Cthulhu's Paradox

[The Rich Port]

Me and my parents watched The Witch the other day and naturally God came up and, by extension, my atheism, because my parents are better interrogators than the Gestapo.

I actually seemed to stumble my God-fearing parents for once... But that's not a good thing, IMO.

In fact... They seemed DESPERATE to validate their belief in God through all of my logic and facts and skepticism, to the point that I was so uncomfortable watching them fall apart that I changed the subject as quickly as I could.

In particular, symbolism was the topic on hand, specifically religious symbolism. I went from explaining to them how Black Phillip was an avatar of the Eldritch, similarly to Shub-Niggurath and her motherly attributes, to upside-down crosses. My parents were vehemently of the opinion that upside-down crosses were Satanic, purely because it's what their Catholic upbringing had taught them... Of course, even Catholics that aren't well-read will know that the upside-down cross is actually a symbol of St. Peter, and is only Satanic in the minds of those ill-informed through popular culture.

This brought what I will now call Shub-Niggurath's Paradox, or Cthulhu's Paradox for those of you not as fluent in the Cthulhu Mythos, to the forefront of my mind: is it worth turning people away from a religion if it means them loosing their moral inhibitions?

That is, is it worth having people finding their own grasp of morality without them breaking down along the way after having abandoned the baggage but cohesive former morals?

This is a common fallacy brought up by religious apologists: "morality is not possible without a God and/or religion". That's patently false, of course. If there is no God, and religion is false, we have indeed constructed a morality, just one muddied by superstition and gullibility. If there is a God, it's influence is rarely felt in the world anyway.

Religions rarely account for every single facet of reality and morality, from abortion to the consumption of drugs to euthanasia to murder in self-defense to bionics to cloning. What a lot of people don't realize is that it is ourselves that form a lot of the morality in our daily lives through our own personal feelings. Psychologists believe it is due to our maturation that our moral views change, and even that morals are an evolutionary adaptation that can be observed in other animals besides humans.

More disturbing than even my parents loosing their religion, literally and figuratively, is the horror stories I hear of desperate apologists claiming that, if their God were proven to not exist, they would indeed become murderers, rapists, thieves, or some abomination they can think of.

In my opinion... I suppose I'm a big fat baby, but I have avoided becoming a moral monster due to my atheism. If anything, I was more of a moral monster when I was a God-fearing Catholic. I was confused, desperate, depressed, accepting of my consignment to damnation... Until the logic bomb fell on me and I decided that I wasn't going to let my express ticket to afterlife Hell or current life Hell affect my behavior. My taste for violence, drugs and destruction dissipated around the same time, which also coincided with my arrival on NationStates. Which is why people who find hope in religion baffle me, especially considering that they often seem the least in need of a religion to keep their secret aspirations towards genocide and human intestine sampling in check.

So, to clarify the point of this thread: do religions control people? And if so, should they continue to be allowed to control people? Are some people just monsters that must be observed by an omnipotent bro-dude while bribed with eternal happiness and coerced with eternal punishment? Or do religions simply give people a purpose and hope where they would seen neither otherwise in this crazy universe of ours?

Also, is this thread too meta-religious? Also, is being meta-religious possible/intellectually disingenuous/hypocritical?

The latter is rhetorical.

[Imperium Sidhicum]

The most profitable commodity in the world isn't oil, gold, diamonds or information. It's fear.

Fear is the ultimate authority, from which all other forms of authority derives. It is the ultimate tool of control which is why it has always sold so well.

Organized religions provide just such a commodity, selling fear to whoever is willing to buy. There's a reason why all historical empires have inevitably come to adopt organized religions - because they manufacture and sell the fear that those in power need to control the rabble.

If you can convince (or coerce) the masses to buy your particular brand of fear, and control the supply, no man commands more power than you do.

In earlier times when most were sufficiently uneducated and gullible to be content with fear of eternal damnation to a lake of fire, religion was sufficient to keep the rabble pacified most of the time. All you had to do was take all the basest human urges, declare them mortal sins, and convince the folk that they will be condemned to eternal suffering lest they rein in their urges in accord with however you decide. You thus immediately gain a degree of control over their very natures and instincts, become able to direct these instincts to a path desirable to you.

For this very reason, the authorities of earlier times were so eager to maintain their monopoly on fear, actively suppressing any alternative belief (i.e., fear generation) systems within their realm.

Obviously, with the spread of literacy, scientific knowledge and empirical thought, the traditional methods of fearmongering would become ineffective, requiring new methods to be devised.

Contemporary fearmongering has thus been re-tooled to meet the needs of modern society. Instead of an eternal damnation at some uncertain time after death, people now have nuclear wars, terrorists, mass immigration and whatnot to fear. The media have replaced religion as the single universally-available source of fear, and whoever controls it, controls the masses much like he used to control the masses back when it was his prerogative to decide which God was the right one to fear.

The fundamental premise of modern fearmongering is the lack of any objective and indisputable truth, as opposed to the one and only truth of earlier times. It is this very uncertainty that breeds fear in modern age.

---

Hence I say that religion is simply a step in the evolution of control through fear. As the shaman of a hunter-gatherer tribe exercised control through instilling fear of a bad hunt, lest the spirits were appeased, and as a medieval king exercised control through demanding that all his subjects follow the tenets of a certain holy book, so too does the modern president exercise control through feeding the rabble a selection of terrifying news via public broadcast, basically telling people what they must be afraid of, and feeding his power off that fear.

[The Rich Port]

I think I covered that in my own post but thanks for putting it in more cohesive words and expanding on the point.

But you avoided the question of the thread... Though I don't blame you, I am quite eldritch.

Do you think religion is necessary?

To a certain degree, I think it is, but nowhere near a degree that we need keep it, like a lamprey suckling on a tumor, shrinking it and keeping it from being bloated with blood but never really solving the problem.

Religion is literally like opium, in that you need to wean people of it lest they have a catatonic seizure, or, in philo-psychological terms, go insane from the revelation.

[Imperium Sidhicum]

I think I covered that in my own post but thanks for putting it in more cohesive words and expanding on the point.

But you avoided the question of the thread... Though I don't blame you, I am quite eldritch.

Do you think religion is necessary?

To a certain degree, I think it is, but nowhere near a degree that we need keep it, like a lamprey suckling on a tumor, shrinking it and keeping it from being bloated with blood but never really solving the problem.

Religion is literally like opium, in that you need to wean people of it lest they have a catatonic seizure, or, in philo-psychological terms, go insane from the revelation.

I think it is necessary. Most people simply aren't ready or willing to accept the responsibility that comes with true freedom, and must hence be controlled. Religion is one of the ways to do that, taking control of their basest fears and directing them in a productive direction.

Some of the greatest artworks in history have been inspired by religion, as have some of the worst atrocities. Religion is fundamentally just a tool, neither good nor bad in itself - it depends wholly on who wields it, much like a hammer can equally be used to build a house or commit murder.

[The Rich Port]

I think I covered that in my own post but thanks for putting it in more cohesive words and expanding on the point.

But you avoided the question of the thread... Though I don't blame you, I am quite eldritch.

Do you think religion is necessary?

To a certain degree, I think it is, but nowhere near a degree that we need keep it, like a lamprey suckling on a tumor, shrinking it and keeping it from being bloated with blood but never really solving the problem.

Religion is literally like opium, in that you need to wean people of it lest they have a catatonic seizure, or, in philo-psychological terms, go insane from the revelation.

I think it is necessary. Most people simply aren't ready or willing to accept the responsibility that comes with true freedom, and must hence be controlled. Religion is one of the ways to do that, taking control of their basest fears and directing them in a productive direction.

Some of the greatest artworks in history have been inspired by religion, as have some of the worst atrocities. Religion is fundamentally just a tool, neither good nor bad in itself - it depends wholly on who wields it, much like a hammer can equally be used to build a house or commit murder.

I don't follow your point.

You seem to be basing your point on the assumption humans are only capable of feeling fear and not doing things out of... Things other than fear.

I think a very small number of people are so fearful of the unknown of freedom...

OK, you might have a point, but...

I'm just going to go hang some Cthulhu pictures and banners if you don't mind.

Ah, but seriously, I think you are being too pessimistic.

And, which raises some of the latter points of the thread: do you follow a religion? Believing in these things, wouldn't it be disingenuous of you to espouse these beliefs knowing or believing yourself they aren't true?

You can't just say humans are beyond saving. That's too... Easy to prove. >:X

[Trotskylvania]

This brought what I will now call Shub-Niggurath's Paradox, or Cthulhu's Paradox for those of you not as fluent in the Cthulhu Mythos, to the forefront of my mind: is it worth turning people away from a religion if it means them loosing their moral inhibitions?

I'd say the inverse is true: strong ideologies like religion have not historically served as inhibitors of awful things, but rather as mechanisms to justify crimes.

People have an innate moral sense coded into them in their DNA. It's what makes us eusocial creatures; we think in normative terms inherently, and we have certain built in resistances to committing violence against one another. For lack of a better term, let's call this internal morality; instinctive, based on sentiment, often conflicting impulses, and not thoroughly systematized.

Then you have the external morality provided by religion, some of which maps onto this internal morality. But it's a construct of reason, not instinct. For most religions, it stems from a list of injunctions by the deities, sometimes with justifications, and extrapolated rules that come from them. And most religions try to monopolize on morality.

God or his chosen representatives often end up demanding their followers punish or convert the wicked by whatever means are expedient. This is true in all religions, but the big totalizing monotheistic religions seem to be the best at it. This demands violence, now sanctioned by the divine. Which allows the adherents to suppress their better natures, which now appear to them as temptation, and go forth and burn witches, execute heretics, smite infidels, and so on and so forth. Worse, they tend to tell you that that little voice in your head that says hurting people is wrong isn't just temptation or human frailty, it's the devil trying to lead you astray.

[Jochistan]

I was just having a similar conversation with some Christian friends. Part of some Baptist fellowship I somehow ran into.

It's weird how people think that without religion individuals have the capability to become moral. Misguided people in religions can become as terrible as they fear more often than not.
No matter how much I disagree with the notion that "God/Religion can be disproved with logic" I still recognize that Atheists can have a sense of Morality. Though in the western world, much of that morality comes from values grounded in religious thought.

I've struggled with "Moral Objectivism". The "God's Law" everyone claims to follow really being different interpretations. "No. You don't 'follow the Scripture', you follow what clergy or you yourself deduced.
and all that" was my general attitude.
But then how can I know what I do is right? how much is open to interpretation? can you really use scripture to say anything you want? what makes a stretch a stretch in interpretation? What is the True, Objective Morality in any World Religion in all of it's diversity?

Eventually I decided to fall comfortably back on a tradition of my choice, A tradition within my religion I believe to hold it's true path. An Objective Morality on which I and others can be judged. And that I can accept for the most part.
Might have been lazy of me. but It makes sense.

Like any belief system concerned with a set Morals, Religion offers certainty in Morality in part. Many, Secular ideologies can act exactly the same. Some Fascist and Nationalist ideologies in particular.
But religion does act to "control" in the sense of giving a general set of Moral codes. At east in its "worldly" sense
. There's nothing wrong with that. Except maybe for people that are scared of authority.

[Lady Scylla]

Me and my parents watched The Witch the other day and naturally God came up and, by extension, my atheism, because my parents are better interrogators than the Gestapo.

I actually seemed to stumble my God-fearing parents for once... But that's not a good thing, IMO.

In fact... They seemed DESPERATE to validate their belief in God through all of my logic and facts and skepticism, to the point that I was so uncomfortable watching them fall apart that I changed the subject as quickly as I could.

In particular, symbolism was the topic on hand, specifically religious symbolism. I went from explaining to them how Black Phillip was an avatar of the Eldritch, similarly to Shub-Niggurath and her motherly attributes, to upside-down crosses. My parents were vehemently of the opinion that upside-down crosses were Satanic, purely because it's what their Catholic upbringing had taught them... Of course, even Catholics that aren't well-read will know that the upside-down cross is actually a symbol of St. Peter, and is only Satanic in the minds of those ill-informed through popular culture.

This brought what I will now call Shub-Niggurath's Paradox, or Cthulhu's Paradox for those of you not as fluent in the Cthulhu Mythos, to the forefront of my mind: is it worth turning people away from a religion if it means them loosing their moral inhibitions?

That is, is it worth having people finding their own grasp of morality without them breaking down along the way after having abandoned the baggage but cohesive former morals?

This is a common fallacy brought up by religious apologists: "morality is not possible without a God and/or religion". That's patently false, of course. If there is no God, and religion is false, we have indeed constructed a morality, just one muddied by superstition and gullibility. If there is a God, it's influence is rarely felt in the world anyway.

Religions rarely account for every single facet of reality and morality, from abortion to the consumption of drugs to euthanasia to murder in self-defense to bionics to cloning. What a lot of people don't realize is that it is ourselves that form a lot of the morality in our daily lives through our own personal feelings. Psychologists believe it is due to our maturation that our moral views change, and even that morals are an evolutionary adaptation that can be observed in other animals besides humans.

More disturbing than even my parents loosing their religion, literally and figuratively, is the horror stories I hear of desperate apologists claiming that, if their God were proven to not exist, they would indeed become murderers, rapists, thieves, or some abomination they can think of.

In my opinion... I suppose I'm a big fat baby, but I have avoided becoming a moral monster due to my atheism. If anything, I was more of a moral monster when I was a God-fearing Catholic. I was confused, desperate, depressed, accepting of my consignment to damnation... Until the logic bomb fell on me and I decided that I wasn't going to let my express ticket to afterlife Hell or current life Hell affect my behavior. My taste for violence, drugs and destruction dissipated around the same time, which also coincided with my arrival on NationStates. Which is why people who find hope in religion baffle me, especially considering that they often seem the least in need of a religion to keep their secret aspirations towards genocide and human intestine sampling in check.

So, to clarify the point of this thread: do religions control people? And if so, should they continue to be allowed to control people? Are some people just monsters that must be observed by an omnipotent bro-dude while bribed with eternal happiness and coerced with eternal punishment? Or do religions simply give people a purpose and hope where they would seen neither otherwise in this crazy universe of ours?

Also, is this thread too meta-religious? Also, is being meta-religious possible/intellectually disingenuous/hypocritical?

The latter is rhetorical.

For a long time, I was largely on the fence about this issue. I was less inclined to agree with the more militant secularists (the antitheists) sects of atheism, that people should forsake their religious beliefs. Overtime, I've grown slightly more tolerable of those opinions, without the venom of the groups that perpetrate it, but I'm seeing religion more as a delusional escape and a dogmatic restraint that's holding us, as a species, back.

I've talked about the subject periodically, with unsettling truths as I've come to display them. Firstly, humans are monstrous. This is surprisingly hard for some people to swallow, that for much of the misgivings of the world, we are capable of very cruel things. That realisation can really hit you if you look at war photographs, or experience the conflict first hand. The fact that the mangled person you're looking at is this way because of human greed, or disregard for life, is very unsettling.

Now, it doesn't mean that everyone is an evil bloodthirsty creature, but the fact is that we're capable of horribly atrocious acts. We usually depict monsters as creatures with inhuman qualities, drooling and thrashing teeth, grotesque visages and a cunning lust for agony when in reality, they wear faces of your neighbour and people you know or see on TV.

When it comes to Morality, it's nothing more than a social consensus that was agreed upon, listing certain things as unacceptable. This view-point shifts from culture to culture, producing discrepancies in an ever globalising world. For many, God or Gods represent a wishful delusion, of both an end to suffering and pain we experience in this world, while providing a meaning to life, and also, in the case of Christianity, a punishment or end for those that are 'evil'.

If you pry religion out of the picture, the moral obligation suddenly seems useless. The realisation that this is the life you have, and that these bad things happen, and there's no resolution at the end of the tunnel except for simply ceasing to exist become troubling to grasp.

Myself, I'm an absurdist, I don't believe there's any meaning to life. This is very possibly all you have, and at the end of the road, that's it. Those kind of thoughts, however, and for many are something that just can't be swallowed.

With Morality, there's a purpose to life and an expectation of reward at the end of the road. People who believe that if you don't ascribe to religion, then you can't be moral, are people who have failed to learn how to take responsibility for their actions. It's far easier to vest one's self into the 'plan' of a supreme-being, and 'blame' that plan for why you do good or bad things than take responsibility.

The problem is that, these people view Religion as a security blanket. That without it, life is meaningless, there's no need to go on, and that there's no retribution awaiting the cruel and monstrous people in this world. It's entirely unfathomable to some, that Religion isn't necessary in order to not commit horrible crimes.

And interestingly enough, those that try the road of Atheism, can't always handle such complex questions about their existence without that security blanket. These people return to religion, having “found it” as you stated, and become even more devout than they were to begin with.

Just imagine this, you've casted off the chains of something that has long held you in line, or you believe it has, and discovered that Life is cruel, the world is a cold, dark place, and the Universe doesn't give a single damn about you. We've people blowing each other up, we've people murdering for pleasure, causing grief and pain. Horrible diseases wiping out entire families, watching mothers cry over the bodies of their dead children on TV, drugs and alcohol take lives, people stuck in an unending loop of getting up, having breakfast, going to work, coming home, having dinner, and going to bed.

And at the end? Poof. You're dead, thanks for playing. Suddenly, your very existence seems meagre and irrelevant in a world that appears to be in total chaos. “I am important!” quoth the dust-speck. You're literally nothing more than a tiny flame among a sea of flames who was snuffed out, and the world didn't even dim or shift. You get an existence of a hundred years, if you're lucky, and then that's it.

Many people, I'd say the majority of people, cannot handle that. That is shattering, depressing, and a major blow to a person. The simple fact that you're not owed anything in this world, and that it couldn't care any less about your tiny existence, and wouldn't even shrug if it ended. That's why people cling to religion. We're afraid. The funny thing, is that we are so afraid that we will easily convince ourselves that certain things are righteous, and must be done in order to enforce that status quo.

Anyone that challenges the illusion, is a threat to that person's definition of their existence, and must be eliminated. It's hilariously hypocritical. It's Plato's Cave to the line.

And as I said before, people struggle with the notion that there are those that can live functioning moral lives without religion. How dare you be capable of happiness, and functioning, while we sit here, hunkered down with our prayer books and cry with the saints for God's resolution. Yet strangely, God never answers.

I've seen the religious go so far to argue that without God, there's no meaning to life, and thus no point to live it. Suicide was the first, and only thing they could come up with. The world was far too painful for them to handle in such a hypothetical. In my eyes, they're correct. It is not humanly possible to determine the meaning to life, it's meaningless, but that doesn't mean you can't give it meaning.

When I attempted suicide when I was younger (Of which I wasn't religious then either), the “last” feeling I felt was fear. Up until committing the act, my mind was set on the fact that I was going to end my life. I would die. The moment I tried, I felt nothing but bone-chilling fear, fear that I could've died. It's an almost indescribable and surreal feeling that haunts you. It was a very strange thing to feel to the point that I lied on my floor in the dark for hours.

Just because life seems meaningless without religion, doesn't mean that you can't give it a meaning yourself. Atheists are good examples (of which it's the 3rd largest ascribed to belief system in the world, numbering the billions) that people can live a life and still be moral. You just have to learn how to pick yourself up, and take responsibility instead of blaming it on guys that metaphysically dwell above and below you.

The world is an awful place, but it doesn't mean you have to be. There's nothing more perfect than a perseverance to rebel against alleged meaningless. I helped the homeless today, why? Because I'm a good person versus I helped the homeless today, why? Because I'm a good Christian.

So to answer your questions;

Religions do control people, and people willingly let them. They are used as a distraction, and a definition of what their life means to build an illusion that they can satisfy themselves with, it gives them hope in a world they see as agonizing. I don't believe now, that they should continue – many religions were created and formed in times that are now out of touch with the modern world and its reality, and have become an ever-increasing restraint on human progress as a species. People will do atrocious things, they always have, they always will. No amount of religion, laws, or punishment will ever change that. It's just a fact of life.

[Siburria]

We are nothing but specks in a self contained universe, filled with delusions supported by society as much as we do so ourselves.

[Camicon]

As long as you're not shitting on my lawn, or anyone else's, then go believe in whatever you want. I might judge you if I think it's exceptionally stupid, but I see no reason to stop you.

[Atomic Utopia]

The most profitable commodity in the world isn't oil, gold, diamonds or information. It's fear.

[snipitty snip snip]

Well you could claim that fear is grounded in information. People will change their minds and fears based on what news they are fed, what they think is true, and what decides what is true? The information they receive is what does that. If they are told that say clowns are evil monstrosities waiting to kill millions or some similarly outrageous thing, and such a concept is repeated a sufficient number of times and with sufficient conviction, the people will start to believe the matter. Thus they will likewise move to alter their situation out of a fear bred from the control of information. In my mind it is not the solider that inspires a national defense, nor is it the politician that creates a yearning for some service, but the propagandist that alters both, but the propagandist that makes the solider stand in the national defense, that ignites a yearning for some good or another in the general population.

Thus I believe it is not fear that drives society, but information, for peoples decisions are only as good as the information that they are fed.

[The Rich Port]

I was just having a similar conversation with some Christian friends. Part of some Baptist fellowship I somehow ran into.

It's weird how people think that without religion individuals have the capability to become moral. Misguided people in religions can become as terrible as they fear more often than not.
No matter how much I disagree with the notion that "God/Religion can be disproved with logic" I still recognize that Atheists can have a sense of Morality. Though in the western world, much of that morality comes from values grounded in religious thought.

I've struggled with "Moral Objectivism". The "God's Law" everyone claims to follow really being different interpretations. "No. You don't 'follow the Scripture', you follow what clergy or you yourself deduced.
and all that" was my general attitude.
But then how can I know what I do is right? how much is open to interpretation? can you really use scripture to say anything you want? what makes a stretch a stretch in interpretation? What is the True, Objective Morality in any World Religion in all of it's diversity?

Eventually I decided to fall comfortably back on a tradition of my choice, A tradition within my religion I believe to hold it's true path. An Objective Morality on which I and others can be judged. And that I can accept for the most part.
Might have been lazy of me. but It makes sense.

Like any belief system concerned with a set Morals, Religion offers certainty in Morality in part. Many, Secular ideologies can act exactly the same. Some Fascist and Nationalist ideologies in particular.
But religion does act to "control" in the sense of giving a general set of Moral codes. At east in its "worldly" sense
. There's nothing wrong with that. Except maybe for people that are scared of authority.

In my own experience, apatheism is the norm rather than the exception.

The Catholic Church was not my primary source of morality, it was Jesus Christ. Indeed, after the pedophile scandals, the Church and Catholicism became abhorrent to me, which is when I began to look for other religions to practice in, along with quite a few other Catholics.

While Jesus is a big influence on me... He is hardly a God to me. Am I still to be indebted to religion? That it chose Jesus's words and then twisted them to whatever the religion suited them to be?

Like Trotskylvania said, if anything, religions are more likely to be avenues of appeal towards atrocity.

And like Sidhicum said, they're usually powers reserved for religious leaders to proclaim.

Whether it's kings or presidents or ISIL, it doesn't matter as long as someone is claiming divine mandate.

[Imperium Sidhicum]

I think it is necessary. Most people simply aren't ready or willing to accept the responsibility that comes with true freedom, and must hence be controlled. Religion is one of the ways to do that, taking control of their basest fears and directing them in a productive direction.

Some of the greatest artworks in history have been inspired by religion, as have some of the worst atrocities. Religion is fundamentally just a tool, neither good nor bad in itself - it depends wholly on who wields it, much like a hammer can equally be used to build a house or commit murder.

I don't follow your point.

You seem to be basing your point on the assumption humans are only capable of feeling fear and not doing things out of... Things other than fear.

I think a very small number of people are so fearful of the unknown of freedom...

OK, you might have a point, but...

I'm just going to go hang some Cthulhu pictures and banners if you don't mind.

Ah, but seriously, I think you are being too pessimistic.

And, which raises some of the latter points of the thread: do you follow a religion? Believing in these things, wouldn't it be disingenuous of you to espouse these beliefs knowing or believing yourself they aren't true?

You can't just say humans are beyond saving. That's too... Easy to prove. >:X

Fear of freedom is really the psychological desire to follow an authority rather than decide for oneself. Very few people actually have the capacity to make moral decisions of their own, uninfluenced by any authorities other than themselves. These people are what Nietzsche called "masters", as opposed to "slaves" who are morally and intellectually too weak and/or lazy to create their own laws and mores, and hence prefer to just follow an established set of rules created for them by someone else.

Religion is such a set of rules created by a few masters to get the masses of slaves to do their bidder - not out of some malice or inherent cruelty, but simply because those masses are incapable of creating such things and instead themselves choose to follow rather than lead.

[The Rich Port]

As long as you're not shitting on my lawn, or anyone else's, then go believe in whatever you want. I might judge you if I think it's exceptionally stupid, but I see no reason to stop you.

Hate to break it to you Camicon, but someone is always shitting on your lawn.

Schrodinger's Shit. It's a quantum shit. It exists while also not existing.

Also... Literally or figuratively?

The way I see it, God himself shit on my lawn by making Adam and Eve impossibly moronic.

If he can't do better than a dozy big-dick dope and his tipsy cow of a girlfriend, what kind of a God is he?

He has a grasp of character development on the same level as a sitcom writer.

[Jochistan]

I was just having a similar conversation with some Christian friends. Part of some Baptist fellowship I somehow ran into.

It's weird how people think that without religion individuals have the capability to become moral. Misguided people in religions can become as terrible as they fear more often than not.
No matter how much I disagree with the notion that "God/Religion can be disproved with logic" I still recognize that Atheists can have a sense of Morality. Though in the western world, much of that morality comes from values grounded in religious thought.

I've struggled with "Moral Objectivism". The "God's Law" everyone claims to follow really being different interpretations. "No. You don't 'follow the Scripture', you follow what clergy or you yourself deduced.
and all that" was my general attitude.
But then how can I know what I do is right? how much is open to interpretation? can you really use scripture to say anything you want? what makes a stretch a stretch in interpretation? What is the True, Objective Morality in any World Religion in all of it's diversity?

Eventually I decided to fall comfortably back on a tradition of my choice, A tradition within my religion I believe to hold it's true path. An Objective Morality on which I and others can be judged. And that I can accept for the most part.
Might have been lazy of me. but It makes sense.

Like any belief system concerned with a set Morals, Religion offers certainty in Morality in part. Many, Secular ideologies can act exactly the same. Some Fascist and Nationalist ideologies in particular.
But religion does act to "control" in the sense of giving a general set of Moral codes. At east in its "worldly" sense
. There's nothing wrong with that. Except maybe for people that are scared of authority.

In my own experience, apatheism is the norm rather than the exception.

The Catholic Church was not my primary source of morality, it was Jesus Christ. Indeed, after the pedophile scandals, the Church and Catholicism became abhorrent to me, which is when I began to look for other religions to practice in, along with quite a few other Catholics.

While Jesus is a big influence on me... He is hardly a God to me. Am I still to be indebted to religion? That it chose Jesus's words and then twisted them to whatever the religion suited them to be?

Like Trotskylvania said, if anything, religions are more likely to be avenues of appeal towards atrocity.

And like Sidhicum said, they're usually powers reserved for religious leaders to proclaim.

Whether it's kings or presidents or ISIL, it doesn't matter as long as someone is claiming divine mandate.

Except it does matter. In the eyes of critics (i.e. everyone who disagreed with them in the first place and maybe some defectors) "mandate of God" doesn't cut it. Everyone who has said they have had God's permission to do something were refuted by others and usually only further riled up those who already agreed with them or would come to.

[Shaggai]

Trust me, there is plenty of morality here. The important thing to remember is that not all moralities are human.

[The Rich Port]

In my own experience, apatheism is the norm rather than the exception.

The Catholic Church was not my primary source of morality, it was Jesus Christ. Indeed, after the pedophile scandals, the Church and Catholicism became abhorrent to me, which is when I began to look for other religions to practice in, along with quite a few other Catholics.

While Jesus is a big influence on me... He is hardly a God to me. Am I still to be indebted to religion? That it chose Jesus's words and then twisted them to whatever the religion suited them to be?

Like Trotskylvania said, if anything, religions are more likely to be avenues of appeal towards atrocity.

And like Sidhicum said, they're usually powers reserved for religious leaders to proclaim.

Whether it's kings or presidents or ISIL, it doesn't matter as long as someone is claiming divine mandate.

Except it does matter. In the eyes of critics (i.e. everyone who disagreed with them in the first place and maybe some defectors) "mandate of God" doesn't cut it. Everyone who has said they have had God's permission to do something were refuted by others and usually only further riled up those who already agreed with them or would come to.

It's almost like God is made up or some shit.

Ah, but seriously... That's the problem, is the divine mandate.

Because humans have terrible memories and forget that divine mandate is bullshit.

From the Kings of Europe to the Sultans of Arabia to George Bush to ISIL.

Then again, people also forget that the world is always going to end according to doomsday cults and they've been wrong for 10,000 years.

[Imperium Sidhicum]

The most profitable commodity in the world isn't oil, gold, diamonds or information. It's fear.

[snipitty snip snip]

Well you could claim that fear is grounded in information. People will change their minds and fears based on what news they are fed, what they think is true, and what decides what is true? The information they receive is what does that. If they are told that say clowns are evil monstrosities waiting to kill millions or some similarly outrageous thing, and such a concept is repeated a sufficient number of times and with sufficient conviction, the people will start to believe the matter. Thus they will likewise move to alter their situation out of a fear bred from the control of information. In my mind it is not the solider that inspires a national defense, nor is it the politician that creates a yearning for some service, but the propagandist that alters both, but the propagandist that makes the solider stand in the national defense, that ignites a yearning for some good or another in the general population.

Thus I believe it is not fear that drives society, but information, for peoples decisions are only as good as the information that they are fed.

I think it's the intended end product that matters, not so much the material that it is made of.

You too acknowledge that fear is the product of information. However, it is ultimately fear that empowers some to control others, the product of a particular kind of information, rather than information itself.

My argument that information in itself isn't that end product, that driving force, is the fact that information is open to interpretation. Much like crude oil can be refined into petrol to serve as fuel, plastic to serve as building material, or napalm to burn cities, information too can be refined into various end results, fear being one of them.

It is not necessarily a negative kind of fear. Some people are driven to obey authorities by fear of punishment for failure to. Others are equally driven by fear of being seen as bad persons by their fellows. Yet others are driven by fear of God's wrath, and still more others are driven by fear of their collective failing to attain it's potential. All those fears are the product of information, but what they all have in common is that they involve fear, the very basest instinct of all living beings.

What is fear, really? It is ultimately the desire to avoid negative consequences that could be detrimental to one's survival. Fear in itself doesn't have a positive or negative value, it just is, and someone who has mastered the manipulation of the diverse forms of fear has command over their very being of all under him - the manipulation of their survival instinct.

Hence I maintain that fear, rather than information, is the ultimate driving force behind everything, information being the source of fear, but not the desired end product that actually empowers control.

[Salus Maior]

I think I covered that in my own post but thanks for putting it in more cohesive words and expanding on the point.

But you avoided the question of the thread... Though I don't blame you, I am quite eldritch.

Do you think religion is necessary?

To a certain degree, I think it is, but nowhere near a degree that we need keep it, like a lamprey suckling on a tumor, shrinking it and keeping it from being bloated with blood but never really solving the problem.

Religion is literally like opium, in that you need to wean people of it lest they have a catatonic seizure, or, in philo-psychological terms, go insane from the revelation.

My God, what the hell did religion do to you to make you think that?

I've known religious people all my life, and none of them have "gone insane" or "live in fear" because of it, quite the opposite actually. Nor does religion condone the practices you've found abhorrent in the Catholic Church. The people who are responsible for said atrocities are still very much in the wrong according to Catholic teaching and morality, regardless of where they are in the hierarchy. The problem is not in the teachings or belief in religion but the corruption of the governing parties of the Catholic Church itself, which is not the same thing. That's like saying no one should identify as an American or believe in values espoused by our country because we had Bush as a president at some point (or possibly Trump in the near future... *shudders*).

As far as I've seen, people believe in religion not because they fear judgement from an unseen being. or feel like they have to in order to be moral, but because it gives a profound sense of meaning, because of a sense that their religion is profoundly right or true in some way. And for those who have that sense, no argument can make them abandon what they believe, nor should it. Are there bad elements in religious groups or in the hierarchy of some organized religions? Yes, and they should be fought. And more often than not, those who sincerely believe in their religion will lead the fight against such groups. In debate and elsewhere.

[Jochistan]

I think I covered that in my own post but thanks for putting it in more cohesive words and expanding on the point.

But you avoided the question of the thread... Though I don't blame you, I am quite eldritch.

Do you think religion is necessary?

To a certain degree, I think it is, but nowhere near a degree that we need keep it, like a lamprey suckling on a tumor, shrinking it and keeping it from being bloated with blood but never really solving the problem.

Religion is literally like opium, in that you need to wean people of it lest they have a catatonic seizure, or, in philo-psychological terms, go insane from the revelation.

My God, what the hell did religion do to you to make you think that?

I've known religious people all my life, and none of them have "gone insane" or "live in fear" because of it, quite the opposite actually. Nor does religion condone the practices you've found abhorrent in the Catholic Church. The people who are responsible for said atrocities are still very much in the wrong according to Catholic teaching and morality, regardless of where they are in the hierarchy. The problem is not in the teachings or belief in religion but the corruption of the governing parties of the Catholic Church itself, which is not the same thing. That's like saying no one should identify as an American or believe in values espoused by our country because we had Bush as a president at some point (or possibly Trump in the near future... *shudders*).

As far as I've seen, people believe in religion not because they fear judgement from an unseen being. or feel like they have to in order to be moral, but because it gives a profound sense of meaning, because of a sense that their religion is profoundly right or true in some way. And for those who have that sense, no argument can make them abandon what they believe, nor should it. Are there bad elements in religious groups or in the hierarchy of some organized religions? Yes, and they should be fought. And more often than not, those who sincerely believe in their religion will lead the fight against such groups. In debate and elsewhere.

This. And people blaming the religions for corrupting people into doing terrible things really aren't giving much credit to individuals for people that call themselves humanists.

[Camicon]

As long as you're not shitting on my lawn, or anyone else's, then go believe in whatever you want. I might judge you if I think it's exceptionally stupid, but I see no reason to stop you.

Hate to break it to you Camicon, but someone is always shitting on your lawn.

Schrodinger's Shit. It's a quantum shit. It exists while also not existing.

Also... Literally or figuratively?
*snip*

Yes.

[6Marion9]

up until 3rd grade I really just viewed God as this dick who never gave me what I wanted when I asked. After that, I realized religion was more politics than anything else, so I played nice with the catholic school boys and religion teachers and become a student minister thingy.

Being Cultured + Understanding = Well Rounded Nice Guy

Well Rounded Nice Guy (or perceived to be well rounded nice guy) > Talking about atheism

So yea, religion controls people. But if people are stupid enough to be controlled by it, why not play it up to use for good and or your well being.

[Salus Maior]

up until 3rd grade I really just viewed God as this dick who never gave me what I wanted when I asked. After that, I realized religion was more politics than anything else, so I played nice with the catholic school boys and religion teachers and become a student minister thingy.

Being Cultured + Understanding = Well Rounded Nice Guy

Well Rounded Nice Guy (or perceived to be well rounded nice guy) > Talking about atheism

So yea, religion controls people. But if people are stupid enough to be controlled by it, why not play it up to use for good and or your well being.

So.... You started with an incredibly wrong and inaccurate view of God and religion, and then came to believe in a very jaded and also ultimately flawed view?

Anyway, that's besides the point.

We're all controlled by something, Marion. And even then, does it count as "being controlled" if you choose to apply yourself to it? Not every religious person starts out in a religious household, and even those that do don't necessary take it seriously for their whole life until they make a choice.

[Quokkastan]

I'm not entirely sure why we're bringing Lovecraft into this. I assume it's just for the joy of bringing Lovecraft into anything. But it's a clumsy way to make the point.

Actually, the best stated version of this arguement I've heard came from (odd as it may sound) Dan Dennett:
https://youtu.be/BvJZQwy9dvE?t=24m11s

[6Marion9]

up until 3rd grade I really just viewed God as this dick who never gave me what I wanted when I asked. After that, I realized religion was more politics than anything else, so I played nice with the catholic school boys and religion teachers and become a student minister thingy.

Being Cultured + Understanding = Well Rounded Nice Guy

Well Rounded Nice Guy (or perceived to be well rounded nice guy) > Talking about atheism

So yea, religion controls people. But if people are stupid enough to be controlled by it, why not play it up to use for good and or your well being.

So.... You started with an incredibly wrong and inaccurate view of God and religion, and then came to believe in a very jaded and also ultimately flawed view?

Anyway, that's besides the point.

We're all controlled by something, Marion. And even then, does it count as "being controlled" if you choose to apply yourself to it? Not every religious person starts out in a religious household, and even those that do don't necessary take it seriously for their whole life until they make a choice.

Well no, people pray for things right? Well, I prayed for stuff because I deserved it. Anyway, that doesn't matter no matter how salty I am for not being able to kiss Suzy by the water fountain.

As for jaded, I think not. Just positive amounts of skepticism, with the backing of socially analysing people.

I agree that it's stupid to believe you have complete control of your life. However, I also believe it's stupid to subject yourself to pointless limitations with no real factual groundings. If people are happy with not being able to eat meat on Fridays, whatever. I think it's dumb, but the only thing dumber is to argue with them about it. Less Machiavellians can only be a good thing anyway.