are you an atheist?

what is greed, pride, or fear but aspects of religion?

lol whut I can't even

maybe you should start by telling us what your definition of "religion" is

what is greed, pride, or fear but aspects of religion?

congratulations on asking the dumbest question ever written on ILX

Some social ills would be eliminated w/o religion

Ok then! Isn't that a good enough reason to have beef w/it?

Pizza is orginally from Naples so I tend to think of putting sardines on pizza as far less blasphematory than putting on fucking pineapple.

hm... i take back what i said about pizza toppings. that shit can escalate to religious warfare pretty easily.

Your line of thinking strikes me as "ok, we can cure your cancer, but you're still gonna have arthritis, IBS, GERD, depression, htn, and gout" "ugh fuck it, don't bother with the cancer cure"

all of humanity's collective irrational behavior being impossible without religion, i stand by though.

Without ignorance. That's surely what you mean.

all of humanity's collective irrational behavior being impossible without religion

have you heard of this guy Stalin. Or Mao maybe. or, I dunno, capitalism.

stalin, mao, capitalism could all easily be deities in some neil gaiman story.

If anything, religion is an effect of humanity's collective irrational behavior, not a cause.

I think I became an atheist so young because all of the traditions I encountered seemed very likely to portray a God made in our image rather than the other way around, because there seemed to be a lot of special pleading and bad faith arguments and because the glaring hypocrisy was the only thing that interrupted the tedium of going to church.

The first step to solving a problem is a correct understanding of the problem. I think philip still needs some work on this step before he succeeds in solving all our problems.

The moral argument for religion is either faintly patronizing or irrelevant. If William James had his way, we'd be religious to be happier or better ppl, and that's fine, but it has nothing to do with real faith.

it's a problem to be managed. it's not a solvable problem. and in your heart of hearts would you want it to be solved problem? without religion there'd be no disneyland, and most people prefer nolan's batman to camp.

Your line of thinking strikes me as "ok, we can cure your cancer, but you're still gonna have arthritis, IBS, GERD, depression, htn, and gout" "ugh fuck it, don't bother with the cancer cure"

I see what you're saying here, but I don't think that's an accurate parallel ... religion as manifestation of inherent human nature and how that nature is "modular" (can use different tools to accomplish same/similar ends), vs. the linear progression of science.

Say with science, pharm companies cure illnesses with their medicines ... great! Then marketing comes along, prescibes ineffective/dangerous medicine to people, and these people die ... lives ended, families shattered when science meets human motivation and imperfection. It seems like science has killed more US citizens for ill/misguided motives in recent years than religion has within our borders (pharmaceuticals, industrials, manufacturing, energy technology, etc.).

ack! my last post sounds too condescending. still think it is true, but really, I just mean, really. Shape up, aimless.

social utilitarian atheists are maddening, its so obviously a replacement of one ideology w another/reaction formation, the need for hope is exactly the same as christians' but the vision is even more impoverished and boring if that's possible. *barfs*

xp phil D. kind of otm, the best religions are at least aware of what runs deep in the psyche and are kind of ambivalent about it. rationality evangelists are like... but statistics and the science industry, the great hope of humanity! i am going to tell myself these lies in order to ignore what constitutes real exploitation and brutality!

"Then marketing comes along,"

just because snake oil salesmen and faith healers have dressed themselves up as big pharma doesn't mean they are no longer of the cloth.

the negative aspects of religion stem from tribalism, us vs them thinking (not a coincident that the most virulent strains/perversions of religion today are located in areas of the globe where tribalism is also strong). symptom vs cause like Phil D said.

i think tribalism is a good thing inasmuch as its opposite is alienation, is it possible to imagine a global kinship? *sings imagine*

us vs them thinking requires a unifying divine mandate to sustain itself. religion isn't a symptom, it is fuel.

so chimps require unifying divine mandate to fuel their us vs them thinking?

ape shall not kill ape

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGMuIyBK5P4

religion isn't a symptom, it is fuel.

it's both

The Island of Dr. Krauthammer -- "the law is this: One God Good, No Gods Bad"

I think if you see religion as primarily or only an "immunitary" function that separates the saved from the damned, us from them, etc then yeah you're gonna lie a lot of problems at the feet of religion. (but oh the irony of "it's those religious people's fault!") i happen to see those immunitary functions at work in any number of discourses though.

however, the explicit creeds of Christianity, for instance, say pretty much the opposite. but that's not even the point. the point that these kinds of argument against religion seem to be blind to or willfully ignorant of how heterogeneous religious belief can be. as a social system, it actually provides one of the very few means of thinking against the "rationally administered" or technocratic/capitalist/consumerist society after the collapse of marxism.

I guess I am an agnostic, I mean I don't think you go anywhere when you die. As a child, I used to worry about heaven too much, like how boring it might be. But I still go to church and study the Bible because I ...get something out of it. I think American society is increasingly anti-religious. A lot of people go to church for the social benefits, what they truly believe I don't know. I don't like the cynicism of it.

I wish reincarnation were so. My grandmother was Catholic and believed in it.

stalin, mao, capitalism could all easily be deities in some neil gaiman story.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, September 24, 2012 11:31 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a problem to be managed. it's not a solvable problem. and in your heart of hearts would you want it to be solved problem? without religion there'd be no disneyland, and most people prefer nolan's batman to camp.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, September 24, 2012 11:35 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just because snake oil salesmen and faith healers have dressed themselves up as big pharma doesn't mean they are no longer of the cloth.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, September 24, 2012 11:40 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

v high quality work here. gaiman, nolan, big pharma, really tying it all together.

'maybe you should start by telling us what your definition of "religion" is'

I compare most things to Abrahamic religions and see if they match up fairly closely. Even under these narrow parameters, things like Maoism, Stalinism, and Capitalism totally qualify, and the fact that adherents to one sect are persecuted by members of another shouldn't be surprising.

Of course the presence of Christians, say, in North Korea, are on balance probably a good thing, but if an NGO had the finesse to do so, it might be worth spending effort to moderate their influence even at this stage.

i'm guess I'm technically agnostic because it's not really possible at this point to prove that gods don't exist. if there actually was something like that that existed, i honestly think that the most likely scenario is that the god or gods are totally indifferent.

but religion will always exist and will always be popular because people are understandably frightened about death, and the thought that your atoms gradually disperse back into the universe is not satisfying. the only way that oill ever change is if humanity figured out how to sustain "life" indefinitely (say, by creating a copy of a person's brain/memories onto a chip or whatever that then "lives" virtually thereafter, or whatever post-singularity sci-fi splooge that you want to substitute in).

things like Maoism, Stalinism, and Capitalism totally qualify

you are insane

of course god exists, look around you, look at all he's done

You seem to be overlooking buddhism, hinduism, sihkism, animism, jainism, shintoism, ba'hai, or zoroastrianism in your definition of religion. As for Abrahamic religions, how closely do unitarian universalism or quakerism match up with your conception of Abrahamic religions?

no no religion started with Abraham and they're all the same do you see. also things that are religions actually ARE religions. case closed.

aren't religions that is

I'm more familiar with Abrahamic religions so that is what I use as a basis for comparison, not that other religions don't count. I'm saying that even within those constraints, why won't you let Mao and Stalin and the Invisible Hand into the pantheon?

let's see Mao and Stalin were both atheists whose core ideologies were little more than self-aggrandizing justifications for the concentration of absolute power within their own hands, which resulted in entire populations being starved, imprisoned, tortured, murdered etc. don't really see anything Abrahamic there.

also capitalism /= "Invisible Hand"

Sounds like the God of Abraham to me...

re: JHWH being an atheist -- was "thou shalt have no gods but me" an expression of "there aren't any gods but me, so you're just wasting your time" or "there are other gods but I don't want you hanging with them. I'm literally a jealous god"

you are lol why am I bothering

I'm more familiar with Abrahamic religions so that is what I use as a basis for comparison, not that other religions don't count.

Perhaps a familiarity with other religions might modify your opinions concerning the nature of all religions, many of which you seem not to know much about. And once you start discovering exceptions to your absolutes, they begin to look far less absolute and far more contingent.

i can't believe u guys did this whole clusterfuck w/out me! :(

we all realize by now that Philip is trolling, right

i would like to participate tho

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Painting_of_David_Hume.jpg

I've met irl people who thought and spoke as philip has been, and they were quite earnest in their opinions. they were also somewhat limited in their knowlege base concerning religion, but then, most religious people are, too.

did they post on reddit?