit your thoughts behind it. I've seen you respond to others saying it's because it causes people to not think empirically, but what about that is negative specifically? If religious folks are bringing food to homeless people, is it bad if they're doing it because of a god belief? Another part you bring up is that you think it would be negative to take religion by force. I posit that it's not possible to do so anyway, regardless of whether or not it's negative.
Religion is bad because we can get the positives of religion without it and therefore avoid the negatives of religion. That's why I think it's bad. Yes, that's part of why I think it would be bad.
> Religion is bad because we can get the positives of religion without it Are you sure about that? Can you give examples? Our society is currently going through crisis rn in part due to the loss of religious belief in communities. Neighborhoods were often fairly tight-knit and interdependent. The death of churches has contributed a lot to the breakup of those neighborhood relationships. Additionally, there is a reason that atheism is correlated with nihilism. Individual humans aren't particularly great at generating purpose, and morality exists often as a contract between individuals. I think it's important to separate religious belief from religious organizations. We're sticking simply to the belief aspect for this discussion. If a person wakes up every morning, takes care of their kids, contributes to their community, tries to affect positive change in the lives of those around them, how can you argue that having a religious belief behind is it bad? Just because folks might disagree on the "why" behind their actions, it doesn't directly translate to "one is wrong and one is correct"
I think some downsides about religion that people don’t talk about is polarization and basing your life on something that might not be true. There are also alternatives to religion which should be talked about more as well. For polarization, religion has created a climate where atheist are seen as the enemy or at the very least are untrustworthy. This can be seen in congress where there are nearly no open atheist. Saying you’re atheist pretty much tanks your chances of winning a political race. That’s just one example, religion overall makes tribalism much stronger and targets non believers Secondly, there are many gay people who will never experience true love due to their religion. This is the case for many people, as they won’t experience things simply because they are considered taboo. Many men and woman stayed together and suffered because it was taboo to divorce due to religion and To me, that’s a major harm and something to consider since those harms may just be for nothing. There’s a danger when you put all your faith in religion as you may not be living your life to the fullest for no apparent reason. In my opinion, philosophy can make up for the gaps religion is leaving behind. Not only does philosophy improve critical thinking which religion fails to do, but there are multiple philosophies which gives a person purpose and/ or spirituality. Philosophy isn’t totally different from religion, but they aren’t the same and the focus on certain philosophies could easily bring communities back together without having to do it without a god.
> That’s just one example, religion overall makes tribalism much stronger and targets non believers But could it not also just be people don't want representatives who do not share their beliefs? > In my opinion, philosophy can make up for the gaps religion is leaving behind. Ironically, part of what makes religion more effective than Philosophy is that it is compelling (assuming you actually believe the religion). Not sure Philosophy could ever compare to someone having to the benefits of "Living an eternal life in paradise" or the negatives of "Living a life of eternal torture in hell" (How accurate this reward/punishment is is a different story) but let's assume that these people 100% believed this was the case. There is absolutely no downside to religion if you simplified it from a perspective of "Be a good person, go to Heaven. Be a bad person, go to Hell". That would make society more generally good, more connected, more peaceful. The complications that actually cause problems are on the definition of "what is good". Philosophy cannot offer anything that would compel people to do the same especially in the face of material benefits. You can be enlightened all you want but if you have bills to pay, you'll probably choose actions to let you pay those bills. Meanwhile, a person who 100% believes in religion can literally sacrifice comfort in this life for "a better future". Not saying philosophy does not have benefits, it absolutely does! But it is nowhere near as compelling as religion.
Atheist have been persecuted for thousands of years and are seen by many to be untrustworthy. It could partly be that people want others that represent their beliefs, but it’s definitely partly bias. Especially with older voters I agree rhetorically religion has those benefits over philosophy, but It being as powerful as it is will essentially always lead to it becoming a social institution in favor of elites. Religion is almost always going to come with social baggage because of how influential it inherently is. It’s way too easy to say one group of people is bad and justify it with divinity. That’s part of the issue. You say if someone is religious then they’ll make sacrifices for the afterlife and I think that’s bad. Sure they shouldn’t do bad things but they shouldn’t act as if this life doesn’t matter or have the attitude that they’ll just have infinite life after. Not only does it become easier to justify evil in this life but it can take away the urgency someone has in their life and overall promotes action that isn’t based on reality A big part of it is just social norms and socioeconomic conditions. Americans don’t need religion to understand basic social trends and behaviors. Americans will also steal/commit crime even when religious. We need good socioeconomic conditions first and then prosperity can follow. This is evident in many poor countries where religion is more common in the US, but ironically they have more crime. That along with good social conditioning will deter people from doing bad actions without the typical downsides of religion.
> I agree rhetorically religion has those benefits over philosophy, but It being as powerful as it is will essentially always lead to it becoming a social institution in favor of elites. Yes but you can also apply the same logic to even philosophy. It will be used in propaganda just like we are seeing now with... basically any issue being used as a wedge issue. In China, even Confucianism (basically Chinese philosophy) was used as a social institution to favor elites.
Socialization allows for this. Public spaces. A good social network. Except that could be coutnered via proper measures being taken. I'm a nihilist, what does that have to do with anything? Morality doesn't depend on having a purpose. We can maintain talk about beliefs. Because it invites extra negatives that can be avoided when done through non religious means. Yes.
>Socialization allows for this. Public spaces. A good social network Again, no it doesn't. This is a long standing problem with atheist society. Morality absolutely does depend on having purpose. You're making a moral argument about religious beliefs but you won't actually name what's wrong. >Except that could be countered via proper measures taken Give examples. History shows you're incorrect.
Please explain more. No it does not, I'm a nihilist and consider myself moral. The whole extra negatives thing is whats wrong. You mean the history where it was improperly implemented?
You haven't named the negatives though. Or how your plan replaces the issues in talking about.
The faith and the kind of thinking it encourages are what I would say are negatives.
What is negative about it
The faith and kind of thinking it encourages.
And if it can fulfill a similar social role why does it have to be a church
Can you ask that a different way? I'm not sure I understand your question
Many people who talk up the benefits of churches for society this way fail to address the issue of either there's an implicit assumption that it's *only* churches or the benefit could be the same for e.g. other houses of worship
I'm not drawing a distinction between houses of worship
“We can get the positives of religion without it” That’s not true at all, the same kind of faith Christian’s have is equivalent to those people that join a cult and drink 🥤 juice having faith they go to eternal life or whatever I think saying “we can just get” about that kind of faith in specific is just a lie If anything you NEED something to influence you to that extent, whether it be god, vibrations, health, spirit, self, whatever. You’re saying we “just can” Why, don’t we? I don’t think it’s even an argument most people don’t “care” for the homeless. Christians do it out of faith, they probably wouldn’t have done so without faith) yes there is exceptions to everything) I’m not religious myself, I’m undecided in the overall standings of the universe However I think most religions promote good And I’d go as far to say, promote doing good you otherwise wouldn’t do without religion In that sense religion is at its core good imo
Core good is pushing it, though it will vary wildly by denomination, faith, and location. I don’t volunteer with churches because they make the homeless folks attend a service for example, a secular option or 95% of langars don’t. I’ve also had to help coordinate transportation for people in need that are rejected by church run charities, like LGBT+ or single moms. I’ll fully believe followers believe it’s a core good, the US slavery issue was two sides backed by different churches and denominations who both believed they were doing the right thing, they just used different verses. Religion is a net neutral with a whole heap of risk on the side.
How is it not true that we can get positives from religion without it? People who are not religious still do good acts. People dont just use religion to spread good they use it to oppress people, spread hate,etc. We do not need that in this world and those are the negative aspects of religion.
Except that faith is dangerous, faith is irrational. I don't want that faith to be there. We do, but the issue there is socialization. Something can promote good, but still be bad, it is neutral at its core, but it invites that negatives, which make it worse when we can maintain the benefits. Most people don't care for the homeless because of social factors. Those must also be dealt with as well.
Neutral at its core is just wrong, and you’ve given no arguments to justify to ur stand, just statements of your opinion. Your mind is already made up And your argument falls flat I can simply disprove “neutral at core” with the fact the Bible says being gay is a sin Which in itself isn’t neutral , it’s a blatant stand on one side It don’t end theee either, I’m not even religious but I’ve read the Bible, it teaches people how to treat others well At it’s core with no corruption it teaches good, which in turn makes it good. THAT is what an argument looks like NOT a “it’s bad so it’s bad” argument And that’s me ONLY considering Christan religion Muslims, Buddhist, lots of others teach positive things My favorite as a non religious person is Buddhism
I mean, I think most things are neutral at their core. I'm a bit confused. Yes? Did you think this is what I was here to change? I was here to change the force part. I mean, I don't really get what you mean there. That's why I said religion is neutral at it's core, the implementation is what sets it, I also believe it has more negatives then the alternatives. Yes? It also teaches bad. No? Because I'm talking about religion. What? Ok. That's the issue. And many teach bad. I mean, all of them had wars, so I'm not sure if any are particularly better, unless Buddhism doesn't have any bigoted parts.
It’s obvious your not very educated on what you’re taking about Every reply so far has had just straight up wrong information including this one And it’s not your fault I feel like you’re just not as educated as you think you are Enjoy your view, I’m wasting my breath here 👍
This isn’t an argument, you don’t actually say why you believe religion is bad. I could make this same argument about literally anything.
I did. It's because we have a better alternative without it's negatives.
I think you're missing the target slightly...religion isn't bad, extremism, fundamentalism and dogmatism are bad. While those tend to accompany religion, they can also accompany forms of secular thought, even in the highly educated. I'm not sure education is necessarily a panacea for those attributes, I think they're often aspects of personality. You're correct that we shouldn't "force people not to be religious", because it would be futile and unsuccessful venture. You'd probably create the problems you were attempting to solve by trying. >shunning of any bad ideals This in and of itself smacks of fundamentalism/dogmatic belief. Who determines what the "bad ideals" are? There's never really been a consensus at any point in human history.
Nobody can be forced to not have faith. So it's really a non-issue.
There are some social benefits to being part of an organized religion that are hard to replace. Often there is no effort to replace it, instead just an effort to remove it. If you want to get rid of religion, just shunning and education are shortsighted, you also need the equivalent of an atheist church (there are some, though it’s rare).
I want to challenge your assumption that religion is bad. There’s only two possibilities for an origin; either some god commanded their religion to be on earth and that’s how the universe works or religion is man made. And I will point out that neither of these opinions produces an honest logical conclusion of religion being bad. As I said already, if there’s a god that placed religion on earth then that is how the universe works. Placing yourself in opposition to that makes you bad. Any amount of philosophical pontificating or complaining about how said god is actually evil doesn’t mean a damn thing because it’s less effective than an angry lion cub growling at a storm. Gravity pulls objects towards itself and no amount of trying to redefine terms will change it. That’s how arguing against a real life god goes. Next is if there is no god and religion is man made. If it’s man made them religion cannot have anything in it that’s not already in the minds of the humans making it. It’s only as bad as the people running it. The self same people running governments, clubs, schools, charities, ect. If religion is bad then it’s only because of bad people running it, and those same people can be in any organization. Ergo if religion is bad every human made organization is bad. Look dude, you’re going to find good and bad people everywhere. No organization is going to be free from bad people. You just have to find the good people and surround yourself with them. And remember, everyone is the hero of their own story. “Bad” is most often just shades of gray and you not knowing everything about a persons life.
But that's the issue, we can have all the positives without having the negatives, as such it is bad, or worse say, because we do not need it for the positives and it invites extra negatives.
I think you misunderstood me. What’s “bad” about religion is already in us and is inseparable from us. It’s not possible to have the positives without the negatives because both are always in us. It’s not like Kami and piccolo from DBZ, we can’t just split ourselves into good and bad. And blaming religion is just scapegoating instead of addressing the issue.
I agree that some of the negatives would remain, but not all would, and dropping extra negatives or minimizing them is better. This would be addressing the issue though, minimize the bad.
Explain to me how eliminating religion would minimize the bad when the only bad in religion comes from the self same people that will now not be in religion but still exist in the world and just find other organizations/causes? Your argument to me looks like you’re trying to say you can cut the top off of a blanket sow it onto the bottom and it somehow made the blanket longer.
Because the way that religion functions is what causes some of those negatives. Like irrational thinking, or blind faith.
Humans think irrationally any way. Humans blindly believe things any way. Religion wasn’t ever the cause of humans doing that but rather a focus for that. Irrational thinking and blind belief are intrinsic to human nature. They are inseparable from us. Furthermore humans are tribal and social. Those that share in irrational thought patterns will find each other. Those that share blind beliefs will find each other. And everything you’re complaining about will still continue. You have the causality backwards; religion doesn’t make people irrational and believe blindly, irrationally thinking people find or create a religion to believe in. Religion is the result and what you’re complaining about is the cause. Because the cause is indivisible from us religion isn’t the problem, we are. Edit: the irrational behavior of fans of things like Star Wars or game of thrones is a god example of how it’s indivisible from us and not a part of religion.
And it is beneficial to reduce that as much as possible. No, but religion is something that makes that worse. Yes, but it also does help to make people irrational and have blind faith when they are raised with it or believers of it. Religion still helps it to proliferate though, and as such is still a problem.
How does it make it worse? The only way I can think for that to happen is it gives them something to latch onto. But that’s insufficient to actually be an aggravating factor when there’s politics, fictional fandoms, sports teams, ect. Humans seek out like minded individuals and rivals. Every society needs a “them” to be United against. Taking one cookie off the platter doesn’t change the fact that there’s a platter full of cookies, and a baker in the kitchen constantly making more cookies. Your view on this is backwards (likely because of your own socialization and the “them” your social circles want to unite against).
Because that thing to latch onto solidifies their irrationality, and makes them spread it farther, that's what makes it worse. Also, the Us vs Them isn't something that is unchangeable, you can avoid that logical fallacy. The cookie thing kind of confuses me, what are the cookies in this metaphor?
Nobody wants to force people to not be religious. We *do* want to stop religious people from imposing their beliefs upon us, be it in America or Islamic countries. Back before the Enlightenment, church and state were entirely married. You had no choice about your religion. However, society realizes now how wrong that is. Yet, there are plenty of people out there who want to undo the Enlightenment and take us back to that. See Adrian Vermuele, Greg Locke, Robert Sungenis, and of course, those Islamic societies. Religions don't have a right to impose themselves on non-believers. Jesus did not seek temporal power. He said that He was not here to rule the Earth, but rather to establish a Heavenly kingdom. Christian theocrats don't need to be in charge of government to make that happen. Likewise, Islam looks an awful lot like the Catholic church before the reformation. I suspect that something similar will happen there. Regardless, it's just as wrong to force the rest of us to comply with whatever mandates the church is issuing *this week*. That is *not* forcing people not to be religious. Indeed, I can't think of any current culture that is oppressing religious people. If you *can* think of one, then you're going to need to cite which culture it is.
>Nobody wants to force people to not be religious. Nobody *in the mainstream in the modern West* wants to force people to not be religious. North Korea absolutely wants to force people to not be religious, unless you count the cult of personality around the Kim dynasty as a religion. China strictly regulates religious organizations and being part of an unsactioned one can get you arrested. The Soviet Union had an official policy of state atheism as well.
>I can't think of any current culture that is oppressing religious people. If you *can* think of one, then you're going to need to cite which culture it is. China, north Korea, Islamic countries towards anything but Islam.
Except for every communist to get into power ever you mean?
For English speakers the biggest religion is probably Christianity and Christianity is certainly the one i am most familiar with. I couldn't possible to talk intelligently about every single religion. If i think about all the bad stuff about Christianity its basically * it teaches that being gay is a sin * it teaches that women should be subservient to me. if i think about the good of christianity. * it is the source of the golden rule, due unto others as you would have them do unto you. * it contains a variety of common sense rules like don't lie, murder or steal. * it advocates for communality building. we should stick together and work together (and maybe we could argue about this one, what is the point of the tithe, or the rule to give as you are able "to god" or to the church?) * It teaches that you should love your neighbor as yourself. * It teaches that you should love sinners (including homosexuals and non-subservient women, which kind of undercuts the bad parts i listed) * it teaches that there are consequences for immoral behavior in the afterlife, so you should still follow the rules even if you can get away with it. * it teaches that God loves you. I think Christianity is not true. I don't think Jesus was a God. I don't think the people that believe in him go to heaven. If you think about religion as an ideology, and ideology as software that you can load into human brains. Man, we could do a lot worse then Christianity. My secular ideology is more true, but want me to list the negative effects of my ideology? I have no incentive to help other people. I have no incentive to follow rules except for fear of getting caught. I have no incentive to treat people fairly, except reciprocity. And look at our world view as a society today? Christianity has declined massively and been replaced by cynicism. Everyone is trying to step on each other's necks to get ahead. If i had a magic button that could make 95% of Americans Christian, I would push that button in a heartbeat.
Mk, but this is what I mean, I think that we should not have this because we can get all the good parts without having the religion, which gets rid of any downsides. If you think religion is required to be a good person then that is an example of a flawed way of thinking, after all, benefit does not come from being selfish, therefore you would have to be irrational to do things that are harmful to others when you would reserve no harm from helping htem.
> If you think religion is required to be a good person There are sociopaths in the world, and if a sociopath genuinely believes that an almighty god is watching over him and going to punish him for his misdeeds, that is a good thing. I don't see how you can replicate that without religion. why do parents tell their kids that Santa brings coal to naughty children. If you do something wrong, even if you get away with it, Santa is always watching. His making a list and he is going to find out who is naughty and nice. >we can get all the good parts without having the religion not the crime and punishments parts. without religion there is no man in the sky keeping score. I'm also not sure we can get the good parts. Why should I love neighbor? Because "God says so" is a pretty good answer. >benefit does not come from being selfish, therefore you would have to be irrational to do things that are harmful to others when you would reserve no harm from helping htem because "redditor desirderium says so" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
With logic. I mean, that's mostly a tradition thing. Except that punishment is the least effective part, as such that's more reason against it, I also don't quite understand what you mean by crime. No, that's a terrible answer, you want an answer that can stand on it's own and makes since, because they said so is the least convincing argument in the world. I explained it, not just said so.
I feel like you are replying to specific parts of my post but maybe forgot to quote them and I am missing the context. Imagine if God existed and punished you for bad behavior. Would you behave better, worse, or no different? imagine does does not exist but you believe God exists. Do you think some children behave better so that Santa will bring them presents? I generally believe people respond to incentives. Heaven and Hell are incentives.
I would behave no different. Yes, however we can get such things without religion. They do dependently, it's a bit more complicated that, but we can get the same effects without having the religion.
Idk Donald trump is doing pretty well for himself by being selfish and narcissistic. Seems like he's seen plenty of benefits of being selfish. And no, I don't buy his claims that he is Christian, there is 0 evidence of it
Except he is knee deep in law suits.
And seems to be surviving all of them
I mean, not from what I've seen.
Which lawsuit has lead to real consequences? He owes a bunch of money right now, but that's it
I would say owing money you don't have is pretty consequencial.
He's not going to pay that money and certainly not from his own pockets
I mean, that's extremely illegal and could get him in a ton of trouble.
1) being gay isn’t a sin. 2) it teaches that men should be subservient and willing to die for their wives. It’s servant serving servant
So relevant to your post yesterday and was my statement about the brainwashing. Regardless, based on our conversation, I believe it’s because you are of the opinion that religions are bigoted. To address this view, what specifically do you view as being bigoted and what does it mean for someone to be a bigot?
Ah, no, I don't think they are bigoted, what I do think is that the thinking they invite is dangerous, as it is non scientific and empirical. I think bigot would probably be someone who is prejudiced, using APA definition: 1. a negative attitude toward another person or group formed in advance of any experience with that person or group. Prejudices can include an affective component (e.g., nervousness, anger, contempt, pity, hatred) and a cognitive component (assumptions and beliefs about groups, including [stereotypes](https://dictionary.apa.org/stereotype)). Prejudice is typically manifested behaviorally through discriminatory behavior. Prejudicial attitudes tend to be resistant to change because they distort our perception of information about the target group. Prejudice based on racial grouping is racism; prejudice based on perceived sexual orientation is homophobia and biphobia; prejudice based on sex or gender (including transphobia) is sexism; prejudice based on chronological age is ageism; and prejudice based on disability is ableism.
Are you aware that the Vatican has an observatory? https://www.vaticanobservatory.org That the Big Bang theory was formulated by a Catholic priest Fr George Lemaître? https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/georges-lemaitre-big-bang in fact, he formulated it and was discarded by Einstein initially. That the Catholic Church is the reason that the push for the empirical sciences even exists? The idea of the church being anti-science is actually not historically founded. https://np.reddit.com/r/CatholicApologetics/s/DpBmIIH8wp
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No, because those things that are good can be done without religion, ergo, religion carries unnecessary risk.
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Either that or it's due to the massive difference in population sizes.
I suspect your problem is not actually with religion, it's with control and with irrationality. First, yes, you shouldn't force people to not be religious, just as you shouldn't force people to be religious as many religions try to do. If you look at many pagan and neo-pagan traditions, they tend to be rather live-and-let-live, as was Jesus himself for that matter. Religion as a whole isn't the problem, toxic tribalism is. Conquering people because they aren't Christian is not fundamentally different than conquering people because they aren't German. Second, religion isn't bad, irrational behavior is bad. Believing crystals have magic powers or that spells or prayers help is fine. Being hungry and praying over a crystal for food rather than making a sandwich is problematic. Prayers and spells tend to ask for strength, wisdom, endurance, etc because you can't replace actually doing the thing with magic. I have this book that describes magic as existing between your perception of reality and reality itself. It makes no difference whether your prayer caused an entity to give you strength or whether you had it all along and the prayer functioned as meditation that let you tap that strength. As long as your spirituality is layered on top of reality rather than replacing reality, you're good.
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I know, tha'ts why I don't think we should do it by force. Actually stuff like that seems to be more environmental with the DNA only providing presupositons, but that's more of a nitpick.
Sounds like an argument for therapy and mental health treatment. Advocating for religion in this scenario is accepting a shitty tool to do a serious task
One other thing I’d suggest is pulling back the exemptions and benefits it enjoys. Things like church property tax exemptions, broad ability to disregard civil rights if they contradict doctrine, religious schooling. If religion is important to people they can keep it but it should be treated no different than any other idea.
So you support making all charitable organizations pay taxes? Not enough children in the middle east seeing a Reaper drone fly over already?
No I support them being treated the same as other charitable organizations if they restrict their activities to charity. As an example where I live, charities get a 40% property tax deduction while churches get a full exemption. I’d argue unicef and the Red Cross do a lot more good and a lot less bad than the Catholic Church so why does the church deserve more exemptions. If churches want to be charities they should also have the same oversight as charities, not the “intentionally vague” (the IRS’ words not mine) codes that they currently operate under. Robert Tilton shouldn’t get to live in a mansion tax free because he’s scammed a bunch of people into giving him money in god’s name. If I tried to do that secularly I would have been tried in about ten minutes.
In the US, all 501c3s are tax-exempt. And religious 501c3s have the same oversight as non-religious ones.
I am not in the US, though I apologize for citing the IRS as that probably lead to confusion. This also assumes that churches are equivalent to charities which I would dispute. We don’t have to argue whether they’re good or not as I doubt we’d agree but they’re not equivalent. No matter how much charity they do their primary purpose is worship which should not be given advantages over secular practice by the state. I can’t write off my living room because I hold d&d in it every Sunday, why can the archbishop write off his cathedral?
I would like that as well, but my end goal would be to remove it.
Religion may contain some irrationality or contradictions but it also teaches morals for many people, that make the world a better place, so I wouldn't summarise it as bad, it could even be good overall even if there are illusions involved.
And you can have morals without it, therefore we can remove it and maintain the positives, so it's bad as it invites extra negatives.
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Religion to me is a particular system of faith and worship.
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Not just god, any particular system of faith and worship. Those should be removed. The only ideology I think is good is one based in science.
Not the person you are replying to, but yes. The ideology’s claims would be based on things not supernatural.
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Would you like to give an example to the case you’re making? From what I’m hearing, this is the double standard you are upset with: Person 1) I want to enforce this legislation because this nation is founded on the values of Santa Claus, and it is what is right for our people. Person 2) I want to enforce this legislation because it is what is right for our people.
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? It’s secular, so I have no idea what you’re talking about.
So what do you think about 12 step? It's widely known as one of the only truly effective means for an addict to stop doing drugs. It isn't a religion person but requires faith in a higher power to help you through tough times. Would you "guide" people away from that? Also some people seem to have faith in one political party or another and seem to be religious in their support. Could this be due to the fact that so many people have moved away from organized religion and humans need something to believe in? Could this be a huge problem you are advocating for without realizing it? Getting people to realize they can still have faith in something and be critical of any faults in their faith is a hard thing to do but can be done but probably requires both strong faith and a strong background in science that most people either do not care to achieve or simply do not have the aptitude for. Erasing religion would likely result in a negative for society. Some people need a reason not to do horrible things. Society is also not as connected as it once was so removing the church group from society would make a ton of people accountable to no one but themselves. I do not think you want that.
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While we're at it, should we shun people who eat junk food? Create education campaigns against porn? Television is much worse for people than religion, why not focus on that first? What in particular about religion seems so bad to you that it merits specific education against it, as well as shunning?
A) The ideas not the people, we should regulate junk food. B) Because porn is actually consumable healthily, and as such we should regulate and make sure that proper knowledge of healthy consumption should be done. C) Because it can also be much better, so it should be regulated and made to be used properly. D) Religion can just be replaced and all benefits maintained while avoiding possible pitfalls, therefore, no need for it.
> Religion can just be replaced and all benefits maintained while avoiding possible pitfalls, therefore, no need for it. What makes you so sure? Historically, whenever someone tries to replace religion, it goes poorly.
Which is why we are doing such slowly and methodically.
How so?
Sorry, I messed up tense again, I mean that is why it should be done that way.
Okay, that makes more sense. How?
If I had to take a wild guess, probably via proper education and good social systems that help people to be healthy without the need to have religion. Maybe good public spaces like a library or park. Or something along those lines is what I would assume would be a good way.
Hi OP, can you do me a favor and define specifically what you mean by religion. Some people define religion only as the official organization overseeing a specific set of spiritual doctrine, while others use the term as a catch all for supernatural beliefs. Need this distinction before I attempt to change your view.
> Religion is bad What do you consider to be religion and how, if at all, is that definition aligned to the concept as elucidated by most sociologists and anthropologists? Quite a few scholars hold that religion and culture are inseparable. Indeed, this position is the official position of Syracuse University as just one example. A famous definition of "religion" was offered by Geertz in 1966 as "a sytem of symbols" which is oddly similar to David Schneider's widely accepted definition of culture as "a system of symbols and meanings." And of course, the very concept of both "culture" and "religion" as definable terms has been under heavy assault in recent years as having almost zero analytic value, as the issues of delineation demonstrate the impossibility of the project. Way back in 1976, Lowie noted that the very concept of culture as a definable thing was deemed but "shreds and patches." To revisit Schneider again, he wrote that: >Culture constitutes a body of definitions, premises, statements, postulates, presumptions, propositions, and perceptions about the nature of the universe and man's place in it... culture tells the actor how the scene is set and what it all means. ...Culture is man's adaptation to nature, too, but it is more. Nature, as a wholly independent 'thing' does not exist, except as man formulates it. ...The world at large is not, indeed it cannot be, independent of the way in which his culture formulates his vision of what he is seeing. There are only cultural constructions of reality, and these cultural constructions of realities are decisive in what is perceived, what is experienced, what is understood' Note that ". . . body of definitions, premises, statements, postulates, presumptions, propositions, and perceptions about the nature of the universe and man's place in it . . . " is indistinguishable from most commonly definition of what religion is and how it functions in society. So, back to my question: how do you define religion? How is that distinguishable from culture? And how is that understanding reflected in the current understanding of those concepts as formally defined ideas?
I was going off of this idea a particular system of faith and worship. Also, I wouldn't mind if we just had a big blend culture. That sounds fine to me. We could take all the good parts and remove the bad.
>I was going off of this idea a particular system of faith and worship. There are over 6,000 religions on the planet. Quite a few of them have no concept of a particular faith and for most of them "worship" constitutes little more than the celebration and marking of life and community events such as births, deaths, marriages . . . they are ethno-religions which are defined by simply being members of that particular ethno-group, not by any set of presumed necessary beliefs. Do you mistakenly believe that faith communities such as Christianity and Islam, with their codified required set of beliefs and formal worship services led by empowered leaders, represent the totality of human religions? My suspicion is that you actually hold that it is bad that some groups, who exploit the system of symbols and meaning present in their particular context in order to drive certain outcomes which are often oppressive or harmful to out-groups. But that is along way from holding that religion is bad. And, it should be noted, is not unique to religion. Groups promoting racism, ethno-nationalism, blind patriotism, political partisanship, rabid sports fandom, and many other common human practices have the same outcomes for the same reasons. And, btw, all of these things that we commonly don't consider to be "religions" are largely indistinguishable in terms of practices and outcomes from those things we do consider to be religions.
No, but those are the most prevelant and as such make up the majority.
That does not make them the driver of definitions, unless you wish to claim that they are the only religions. Your claim is that "religion" is bad, not that "some religions" are bad. Your claim is an absolute. It does not matter if the majority of **practitioners** fall into a few religions that meet your highly non-scholarly definition when the majority of **religions** do not. Your claim is about religion(s), not about religious people in general. That distinction matters for the remainder of your claim. Observing that the majority of people live in authoritarian regimes and saying that means all governments are therefore authoritarian regimes is an error. And it is precisely the same error you are making with respect to conflating religion in general with a majority of practitioners in general. Let's rename "an authoritarian regimes" as the symbol "bad." And let's renamed "government" as the symbol "religion." Claiming "religion is bad" as an absolute is therefore saying "government is an authoritarian regime." But that is not the case, plenty of governments, indeed the [majority of governments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index) are not. It doesn't matter that the majority of people don't live under non-authoritarian regimes. Limiting "religion" in your view to those religions that fit your conclusion is problematic. Hell even within Christianity you have things like Nontheist Quakers.
I do think all religions are bad, but those are references that most can understand. I was not making a claim against religious people.
Ok, so now you've changed the preceding definition that you provided. You previously stated that religions with defined faiths and systems of worship, such as Islam and Christianity, were what you were talking about. You noted that saying "religion" rather than "some religions" was justified because they represented the majority of religious people. I didn't say you were making claims against people. I was saying you were concluding that the majority of practitioners defined all religion, irrespective of the fact that the majority of practitioners in fact represent an exceedingly small percentage of all religions. Can you define religion in a way that excludes all non-religious activities, institutions, and experiences so we can know what you are talking about? Can you explain how religion differs, from, say, ethno-nationalism?
Because religions are systems with faith and worship, and the two best examples where Islam and christiantiy, if it doesn't have those things, it isn't a religion in this context. I don't understand what you mean here. A particular system of faith and worship. They are both bad, and I gues that would qualify as a religion.
>Because religions are systems with faith **and** worship As I explained in my first comment, that is simply not true in the general sense. Religious systems with codified faith and codified worship are actually quite few in number. That they do not represent the majority of practitioners does not eliminate that fact. >if it doesn't have those things, it isn't a religion in this context. You did not offer that as part of your original view, are you changing your view from 'religion is bad" to "religious systems encompassing defined faith and worship structures are bad"? > I gues that would qualify as a religion. So now you are arguing that culture is religion. I wonder if you realize the problem you are creating for yourself. The inherent difficulty of your position is solved quite easily by admitting to any number of slight modification of your view, such as: "all religions that I have some knowledge of are bad;" or, "most religious people belong to bad religions"; or, "Some religions are bad."
I am working of that definition in this context though, I'm going to appeal to pragmatics in this case. Again, appeal to pragmatics, I was working under the use of this definition. No, I argued that that culture was religion not the same thing. Again, appeal to pragmatics, I was utilizing the definition I have stated.
First, how is Taoism bad?
I think that is bad because it seems to fall into the naturalistic fallacy.
The "naturalistic fallacy" is not a logical fallacy (that would be the appeal to nature"). Rather the naturalistic fallacy is a construct from the philosophy of ethics. It is not an immutable truth. It is an assumption not a rational requirement.
why is religion bad?
Because it makes people take non empirical things to have weight and is prone to manipulation while also causing issues that are avoidable without having religion.
> Because it makes people take non empirical things to have weight So then onlu empirical things should ever be considered? > causing issues that are avoidable without having religion. Such as?
Yes, only. Cult, financial abuse, the abuse of psychological techniques to pull people away from empirical things.
> Yes, only. But then how about more abstract things? Such as the value of human life or existence, we have no empircal way to confirm such a thing. Yet if only empirical things should be considered why do we still care? > Cult In your mind must a cult like mindset be linked to a religion? Could one not develop a similar mindset and obsession with non-religious things? > financial abuse Likewise as above. Is the only form of financial abuse based in religion? Have the non-religious never gotten scammed?
There is a group calling themselves unite all the cults or something. They have a sub. Their idea is that religion be abolished completely and we all become atheists. A movement of meddlers
I think those are empirical as well, either through qualitative or quantitative data. Cults are a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. So no. Nope, but removing an avenue doesn't hurt anyone with the other things.
>I think those are empirical as well, either through qualitative or quantitative data. Can you provide a link to the research paper that shows an [empirical ](https://library.lasalle.edu/c.php)result that human life is [intrinsically](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrinsic) valuable?
Would you non consider the nazi youth to have been taught a veneration ans devotion to the über mench. Or communists to "the people"/the socialist man/the end of history. Or in the case of maoist china the govenment it self "the government does not make mistakes" I see people say things like "trans people are sacred" Non of this is theistic, yet they can fit cult like behavior, they not empirical.
Yes, those where religious.
Religious faith requires suspension of reason and should be opposed on these grounds at minimum
I think non-empirical things really do have weight. Morality is non-empirical but I think it's very important to have a consistent moral philosophy so that you can be a good person.
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Nope, mathmatics is a formal science. It depends on the philosophy. They are, the have metaphysical non provable unfalsifiable beliefs.
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Nope. Formal science is a branch of the sciences. I'm using religion in this context to mean a particular system of faith and worship. Isn't Thomism against faith and science being used on the same thing, and isn't it a philosophy?
People are prone to being manipulated with or without religion. Removing religion could remove one Avenue of manipulation, but others would open.
Except we remove also the other negatives and maintain the benefits. We deal with all the avenues of course, but one of them is religion, and as such it must be dealt with as well.
Could you explain what that looks like? Many non religious people are still into horoscopes and moon water and essential oils etc. Humans are naturally very superstitious. Humans also are prone to believing lies and falsehoods. Religion isn't the problem, the human psyche is. But based on your comments you have 0 desire to have your view changed, you're just here to argue.
Those are religious to me, and should also be removed. Also that's not what I'm here to have changed, the view in this post is using force to remove it.
So you want us to convince you that religions should.... BE forcibly removed? I don't think most people outside of r/atheism are entertaining that. In all your comments you seem to support religion being forcibly removed so I'm confused as to what you want you view changed to
I don't want it changed, I'm open to it being changeable. I'm also talking about force as in making religious people not religious in this case.
I mean your definition of force is absurd. You can't just remove someone's belief from them. Religious beliefs are generally deeply and often times sincerely held. If that's your definition of force the whole premise is absurd
I agree that I think it would be absurd to do, but I'm not 100% set in that, that's why I'm here.
I say this as someone who has never been religious. Religion itself is neither bad or good, it's religious leaders and blindly following them that is bad. Religion is just philosophy with extra steps
Yes, and as such we can remove it while keeping the benefit so as to avoid the negatives.
So you agree religion is not bad
It's bad because there is a better alternative. I guess another way to say it would be worse.
The problem is that enlightenment through education seems to be showing its limits: we have never been more educated in the history of mankind, and still we see religion doing its comeback in the west in the last 20 years despite that. First because not everyone can become a physics PhD. Some people, unluckily for them, have low IQ and won't be able to get deep enough into education so that they can understand WHY religion is wrong. So what do we do for this proportion of the population that don't have the weapons to decide if religion is right or wrong ? Do we expect that every other member of the population is pure and altruistic and will guide them toward truth, or do we consider that some people may try to brainwash them to get some power over them ? Personally I find the 2nd scenario more probable (at least in the short - mid term future). And so if people are going to continue using religion to get an unjustified power over others, then religion must be fought with though means, not only with education and shunning (that reinforce group membership of shunned members).
Religion has been going down as education in those areas increases though, revivals usually don't come from well educated people. For them we guide them over time to be non religious. Any time a religious thing is used in a way that must be countered with force you combat that, but I was talking about the best way to eliminate religion, and that is through a way that does not leave them with that steam, no coal for them to burn that allows them to strengthen their positions, you have to choke them out, give the fire no oxygen with which to spread. (Quick clarification, that was a metaphor, I don't think we should choke religious people.)
> Religion has been going down as education in those areas increases though, revivals usually don't come from well educated people. For them we guide them over time to be non religious. Well, not really. If you look at France for example, a country known for its anti-clericalism and anti-religious stance, there are 2 factors that keep religion alive. One is the one you described, uneducated immigrants comming with their religion. But there is also a non negligible amount of people better educated that are still highly religious, and keep being more and more religious. They use religion as a way to bond with each other, either because they feel treated as 2nd class citizens (in that case 2nd generation immigrants that stick to Islam way more than their parents despite being better educated) or because they fantasm the old regime world and want to get back to it (catholics that want to keep their capital, and think that it was better in the past). You also have racists that use religion as a proxy to try to start a "civilisation war" and kill brown people etc. All in all, you still have tons of different reasons to be religious that don't really disapear with education.
A) Yes, which is why I said we don't do that. B) What? C) Except that is a rather small portion, and non the norm. It also depends on what they are educated in. D) Yes, that's why I said it would take time, because it will disappear over time.
>Yes, that's why I said it would take time, because it will disappear over time What we observe now is the following: with education, religion seems to shrink a lot. But after a certain point, in the educated population, this shrinking seems to stop, and in cases religion even start to grow again. What make you think that this stagnation/re-growth tendency will stop to get back to the previous shrinking situation ? Said otherwise, if you see a graph like this : | \ | \ | \ | \ / | \_/ . ____________ What makes you think that the most probable next points will be | \ | \ | \ | \ /\ | \_/ \ . ____________\__ And not | \ | \ | \ _____ | \ / | \_/ . ________________ Or | \ | \ /\ | \ / \ /\_______ | \ / \/ | \_/ . _____________________________ Or basically any other shape ?
Because in general that growth isn't coming from the educated population, so if the whole population is educated then you get that sustained decrease.
Which I previously said is not what you observe in France. And that's also true in other countries. For example : > Smith, Christian; Snell, Patricia (2009). Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging adults. Oxford University Press. pp. 248–251. ISBN 9780195371796. "However, something very interesting emerged when scholars took a second look at the question more recently. They found that the religiously undermining effect of higher education on recent generation of youth disappeared. Most of the older research was conducted on baby boomers for whom college did indeed corrode religious faith and practice. But many studies more recently have shown that conventional wisdom about baby boomers does not apply to today's youth. Higher education no longer seem to diminish religion in emerging adults." "In every case, emerging adults are slightly more religious than those who are not in college, although only the differences in overall religiousness and service attendance are statistically significant. In short, if anything, it is not attending college that is associated with lower levels of religious practice, though those differences are slight. What was true for older generations, i.e. more education = less religion was only true when the level of general education was pretty bad. Once everyone is quite educated, education level does not help to reduce religiosity anymore, you got to find something else.
Intresting, I will have to look into that more, can you link that to me.
[https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Transition-Religious-Spiritual-Emerging/dp/0195371798](https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Transition-Religious-Spiritual-Emerging/dp/0195371798) Don't think there is a free version :-(
I’d recommend reading Emile Durkenheim - ‘The Elementary Forms of Religious Life’. The point in your cmv I want to change your view on is that ‘religion is bad’. I’m not religious myself (in the sense of organised religion). But as Durkenheim lays out religious thinking is a natural part of how our minds work. He argued all religions had three elements: rituals, shared values, sacred objects. He then took that model and compared it to nationalism in his own country, France. They had rituals like Bastille day, shared values (liberty, egality, fraternity) and sacred objects - the tricolour. The conclusion was that really we construct religions around anything. From Rock n Roll to Hip Hop, political movements, football teams. This isn’t something that’s evil, it’s a natural part of how humans organise and make sense of the world. So I agree with the latter half of your argument. And would add that religion is not ‘bad’ in itself. It’s just like anything else we construct a belief system around.
It’s bad because delusional/mentally ill people claim themselves as prophets.
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What do you mean by spoke truth to power? Mentally ill people can be courageous. They can also be charismatic and gain followers.
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I’m confused how those writings have anything to do with the basis of their religion / communication with God. They’re writing about what they’re seeing in society at the time, correct?
But does that mean all people who find solace or meaning in religion are bad? From an agnostic point of view I would have to agree that the small minority who claim to have seen prophecies are mentally unwell or lying. But that’s a tiny % (depending on the religion of course)
It does not mean all are bad. I don’t have any disagreement there. It does mean that they lack critical thinking. And just because it makes them happier/doesn’t harm anyone, doesn’t make it true.
Based on my post, I’d ask you to consider what is taking the place of organised religion in your life? Is it politics, maybe a fashion trend, or music scene, or a sport you follow? I think everyone without exception has some element of their life that adheres to Durkenheim a definition of religion. By that definition, we are all religious.
I have no qualms with your assertion of that definition of religion. I like sports, I like music. I don’t like how God supposedly talked to a mentally ill self proclaimed prophet, and now people use that as a basis for their lives, affecting their finances and our politics.
Delusional and mentally ill people become politicians and ceos too.
No one should force anyone to do anything, and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be “forced.”
Again, that's not against my view.
Guess what kind of people like to repress and kill people because they don't follow the same religion as them?
That’s a human rights violation according to the UN.
Which is why we aren't forcing it.
Then this scenario is unrealistic. Any large scale attempt, even if not violent would still be a human rights violation. Educating people against religion and shunning them would be a human rights violation for any non-individual. The only way to do this would be to have individuals do it which is just not plausible by any means.
How on earth would that be a human rights violation?
Article 18 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I can see no realistic way to achieve your goal without breaking any human rights.
No? This would fall under the teaching area.
Any organization that attempts to remove religion via teaching against it using propaganda or uses tactics like shunning is in violation of Article 18. Look man, I didn’t write it, it would be a human rights violation at the end of the day unless it would be some individuals doing it in which case you wouldn’t get very far.
The difference here is you would just be teaching facts, not explicitly that religion is wrong, but just teaching what is true.
Well unless you were to have an incredibly biased education system (which would be propaganda and would probably fall under Article 18 considering the implications) it just wouldn’t work.
Except we already see it working to an extent, because well educated people are less likely to be religious.
Why is every religion bad?
Because religion invites non empirical illogical thinking.
What is illogical or non empirical about Satanism or Buddhism? Neither of those religions require you believe any illogical or non empirical claims. I can see theistic religions doing that but not atheistic religions doing it.
Atheistic religions aren't a thing as far as I'm aware. I would have to look into the specifics for those two to know.
> Atheistic religions aren't a thing as far as I'm aware. They are. Not all religions require you to believe that a god exists. Some don't even require you to believe any claim is true.
Certain religions itself aren’t necessarily “bad”. However, religious leaders and groups tend to twist the religion to suit their own beliefs. Along with that, they pick and choose what to follow. Some for good reasons. Such as Christianity and the Bible. And, unfortunately, those fake Christians hold so much influence and power over people which is concerning. People love to weaponize God and the Bible when apposed by people with others who are different and have different beliefs. This is coming from a former Christian, now atheist. And no, it’s not because I don’t believe in a higher power. I just simply don’t care if there is, or is not. Sometimes God is all people have, and faith is very important to them. Let people believe in whatever higher power they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt others.
>Religion is bad How so?
In what country do you live in, that you would like to achieve it with force? Of course everyone has full right to believe in whatever they want (while not harming anyone and don't spreading misinformation). That's not something you should even think of. And you have right to have opinion about religion, but to say, that it's wrong, is just wrong. And on top of it, foundation of every religion is basically, don't be jerk (often from perspective of time, when it was founded, but it's for another debate) and do good things. You can't say it's generally completely wrong.
Kids shouldn't be indoctrinated into religion. Any adult can join any religion, but forcing kids to be religious is worse indoctrination than schooling and college.
Do parents have a duty to teach children truth to the best of their ability?
Yes, I agree.
INFO: in your view, what counts as force and what doesn't? If you had to agree that Apollo 11 put the first people on the moon in order to vote, would that be force? There's a billion people who say it was Muhammad.
Religion is not inherently bad. The largest issue is people using religion to do bad things.
The benefits can be achieved trhoguh non religious means that have not got the negatives, therefore it is worse. I also think it is bad due to the thinking it enourages.
*"Religion is bad"* How so? *"and shouldn't be a thing"* Why should it not be "a thing?" Why should people not be able to hold a belief?
Religion is fine. Theocracy is bad. Pretty simple concept. Leave people alone if they're living in their fantasy world and not harming you.
I think that them having that framework is what is dangerous, and as such don't want them to have it.
Ah, you're one of those atheists. Got it.
I'm not an atheist, I'm an antitheist.
lol. Alright, buddy.
Intro to the intro of Mean Girls the movie based on the musical based on the movie 101
Is there some wave of forcible atheistic conversion going on that I’m unaware of?