The general thrust of a religion is a system of belief.
This is your misunderstanding. Religion is not a this, nor a that. It is a rather a word that refers to something
huge, the beliefs, emotions, experiences, and actions of billions of people over thousands of years in every corner of the world. Religion refers to the biggest organized enterprise ever undertaken by human beings. The mere scale of religion alone argues convincingly against any single characterization.
Belief is based on faith, and requires no evidence or reason, though many pseudo-reasons are offered to support faith.
You want religion to be merely ideology, because that is the ground upon which you feel most comfortable fighting, and fighting is what you want to do. To be fair to you, many religionists take this very same approach. This is ONE approach to religion, not THE approach to religion.
Whether this system of thought results in UFO conspiracy theories, creationism, or belief in a range of gods; evil or good - this is all bad, because it is false, and fundamentally contradictory.
But yet, you yourself suffer from the very same problem, the assumption that you personally are qualified to know what the ultimate facts of reality are. Which if you'll actually think about it, is an absurdly sweeping claim, no matter who makes it.
This is what I mean when I claim that you've become the very thing you arguing against. You claim to know what is false and true, on a scale where you could not possibly be qualified to be so absolutely certain.
It panders to the poorest aspects of human cognition and reduces the human to a scared animal. This is the way in which all religion is bad.
Ah, ok, you've now let it slip that ALL religion is bad.
This system of thinking might result in good things happening, but there is nothing distinctive about it that makes this happen.
This is the problem. You see religion as being only a system of thinking. I suspect this is because your focus is exclusively on debunking religion, instead of attempting to actually understand the thing you so desperately wish to debunk.
It's surely true that religion is only a system of thinking, an ideology, for very many people. If you were to attack ideology, instead of aiming for religion as a whole, you'd be hitting much closer to the mark. We could find much agreement then.
Religion is an out-of-date means of trying to make sense of the world. It's time to move on.
Ha, ha! You show no sign of moving on my fine forum friend.
Thus religion is unnecessary as a moral guide and the list of hideous acts committed in the name of religion are legion.
And yet, in the last century at least, the large scale carnage has been committed to an impressive degree by explicitly atheist regimes, not religion. A fact which interests few atheists, because it interferes with the dogma chanting.
Setting religion to one side has enormously improved all out lives.
Again Chaz, setting aside ALL religion, or just SOME religion? I've addressed your points, now please address my question.
Welcome to the PhiNowPhorum, Felasco. I see you've met chaz "the Dodger" wyman. Many of us have given up trying to have a productive discussion with him, but maybe you'll have better luck.