Religion is Bull Shit

[FM Arouet666]

Classic, going to miss George............ :evilgrin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o&feature=rec-fresh

[Duppers]

1. indeed ....and they're dangerous

From across the pond:

"Last week at Borders, the UK and Irish bookstore chain owned by Risk Capital Partners, received several threats from an extremist Islamic group saying they would suffer if they sold the controversial novel The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones in their shops."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3f33841c-a50e-11dd-b4f5-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

(Forgive the link to the Financial Times. I don't read them, don't like them, just received the article this morning from my atheist meet-up group leader.)

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. You are completely wrong

Religion makes a lousy fertilizer, as the only thing it grows is hate and bigotry.

[funflower]

3. Welcome back, Mr. Voltaire. Haven' seen you in these parts for quite a while.

Been exiled or something?

[FM Arouet666]

4. Hiding under a rock.

Back from my self imposed exile. The true reason is too silly to admit......... :evilgrin:

[funflower]

5. Then by all means don't admit it! n/t

[sarcasmo]

6. No argument from this mind.

[dmallind]

7. I disagree

Are any of them based on anything that is empirically supported or even cogently argued? No. I don't disagree at all with the idea that religion is as truthful as Harry Potter.

But Harry Potter, depending on your taste in literature, may not be bullshit even if it's made up. And religion isn't either, even though it's 99.9999% likely to be just about equally imaginary. Religion - and literature - tells us a lot about ourselves. Religion springs from unanswered questions and primal fears. The ones that have survived and thrive are pretty much instruction manuals for understanding human needs and desires. The fear of ceasing to exist. The fear of admitting "we just don't know and probably never will" is the only true answer to many probing questions about our origins and purpose. The need for community and cohesion. The fear of "the other" and the concomitant elevation of "the us". The comforting self-validation of marking life events with ritual and tradition. The desire for postmortem justice in a world where antemortem justice is scarce.

All these things speak to the human condition more completely than any amount of anthropology, sociology or psychology. Not because those studies are deficient, but because religion is voluntary, universal, shared publicly, and in most cases many centuries older than the sciences which try to answer the same questions about human nature. The world may be a more peaceful place without religion, and it would definitely be a more rational one, but it would also be a lot less informed a world about humanity and what's at our core. I have no belief in religion, but I find it fascinating, informative, and when not used to kill or oppress (although that use too tells us much about humanity, even if we don't like what it tells us), ultimately invaluable.

[FiveGoodMen]

8. Wouldn't you be a little worried, though, if people started taking Harry Potter seriously?

[dmallind]

9. Very much - but it wouldn't be the fault of fantasy fiction, let alone Harry Potter

Let's be honest history is replete with people who took far less worthy ideas way too seriously.

The problems with religion is the problem with ANY cause which is designed or sold to be more important than human life. Political ideologies, nationalist allegiances, even in some casees support of a certain team, also qualify. However religion - or at least the desert monotheisms which dominate the world - unlike any of the other examples adds the dimension of being rewarded in some way beyond this life. That's why it's dangerous, but also interesting. An idea that promises rewards only after death, but for which people in their millions have been willing to die, or kill. How powerful is that? How much does something have to speak to our innate longings to get that kind of response?

Now if that's ALL it did it would be one thing, but even a committed atheist (albeit technically a weak one in that I do not assume the absence of gods as axiomatic) can't avoid looking at teh good things that religion drives. The same motivation that makes Rudolph or Bin Laden blow things up because they might annoy their respective imaginary friends also makes people build hospitals, fund homeless shelters, and so on. Nonbelievers do good works too of course (three of the top 5 philanthropists in the world are nonbelievers) but we don;t do these good works BECAUSE of our lack of belief, and it is much harder to get people to work collectively and cooperatively on behalf of simple altruism than it is to get them to do so on behalf of their god.

On the whole I suspect we'd be better off without religion, both now and in history, but it doesn't stop religion being an inordinately powerful and extremely fascinating phenomenon while it's here, and nor is the final felicife calculus as clear cut as it may at first seem.