How can anyone take religion seriously?

[MMasz]

Oh, quit playing games. You sound like Rand. You make up your own parameters and refuse to consider whatever falls outside them. ex: your definition of universe.

[Ned]

OK, second good definition I got for the 'g' word.

You guys are on a roll!

However, if you can't define a word you are using, then you don't know what you are talking about.

Sorry, but that's the way it is.

[MMasz]

Ayn Rand reincarnated.

Bye.

[Ned]

See what I mean?

You can't define the word you are using, so you bow out.

Fair enough.

[HexHammer]

Ned

You forget about the psychological aspect of all humans.

1) humans are prone to suggestion and groupthink, it's a very strong aspect that we have specially as children, thus if we have religious parents in a strong religious community, we most likely will be religious too.

Tho if there's no religious community but only religious parents, the chance of being religous is much lower.

2) some are very naive and won't need any solid proof to be swayed, which is very evident in people believing in "Intelligent Design", there are no solid proof, only good rethorics and exorbiant metaphors.

You might think this is only a few stupid people, but tragicly it's the majority of people who in some aspects are helplessly naive. Just look at how many supported the highly illegal Iraq war, even the danish goverment 80% of all elected voted for this war, even with no evidense of Saddam being involved in 9/11, which later he was totally aquitted from.

Majority of people are sheep!

[Arising_uk]

Stop right there.

You used an undefined word: 'God'

Until you define it by the well understood rules of epistemology, we cannot proceed any further.

Ah! Ignosticism, like it!
p.s.
Oh! And in answer to your question, there is only one true Monster and the FSM are its Holy Initials, may the blessings of His Noodliness be upon you be you pirate or ninja(splitters). JArrgghh Pastafari and Ramen.

[EagerForTruth]

Ok, my first instinct was not to come anywhere near this sub-topic, but my curiosity got the better of me.

Firstly I will say for reasons of different natures I take religion VERY seriously.

1) The many religions humans have developed over time have been one of the most largest influences on the development of many cultures and societies way of life, ethical outlook, ritual behaviors, and indeed way of even organizing their rhythms of life (holy days, holidays, holy seasons, etc.)

2)Religions have been one of the largest factors in many of the underlying cultural differences that have led to both benign exchanges between peoples and catastrophic conflicts, countless times for both.


Secondly I'd like to state that as a non-judgemental, peacefully believing atheist, I did have the fortune to attend public school mostly, but Catholic high school and college. Though each school, each church, each set of teachers across the worldwide existence of them, my experience there was first, excellent academically, and second, a spiritual, mental, and emotional source of growth that forces me to not only take religion seriously for the above reasons, but also realize the what is often the crux of the problem of this debate.

To the people who are full believers of religion I could spout plenty of vitriol that's been said countless times, but I'll leave it to this: the core concept of full belief in religions is exactly that you believe something we now know to be impossible, is or did happen. The easiest example is the concept of the miracle. Religious miracles are things the simply cannot happen in this reality - the rules of physics cannot whimsically be broken by anything and then restored in such ways. Why not just believe in magic, elves, and dragons? Even more so to me may be that even in a religious system, God cannot contradict himself. If God does exist, then he made the rules, but their his rules. While humans in the imperfection may make rules that they themselves break, I feel quite certain a "perfect" being would by definition be incapable of doing so.

Now to the highly critical opponents and denouncers of religion: Understand I can (and just did, though I easily go on) make plenty of criticism of religion, I can just as easily do so about nearly every other facet of human behavior and society. The reason I hold such respect is that if the religious would soften their need to have a "super-being" on their side that gives them righteousness of cause and certainty of the future, the real beating heart of a religious system is to try and help our still rather primitive societies and selfish individual some organized and communal way of finding moral direction, empathy and compassion for others, and faith that we can make ourselves better.

I really become sad and rather disappointed when I see the two sides of this argument throw inherently inane arguments at each other. Religion is the choice to believe the impossible against all proof otherwise. Then again, those who claim to "know" better should know better enough that they see trying to argue logic against religion is pointless. Logic is not it's base. Even within my own reasoning, a possibility I doubt, but will admit, is that God could very well exist. I don't happen to think so, but just like no one can prove he does, no one can prove he doesn't. The religions - which are organic human cultural creations once again something both sides seem to be side-stepping - could be right that God is there but very mistaken on their expression of it and belief system from it.

Lastly, for the religious I will say this....though cultures have perverted them beyond belief, the vast majority of the true underlying moral code of religion is generally summed up in the most common clichés like
"Do unto others as you'd have done to you" - I think there's not many who'd argue that as a moral guide
or the commandments either - perhaps some of the Old Testament is a little....harsh....if you just stick to the simple 10 lines, you have a decent barebones set of rules for a group of people.

Given it was Catholic school and not Islamic, I can't go to specific things quite as easily, but just as the bible, if you cherry pick lines that are clearly intolerant or violent, it does not let you claim total moral bankruptcy, that lies with the people within it. I did do a touch of world religion studies and can tell you all religions generally do maintain an overall message of cooperation, empathy, and forgiveness within people. What does is say of us as humans that both the ones who believe it and the ones that don't have so easily, often, and extremely extracted the negative and focused on that.

Please, I'd welcome a *productive* response to that....

[bobevenson]

Firstly I will say for reasons of different natures I take religion VERY seriously.

You should take spirituality very seriously (like in the book of Revelation or "The Ouzo Prophecy," but religion is one of the biggest scams on Earth, right up there with education and patriotism.

[EagerForTruth]

I do take spirituality seriously - more seriously than religion. Religion is serious too, although by that i do not mean i subscribe to it, but it those things about it that I mentioned seriously. Even if I didn't have the appreciation (and criticisms) that I do for it, I would even till take it seriously for its ability to affect way so many people believe, feel, and act. As for your prophecy, why would "I" consider it a scam, after all, i don't subscribe to it. As a person who keeps spirituality in my being at all times, it is a guide to how I orient myself in regards to any other possible beliefs or knowledge. For me my contact with religion was an excellent tool for me to spiritually develop myself.

[bobevenson]

Religion is serious too

No, it's run by false prophets like Billy Graham and the Pope.

[attofishpi]

Here is a list of just the major religions (practiced today), from Wikipedia.

See which of them appeals to you?

1 Abrahamic religions
1.1 Bábism
1.2 Bahá'í Faith
1.3 Christianity
1.3.1 Other groups
1.4 Gnosticism
1.5 Islam
1.6 Judaism
1.7 Rastafari movement
1.8 Mandaeans and Sabians
1.9 Samaritanism
1.10 Unitarian Universalism
2 Indian religions
2.1 Ayyavazhi
2.2 Bhakti Movement
2.3 Buddhism
2.4 Din-i-Ilahi
2.5 Hinduism
2.6 Jainism
2.7 Sikhism
3 Iranian religions
3.1 Manichaeism
3.2 Mazdakism
3.3 Mithraism
3.4 Yazdânism
3.5 Zoroastrianism
4 East Asian religions
4.1 Confucianism
4.2 Shinto
4.3 Taoism
4.4 Other
5 African diasporic religions
6 Indigenous traditional religions
6.1 African
6.2 American
6.3 Eurasian
6.4 Oceania/Pacific
6.4.1 Cargo cults
7 Historical polytheism
7.1 Ancient Near Eastern
7.2 Indo-European
7.3 Hellenistic
8 Mysticism and Occult
8.1 Esotericism and mysticism
8.2 Occult and magic
9 Neopaganism
9.1 Syncretic
9.2 Ethnic
10 New religious movements
10.1 Creativity
10.2 New Thought
10.3 Shinshukyo
11 Left-hand path religions
12 Fictional religions
13 Parody or mock religions
14 Others

Let me know which of them you fancy!

None

Where in the flying duck is panentheism?
Oh yeah...its where the intelligent theist resides...LOG_IC

http://www.androcies.com

[attofishpi]

Where in the flying duck is panentheism?
Oh yeah...its where the intelligent theist resides...LOG_IC

http://www.androcies.com

Oh what happened here? Did all the atheists suddenly realise that the existence of a God is probable?

Did ration_ale allow comprehension?

[Hjarloprillar]

Then, the question is: if we can assume that something complex and powerful always existed, then why can’t we just assume that the universe has always existed, without a creator? Whichever way we look at religion, we either run into contradictions or find ourselves inventing arbitrary and totally unnecessary concepts.

I must put forward my ideas to clarify before [and] comment.
I believe the universe is like a dimension struck out of that which has always existed.
Reality.
Such verses are stacked. this verse we are i may be the billionth such.
One leads to another. the successful verse produces offspring [singularities]
'evolution' can be used to describe this.
Appon this base a designer be it a species are whatever. can subtlety influence the 'evolution of verses'
to encourage the promotion of sentient life.

That influence is not as complex or powerfull as the verse it 'modifies'
Just as the logic and speed of human mind is not as powerful and threaded as a 200 terraflop supercomputer.

The power of a god.. is very small shifts in detail to result in life..the details as it were.

Religion is a story of an idea of god told by.. well, i'll not say more.

Why do i believe the above ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law