Why I think religion is inherently bad. [POLL ADDED]

[Typhlochactas]

Don't they have better things to do than provoke unnecessary conflicts?

That's the best reason you could come up with? Religion shouldn't be criticized because they could be riding their bike or something? Come on, that's pretty lame.

Religion should be criticized because it is something that billions of people hold to be true. Since it has such a huge effect on the way people think and behave, it would be terrible not to hold it to the highest scrutiny possible.

The criticize those aspects. But when you go after religion as a whole, you're just inviting an unnecessary conflict.

Ok, so I'm free to criticize a physical claim like 'Jesus was resurrected'?

[Khodoristan]

I shall now go rest me weary mind.

Seconded. I have a ConLaw final in...5 hours. Oh, college.

[Typhlochactas]

Also, the people who have posted saying that they had their religious view changed after joining NSG.

So I concede a debate and all of a sudden I can change my religion? Neato!

Yeah, exposing yourself to the other side definitely has a large impact on many people. I'm one of them.

[Occupied Deutschland]

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute...

Wouldn't the existence of extra space-time dimensions suggest there existed one wherein God (or a similar entity) existed?

I declare myself winner of this debate and will hold the coronation for my now gained title of 'King of the Internets' tomorrow at dusk.

It would suggest no such thing.

This is a bad joke and you should feel bad.

Jeez, this is what I get for trying to introduce some levity into the whole 'Religion are Evulz!' debate.

[Shofercia]

Is the OP trying to be the Landover Baptist version for atheism? If so, Landover Baptist does it better. For instance:



I mean that right there is Landover Baptist version of atheism, I don't know if I should applaud that or not. The Holocaust was about Hitler pretending that such a thing as racial superiority exists. You ever notice, OP, how Hitler actually talked about the "Superior Race" way more often than the "Superior Religion"? Do I need to get a dictionary for the OP to be able to distinguish between race and religion?

To show that much ignorance of history is truly astounding. And other examples of the wars that the OP pretends to be primarily religious can be debunked with ease. For instance, I'm Russian, and I know that there were other events in 1905 and 1917 that started the pogroms, that had nothing to do with religion, like, oh, say the Csar not being able to provide efficient food and ammunition deliveries? What makes more sense, the OP's argument, that people suddenly said "Oh hey, 1905, time to go and persecute a random religion" or people going "oh crap, there's no order, the Csar's an idiot, and now we've seen proof of his idiocy, let's pillage some places for food." Really a no brainer. Al Qaeda - that probably had more to do with either bombs being dropped on people's heads, or some pricks wanting to feel more important, and attacking a high value target, or the threat of the McWorld Culture. Bosnia, erm, interesting how the OP singles that one out in the Yugoslav Wars, but hey, when facts aren't on your side, you need all of the factual manipulation you can get. Crusades - yeah, on one of them, a Christian Army hit a Christian City, hmm, maybe there were other reasons for the Crusades, like say the leaders of Europe wanting the troublemaking landless nobles to fight elsewhere, besides their Kingdoms? I'm tired of rebutting those bullshit examples.

The OP then mentions the Galileo Story. Do tell OP, where did Galileo study? University of Pisa. Now the founder of the University, what was his name? Pope Clement VI. Yep, that's us, hindering science by opening universities for others to study, at least according to the OP. Sense? The OP makes no sense.

The OP continues to pretend that a comedian is apparently a scholarly source. I wonder, would the OP quote Daniel Tosh to the Harvard Professors? Perhaps he can quote that along with the story of how religion hindered Galileo, by creating a university for Galileo to study at.

And then the OP pretends like he knows what he's talking about:

Trillions and trillions of prayers every day asking and begging and pleading for favors. 'Do this' 'Gimme that' 'I want a new car' 'I want a better job'. And most of this praying takes place on Sunday. And I say fine, pray for anything you want. Pray for anything. But...what about the divine plan? Remember that? The divine plan. Long time ago god made a divine plan. Gave it a lot of thought. Decided it was a good plan. Put it into practice. And for billion and billions of years the divine plan has been doing just fine. Now you come along and pray for something. Well, suppose the thing you want isn't in god's divine plan. What do you want him to do? Change his plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a divine plan. What's the use of being god if every run-down schmuck with a two dollar prayer book can come along and fuck up your plan? And here's something else, another problem you might have; suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? 'Well it's god's will. God's will be done.' Fine, but if it gods will and he's going to do whatever he wants to anyway; why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me. Couldn't you just skip the praying part and get right to his will?

OP, here's the most popular Christian Prayer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Prayer



Anything there about a new car? New house? New boat? New jetski? And how does the OP decide that most of the Prayers take place on Sunday? I Pray every day, so there's no specific day that I say most of my Prayers. Additionally OP, Prayers has always existed. It's not a new invention. So to pretend that [n]ow you come along and pray for something - that's pretty damn disingenuous. It's also historically inaccurate. I don't think you should comment on Prayer anymore, because you have absolutely no idea how it works. Much like you have no idea about the reasons behind most of the wars you listed, and no idea that Galileo was educated in a University founded by a Pope, and...

I'm going to stop typing in response to the OP now, lest I say something that's, well...

1. The general prayer day is sunday.
2. You don't hear everyone's prayers so you don't know what the fuck they want.
3. My 800 million mark may be way off and some of the conflicts too, but the point still stands religion causes death.

1. In Christianity, yes. But it doesn't say that you must state 51% of the Prayers on Sunday.
2. Neither do you. So stop pretending like you do. However, I do know that the Prayer that I cited is the most popular Prayer in the Christian Faith; the name "Lord's Prayer" gives that away.
3. You missed the Holocaust, that's pretty damn ridiculous. That alone makes the entire OP a Landover Baptist version of atheism. BTW, your initial OP was "all religion is hurr durr bad lolz Godwin!" Now you're saying that your point was that religion causes death. You know what actually causes death? Experimental treatments. Should we stop all those as well? Self-defense also causes death, so perhaps we should stop defending ourselves, amirite? Cause clearly, if they cause death, they bad. Is that your point?

[Khodoristan]

So I concede a debate and all of a sudden I can change my religion? Neato!

Yeah, exposing yourself to the other side definitely has a large impact on many people. I'm one of them.

Oh, really? Do tell.

[Shofercia]

You win. Thank you for teaching me religion is a debate that goes nowhere, especially on NSG.

Bullshit.

See: Conservative Morality.

His name's actually Conserative Morality. I know you want it to be conservative, but there's reality, and then there's what you want reality to be. Don't confuse the two.

[Mavorpen]

Bullshit.

See: Conservative Morality.

His name's actually Conserative Morality. I know you want it to be conservative, but there's reality, and then there's what you want reality to be. Don't confuse the two.

"Extra extra, auto-correct doesn't exist!"

[Shofercia]

Don't they have better things to do than provoke unnecessary conflicts?

That's the best reason you could come up with? Religion shouldn't be criticized because they could be riding their bike or something? Come on, that's pretty lame.

Religion should be criticized because it is something that billions of people hold to be true. Since it has such a huge effect on the way people think and behave, it would be terrible not to hold it to the highest scrutiny possible.

The criticize those aspects. But when you go after religion as a whole, you're just inviting an unnecessary conflict.

Ok, so I'm free to criticize a physical claim like 'Jesus was resurrected'?

Actually there was this analogy in that very same post, which you missed, so here's the best reason I could think of:

I mean you can critique parts of America's Foreign Policy, or parts of Russia's Foreign Policy, and you probably should. However, when you go ahead and state that "Russia/America has never a single thing right in their entire existence" - you're pretty much saying "I'm an ignorant moron". If that's the image you want to convey, go for it! Just don't complain when that becomes the stereotype of atheists. That's the best analogy I could think of.

And if you want to criticize the claim that Jesus was Resurrected - go for it. Personally, I think it's all about belief. So if you are a Christian, you believe that Jesus was Resurrected. If you're not a Christian, you probably don't. However, unless you have a time machine, criticizing that is rather silly. You are welcome to point out that it's Faith-based, when someone else argues otherwise.

[Typhlochactas]

Yeah, exposing yourself to the other side definitely has a large impact on many people. I'm one of them.

Oh, really? Do tell.

You don't think that exposing yourself to the other side's arguments would make you more likely to join them, if you were in complete ignore before?

[Dogapus]

Why shouldn't they?

Why, then? When Athiests keep ther beliefs to themselves, that's fine, but when they start attacking anyone religious, it gets me all irittated.

Because Relgion does it more!

[Dogapus]

I hope as you get educated you gain wisdom

I hope you get lined up against a wall and shot

[Typhlochactas]

That's the best reason you could come up with? Religion shouldn't be criticized because they could be riding their bike or something? Come on, that's pretty lame.

Religion should be criticized because it is something that billions of people hold to be true. Since it has such a huge effect on the way people think and behave, it would be terrible not to hold it to the highest scrutiny possible.



Ok, so I'm free to criticize a physical claim like 'Jesus was resurrected'?

Actually there was this analogy in that very same post, which you missed, so here's the best reason I could think of:

I mean you can critique parts of America's Foreign Policy, or parts of Russia's Foreign Policy, and you probably should. However, when you go ahead and state that "Russia/America has never a single thing right in their entire existence" - you're pretty much saying "I'm an ignorant moron". If that's the image you want to convey, go for it! Just don't complain when that becomes the stereotype of atheists. That's the best analogy I could think of.

And if you want to criticize the claim that Jesus was Resurrected - go for it. Personally, I think it's all about belief. So if you are a Christian, you believe that Jesus was Resurrected. If you're not a Christian, you probably don't. However, unless you have a time machine, criticizing that is rather silly. You are welcome to point out that it's Faith-based, when someone else argues otherwise, like I just did.

I don't think that religion hasn't done anything right. We were talking about whether religion should be criticized. Why did we jump to this all of the sudden?

[Khodoristan]

Oh, really? Do tell.

You don't think that exposing yourself to the other side's arguments would make you more likely to join them, if you were in complete ignore before?

Never said that. Never said I wanted to 'join them'. Never said I was convinced in any way to convert or to drop my faith. All I said was I conceded the debate.

[Shofercia]

Why, then? When Athiests keep ther beliefs to themselves, that's fine, but when they start attacking anyone religious, it gets me all irittated.

Because Relgion does it more!

And you don't think that irritating religious people will get them to hate those who irritate them more?

[Obamacult]

If you find me evidence of all of the above being true, I will concede this debate. Super srs tho.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/life- ... 2/apr/01/1
http://www.alternativephysics.org/book/ ... iments.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/higgs- ... d=16695742

You seriously need to read your sources dude, Khodoristan is correct, none of the theories have been proven as true. Yeah, experiments are promising and don't disprove the theories, but yeah, they don't prove them either. Just pondering:

it is easier to look for a friend's face in a sports stadium filled with 100,000 people than to search for a Higgs-like event among trillions of collisions."

"During its life, the Tevatron must have produced thousands of Higgs particles, if they actually exist, and it's up to us to try to find them in the data we have collected,"

More data are needed before we can be sure.

There may be a fundamental problem with the experiment in the form of an invalid assumption.

If the experiments were as flawed as this article suggests then they cannot be used to prove or disprove time dilation.

It seems like your taking a leap of faith to believe in unproven theories without proof. You kinda remind me of my religious buddies who take the same leap of faith in believing in God. I mean science believed in a flat Earth and an Earth that was the center of the universe. Some theorists could easily be wrong about Higgs particles, string theory, and time dilation. But something tells me that it is more important for you to win your debate than to accept the truth that science has neither confirmed nor refuted these theories.

Sound familiar?

[Typhlochactas]

You don't think that exposing yourself to the other side's arguments would make you more likely to join them, if you were in complete ignore before?

Never said that. Never said I wanted to 'join them'. Never said I was convinced in any way to convert or to drop my faith. All I said was I conceded the debate.

I think that you've severely misunderstood me. All I was trying to do was add credit to Mavorpen's idea that people change their beliefs from being on NSG, which was said in response to you pointing out the inanity of debating religion on NSG. It had nothing to do with your own personal beliefs.

[Saragossa]

With the exception of post-reformation Christianity, almost all major religions are tied to a culture or political entity. I'm not sure how anyone can say that religion caused any wars on its own. Anything involving Islam, the Balkans, Hitler or colonialism is probably more political than religious

[Valkmar]

1. The general prayer day is sunday.
2. You don't hear everyone's prayers so you don't know what the fuck they want.
3. My 800 million mark may be way off and some of the conflicts too, but the point still stands religion causes death.

1. In Christianity, yes. But it doesn't say that you must state 51% of the Prayers on Sunday.
2. Neither do you. So stop pretending like you do. However, I do know that the Prayer that I cited is the most popular Prayer in the Christian Faith; the name "Lord's Prayer" gives that away.
3. You missed the Holocaust, that's pretty damn ridiculous. That alone makes the entire OP a Landover Baptist version of atheism. BTW, your initial OP was "all religion is hurr durr bad lolz Godwin!" Now you're saying that your point was that religion causes death. You know what actually causes death? Experimental treatments. Should we stop all those as well? Self-defense also causes death, so perhaps we should stop defending ourselves, amirite? Cause clearly, if they cause death, they bad. Is that your point?

My point is that it causes death for a unseen, unheard, and undefined being or entity that cannot be proved.

[Shofercia]

Actually there was this analogy in that very same post, which you missed, so here's the best reason I could think of:



And if you want to criticize the claim that Jesus was Resurrected - go for it. Personally, I think it's all about belief. So if you are a Christian, you believe that Jesus was Resurrected. If you're not a Christian, you probably don't. However, unless you have a time machine, criticizing that is rather silly. You are welcome to point out that it's Faith-based, when someone else argues otherwise, like I just did.

I don't think that religion hasn't done anything right. We were talking about whether religion should be criticized. Why did we jump to this all of the sudden?

I was responding to the OP, so when you responded to me, I thought you were countering my response to him. According to the OP, religion is "hurr durr bad" and should be eradicated. That notion is idiotic. That's what I was responding to.

The other thing, is that I don't think that religion, as a whole, should be criticized, and I think that doing so is a stupid notion. However, I welcome criticism of certain aspects of religion, like the Sale of Indulgences, or hospitals trying to hide behind the First Amendment in order to avoid providing certain services, while accepting all of the state benefits. Additionally, you can criticize Tele-vangelism, or, I mean there are lots of things to criticize about modern religious practices. Just because we try our best to follow Jesus, doesn't mean we succeed every time. So yeah, we deserve the criticism, and should be able to withstand it. But making mocking references about religion that serve no point other than to mock, those just make the person doing it look extremely ridiculous.

[Mavorpen]

You seriously need to read your sources dude, Khodoristan is correct, none of the theories have been proven as true. Yeah, experiments are promising and don't disprove the theories, but yeah, they don't prove them either. Just pondering:

You seriously need to actually read people's posts. Nowhere did he ask me to find sources saying that the theories have been "proven as true." So bugger off with the straw men.

It seems like your taking a leap of faith to believe in unproven theories without proof.

False, since I've never said I believe in any of these theories.

You kinda remind me of my religious buddies who take the same leap of faith in believing in God. I mean science believed in a flat Earth and an Earth that was the center of the universe.

False. No such belief the Earth was flat was held on a large scale by experts by the time formal science arrived. Even if they did, this is irrelevant.

Some theorists could easily be wrong about Higgs particles, string theory, and time dilation. But something tells me that it is more important for you to win your debate than to accept the truth that science has neither confirmed nor refuted these theories.

No shit they could. The problem? This is a straw man, because I never claimed that these theories have been "proven" or that I "believe" in them.

Sound familiar?

Yes, it's the sound of straw men everywhere.

[New Acardia]

Religion is a dubble edge sword.
Because it makes people who want to be good in to better people.
And people who want to be evil in to worst people.

Although those who are the most aginst religion ( At least in my family). Tend to do what they want to do. And hurt who ever gets in there way. and do not want any one telling them. That there behaveur is wrong. Reguardless of who gets hurt.

[Typhlochactas]

I don't think that religion hasn't done anything right. We were talking about whether religion should be criticized. Why did we jump to this all of the sudden?

I was responding to the OP, so when you responded to me, I thought you were countering my response to him. According to the OP, religion is "hurr durr bad" and should be eradicated. That notion is idiotic. That's what I was responding to.

The other thing, is that I don't think that religion, as a whole, should be criticized, and I think that doing so is a stupid notion. However, I welcome criticism of certain aspects of religion, like the Sale of Indulgences, or hospitals trying to hide behind the First Amendment in order to avoid providing certain services, while accepting all of the state benefits. Additionally, you can criticize Tele-vangelism, or, I mean there are lots of things to criticize about modern religious practices. Just because we try our best to follow Jesus, doesn't mean we succeed every time. So yeah, we deserve the criticism, and should be able to withstand it. But making mocking references about religion that serve no point other than to mock, those just make the person doing it look extremely ridiculous.

Yeah. I didn't like the argumentum ad George Carlin either.

[Shofercia]

1. In Christianity, yes. But it doesn't say that you must state 51% of the Prayers on Sunday.
2. Neither do you. So stop pretending like you do. However, I do know that the Prayer that I cited is the most popular Prayer in the Christian Faith; the name "Lord's Prayer" gives that away.
3. You missed the Holocaust, that's pretty damn ridiculous. That alone makes the entire OP a Landover Baptist version of atheism. BTW, your initial OP was "all religion is hurr durr bad lolz Godwin!" Now you're saying that your point was that religion causes death. You know what actually causes death? Experimental treatments. Should we stop all those as well? Self-defense also causes death, so perhaps we should stop defending ourselves, amirite? Cause clearly, if they cause death, they bad. Is that your point?

My point is that it causes death for a unseen, unheard, and undefined being or entity that cannot be proved.

And my point is that it's usually used a scapegoat for rulers to acquire more power, just like gang pride can be used by landowners to acquire more land, and that land/power can be seen, heard, and defined. By attacking religion you're not attacking the actual problem. For instance, you blame religion for the Holocaust, (yeah, you're not living that one down,) and you let racism, the real problem, off the hook, or at least you're not being as vicious against it, as you should be. What's a more effective way to prevent another Holocaust? Make online posts about "hurr durr religion bad" or working to eradicate racism as best as you can? Really, it's not rocket science, and you only have a limited about of time.

[Typhlochactas]

My point is that it causes death for a unseen, unheard, and undefined being or entity that cannot be proved.

And my point is that it's usually used a scapegoat for rulers to acquire more power, just like gang pride can be used by landowners to acquire more land, and that land/power can be seen, heard, and defined. By attacking religion you're not attacking the actual problem. For instance, you blame religion for the Holocaust, (yeah, you're not living that one down,) and you let racism, the real problem, off the hook, or at least you're not being as vicious against it, as you should be. What's a more effective way to prevent another Holocaust? Make online posts about "hurr durr religion bad" or working to eradicate racism as best as you can? Really, it's not rocket science, and you only have a limited about of time.

Well, religion had some things to do with the holocaust, but many religious people also worked to shelter Jews from Nazi persecution. It goes both ways on that issue.