Seriously, why the fuck do we still have monotheistic religions when now they are banning adopting for ALL couples who are not married in a state. They say this is to STOP THE GAY AGENDA LOL when they fail to realize many straight couples refuse to get married due to legal issues this may bring for the future.
Since when the fuck did America become the Christian Empire, and when the fuck can we expect this shithole country to go over and die for being fucking assholes? This shit pisses me the fuck off.
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Anonymous2009-01-01 22:12
2010 it wil cease to exist.
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Anonymous2009-01-02 1:29
>>2
I seriously doubt that religion will cease to exist by 2010.
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Anonymous2009-01-02 6:02
We live with disgusting people on a dirty, ugly planet in a cold and dead universe. Some people cope with this fact by believing in a God, others take drugs or kill themselves.
Why do religions exist?
Cos too many ppl can't (or don't want to) think for themselves.
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Anonymous2009-01-11 13:43
Religions exist to keep mans ego in check.
When man starts thinking he is God, real bad things start to happen...
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Anonymous2009-01-11 15:43
religion is good, its how politicians use it to favor bad agendas like jingoism
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Anonymous2009-01-11 21:34
Religion is many things, it is ignorant to view it in just one way. The marxist viewpoint many people here espouse is partially true but it doesn't explain everything.
Religion is more the culmination of all the major elements of a society into one package which people are indoctrinated into. On one hand it makes people less militant against tyrannical rulers, on the other the church was a major force in stabilising countries and preventing continuous warfare that would have prevented the establishment of large settlements and the development of basic industries such as ship building, windmills, printing presses and so forth.
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Anonymous2009-01-12 2:43
religion should be kept out of politics. nuff said
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Anonymous2009-01-12 11:50
Religion was created to keep peons and other majorities "in check". It would be hard to keep a population under control if they did not share common values. But with religion, promising a superb afterlife if one is a good citizen, it keeps the average joe from just going around breaking laws and shit.
Basically, religion was created to allow the rich to rule the poor more efficiently.
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Anonymous2009-01-13 1:46
>>11
It may have been used by "the rich" to control the poor at one point, but it didn't start that way. 12000 years ago there were not top hats and monocles, most parts of the world didn't even have access to cuban cigars even if they had been invented by then. You also ignore the fact that the medieval church often rivalled the aristrocracy in wealth, in fact it made the rich poorer.
Admit you are wrong please. Thanks.
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Anonymous2009-01-13 15:34
Religion is systematized wishful thinking.
The human condition, objectively, sucks. People wish there were one or more powerful beings in the sky who cared about them.
That's where religion comes from.
/thread
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Anonymous2009-01-13 22:41
>>13
God and the afterlife is just a small part of religion.
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Anonymous2009-01-15 11:57
I HATE FAGS AND RELIGION
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Anonymous2009-01-15 21:31
Government of any form is essentially a religion -- you submit yourself to a higher power, they give you a bunch of laws to follow, and if you're caught breaking them you get punished. The only significant difference is in who you submit yourself to. Given a choice between George W Bush or the omnipotent omniscient all-creator of the entire universe, most people just pick whichever side makes more sense.
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Anonymous2009-01-15 23:15
Once upon a time, religion did something good for us. However, that's so long ago that I forget what.
Nowadays, all religon does is fuck up the whole goddamn planet by turning assholes (esp those with too many guns) into even bigger assholes ("God says we're the master race"), give them something to hide behind ("Cos GOD says so!"), and also gives them some nifty ways to silence critics ("You contradict GOD?!? That's HERESY!").
It also creates useful idiots ("Oh but hose aren't REAL Christians"), and so the real problem goes unsolved.
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Anonymous2009-01-16 15:11
>>too many guns
Impossible. That's MADNESS.
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Anonymous2009-01-16 23:14
Religion started as a series of beliefs about the natural world that explained things, for example what happened to the sun at night, why people got sick and how you helped them, etc. Over time it became a way to unify the tribes, which in turn brought greater security as well as increasing the gene pool. This was tied into our evolution as a species and in certain ways our brains are wired for it (read The God Delusion) since religion, especially organized religion, had huge advantages. People who were religious were the ones who survived and reproduced.
As a result it's pretty much hardwired into our brains and our cultures. Religious training can be overcome, but it's difficult for some people, my sister became very depressed after realizing that there's no such thing as God last year, and it took her a good six months to recover. Most people don't bother trying to overcome it, since it fulfills a cultural and biological need.
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Anonymous2009-01-16 23:23
Why do religions exist? Because people were acting like shits, and God came down one day and told people to stop acting like shits, and people actually listened to him. God threw in a bunch of promises to sweeten the pot, and a bunch of flashy miracles to seal the deal, and BAM, religion.
Then God left, and everyone decided to act like shits again.
This is all rather well-documented.
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Anonymous2009-01-17 18:12
in b4 anti-religion fags form a cult of their own
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Anonymous2009-01-19 17:59
>>18
One gun in the right psycho's hands is one too many.
>>20 This is all rather well-documented.
So are all the events in Stephen King's horror books, yet NOT ONE of those events ever happened, and in fact CAN'T happen.
Your Bible and Torah and Koran and whatnot are all a bunch of books filled with FICTION. They're nonsense. They get their own section of any bookstore since if we filed them under "Fiction" like they should be, you religitards would become violent as history's documentation well illustrates. :^D
>>23
Wow, another atheist retard. Read up on Descarte's proof of god. It is an established metaphysical fact, just like the basis for scientific method.
All those myths in holy books? Myths always have a basis in reality, Noah's flood was obviously the rising sea levels after the end of the ice age, creation of the earth was a load of metaphors with parallels with the big bang and Jesus' divinity and miracles are not the point, he was a swell guy.
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Anonymous2009-01-20 18:38
>>26
Descartes' philosophical "proof" of god is not scientific, and not actually proof philosophically either. In fact, he relies on certain assumptions that aren't agreed upon, such as "something can not be caused by a cause lesser than itself", which makes any conclusion he reaches unsupported.
Also, you just basically called the Bible a bunch of half-truths and lies that are no more correct than any other myth or urban legends because they, too, must be based in reality.
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Anonymous2009-01-20 20:53
>>27
The validation for science comes from metaphysics as does god's validation. The fact that science is scientific is not it's validation, this is called "circular reasoning" and is a logical fallacy, this doesn't mean that science is wrong, just that it's justification cannot be itself. Descartes explores these problems and 100 years later Immanuel Kant went into greater detail on this particular branch of philosophy in his treatise "a critique of pure reason", another text you will need to read back to back and study in depth.
The bible is no more or less a source than ancient tablets and texts, for all we know Alexander the Great could be one huge myth but we assume it is true due to historical method. Judging bible myths differently just because they are from a religion you are prejudiced against is called "bias".
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Anonymous2009-01-20 22:40
>>28
I know you're trolling, and I give it six out of ten, maybe subtracting one for posting this shit here instead of in /sci/. That having been said:
The proof for science is the scientific method, kid.
1, observe the natural world
2, devise a testable hypothesis about some aspect of it
3, carry out an experiment to test the hypothesis
4, guided by what we learned in 3, go back to 1
Religion demands faith. Science requires only that you see for yourself.
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Anonymous2009-01-20 23:42
>>28
>"The validation for science comes from metaphysics as does god's validation."
No. Metaphysics IS a science (though a pretend one, lower on the ladder than even social sciences), and as you've said science can't be used to justify itself. Metaphysics deals specifically with that which is outside of science, yet those who study it declare it a science anyway.
The scientific method is justified because it is inherent to mankind (exception being people toss it aside when believing in God) and we are scientific beings. We exist within the realm of science. Because science deals with what can be known, proven or supported with evidence, the only way we will begin to take anything as a better method than the scientific one is by convincing us that knowledge is unimportant. That believing in some magical force is better than knowing about a natural one.
More importantly, God HASN'T even been proven as a metaphysical fact. There is no such thing as a metaphysical fact. Provable facts are the realm of science. Anything OUTSIDE of science is conjecture.
Just read the Wikipedia page on the Trademark Argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_argument), especially the part titled "Criticisms of the Trademark Argument". Rene Descartes has not proven God as a fact, a law, or even a theory. I'm not even sure a hypothesis is a hypothesis if it refuses to meet evidence head on because it knows it can't ascend to a theory. Then it becomes a fairy tale.
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Anonymous2009-01-21 23:05
>>30
A hypothesis must be testable by definition. If it is not testable, it is not a hypothesis, merely an opinion.
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Anonymous2009-01-22 20:24
Why do religions exist?
Just because. No reason, really. </troll>
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Anonymous2009-01-22 23:14
>>29
Perhaps you should employ step 1 of scientific method, since I do not see any of my arguments examined in your reply.
>>30
Scientific method didn't spring out of the ground, it was drawn from metaphysical concepts. Also technically metaphysics is not a science, the science of metaphysics would be psychology and cognitive science, maybe functionalism.
Anyway, maybe I should be more direct with the point I'm making... I am sure as an ordinary flawed human being you mix up science with a set of unrelated experiences and feelings associated with it just as people mix up the abstract philosophical concepts which define their god with idols and myths and so forth. I could criticise you all day on your errors, preconceptions and intellectual shortcuts but none of it will ever shake your belief in the validity of science, this is what's happening when you inform theists of their superstitions and contradictions, telling a theist there is no proof of god is like me instructing you to kill yourself since science cannot solve the hard problem of consciousness and thus you are a philosophical zombie.
The only problem I see with the trademark argument is the definition of "god". It certainly doesn't prove these is an old guy in sandals and a toga sitting in the clouds zapping people with lightning, but it does prove the validity of certain abstract philosophical concepts in the same way metaphysics proves the validity of scientific method.
As I said read Descartes and Kant or I will be intellectually flooring you over and over.
What about the "Civil Religion" of the Masons & Enlightened? http://mailstar.net/rights.html
They have moar blood on their hands, I think
They are not free from getting quite lunatic at times, either.
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Anonymous2009-01-23 12:34
>>33
an argument from authority is not an argument at all.
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Anonymous2009-01-23 12:59
>>33 As I said read Descartes and Kant or I will be intellectually flooring you over and over.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Read some Karl Popper. Then you and your Eighteenth Century mysticism get back to us.
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Anonymous2009-01-23 15:13
>>33
>>As I said read Descartes and Kant or I will be intellectually flooring you over and over
Do it once and I may be inclined to believe you.
If the only problem you see with the trademark argument is that it chooses which God exists, you don't understand the trademark argument or have chosen to ignore valid criticisms of it. The big one that I like is that Descartes' notion of descending complexity is not necessary or even adequately justified. Humanity is entirely capable of creating something greater than itself, given enough time. Everything can. Shit collides in space and becomes entire planets, entire star systems, entire galaxies. Things CAN and DO get more complex with no rhyme or reason. You just want a god of some sort to exist, or can't understand why one wouldn't, so you pick a big name philosopher that is on your side and pretend he got the definitive "right answer" of the universe, while ignoring any opposing big name philosophers. Descartes only gave us one major important philosophical concept, "I think, therefore I am". Other than that, he may as well have stuck to mathematics.