The Religion Thread

[slothpomba]

There was a time when there was no separation of Church and State: that was called the Dark Ages.

The concept of "Dark Ages" is refuted by modern historiographical (the study of the study of history) scholarship. Even the term is probably an enlightenment (perhaps earlier) creation which lets us look down upon the "uncivilized gap" between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Enlightenment. The real definer of this age is the fall of Rome (which actually didn't fall just yet) rather than it necessarily being dark in the sense of knowledge.

The foundation of many sciences were laid during this age, alchemy (early precursor of chemistry) was around, anatomical research occurred and the early stages of a literate educated class flourished (remember, it was a time where very few people saw any use at all in being literate). More.

Furthermore, most educational institutions were founded and paid for by the church. If it can be said there is no separation between church and state, it can be said there was no separation between the church and learning in the medieval and post-medieval periods. Once again we see in a time where people saw little need to pay for education or indeed, research, the church fulfilled that function. I believe it would not be too far of a stretch to say if it were not for the church funding this, we would be further behind than we are now.

Having a secular government is essential for any fair, modern, democratic society.
Religion is far from a moral compass and should never be allowed to dictate law.

I never said religious texts, especially uninterpreted in a modern context, should form the basis of a legal code. I was expounding the nature of religion in ancient and pre-modern societies. Also to be fair, religion contains many positive innovations not found in at the time.

Take for example the Bible, Genesis 1:27

(NIV) So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

So G-d created humankind in His own tzelem, in the tzelem Elohim (image of G-d) created He him; zachar (male) and nekevah (female) created He them.

This seems meaningless if you don't understand the ancient near-east context this emerged in but it really is revolutionary. Man is made in the image of God. Not a man but man. Prior to this you find the idea that only the king was created in the image of God, everyone else was trash by comparison. It's difficult for modern people to understand but perhaps consider Xerxes in 300. Here we see the first flicker that it isn't only the king that is made in the image of God but all of us.

Revolutionary for the time and indeed, its probably the first flickers and partial origin of the idea of universal human rights. In Israelite society around this time of course divisions of human were unequal (jews and non-jews, man and woman, slave and free). Compared to other societies where one person was exalted above all though it is very special.

Likewise, in the Quran we find provisions on how to treat slaves. It never totally outlawed slavery, this is true. However, compared to its historical context where you could do pretty much anything you wanted to slaves, it was somewhat of a evolutionary change in the relationship between slave and master.

It's not all roses of course, these books contain many horrible things by modern standards, undoubtedly. For their time though, they were an absolute revolution in human thought and relations. Indeed, its hard to find many cases where the major religions actually made a situation worse rather than better compared to its surrounding context.

Yes, just like it's more likely than not that the tooth fairy doesn't exist, or that it's more likely than not that Santa Claus doesn't exist. The probability of gods or supernatural beings existing is extremely low, almost negligible. Religion is just wishful thinking.

How do you even begin to assign such a probability to things?

[MDMA]

try proving yourself right first. if you can't back up what you're saying, you're a bigot.

I assumed this would be the only response I would get. I asked for someone to prove me wrong and I was actually asking (could have come across as a smart ass) which doesn't make me intolerant. I made an outlandish statement to spark debate and I wanted to hear someone contest it … simple really. I personally do believe that religion does cause a lot more harm than good, hence my remark. Educate me on your Judaism ways, prove me wrong (once again could sound like a smart ass, seriously asking).

[chasej]

I assumed this would be the only response I would get. I asked for someone to prove me wrong and I was actually asking (could have come across as a smart ass) which doesn't make me intolerant. I made an outlandish statement to spark debate and I wanted to hear someone contest it … simple really. I personally do believe that religion does cause a lot more harm than good, hence my remark. Educate me on your Judaism ways, prove me wrong (once again could sound like a smart ass, seriously asking).

It's impossible to have a debate when sweeping statements are made with no substance. I'm not religious so I really couldn't educate on anything theological, nor would I want to lol. There's not really much Judaism can do to disprove 'religion is the spawn of all evil' since it's such a sweeping statement, it's better of looking at history and non-religiousally based evils to prove that point wrong.

Hitler was a strongly anti-clerical, and stopped attending mass as he grew older. Nazism is primarily non-religious ideology. That instantly disproves your point, all evil is not due to religion. Religion can cause evil, but it is not the only source, and it may not even the be the main source of evil, like looking at the evils of the modern time, Mao, USSR, Nazi Germany, (to name a small selection) all of them were strongly secular, and were even hostile towards religion. In modern times most serious evil has emerged from states/nations fuelled by desire to preserve state mechanisms or further a national goal, and hundreds of years ago, religions were essentially performing the functions of the state, perhaps it's nationalism to a state/collective/nation and not religious belief or practice itself which causes evil?

[slothpomba]

You're not seriously suggesting that the scientific method of questioning, experimenting and investigating is equally as preposterous as the religious method of "everything in this book is the ultimate truth and you are not allowed to question it", are you?

You didn't respond to the charge that scientism is just as bad as religious fundamentalism. I am not necessarily pro-religion, i am pro-scholarship and reason. Seeing science as the only way to determine anything is unreasonable and just as bad as fundamentalism. It seems to be you do espouse a form of scientism. Scientism is far different from science or the scientific method if you read the definition posted.

Very few religions or religious scholars say you are not allowed to question anything. Indeed, if you look at how many different branches of Christianity there are, it is quite evident that people question things. There is a very rich tradition of scholarship and questioning things in the Jewish and Islamic tradition as well. Many believing philosophers have came up against the question of whether God does or does not exist and raised defenses of their position (like someone would defend the position God does not exist).

Actually, we can detect love. It's all in the chemicals and electric pulses in our brains. Maybe not with our current technology, but it is possible.

You're not detecting love. You're detecting the neurobiological correlates that an individual feels in response to being in love, not "love" (as a concept or broader idea).

Bacteria was never invisible. We just didn't have the technology to see it. But "God" on the other hand is supposedly invisible...

Invisibility is something not being viewable. Before the microscope bacteria was quite literally invisible. Sure, not in a comic book sense as an invisibility cloak but we could not see it. You claim to argue against God because we cant see or detect him. If we cannot detect something, it doesn't exist. I was trying to show the flaw in this logic. There was a time where we could not observe bacteria but bacteria has existed as long as humans have. Just because God/s isn't observable (especially at this moment), it has no particular bearing on whether God/s exists or not.

Philosophy is about asking questions and thinking deeply. Religion is about dodging difficult questions by saying "goddidit". No reasonable, unbiased philosopher would follow a specific religion.

You created your own strawman of religion and then burnt it for your own purposes. It is the height of absurdity to say that religious people never ask questions of this nature, indeed, there are so many volumes written about all the difficult questions posted against religion. You show an extremely anaemic understanding of contemporary and historical philosophy. So many of the famous historical philosophers (Descarte, Pascal, Plato) followed specific religions. There are many quite successful modern philosophers who are religious as well (there are lists go look).

All religions are the same: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. Each religion was fundamentally created as a way of controlling the masses,

Then you have an exceedingly poor understanding of history. Christianity was a religion of rebellion and persecution. It was hardly a religion of the masses let alone a religion to control the masses. It was persecuted on all sides by the Jews from which Christianity emerged and it was also persecuted by the Romans. Indeed, if anything, religion put limits on a rulers power (especially compared to ancient religions).

which is why some countries are referred to as a "Christian nation" or "Islamic nation", rather than having a consistent proportion of all religions in all countries.

The real reason for this is identity. Religion is intimately tied to identity. The Japanese religion of Shinto (you know the red gates) is intimately tied with being Japanese. So much so that a book on the subject said "Shinto is the essence of Japan"/"Shinto is Japaneseness". It's also the reason why it is so difficult to separate out whether being "Jewish" necessarily relates to an ethnicity or a religion, the two are intimately tied. A final example is Indigenous Australian religion. You cant really convert or get into it as an outsider. To belong to your indigenous nation is to follow the religion like people did since time immemorial. Your ancestral spirits are contained in the land.

The ancients had no word for religion because it was just simply something you did, it was simply something everyone did. There was some knowledge people had other Gods but to be Egyptian by ethnicity and culturally was intimately tied with practising the ancient Egyptian religions. Of course, this is all pre-multiculturalism which is challenging all this but identity is the real reason you have nations like that. Shinto no longer (or arguably, never did) control the lives or nation of Japan, yet, even today, almost all Japanese participate in Shinto festivals of their own free will.

[slothpomba]

Religion is the spawn of evil. Try prove that wrong.

Traditionally, when you try start a debate or challenge someone to prove something wrong, you usually say a bit about why you believe that.

If we cannot see the reasons why you believe that, we can hardly argue over whether we think you are right in holding that view for those reasons. It's the philosophical equivalent of a sucker punch because we could say anything and without laying down some principals of your own, you have total freedom to attack our points when you have no cards on the table.

Just as a note if these two particular tangents come to consume the thread and become repetitive, i'll likely split them off and move them to rants and debate instead since it seems it wasn't what the original poster intended.

I dont think the thread was intended for heavy debate as much as saying (I believe X and Y, Here is why or I think this particular religion is interesting because of Z). Of course my experience in these threads for the long time ive been here (6-7+ years) is that they rapidly end up circular*.

No one of course will win and philosophers have argued over the existence of God and religion for centuries with no clear resolution, its extremely unlikely we'll have one. Discussion rather than debate seems the goal here. I'll wait for OP's feedback though.

*If anything, if this kind of argument is to happen, it needs a structured debate format (Opening, Person A makes a statement #1, Person B Makes a statement, Rebut each, close, etc.) because it really will otherwise just go on and on until the cows come home. 

[brenden]

ATAR Notes did a survey about four weeks ago asking what could be improved about the website, and a very prevalent concern of the survey responders was the quality of religious debate (and the presence of blatant vitriol)... Personally, I dislike religion and its presence on this planet, and I think the debate on ATAR Notes can sometimes be enlightening and teach people things (I actually didn't know the word "fallacious" until I saw it used in an AN debate), and I'm wary of censoring people on this forums - but I will reiterate that it was a very significant concern (like, up there with "the website is so shit to navigate").

For this reason, this thread will be locked immediately as soon as someone makes a reply I don't appreciate. Seems okay so far but, just giving everyone a fair warning so people aren't surprised when it gets locked.

[heids]

Just as a note if these two particular tangents come to consume the thread and become repetitive, i'll likely split them off and move them to rants and debate instead since it seems it wasn't what the original poster intended.

I dont think the thread was intended for heavy debate as much as saying (I believe X and Y, Here is why or I think this particular religion is interesting because of Z). Of course my experience in these threads for the long time ive been here (6-7+ years) is that they rapidly end up circular*.

No one of course will win and philosophers have argued over the existence of God and religion for centuries with no clear resolution, its extremely unlikely we'll have one. Discussion rather than debate seems the goal here. I'll wait for OP's feedback though.

It's not my thread, it's AN's thread - I'm perfectly open to debate, discussion, wherever it goes, I figured it would end in debate.  I'm learning though that I probably didn't do the wisest thing starting a thread like this, I'm such a newbie   Hoping nothing I or anyone else says causes offence or disgust, or is endless nonsense.
(P.S. Dumb question - what does OP stand for? - original poster, other person?)

Religion is the spawn of evil. Try prove that wrong.

I believe that humans are the spawn of evil.  Religion in itself I don't see as evil, however as very open to abuse; humans take it, and use it evil-ly (if that's a word).  For instance, Judaism preached very strong social justice (leaving food in fields for the poor, slaves freed every 6 years and just letting them run away if they hated their masters, a societal 'reset' of debt and landowning every 50 years, welcoming of refugees, and far more), far above the other cultures of the era.  If our society ran on some of those wheels, it would be far more just and equal. 

How can something that promotes love, justice, care for the poor etc. be in itself evil?

However, most humans don't follow a religion the way it was set up - I for one don't follow Christianity very well - instead often (ab)using it for power, tyranny, money, and everything totally contrary to the religion.  You can't blame that on the religion itself though, it just means they're behaving just the same as those without religion, just twisting the religion to use it as a lever for their hideous behaviour.

I'll admit that some of things in say Judaism would be abhorrent to most - e.g. death penalty (after 2-3 witnesses) for adultery, murder, homosexuality, believing a different religion.  Despite this, which I find harder to come to terms with (and which Christianity has removed), I believe that overall, if people actually stuck to the whole religion (which of course they never would ), it would promote a far fairer and happier society. No one could be falsely convicted, faithfulness in marriage would lead to far less heartbreak, refugees would be accepted, the poor would not be trapped in a cycle of poverty, and so on.  Just like the law, a religion has moral standards which are abhorrent to anyone who wants to live their own way without these standards.

[MDMA]

• Religion makes a virtue out of faith
• Religion diverts generous impulses and good intentions

• Religion teaches helplessness
• ISIL

• Religion seeks power (i.e. catholic church). The idea of religion is purely capitalist.
• It anchors believers to the stone/iron age

• Promotes tribalism rather than individualism
• The fact that it is based on a book

Sucky points I know I'll be back another time to provide evidence that it is the spawn of evil.

[heids]

Religion diverts generous impulses and good intentions

How?  I would have thought the whole 'love your neighbour as yourself', strong focus on social justice, 'suffer yourself to be defrauded' etc. aims to PROMOTE generous impulses and good intentions.  Doesn't mean that the people PRACTISING (or failing to practise) the religion have any more generous impulses and good intentions than anyone else, unfortunately, though.

ISIL.  Religion seeks power (i.e. catholic church).

Don't mix up a group who theoretically acts in the name of religion with religion. The ISIL or Catholic Church I would not necessarily count as Islam/Christianity.  They are humans who have twisted the religion, using it as a lever for their own power, money and interests, totally contrary to the religion itself.  See this and many more verses:

'The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them... but not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.'  Luke 22:25-6.

Christians, and their abuse of Christianity, is not actually what the religion is.

Religion makes a virtue out of faith, and teaches helplessness.

One comment about these is their assumption (perfectly reasonable if you don't believe in religion) that there ISN'T a God.  Let us imagine that there really is a God ordering this universe.  If so these are perfectly reasonable. (Though 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me', walking-on-water style faith, and standing up in the face of severe persecution, don't suggest helplessness to me).

Promotes tribalism rather than individualism, is based on a book, and anchors believers to the stone/iron age.

Sounds truly evil indeed!

[slothpomba]

ATAR Notes did a survey about four weeks ago asking what could be improved about the website, and a very prevalent concern of the survey responders was the quality of religious debate (and the presence of blatant vitriol)... Personally, I dislike religion and its presence on this planet, and I think the debate on ATAR Notes can sometimes be enlightening and teach people things (I actually didn't know the word "fallacious" until I saw it used in an AN debate), and I'm wary of censoring people on this forums - but I will reiterate that it was a very significant concern (like, up there with "the website is so shit to navigate").

For this reason, this thread will be locked immediately as soon as someone makes a reply I don't appreciate. Seems okay so far but, just giving everyone a fair warning so people aren't surprised when it gets locked.

Honestly, i'm not surprised. It can be viscous, in ancient history it even came from moderators/staff volunteers which i strongly advocated against. I'm an atheist more or less but i'm pro-religion. I'll likewise be watching for any unsubstantiated, shit-stirring or hurtful comments. I think given our past experience, it is definitely worth erring on the side of extreme caution.

A persons religious beliefs are often a huge, central part of their entire life and identity. There is no wonder people get upset when they are attacked or people throw around terms like "sky fairy". As i've said many times before, i think we should actually outright ban religious debates since there are already plenty of websites to do that (but all the staff know my position anyway). We're an education website. No one should feel turned off an education website because their sincere religious beliefs were attacked or thought to be hostile in a tangent.

[slothpomba]

This thread is a perfect way to educationally procrastinate the night before my exam. I'll have a crack at reviving it. Completing this subject has made me realise just how good the bible is as a work of literature. I thought it was dry, boring and unconnected, boy i was wrong.

Ancient Israelite culture is what one scholar called a high-context culture. Every member of the society shared a strong common culture and needed to understand this to function in their society. Texts from these society tend to be very rich in references. These references are presumed to be understood by the reader because the reader is presumed to live in that society (which is why the bible is so hard to read). The ultimate low-context society is probably the USA, there isn't really much of a shared common culture you need to know to function. Low context societies produce very descriptive texts to explain cultural elements to outsiders.

The Ancient Israelites obviously knew of other cultures and their stories, this is woven into the fabric of the bible. Being a high-context society, it's not made explicit that these motifs are from other things or indeed, they are mentioning them to insult them, it's just assumed you would know. There are many interesting parallels between the stories of Biblical Israel and their surrounding members.

I'll just post one example now but it gets really fascinating. Look at the stories behind the creation of man. They both include material of the earth and material that used to be part of a god (breath and blood). Both are reminded in one way or another not to forget their god. This first passage is from a Mesopotamian text called Atrahasis:

   Nintu shall mix the clay
   With the flesh and his blood
   Then a god and a man will be mixed together in clay.
   Let us hear the drumbeat forever after,
   Let a ghost come into existence from the god’s flesh,
   Let her proclaim it as his living sign
   And let the ghost exist so as to not forget (the slain god).


    Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
       and man became a living being. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.