Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

[Greatest I am]

Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

My mind set is close to Daniel Dennett as far as what religious people / theist should become after they grow up.

Personally, I like a lot of the social functions and appeasement of our need for fellowship, hivishness and tribalism offered by religious institutions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5tGpMcFF7U

So I do not want to kill all religions but just encourage them to be more moral, tolerant and give equality to women and gays.

Having said the above, People and recent trends to read scriptures literally have cause many to forget that religions were invented as theatre and myth and were never meant to be read or taken literally. They were designed to seek God, not to find one.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

As you can see from the following, religions and temples have always been about entertainment and fellowship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7BHvN6rZZA

If Christianity and Islam could return to the old way of seeking God instead of idol worshiping false Gods, perhaps jihadists and other fundamental believers might chill and get along the way they have at some points in our past history.

Religions are fairy tales for adults. If this is a truth, we should encourage Christianity and Islam as well as all other religions to grow up and return to their better past of seeking God instead of idol worshiping Yahweh and Allah. Both of them are mythical and manmade Gods.

To just leave Christians and Muslim idol worshipers to continue as is means that we may never rid ourselves of their institutionalized homophobia and misogyny. The kind and moral thing to do is to try to correct our immoral religious friends to recognize their myths as fairy tales for adults. Do you agree?

Regards
DL

[Dalek Prime]

The human race will always tell itself tall tales, in order not to face the void that sits there waiting. And for that reason, I don't see why we can't allow people to believe in their own way, in order to get through the day.

[Greatest I am]

The human race will always tell itself tall tales, in order not to face the void that sits there waiting. And for that reason, I don't see why we can't allow people to believe in their own way, in order to get through the day.

Yes. Get through the day at someone else's expense.

So you think we should allow their self-delusion even though it is the cause of homophobia and misogyny.

Women and gays do not think the damage is worth the pleasure the religious gain for discriminating without a just cause.

I do not agree with you and many surveys are showing just how much damage the mainstream religions are doing to their own mentality with their angry God.

Are you happy that the women in your family are second class citizens thanks to Christianity?

Regards
DL

[thedoc]

Are you happy that the women in your family are second class citizens thanks to Christianity?

Regards
DL

You paint all Christians with the same brush, that is not very realistic, no more than all atheists believe the same thing, or that you believe what every other believer, believes.

[Skip]

If Christianity and Islam could return to the old way of seeking God

Where? If there were any gods, why would they hide?

These are not fairy tales. Fairy tales are harmless: they teach decent behaviour; helping the weak, curbing the bully, respecting the old, holding out for true love; courage, kindness, loyalty and steadfastness.

Growing up would require that we stop looking for sacrificial victims to cleanse us of our sins; to confront our fears and contradictions and find some way to either stop sinning or learn to cope.

That's hard. Killing a godling and then celebrating his death every Sunday is easy.

[Obvious Leo]

It's just a matter of being patient and waiting until mass education weaves its magic. Religious belief is little more than a quaint cultural curiosity in most countries of the world and it's only a matter of time until the few remaining backward cultures grow out of it. Trying to force the issue, a la Dawkins et al, is just making matters worse. As far as I'm concerned a proselytising atheist is just as ludicrous a figure as a proselytising theist.

[Skip]

Mass education magic has had a century. It's failed dismally.

[Dalek Prime]

The human race will always tell itself tall tales, in order not to face the void that sits there waiting. And for that reason, I don't see why we can't allow people to believe in their own way, in order to get through the day.

Yes. Get through the day at someone else's expense.

So you think we should allow their self-delusion even though it is the cause of homophobia and misogyny.

Women and gays do not think the damage is worth the pleasure the religious gain for discriminating without a just cause.

I do not agree with you and many surveys are showing just how much damage the mainstream religions are doing to their own mentality with their angry God.

Are you happy that the women in your family are second class citizens thanks to Christianity?

Regards
DL

My sisters run their households, fuck you very much. And I'm all for letting people get through this shit hole existence any way they can, within reason. No one should take their marching orders from you, because you don't like the way they march.

[Obvious Leo]

Mass education magic has had a century. It's failed dismally.

It depends where you look, Skip, because one man's education is another man's brainwashing. The quality of mass education is generally dismal but the anarchy of the internet will ultimately herald a new dawn in eradicating many of the ancient superstitions, undoubtedly to replace them with more modern ones. However the new gods will have only a limited lifespan.

[Dubious]

Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

That's not so easy. It's the Ritual of religions, more often than not, which hold a society together in which God operates as a mere formality though an indispensable one. Take the Shias and Sunnis not unlike Catholics and Protestants in earlier times. Their differences then and now didn't amount to a difference of Gods but more on political, philosophical and even commonplace motives. Even as people become more secular believing in no God or a completely indifferent one, it's the rituals and customs which flow from it which bind cultures and societies. These are far more difficult to dismantle since they're always based on some Sacred Constitution even if no longer believed in by those who continue to observe its customs. Religions are already, and more so now, atheistic in the sense they no-longer require God as an active entity and not in the least desirable by those who profess to believe.

[Obvious Leo]

It's the Ritual of religions, more often than not, which hold a society together in which God operates as a mere formality

Agreed. It's all about having a group to identify with which can differentiate "us" from "them" and the substantive basis for such a differentiation is a secondary consideration. People will divide themselves into groups along all manner of arbitrary lines be it ethnicity, nationalism, or even what football team they follow. All have their own distinct myths and rituals which bind their members to the group. This is what makes us human.

Humans are really still just knuckle-draggers barely out of the trees but it is this tribalism which drove us to the top of the tree of sentience.

"Homo hominis lupus est"....Plautus. "Man is the wolf of man".

[Greatest I am]

Are you happy that the women in your family are second class citizens thanks to Christianity?

Regards
DL

You paint all Christians with the same brush, that is not very realistic, no more than all atheists believe the same thing, or that you believe what every other believer, believes.

The Abrahamic cults have been the majority in the West forever.

Ignore that they are the cause of homophobia and misogyny in the West all you like.

Seems that you do not care that the women in your family are second class.

You must be a theist.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

If Christianity and Islam could return to the old way of seeking God

Where? If there were any gods, why would they hide?

These are not fairy tales. Fairy tales are harmless: they teach decent behaviour; helping the weak, curbing the bully, respecting the old, holding out for true love; courage, kindness, loyalty and steadfastness.

Growing up would require that we stop looking for sacrificial victims to cleanse us of our sins; to confront our fears and contradictions and find some way to either stop sinning or learn to cope.

That's hard. Killing a godling and then celebrating his death every Sunday is easy.

I mostly agree with this.

I will speak to this.

"Where? If there were any gods, why would they hide?"

When one is not an idol worshiper then the seeking after a God is just seeking the best rules and laws to live life by. As shown in the O.P., that begins with the Golden Rule.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

It's just a matter of being patient and waiting until mass education weaves its magic. Religious belief is little more than a quaint cultural curiosity in most countries of the world and it's only a matter of time until the few remaining backward cultures grow out of it. Trying to force the issue, a la Dawkins et al, is just making matters worse. As far as I'm concerned a proselytising atheist is just as ludicrous a figure as a proselytising theist.

I see.

So atheists and others who are not homophobic or misogynous should refrain from trying to improve the lot of women and gays.

Seems that you morals suck my friend and you have no sense of social morality or justice.

For evil to grow, all good people need do is nothing and that is what you are recommending.

Change the labels in this quote to women, minorities, gays or children being brainwashed by religions and it shows what we should be thinking and doing for each other.

"First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I'm not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I'm not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I'm not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me." – Pastor Father Niemoller (1946)”

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

The human race will always tell itself tall tales, in order not to face the void that sits there waiting. And for that reason, I don't see why we can't allow people to believe in their own way, in order to get through the day.

Yes. Get through the day at someone else's expense.

So you think we should allow their self-delusion even though it is the cause of homophobia and misogyny.

Women and gays do not think the damage is worth the pleasure the religious gain for discriminating without a just cause.

I do not agree with you and many surveys are showing just how much damage the mainstream religions are doing to their own mentality with their angry God.

Are you happy that the women in your family are second class citizens thanks to Christianity?

Regards
DL

My sisters run their households, fuck you very much. And I'm all for letting people get through this shit hole existence any way they can, within reason. No one should take their marching orders from you, because you don't like the way they march.

Proverbs 3:12 For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

Your sisters may run households but that is about the limit that most homophobic and misogynous Christians will allow.

In the work force, they dare not ask for equal pay for equal work thanks to people like you.

Regards
DL