I have a question for people who hate religion Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 NEXT | |
Firstly, of course there would. Someone always sympathizes with the crazies. Second, generally speaking, evil is usually in the motive. You can't really claim a motive when the being you're projecting onto is omniscient and you aren't. Lack of information is a relevant point. In most circumstances you'd say somebody's a jerk for throwing you to the ground, but if it's out of the way of a truck you're not going to call it evil. And there are people (not myself, but people) who figure that overpopulation is some horrible threat to humanity, and they try and justify mass human death as being a benefit to the species. I'm not trying to imagine the motive of a deity to be anything like that, but look, somebody found a reason for cancer and natural disasters and that's without considering at all the implications of a possible afterlife... | |
I'm curious as to what 'truck' one could be throwing kids who die in indescribable pain from cancer away from. Terrorist kills 3000 people in the 9/11 attacks:- Evil. Maybe he'd do a better job of recruiting if he gave some sort of explanation other than "Ooooh, I'm a mysterrrrrious Goooooood, whooooooooooo" | |
It seems to me one could theologically justify suffering caused by human action on the grounds of free will, in that we must be able to inflict harm in order to have moral choices. However, why a benevolent God would create a world filled with even more suffering caused by what amounts to random chance seems extremely hard to justify under any circumstances. "God moves in mysterious ways" and variants are deeply unsatisfactory answers. There might be a good reason that a putative omniscient god understands and we don't (even can't) for such suffering to occur, but without any evidence or coherent explanation they have no basis. Hence in practice, they aren't really answers at all - they're blowing the issue off. | |
I wouldn't say "God moves in mysterious ways" is an answer to any paradox, only the break in another non-answer. "Evil wouldn't exist with a benevolent, omnipotent God" holds pretty strong. And combined with "and Evil exists" makes the conclusion that "therefore there is no omnipotent, benevolent God." The "and Evil exists" statement is where the proof falls flat because of the relative nature of "good vs evil" and the vagueness of the concepts, that unless you know everything ever, you can't choose something and declare it objectively evil. I'm not going to hesitate to point this out when somebody tries to pull this proof out just because it fails to answer questions about the nature of God itself. | |
What an asinine reply! | |
Incorrect. There are a vast number of religions for which faith is not necessary, particularly most polytheistic religions throughout history. It is only in a couple of modern religions where faith is a necessity for participation. Next time you toss out comments like "asinine", you might not want to immediately follow that comment with a claim that shows just how shallow and superficial your knowledge of the topic is. | |
The only religion I can say I hate is Wicca/ new-agers simply because they're hippies who are the bane of my existence, other than that I don't hate or even really have negative feelings towards religion. | |
I don't hate religion in and of itself. What I do hate is religious idiots. That is to say, those people out there who are so clouded by religion that they ignore even basic common sense, in many cases to the detriment of themselves and others. I also hate organized religion. Not what the organization believes in, but the organization itself. Turning your religion into an organization mixes in all kinds of ugliness, but mainly politics, with people, followers, governments, internal politics, you name it and there's some nastiness going on. Additionally, the organization seems to make people think they can strong arm people into agreeing with them. | |
I dislike religion but i cant say i hate it. My main arguement is as follows. Some atheists dont like religions, id say a few of these people would even go as far as to not befriend those who are religious. But id say quite a few christians in america would shun an atheist even harder. The main religions are extremelely exclusive clubs. A club that if youre not part of youre going to suffer eternal torture forever and ever and scream in hellfire. Christians, ALL OF THEM, can look at you, decide you deserve this fate, fully envisage you suffering infinite suffering and hatred and torture forever in unimaginable cruelty and savagry and decide that its perfectly fine. They must have rationilised this somehow. This is a club that at its core, simply doesnt play well with others. Sure you get nice christians who are awesome to everyone but at the end of the day they fully justify and accept that you are human filth who deserves such infinite punishment. Maybe they dont say that, maybe they try not to see you as human filth but if they believe their religion then surely they MUST accept you deserve it. Would you wish infinite bloody torture on even the worst criminal? No. Every christian must assume you are even worse than that, even more deserving of punishment. I realise some christians deny hell. I find this rather strange as heaven and hell underpin most religions on the basis of "LOVE ME OR ILL BEAT YOU" but these christians i find VERY acceptable. These guys rock. Accepting christianity is rather rare in the vocal population and if you believe atheists are going to hell then im afraid youve made a choice not to get on with others. Atheists may not like the religious, some might be downright rude, but id say not even ONE would wish the amount of suffering on you that you assume is just and fair to be pushed on them. How can i not be offended that most religious people wouldnt bat an eyelid at me being infinitely tortured in real life. Why would they? Im gonna be infinitely tortured when i die anyway, what difference does it make? Its the undercurrent of subtle disregard for human pain that creeps me out about the religious. Ill try and get on with everyone. Just dont expect me to appreciate being thought worthy of such infinite cruelty. EDIT: My post only is in regard to the main religions today with some concept of a hell. Many religions share this and those that dont are A ok in my book. | |
Please provide evidence for this alleged lack of believing in the religions tenets as being a primary qualification for joining the faiths. Unless you can show me one or more religions which provide proof of their claims, then I stand by my comment, that you one of the common factors of religion is that you have to have faith. And in any case, your even if true(which I doubt), you comment is irrelevant, as this thread is about religions today, not in the past. So why even bring it up? | |
There are none. A religion does require faith. Apologists will often attempt to perfume the word religion which is so stained by it's history and still very much is. "Let's try to link the word religion to groups that has a non violent, none monotheistic, none deity position. Then we can say religion isn't all bad". No! People do not get to redefine religion to support their argument. Religion requires faith because not a single one of them has any proof what so ever. | |
Shinto, Wicca, Ancient Greek Polytheism, Hinduism, Norse Paganism and many modern polytheistic movements don't require faith. All they require is participation in the rituals. I would argue that Judaism in most interpretations functions identically. You don't have to believe, you just have to join the group. The only religions I can think of off the top of my hear that explicitly require declarations of faith are Christianity and Islam, making religions where faith is required the exception, not the norm. And hell, even in those religions declarations of faith are (depending on the congregation) really only necessary to get into the group. In my experience in practice as long as one does not overtly contradict the faith of the congregation (by making declarations that there was no God, Jesus, or Mohammed) then as long as one participates in the rituals of the congregation with apparent sincerity and at least publicly obeys the congregation/religions rules/proscriptions, then it doesn't matter if one truly believes the doctrine or not. Faith is vastly overrated by many atheists on this board. The real world is (thank goodness) much more interesting and subtle than their "us vs. them" narrative presents.
Incorrect. This thread is about people who hate "religion". There was no specifier in the OP saying we had to confine our discussion to modern day religions (though of the religions I listed, most are still relevant today). I bring it up because your post is a perfect example of what I was getting at- people decide they hate "religion" without even knowing what religion is or what religion can be. They have a shallow image in their mind based off of one or two prominent religions they are passingly familiar with and then attack religion as a concept based on that very limited data. In practice it's no different from some white guy in the suburbs who watches black people getting arrested on COPS all day and has only ever personally met a couple of black people in the big city who were begging for change and from that experience concludes that he hates all black people. It's ridiculous. It's ignorant. And it's sadly quite commonplace on this board. In a lot of cases, I think it comes from people who are very insecure about their intelligence, so they attack a straw-man concept of religion as a whole in order to feel clever. | |
Well I don't hate religion in general, but I certainly hate Catholicism. It's a hatred from personal experience, and unfortunately, I'm not big enough of a person to avoid letting my bias sway me. | |
I do not hate religion. I hate it when the institution oversteps its bound and ceased to maintain it a by-choice spiritual thing it is supposed to be in my opinion. Simply put, if you're religious, I don't have a problem with you. I'll only have a problem with you if you try to shove it down my throat, cause that's just plain rude. See, I kind of like my capability to learn more about a religion without actually being part of it... Oh yeah I also have a problem with you if you follow a "cool" religion to be "cool" without having a clue about it. | |
Ok, so let me get this straight, people professing to be members of a religion, do not actually believe in the religion they are affiliated with? Faith means accepting what the religion says, without evidence, doesn't it? Sure there may be participants who are there for the company, companionship or other reasons, but they can not really be considered part of the faithful for that group can they? | |
On one hand, religion causes death, misery, and illogic. There are no things that religion can provide that cannot be provided by secular means. Where did everything come from? We are still working that out, though we can never know for sure. | |
Incorrect again. I never made that claim. People professing to be members of a religion don't have to believe in the religion. This is not a difficult concept.
This much you have correct. Where you stumble is that not all religions require faith.
There isn't any. Your question is irrelevant. One does not need to believe in Kami to be Shinto.
And one does not need to believe in these deities to be participating members of these religions.
Incorrect. Don't confuse the backstory with the game.
Absolutely they can. For most religions in most of human history, I feel confident claiming these sorts of people made up the vast majority of religious people. For most of human history, religious dogma has been the exclusive domain of learned priests while the typical members of society were illiterate and had no time for any learning beyond what was necessary for survival. In fact, for a great many polytheistic religions, the articles of dogma are exclusive secrets not to be revealed. How can you declare faith in the dogma to be a requirement of religion when there are religions where the majority of the public aren't allowed to know the dogma? This notion that a practitioner must have personal faith in the religion only really began with Christianity, and while it has proven popular[1] it is by no means an inherent part of religion. And yet here you are accusing people of making "asinine" arguments when you've proven in this discussion you only have a very shallow grasp of what religion really is and are clinging to an incorrect mythology of what religion is about. It's so terribly ironic that to fight a belief you claim takes things on faith, you depend on a mythology that contradicts reality and refuse to let it go... [1] This is part of the reason Christianity is the world's most popular religion- one is able to join by one's own will. One does not need to concern oneself with what a class of priests thinks of one's race/culture/tribe/etc. | |
How can they be part of the "faithful" if they don't actually believe the religion's claims? | |
I dont know, probably the same way people are faithful to their spouses even if they don't think their spouses are. | |
Hi, strawman. Being part of a religion does not require one to have faith that the religion is Truth. Calling it the "faithful" is just poetic language designed to avoid acknowledging that fact. | |
To me it looked more like an attempt to distinguish actual believers of a religion from those who are simply members of the club. But I guess if you use "faithful" to mean "members of a religion" then belief is not at all necessary. | |
Maybe I'm slow but I still don't understand what you just said. Are you saying you can be part of a religion, even if you don't believe in said religion being true? Cause yeah, I guess that's true, but why on Earth would you be part of a religion you don't believe in unless you have some sort of identity/belief crisis? | |
"I am a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but I do not believe in their racial position. All men are equal". Breaking with the core belief of a group will disqualify you as a member. Sure you can hang around the Ku Klux Klan meetings because you have buddies there or you like the food, but you are not one of them. Same for religious groups. | |
Fair enough.
Exactly!
Any number of reasons. In fact, there are so many I don't care to list them all. But let's make a very basic analogy. Anyone who has been in a relationship should hopefully be able to relate: At some point you want to tell the person you love that they are the most important person in your life. That they are the most beautiful woman/handsome man in the world. But as long as Ziyi Zhang/Viggo Mortensen are unmarried and available your significant other cannot hope to compare to these perfect specimens of mankind. But you tell them they are the only one for you anyway. Of course, deep down inside you know that if Zhang/Viggo ever came to you in real life and demanded you drop your trousers you would say yes, because who are you to argue with perfection? But you don't acknowledge this, because your want to believe that the comparatively inferior partner you've ended up with is satisfactory. They're good enough for you, anyway. But deep down you know that if Zhang/Viggo came to you in Crouching Tiger/Ranger attire and told you they want to have their way with you, you'd drop your significant other in a second. Because let's face it, you're only human. That's what religion for a lot of people is like. It's a convenient lie. It's a mythology that is knowingly constructed for the advantages it provides. Even if there is an overt declaration of faith, that doesn't necessarily mean it is believed. But it feels good to say it is believed. So it is. Of course there are some people who genuinely believe their religion. And it's impossible to separate the genuine believers from the posers without some pretty advanced brain-scan equipment. But in the end it doesn't matter. We know that people say they believe things they don't actually believe quite regularly[1]. To demand religious people hold these beliefs more sincerely than other people do is an error of logic. [1] anyone who has had a member of the opposite sex comment on their private parts knows exactly what I mean. | |
So no need to share the core belief to be part of a religion. So you will call Islamic terrorists Muslims then? If not, explain why. They certainly claim to be Muslims and that their moderate counterparts are misguided. | |
I only hate New Age and Wiccan, because those Religions are the literal definition of bullshit. Wiccan seems like it comes straight out of World of Warcraft, and New Age promotes self-damaging practices. | |
That analogy is great, unless you have IU as a lover, then it starts to fall apart.
That seems a bit dubious to me. I would do it, but I'm sure other people are actually capable of devotion to a person to that level. I'm also sure some people aren't lying when they say things like that.
Well I agree with that.
Agreed.
This just confuses me. If they are part of a religion, and they don't believe in the religion, but they spout the beliefs/tenets of their religion as if they were fact despite not even believing it to be true, then shouldn't it follow that people should expect them to at least hold their fauxbeliefs sincerely if they still insist on subscribing to them? [1] anyone who has had a member of the opposite sex comment on their private parts knows exactly what I mean. | |
I think it's more akin to being part of a 'The Best Sport in the World is Cricket' club, without actually thinking Cricket is the best sport in the world. They can still claim to be members of the club, despite not thinking the clubs core belief is true. Although I'm sure that analogy is somehow flawed. | |
I think that is a good analogy for the majority of Christians. Many do not really believe. Like trusting in god but buying a gun for home protection or placing the pope in a bulletproof car. That sort of thing. | |
Talking about not knowing evil from good. I thought Christians were a fan of objective morality. | |
Ah, keep in mind we're talking about a specific subset of members of a religion. Not everyone in a religion believes it to be a convenient lie. Some people do genuinely believe in their religion (and I don't see any problem with that). Meanwhile, there is another subset of members of a religion who proselytize to others and try to get them to convert- I'm guessing that most of these people come from the group who genuinely believe, though some may come from the former group of "disbelief suspenders". We can imagine someone who hopes that through street preaching they can over come their own doubts about the religion. Or we can imagine someone who tries to get converts simply to raise their standing with the church. But I'm betting the majority of people who try to get converts are true believers because proselytizing is a socially risky behavior, and many people aren't willing to take that risk unless they're convinced themselves in the cause it's for. The takeaway point I'm trying to make is that religion is complex. There's no single way to go about it. Trying to claim "I hate all religion because all religion is x!" is really just demonstrating ignorance. | |
I don't hate religion (I don't think I 'hate' anything). I do tend to be opposed to organised religion, not because I necessarily dislike it when people of similar beliefs come together to share their similar experience, but because it tends to work in the reverse. It never seems to be "We all came to this religious conclusion on our own, so let's form a group based upon our similarity", whereas it quite often seems to be a case of "Look, someone too young to make an informed decision!", or "Hey there! I see you are exploring your spirituality. How about instead of thinking it through for yourself, you just believe what we tell you to?". So my problem isn't the beliefs, nor is it the gathering of people with similar beliefs. What it is, is when the process of 'believe -> join a similarly believing group' becomes 'join a group -> adopt their beliefs for reasons other than said beliefs being true for you'. The problem is that unless no religion catered to pre-adults, you are always going to have cases where a religious group gains new members in ways that aren't hinged upon the beliefs of the group, and it isn't exactly something you can legislate against either (not only as a question of practicality, but also a question of governmental boundaries). So organised religion, I feel, is quite dangerous, as the groups likely to persist are those with a large group of followers, and those with lots of followers are likely to be the ones that promote practices of youth-indoctrination and social pressuring, whereas those that only accept members who, a) are fully-fledged adults able to make their own decisions, and b) wish to join based upon their own individual views aligning with those of the group, are the religions least likely to gain a public image, and therefore least likely to perpetuate the view of only gaining members through genuine belief-commonalities. That isn't to say that I think religion should be outlawed, or anything that drastic. While I would prefer to be able to stop people from indoctrinating their youth[1], and while I don't think it should be the parents'/guardians'/role models' choice whether or not their youth is brought up in a certain religion, I also do not think anyone else should have the power to stop them against their will (not because I think such power is necessarily wrong, but because I think that to possess such power is too great a responsibility to have anywhere outside the realm of ideals). [1] By their youth, I do not mean to so they own them, but rather I refer to the youth to which they are responsible. I suppose it is similar to some views on land ownership; people do not own the land, they are merely stewards, and while they may benefit from it, they should always be aware that the land is not theirs to do with as they see fit. | |
Then wtf is someone doing identifying yourself as a member of the group?
Gotcha, not surprisingly wiki got it wrong, but you are here to correct it :).
Gotcha, once again the onus is on not believing, rather than on believing.
Just because some are not aware of all of the dogma, does not mean that there is/was dogma of which they were aware. [1] This is part of the reason Christianity is the world's most popular religion- one is able to join by one's own will. One does not need to concern oneself with what a class of priests thinks of one's race/culture/tribe/etc. | |
That really isn't any of your business. They are part of the group. You aren't the pope of religion-town, you don't get to set the rules by which people join a religion.
Incorrect again. Just because you want this to be true so you can claim you've won an internet argument doesn't make it true. Expand your mind. Look beyond the shallow stereotype of religion you have constructed.
Not all religions have teachings. Or rather, not all religions have a single set of teachings that are meant to be a coherent guide to how one lives their life. The big Abrahamic religions are often thought of as having a single message about how one should live one's life, but that's not a requirement of religion in general. Most polytheistic religions seem to function in the opposite manner- there is not neat and tidy cliff notes version of a narrative to rely upon for making decisions in your life. This is one of the things I really like about most polytheistic religions. The lores tend to be complicated and contradictory, so they often demand study and careful, deliberate thought before one can make a declaration of what it all means. But one doesn't need to make a declaration of what it all means if one doesn't feel comfortable. IMHO they're more of a mystery to be pondered than a team to cheer for.
A very poor analogy. The KKK is a group with a specific ideological purpose. Not all religions have an ideological purpose.
A swing and a miss again. The lore of Shinto posits that there are kami. It is not necessary to believe in kami to practice Shinto. I saw this time and time again in Japan. I personally witnessed many people who do not believe in kami participating in Shinto rituals. In fact, this is why survey data of religious beliefs in Japan tend to be very confused. Depending on which questions are asked, one can get results showing the country is overwhelmingly atheist or overwhelmingly Shinto/Buddhist. It's worth taking a moment and going back to the core of what is being argued here because you seem to have lost the plot a bit. The argument is not that religious back stories don't involve fantastical or non-scientific elements. Because if that were the case, we wouldn't be talking about a religion. If I try to start a religion that takes as it's central tenet that Earth revolves around the sun and this is why we have seasons, I don't have a religion. I'm just repeating a fact. However, the fact that something unscientific is a part of the religious mythology does not mean that the religion requires faith. And this is why your link to Wikipedia is an irrelevant red herring. The back story can be a part of the game, but it doesn't have to be. When a Japanese teenager goes to a shrine and drops his coin in the box and makes a wish and writes a prayer asking to get a good grade on his university entrance exams on a votive plaque and hangs it on a tree, he doesn't have to believe that kami exist or that they will do anything to help him. His religion can be nothing more than a culturally-relevant form of self-expression.
The existence of dogma does not require faith. You really need to get that through your head. Until you grasp this, you will be stuck forever jousting at a paper-thin stereotype of religion.
Incorrect. As I said before, not all religions have teachings. The vast majority of human religions have just been things people do. It's only in the post-Christian world that this notion of religion making a statement about the nature of reality that must be believed got started. Until then, most religions essentially functioned as elaborate systems of sympathetic magic, where people dealt with symbols of what they wanted or feared. And again, it is not necessary for a member of the religion to actually believe that the sympathetic rituals worked (although undoubtedly many did). Because prior to Christianity most religions were simply tied to the culture the practitioners were a part of. A farmer from a village outside Athens 2500 years ago didn't necessarily believe in a pantheon that included Gaia because he was making a declaration that yes, there are gods, and yes, one of them is named Gaia and that petitioning Gaia will guarantee a good harvest. He might have easily just done it because that's what people in his village did, and because expressing the wish for a good harvest symbolically through the culturally-ordained ritual with his village made him feel good. If he relocated to Rome and started a farm there, he wouldn't need to "convert" or make a new declaration about the ultimate nature of the existence of gods and their relationship to mortals. He just does the rituals that the priests of Ceres ask for because now he's in Rome, and he needs to do as Romans do. I really strongly suggest you educate yourself about the diversity that is possible in religions. Because you seem to be working yourself up a lot to attack a stereotype of religion that really doesn't exist, at least not for all of religion as a whole. | |
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Yes, yes, I get it. We don't know the definition of evil, blah blah blah. It's easy enough to rationalize anything away. Cancer, which is literally a self-destruct button coded into our DNA. AIDS, a foreign invader that just up and kills us horribly. Volcanic eruptions that kill hundreds. Hurricanes that swamp entire cities, and leave hundreds of thousands suffering. Yes, a loving, benevolent God may not mean such things out of evil. It's logically possible, especially if God himself defines "good" to hand-wave that all away. But it begs the question: don't you feel intellectually dishonest in the slightest? Doesn't the argument seem kinda pathetic when faced with the overwhelming nature of the disaster in question? If a human did something like put a major metropolis underwater or create a built-in mechanism in the human body that causes a slow, crippling, prolonged death at any age, there wouldn't be a single person who, even for an instant, thought "Nah, that's not evil at all".