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Getting Real : Faith No More
God is Not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything! | from conan - Sunday, June 17, 2007
accessed 1707 times I know that the religion debate is not likely to end soon and I know that it has been done to death on this site, as well as others. I wanted to post a portion of a chapter from the book titled "God is Not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything!" by Christopher Hitchens. This book is written in an easy to understand, easy going manner which can be appreciated by all, and the author gives his personal experiences along with extensive research as he goes about to prove religion in general to be the hoax that we now know it to be.
I am not trying to preach 'anti-theism' or any other agenda, but merely found this book fascinating and revealing, despite the fact that most of Hitchens' arguments have been made by others previously. I think that if society were to stop being so obstinate as to refuse to accept the common knowledge facts that we are what we are in our universe without some all knowing deity having had to create us, we would be a much more advanced civilization, and be prepared to further our place in the history of this planet and indeed this universe if we were able to eliminate the religious stupor that has been the human hang-over for millennia.
This book is a fascinating expose on the fabrication of several modern religions and the clearly outlined manufacturing of dogma, doctrine, and religious rule through the ages. The specific topics below focus on three aspects of the hypocritical ideals that religion tries vainly to instill in its constituents while showing the ironic results that it (religion) has been wholly responsible for.
Blood Sacrifice
Before monotheism arouse, the altars of primitive society reeked of blood, much of it human and some of it infant. The thirst for this, at least in animal form, is still with us. Pious Jews are at this moment trying to breed the spotlessly pure “red heifer” mentioned in the book of Numbers, chapter 19, which if slaughtered again according to the exact and meticulous ritual will bring about the return of animal sacrifices in the Third Temple, and hasten the end of time and the coming of the Messiah. This may appear merely absurd, but a team of like-minded Christian maniac farmers are attempting as I write to help their co-fundamentalists by employing special breeding techniques (borrowed or stolen from modern science) to produce a perfect “Red Angus” beast in Nebraska. Meanwhile in Israel, the Jewish biblical fanatics are also trying to raise a human child, in a pure “bubble” free from contamination, who will at the attainment of the right age be privileged to cut that heifer’s throat. Ideally, this should be done on the Temple Mount, awkwardly the site of the Muslim holy places but nonetheless the very spot where Abraham is alleged to have drawn a knife over the live body of his own child. Other sacramental guttings and throat-cuttings, particularly of lambs, occur every year in the Christian and Muslim world, either to celebrate Easter or the feast of Eid.
The latter, which honors Abraham’s willingness to make a human sacrifice of his son, is common to all three monotheisms, and descends from their primitive ancestors. There is no softening the plain meaning of this frightful story. The prelude involves a series of vileness and delusions, from the seduction of Lot by both his daughters to the marriage of Abraham to his stepsister, the birth of Isaac to Sarah when Abraham was a hundred years old, and many other credible and incredible rustic crimes and misdemeanors. Perhaps afflicted by a poor conscience, but at any rate believing himself commanded by god, Abraham agreed to murder his son. He prepared the kindling, laid the tied-up boy upon it (thus showing that he knew the procedure), and took up the knife in order to kill the child like an animal. At the last available moment his hand was stayed, not by god as it happens, but by an angel, and he was praised from the clouds for showing his steady willingness to murder an innocent in expiation of his own crimes. As a reward for his fealty, he was promised a long and large posterity.
Not long after this (thought the Genesis narrative is not very well illustrated in point of time) his wife Sarah expired at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven, and her dutiful husband found her a place of burial in a cave in the town of Hebron. Having outlived her by attaining the fine old age of one hundred and seventy-five, and having fathered six more children meanwhile, Abraham was eventually buried in the same cave. To this day, religious people kill each other and kill each other’s children for the right to exclusive property in this unidentifiable and locatable hoe in a hill.
There was a terrible massacre of Jewish residents of Hebron during the Arab revolt of 1929, when sixty-seven Jews were slaughtered. Many of these were Lubavitchers, who regard all non-Jews as racially inferior and who had moved to Hebron because they believed the Genesis myth, but this does not excuse the pogrom. Remaining outside the border of Israel until 1967, the town was captured that year with much fanfare by Israeli forces and became part of the occupied West Bank. Jewish settlers began to “return”, under the leadership of a particularly violent and obnoxious rabbi named Moshe Levinger, and to build an armed settlement named Kiryat Arba above the town, as well as some smaller settlements within it. The Muslims among the mainly Arab inhabitants continued to claim that the praiseworthy Abraham had been wiling to murder his son, but only for their religion and not for the Jews. This is what “submission” means. When I visited the place I found that the supposed “Cave of the Patriarchs”, or “Cave of Machpela”, had separate entrances and separate places of worship for the two warring claimants to the right to celebrate this atrocity in their own names.
A short time before I arrived, another atrocity had occurred. An Israeli zealot named Dr. Baruch Goldstein had come to the cave and, unslinging the automatic weapon that he was allowed to carry, discharged it into the Muslim congregation. He killed twenty-seven worshippers and injured countless others before being overwhelmed and beaten to death. It turned out that many people already knew Dr. Goldstein was dangerous. While serving as a physician in the Israeli army he had announced that he would not treat non-Jewish patients, such as Israeli Arabs, especially on the Sabbath. As it happens, he was obeying rabbinic law in declining to do this, as many Israeli religious courts have confirmed, so an easy way to spot an inhumane killer was to notice that he was guided by a sincere and literal observance of the divine instruction. Shrines in his name have been set up by the more doggedly observant Jews ever since, and of those rabbis who condemned his actions, not all did so in unequivocal terms. The curse of Abraham continues to poison Hebron, but the religious warrant for blood sacrifice poisons our entire civilization.
Atonement
Previous sacrifices of humans, such as the Aztec and other ceremonies form which we recoil, were common in the ancient world and took the form of propitiatory murder. An offering of a virgin or an infant or a prisoner was assumed to appease the gods: once again not a very good advertisement for the moral properties of religion. “Martyrdom”, or a deliberate sacrifice of oneself can be viewed in a slightly different light, though when practiced by Hindus in the form of suttee, or the strongly suggested “suicide” of widows, it was put down by the British in India for imperial as much as for Christian reasons. Those “martyrs” who wish to kill others as well as themselves, in an act of religious exaltation, are viewed more differently still: Islam is ostensibly opposed to suicide per se but cannot seem to decide whether to condemn or recommend the act of such a bold shahid.
However, the idea of vicarious atonement, of the sort that so much troubled even C.S. Lewis, is a further refinement of the ancient superstition. Once again we have a father demonstrating love by subjecting a son to death by torture, but this time the father in not trying to impress god. He is god, and hi is trying to impress humans. Ask yourself the question: how moral is the following? I am told of a human sacrifice that took place two thousand years ago, without my wishing it and in circumstances so ghastly that, had I been present and in possession of any influence, I would have been duty-bound to try and stop it. In consequence of this murder, my own manifold sins are forgiven me, and I may hope to enjoy everlasting life.
Let us just for now overlook all the contradictions between the tellers of the original story and assume that it is basically true. What are the further implications? They are not as reassuring as they look at first sight. For a start, and in order to gain the benefit of this wondrous offer, I have to accept that I am responsible for the flogging and mocking and crucifixion, in which I had no say and no part, and agree that every time I decline this responsibility, or that I sin in word or deed, I am intensifying the agony of it. Furthermore, I am required to believe that the agony was necessary in order to compensate for an earlier crime in which I also had no part, the sin of Adam. It is useless to object that Adam seems to have been created with insatiable discontent and curiosity and then forbidden to slake it: all this was settled long before Jesus himself was born. Thus my guilt in the matter is deemed “original” and inescapable. However, I am still granted free will with which to reject the offer of vicarious redemption. Should I exercise this choice, however, I face an eternity of torture much more awful than anything endured at Calvary, or anything threatened to those who first heard the Ten Commandments.
The tale is made no easier to follow by the necessary realization that Jesus both wished and need to die and came to Jerusalem at Passover in order to do so, and that all who took part in his murder were unknowingly doing god’s will, and fulfilling ancient prophecies. (Absent the Gnostic version, this makes it hopelessly odd that Judas, who allegedly performed the strangely redundant act of identifying a well-known preacher to those who had been hunting for him, should offers such opprobrium. Without him, there could have been no “Good Friday”, as the Christians naively call it even when they are not in a vengeful mood.)
There is a charge (found in only one of the four Gospels) that the Jews who condemned Jesus asked for his blood to be “on their heads” for future generations. This is not a problem that concerns only the Jews, or those Catholics who are worried by the history of Christian anti-Semitism. Suppose that the Jewish Sanhedrin had in fact made such a call, as Maimonides thought they had, and should have. How could that call possibly be binding upon successor generations? Remember that the Vatican did not assert that it was some Jews who had killed Christ. It asserted that it was the Jews who had ordered his death, and that the Jewish people as a whole were the bearers of a collective responsibility. It seems bizarre that the church could not bring itself to drop the charge of generalized Jewish “deicide” until very recently. But the key to its reluctance is east to find. If you once admit that the descendants of Jews are not implicated, it becomes very hard to argue that anyone else not there present was implicated, either. One rent in the fabric, as usual, threatens to tear the whole thing apart (or to make it into something simply man-made and woven, like the discredited Shroud of Turin). The collectivization of guilt, in short, is immoral in itself, as religion has been occasionally compelled to admit.
Eternal Punishment and Impossible Tasks
The Gospel story of the Garden of Gethsemane used to absorb me very much as a child, because its “break” in the action and its human whimper made me wonder if some of the fantastic scenario might after all be true. Jesus asks, in effect, “Do I have to go through with this?” It is an impressive and unforgettable question and I long ago decided that I would cheerfully wager my own soul on the belief that the only right answer is “no”. We cannot, like fear-ridden peasants of antiquity, hope to load all our crimes onto a goat and then drive the hapless animal into the desert. Our everyday idiom is quite sound in regarding “scapegoating” with contempt. And religion is scapegoating writ large. I can pay your debt, my love, if you have been imprudent, and if I were a hero like Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities I could even serve your term in prison or take your place on the scaffold. Greater love hath no man. But I cannot absolve you of your responsibilities. It would be immoral of me to offer, and immoral of you to accept. And if the same offer is made from another time and another world, through the mediation of middlemen and accompanied by inducements, it loses all its grandeur and becomes debased into wish-thinking, or worse, a combination of blackmailing with bribery.
The ultimate degeneration of all this into a mere bargain was made unpleasantly obvious by Blaise Pascal, whose theology is not far short of sordid. His celebrated “wager” puts it in hucksterish form: what have you got to lose? If you believe in god and there is a god, you win. If you believe in him and you’re wrong – so what? …
…Pascal reminds me of the hypocrites and frauds who abound in Talmudic Jewish rationalization. Don’t do any work on the Sabbath yourself, but pay someone else to do it. You obeyed the letter of the law: who’s counting? The Dalai Lama tells us that you can visit a prostitute as long as someone else pays her. Shia Muslims offer “temporary marriage,” selling men the permission to take a wife for an hour or two with the usual vows and then divorce her when they are done. Half of the splendid buildings in Rome would never have been raised if the sale of indulgences had not been so profitable: St. Peter’s itself was financed by a special one-time offer of that kind. The newest pope, the former Joseph Ratzinger, recently attracted Catholic youths to a festival by offering a certain “remission of sin” to those who attended.
This pathetic moral spectacle would not be necessary if the original rules were ones that would be possible to obey. But to the totalitarian edicts that begin with revelation from absolute authority, and that are enforced by fear, and based on a sin that had been committed long ago, are added regulations that are often immoral and impossible at the same time. The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. The resulting tyranny is even more impressive if it can be enforced by a privileged caste or party which is highly zealous in the detection of error. Most of humanity, throughout its history, has dwelt under a form of this stupefying dictatorship, and a large portion still does. Allow me to give a couple examples of the rules that must, yet cannot, be followed.
The commandment at Sinai which forbade people even to think about coveting gods is the first clue. It is echoed in the New Testament by the injunction which says that a man who looks upon a woman in the wrong way has actually committed adultery already. And it is almost equaled by the current Muslim and former Christian prohibition against lending out money at interest. All of these, in there different fashion, attempt to place impossible restraints on human initiative. They can only be met in one of two ways. The first is by a continual scourging and mortification of the flesh, accompanied by incessant wrestling with “impure” thoughts which become actual as soon as they are named, or even imagined. From this come hysterical confessions of guilt, false promises of improvement, and loud, violent denunciations of other backsliders and sinners: a spiritual police state. The second solution is organized hypocrisy, where forbidden foods are rebaptized as something else, or where a donation to the religious authorities will purchase some wiggle room, or where ostentatious orthodoxy will buy some time, or where money can be paid into on account and then paid back – with perhaps a slight percentage added in a non-usurious manner – into another. This we might term the spiritual banana republic. Many theocracies, from medieval Rome to modern Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, have managed to be spiritual police states and spiritual banana republics at the same time.
This objection applies even to some of the noblest and some of the basest rules. The order to “love thy neighbor: is mild and yet stern: a reminder of one’s duty to others. The order to “love thy neighbor as thyself” is too extreme and too strenuous to be obeyed, as is the hard-to-interpret instruction to love others “as I have loved you”. Humans are not so constituted s to care for others as much as themselves: the thing simply cannot be done (as any intelligent “creator” would well understand from studying his own design). Urging humans to be superhumans, on pain of death and torture, is the urging of terrible self-abasement at their repeated and inevitable failure to keep the rules. What a grin, meanwhile, on the face of those who accept the cash donations that are made in lieu! The so-called Golden Rule, sometimes needlessly identified with a folktale about the Babylonian Rabbi Hillel, simply enjoins us to treat others as one would wish to be treated by them. This sober and rational precept, which one can teach to any child with innate sense of fairness (and which predates all Jesus’ “beatitudes” and parables), is well within the compass of any atheist and does not require masochism and hysteria, or sadism and hysteria, when it is breached. It is gradually learned, as part of the painfully slow evolution of the species, and once grasped is never forgotten. Ordinary conscience will do, without any heavenly wrath behind it.
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Reader's comments on this article Add a new comment on this article |  from Poker Star
Monday, August 13, 2007 - 20:03
(Agree/Disagree?)
I picked up this book at freedomfest in Las Vegas. Great read.
(reply to this comment)
| from valhalla
Friday, July 06, 2007 - 02:36
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couldnt agree more!!!
(reply to this comment)
| from ..........
Friday, July 06, 2007 - 02:11
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http://youtube.com/watch?v=fFo1TBC5gKc
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| from ..........
Wednesday, June 27, 2007 - 10:22
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7967325417832639938
(reply to this comment)
| | | | from EyesWideShut
Monday, June 25, 2007 - 21:07
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I'm reading this book now. Couldn't agree more. Also reading Blink. Very good so far.
(reply to this comment)
| from Jedran
Monday, June 25, 2007 - 06:55
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The concept of god was originally created to be a source of law. Most ancient religions existed simply because the King at the time needed a way to prove that the laws he was making should be obeyed other than the fact that he was king. It's much more impressive to say that god gave you a law that to say you came up with it yourself. Judaism was one of the first religions to take itself seriously as a religion and it was still 50 percent (or more) a judicial source. Chrisitianity was the first religion that was solely concerned with the religious aspect. As judicial sources developed and natural laws evolved into what they are today, that is laws that exist because they just are without the necessity of a religious background the concept of god was no longer necessary a source of law but it had already developed into a sociological phenomenom.
(reply to this comment)
|  From conan
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 10:40
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This is historically inaccurate. The original concept of a 'god' was much earlier than kingdoms who needed an all-powerful being as their king's fail-safe. The origins can be traced to small nomadic tribes who had 'fertility goddesses' that the shamans and 'holy-men' led the tribe in supplication for a successful crop or a favorable hunting season. It was goddesses of rain and 'mother nature' that humans first prayed to and offered sacrifices to. It was powerful men who decided that god was a man and more powerful and introduced gods such as the 'sun god' and others who were authoritarian and absolute to instill fear into the subjects who couldn't possibly know any better. These false ideas are among the origins of repression of females which religion has historically perpetrated and limited the power women were allowed to achieve throughout history with few exceptions.
These immoral, backward concepts persist today in monotheistic religion. Women cannot join the men of Muslim faith in their mosques but have separate 'secondary' chambers where they can pray. Jewish and Christian women historically were repressed repeatedly and are now starting to be allowed to be spiritual elders in their respective faiths, although Catholicism still does not condone female priests or bishops and as such would never consider a female as a candidate for pope. (reply to this comment) |
| | From Ne Oublie
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 13:28
(Agree/Disagree?)
Not quite buying your Dan Brown/feminist re-write of history there, conan, but that's beside the point I want to make. The way I see it, religion in some ways served as the precursor of the later, more defined, legal structures. What started as moral guidance in early religions, then took on a more codified form as societies, technology and religion itself developed over time.(reply to this comment) |
| | From conan
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 13:55
(Agree/Disagree?)
I actually think Dan Brown is an idiot and don't aspire to any of his preposterous, outlandish claims. The above post regarding feminist deities is historically accurate. The term 'mother nature' comes from these early societies in the fertile crescent and it came from the idea of a woman as the child-bearer/life-giver which gradually translated itself with nomadic tribes in the more desert regions as a sun-god/male totalitarian deity with death as the punishment for failure to comply as opposed to life being the reward for cooperation.
The midwife was the original shaman as they had the 'power' to deliver a healthy child and were then called upon to intercede with the goddesses unseen for rain for the crops, etc. These were small groups of both patriarchal and matriarchal clans that lived in close proximity to ward off attacks of both prey and nomadic wanderers. As these civilizations grew and the desert peoples had a greater influence on trade and commerce, the idea of a powerful, dangerous god became more and more prevalent in the limited societies until gradually their laws were written in accordance with and to appease the desire of these fearful gods.
The feminine repression came over time as men became the priests more often than not and the leaders were more and more frequently kings and not queens. It was then that the religion took a slant at esteeming the male form and belittling the female. Hence the importance on male heirs throughout history and the devastation of men like King Henry VIII who tried repeatedly for a male heir to be the head of the state, as well as the Church of England. These practices found their way into Christianity and Islam because of the societies those religions sprang from.
In ancient Greece, the females had as important a roll in society and religion as a male, but this was corrupted slightly by Rome, and than further by subsequent 'enlightenments' of religion.(reply to this comment) |
| | From rainy
Thursday, June 28, 2007, 02:36
(Agree/Disagree?)
As much as I love to hear stuff like what you're saying, Conan, and bless you for saying it, I really think that the traditional domination of males over females in the human (and much of the animal) world is purely biological. Testosterone, aggression, sex drive, physical strength. That's the underlying reason, however it's been dressed up. Now we are evolving and beginning to think afresh why we do things, and women are learning from their mistakes, and the world is on its way to equality. (I like to think)(reply to this comment) |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | from cheeks
Friday, June 22, 2007 - 15:00
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I think you guys spend far too much time on what you don't believe. You are beating a horse that you don't even believe is there. It's like looking for ghosts when you don't believe in the supernatural. Why even bother.
(reply to this comment)
| | | | | | | | | | From JohnnieWalker
Friday, June 22, 2007, 17:48
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I find it oddly funny that you seem to not understand the concept of people enjoying things you don't and letting them do their thing without criticizing them for it.
By your logic, you are currently wasting your time by writing and posting your objections, seeing as you do not believe discussion on this topic is worthwhile. And yet you do so because you feel like it. Likewise with some of us.
Cheeks, I said as much above, but let me reitterate: just because YOU don't enjoy discussing a topic doesn't mean it is a waste of time for others. Feel free to tell us you THINK or FEEL we are wasting our time, but telling us we ARE wasting our time doesn't make it so.
Might I propose that you wouldn't be objecting as much--if at all--if you were agnostic or not religious yourself?(reply to this comment) |
| | From cheeks
Friday, June 22, 2007, 18:58
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Like I said by all means continue. I think my beliefs have little to do with me mocking the lack of yours. I have for the most part kept out of the religious debates simply because I see little reason to try to ride a horse that is so obviously dead. I do read them simply to have a good laugh. I recently decided to comment on them because I get an even bigger laugh. And like I have said before I don't know any of you and honnestly don't really care what you think. I am going to continue to do things that humor me. Perhaps when I have the baby I will get out of this mood I am in and go back to something that is a little more normal for me. Until then......................(reply to this comment) |
| | | | | from vacuous
Friday, June 22, 2007 - 06:41
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I think some of the criticism is misplaced or judged too harshly. Certainly in ancient times infants and people were sacrificed to Gods in the name of religion, but in an early agrarian society where food was limited it was often necessary to cull off population that the land could not support to prevent starvation. Religion may have blunted the horror of this necessary deed and given it meaning. Is then, religion to blame for the death or for the meaning in the death? If death had no meaning how would those societies survive? Who would volunteer their child for the good of the whole?
Just a thought...
(reply to this comment)
| From Ne Oublie
Friday, June 22, 2007, 07:57
(Agree/Disagree?)
While we're at it, here's another thought...
The way I figure, either you consider religion to be manmade or paranormal.
If the latter, then your complaints about what is commanded ought to be taken up with that 'superior force', 'divinity' or what have you - although you're probably not likely to, since as a believer you're probably a member of that religion.
If, on the other hand, you believe religion to be manmade, then 'religion' is simply a part - or manifestation - of human nature. And as such, eliminating 'religion' would do nothing to remove all the injustice, since that springs not from 'religion' but from the human creators of it.
So, that is why I think all these guys who go ranting on about the evils of god or religion are just full-of-it atheistic evangelists. If you really don't believe in god or religion, then they can't be evil - they are simply non-entities!(reply to this comment) |
| | From conan
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 10:56
(Agree/Disagree?)
While I agree with your premise here, I must add something. While it's true that religion in my opinion is a non-entity, it is not treated that way by its adherents or leaders. Religious hatred is very real among the religious and as such, the 'flocks' of the religious are ripe for fundamentalists to emerge and engage in hostile activities toward the infidels of their strongly held convictions/beliefs. It is for this reasons that I find religion to be so damaging to modern society. I understand it's place in history and how important it was to shaping our current political landscape and world climate, but don't you think that religion is something that should have no place in government or policy-making?
That is when religion is dangerous. It is when America has a president who believes he is mandated by god to be president, and a war president at that, that we should worry about religion being a 'non-entity'. It is when the promise of 72 virgins will incite youthful religious men of Muslim faith to strap a bomb to themselves and detonate their bodies in crowded markets, or on buses, or to hijack planes and crash them, that religion becomes dangerous. When the Catholic church in Africa doesn't promote condom distribution for disease control because they belief that contraception is wrong and then you have epidemics of AIDS and other STDs rampant across an entire continent that you have to agree that religion is dangerous. It's when men convince their wife that he needs to marry the neighbor's 12 year old daughter to follow the lead of his spiritual elders and they kidnap said little girl and imprison her against her will in the name of their faith that religion is dangerous. It's when the drunken ravings of a lunatic 'allow' and even mandate sexual contact with underage children and prostitution in the name of a fallacy which in turn spawns a generation of abused individuals that religion is dangerous.
I understand that there is evil outside of religion, but when it is a religious entity that inspires such hideous behavior that it is truly dangerous. Humanism has committed its share of crimes over the millennia, but it can apologize for those heinous acts without having to alter or tweak or re-interpret a fundamental set of an imaginary, however unalterable, set of beliefs. (reply to this comment) |
| | From J_P
Friday, June 22, 2007, 15:14
(Agree/Disagree?)
There is a fundamental difference between ranting against the "evils of god or religion" and an expression of disagreement with the belief in god and being hostile towards the power of religion. To call something evil is to at least acknowledge it. Since religion (as a belief structure) exists, I can call it evil. Since I do not believe god exists, I can announce my position that belief in god is naive and potentially dangerous.
Given that religion and god are, to a degree, non-falsifiable, it gives religious people some sort of incredible power to keep believing in something that if it were called by another name or in other circumstances, they would be considered crazy.
I do not believe that religion is simply a part of human nature, rather that it was conceived as a form of control. And while human injustices will continue without religion, they would not have the absolute dogma driving them which religion provides and would be seen for the simple human perversity of an individual or group and probably be condemned as such much quicker.
The special respect that is afforded an opinion or an action just because it comes from a religious leader, or is supposedly supported by a religious view, is dangerous because it keeps the publics mind from questioning those thoughts or actions as they would if they came from any individual. If an idea comes out of religion, it is afforded the status of truth even if proven otherwise, whereas in science (or the rest of the world for that matter) an idea or theory is expected to be attacked and must be defended. Only after withstanding a sustained attack can it be considered fact.
This is why it must be actively spoken against, not passively accepted out of 'respct'. While I could respect one's right to believe what they want, I have no reason to respect their actual belief. There is a limit of course to speaking out before crossing some invisible and subjective line of lunacy, but in the end, more good will come of speaking out than not, IMO.(reply to this comment) |
| | From Ne Oublie
Friday, June 22, 2007, 15:40
(Agree/Disagree?)
Oh, and by the way, I would have to consider your statement that
"If an idea comes out of religion, it is afforded the status of truth even if proven otherwise, whereas in science (or the rest of the world for that matter) an idea or theory is expected to be attacked and must be defended. Only after withstanding a sustained attack can it be considered fact."
to be incredibly idealistic. I could list numerous examples from both science and "the rest of the world" where what is accepted as "fact" is based on little to no evidence, and any debate is squelched in the name of political correctness, or simple weight of numbers.(reply to this comment) |
| | From J_P
Friday, June 22, 2007, 16:04
(Agree/Disagree?)
Idealistic? How?
While there are plenty of examples to be sure, I wouldn't deny that. But you would also have to say that if the Pope came out and said something like "Using condoms to prevent aids is a sin since it is birth control" it is accepted by many ignorant, and some not so ignorant people, as true. While if the same thing was said by a non-religous leader/entity it would be much more widely dismissed as a dangerous thing to say.
I do not say these things in the absolute sense, as that will never be 100% statistically correct. However I am talking about the level of respect automatically granted to religion and ideas coming out of religious mouths as compared to completely secular sources, which is un-doubtedly skewed towards the religous side.(reply to this comment) |
| | From Ne Oublie
Friday, June 22, 2007, 16:47
(Agree/Disagree?)
In my view, the primary difference between religion and the other examples I gave is that religion tends to be - theoretically, at least - far more a case of "all or nothing". The idea being that you either accept the whole lot, or you are no longer a believer and reject the lot. In reality, I would suggest, this is far less frequently the case, and the majority of "believers" don't, in fact believer it all, and instead cling to their chosen dogma while ignoring (or accepting guilt for) the rest. On the other hand, those who are not believers very often hold far more views and opinions in common with believers - or believers in different religions amongst each other - than they care to admit, and they resort, instead to demonising 'straw man' arguments of the 'other guys'.(reply to this comment) |
| | From J_P
Friday, June 22, 2007, 18:33
(Agree/Disagree?)
You are correct, in my view, about religion being all or nothing. I also agree with the fact that a religious person and non-religious person would probably have a lot more in common than not.
I believe that the difference is in the reason given for those beliefs. A religous person would/may attribute that to a god or teachings that come from a spiritual connected human, as it were. I dont demonise the beliefs themselves, I applaud the ones that are helpful to humanity. Attributing those to religion as opposed to moralistic human nature is offensive to me.(reply to this comment) |
| | | | | From Ne Oublie
Friday, June 22, 2007, 16:20
(Agree/Disagree?)
You are forgetting that people ultimately choose - at some level, at some point - to be believers. Yes, PLENTY of people challenge what the Pope says, in fact I think it's something like 3/4 of the world's population, that disagrees with the majority of what the guy says - not to mention all the nominal or 'weak' Catholics.
Yes, religion is one way in which people place their trust in someone - or something - else. Other ways are the media, politics, science, education, professionals of all sorts, and the list goes on. Each to varying degrees, but each in their own way is an example of an individual taking the word of another because of the trust they have put in that person (or institution).(reply to this comment) |
| | | | | From Samuel
Sunday, June 24, 2007, 05:20
(Agree/Disagree?)
No, reason is exactly what religion needs. When people don't reason, they will listen to anything that their leaders say, which can be right or wrong. If there was reason among the Muslims in 2001, September 11th would never have happened. If there had been reason among the Christians and Muslims in the 1100's and 1200's the Crusades would have never happened. If there had been reason among the Christians in the 1400's, the Spanish Inquisition never would have happened.(reply to this comment) |
| | From conan
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 10:29
(Agree/Disagree?)
This comment is naive and and stupid. Religion and reason have never mixed, and never will. It is because of their 'oil and water' like properties that men such as Galileo were arrested and threatened with death because they dared to reason about reality outside the religious box. Reason might have had the Catholic church denounce Hitler's genocide instead of writing him to encourage him in his efforts to rid the world of descendants of the Jews who committed 'deicide' and instructing their priests and bishops to help the Third Reich in whatever way they could. Yes, reason is what religion needs, but you are naive in thinking that it would ever happen. Reason leads to doubt, and doubt leads to loss of faith, which would eventually bring down religion. And let's face the fact that it is because the religious leaders know this that they choose to ignore reason in favor of dogma, tradition, and fear.(reply to this comment) |
| | From GetReal
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 11:06
(Agree/Disagree?)
Sorry Conan i have to disagree with you on that .here is why : you make the (IMO stupid and naive)statement that if reason were to prevail it would lead to the end of religion.It is mainly because of the time and research that I put into this topic that I came to "religion".I challenge you or any one else that has made similar statement to come up with evidence to support the idea that only a unreasonable person could be live in God.I will be happy to discuss this topic in length with you over the next few days.
GBY :)(reply to this comment) |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From J_P
Friday, June 22, 2007, 18:28
(Agree/Disagree?)
I dont think I am forgetting that fact. While I know many would disagree with the pontiff, they cannot materially do so without risking ex-communication for breaking th rules of the church.
As far as choice goes:
A: Informed Choice vs being raised/or otherwise into a religion that tells you if you dont believe or do as mandated, you will go to hell, or in some other way be punished or adversely considered.
B: There are those who know better, but think "Why not, if I am wrong, then it doesn't matter, and if there is a god, then at least I picked the right side". While it is a choice, it can hardly be considered an active stand, rather a passive decision.
C: While each person takes the word of another every day, there must always be a way of either validating or challenging the veracity of what is being said (media, science, education) or not accepting it and being able to do something about it (politics via voting, professionals via business choices). The exceptions to that would be dictatorships and religion. You cannot freely disagree in any material form without consequence.
In any form of belief system (politics, etc, included) there is the opportunity to debate and challange another without having to completely place trust in another without choosing to do so, and I add to that, the individual has the OPTION of a fully informed decision. With religion, that is not the case.(reply to this comment) |
| | From Ne Oublie
Sunday, June 24, 2007, 13:55
(Agree/Disagree?)
The point is that the 'rules of the church' only apply for so long as they choose to remain a part of that church. Yes, they may be brow-beaten or threatened into submission, but what are the threats used? Apart from places where religion and politics have mixed - ie: most of the "civilised" world - they are almost invariably the fear of losing that which only that religion can give, be it in the afterlife or the community offered by fellow believers.
In any case, it is a tradeoff that in order to receive the benefits offered by that religion the individual will ascribe to the beliefs stipulated by it. Therefore any sense of guilt is due to a recognition by the individual that they are not upholding their end of the deal, and the fear is that on recognition of their deficiency that the other party will do likewise.(reply to this comment) |
| | From Ne Oublie
Friday, June 22, 2007, 15:35
(Agree/Disagree?)
J_P, your argument falls apart on the basis that if religion and god are not 'real', then they exist only in the minds of believers, and as such are subject to the projections of that (human) believer's nature. You say that you believe religion was "conceived as a form of control" - by whom? If by humans, then it is, in fact, a product of human nature, and indeed continues to be manipulated by human nature.
The only way to attribute either positive or negative attributes to religion, is to recognise it as an entity. Otherwise it remains no more than the cumulative perception of human nature.(reply to this comment) |
| | From J_P
Friday, June 22, 2007, 15:58
(Agree/Disagree?)
A cooking pot is a product of humans but who is trying to call that a product of human nature.
I never said that religion was not real or does not exist. It is real, but I can call it evil and un-true. God is not real, so I cannot say something against the "thing" called god, but I can speak against the idea of a god, espoused in religion.
It is manipulated by humans, not by human nature.(reply to this comment) |
| | From Ne Oublie
Friday, June 22, 2007, 16:11
(Agree/Disagree?)
J_P, this is where JW's comment about the distinction between believing in god as an 'entity' or as a 'concept'comes into play. Yes, religion "exists", but only as a term used to describe a wide variety of concepts and perceptions. It exists solely within the consciousness of humans, and as such is subject to their projections and preconceptions.
The cooking pot is an entirely different story, as while is is created by humans, it does in fact take on physical and tangible properties. That doesn't make it either 'good' or 'bad', but it does exist beyond human consciousness.
As for whether it is manipulated by humans or human nature, I would disagree with you. (reply to this comment) |
| | From conan
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 12:49
(Agree/Disagree?)
Humans have controlled religion for as long as it has been in existence, and therefore is entirely manipulated. Yes, it exists in the subconscious as well, but that is because people have trained themselves to believe it is that way. Especially in the case of Christianity, the clergy were the only ones permitted to read the 'scripture' and to define what was contained inside and interpret it to enrich their lands and line their pockets. Religion as a structured entity has always been corrupt, whether it was believed to be authentic by its perpetrators or not, they always managed to use it to their advantage. Superstition has played its role as well, but human nature has used religion as a way to prey on the mass populous and to enslave the mind and wallet of the week. The 'Dark Ages' are so called because religion ruled with an iron fist. Kings answered to the pope and feared his say as the voice of god. The search for religious freedom led to global expansion, economic growth, the Renaissance and advances to science and medicine in staggering proportions. Imagine how much more we could know about the heavens, about our bodies, about anything really, if religion were held in check. Even today in America, religion prevents the research of embryonic stem cells in the search for medicinal breakthroughs in the fear of a deity's reprisal, or the loss of support of religious groups in the next election, whichever you chose to believe is more accurate. (reply to this comment) |
| | | | | From J_P
Friday, June 22, 2007, 18:53
(Agree/Disagree?)
I take your point on the fact that it is not tangible, to be touched or manipulated. I still think that the properties of religion are manipulated by humans for some benefit, and this plays on some basic human nature of belonging, perhaps as a survival mechanism. As an evolutionary trait, I would say that humans today do not need this any more, but as it is part of our nature, until we individually recognize this, humans will continue to attach themselves to an intangible idea, namely religion.
I would say though, that it does exist to the point that it affects peoples lives in a real physical way, and is accepted by the vast majority of people as a valid way of reasoning. THis is opposed to someone with a personality disorder. We can accept that what they are experiencing or saying is real to them, while at the same time KNOW that it is not in fact real.(reply to this comment) |
| | From JohnnieWalker
Friday, June 22, 2007, 10:47
(Agree/Disagree?)
I think you're confusing belief in the existence of god as an entity with the existence of god as a concept.
I can quite easily believe that the concept of any god is good or evil without believing in that god as an entity.
The point being made here is that religion has just as much a tendency to provide an excuse for the baser aspects of human nature as to provide an inspiration to suppress them.
In my opinion, the practice of magical thinking that is integral to any religion can be helpful. But the excuses and justifications it provides can be highly destructive.
Again, in my opinion, religion had its time and place. In a time when the human mind, its function and psychology were not yet understood it provided some with the motivation to exceed themselves for the betterment of mankind. However, in modern times, the guidelines provided by religion have become antiquated and the human mind has outgrown religion's archaic limitations and seemingly arbitrary ideologies.
That alone is what makes the question of whether religion is good or evil irrelevant to me at this point.(reply to this comment) |
| | From J_P
Friday, June 22, 2007, 18:41
(Agree/Disagree?)
I don't think I am. To me, they are more closely the same than different. Whether it is a entity/being or the concept (which I am not able to describe), the effect is the same, the so-called god of the gaps.
It is the attribution that I have exception with. We, as humans, are responsible for our actions. THere are scientific ways to measure those actions, and we may not yet fully understand exactly why we makethe decisions we do, to attribute that to a god or religion, or the concept of the like, is simplistic in my view. The the action has a good effect is no justification for the reason behind the action in and of itself. To say that religion allowed some advancement in technology or discovery just because it was a professed Christian who discovered it does not mean it was because that person was a believer. It could just as easily be turned on its head and said that without the oppresive nature of religion, we might be well ahead of where we are today in our understanding of the human condition.
That a religious belief system has a strong effect on people is not disputed. That this effect has yielded many benefits cannot be disputed either, but so must the inverse.
That religion itself is credited for the benefits, and it is assumed that those might not have occured without religion, I submit, is wrong.(reply to this comment) |
| | From JohnnieWalker
Friday, June 22, 2007, 18:55
(Agree/Disagree?)
The benefits I had in mind are not scientific in nature--i.e. I do not accredit a scientific invention or discovery to any given religion. Rather the religion created an environment or emotion that resulted in said scientific invention or discovery.
I tend to think that we of the information age take our cynicism for granted and fail to realize how great a motivator it is.
Again, none of this is more than my currently held opinion based on my experiences and current research.(reply to this comment) |
| | From J_P
Friday, June 22, 2007, 19:00
(Agree/Disagree?)
Again, I think it ends up being the same thing. That something happened under said circumstances does not mean that it would not have happened under other entirely different circumstances (religious or otherwise). It does not mean it WOULD have either.
Religion may have been a motivator in some cases (for good or evil) or just a circumstance, just as the opposite can be true.(reply to this comment) |
| | From Ne Oublie
Friday, June 22, 2007, 15:30
(Agree/Disagree?)
I beg to differ, JW.
If god is only a concept, then it is exclusively a construct and projection of the human mind - whether individually or collectively. God therefore has no properties - whether good or bad, and anything done in the name of god is ultimately a manifestation of some element of human nature.
So, the point I was making was that in order to give either religion or god properties, you have to accept its existence as an entity. Since I do not hold that view, I consider describing them as 'negative' to be as fanciful as considering them 'positive'.(reply to this comment) |
| | | | | | | | From vacuous
Friday, June 22, 2007, 11:25
(Agree/Disagree?)
I think religion is a process rather than an object. If my body is a microcosm of the macrocosm and the pattern of the universe is manifesting itself within my body, the whole is implicit in each part and is present in an implicate way within my body. Now in early societies religion was a way of assimilating external instances within oneself to create meaning. I think this is still important if one is to avoid a fragmented existance. In Greek "art" means "to fit", beauty in the dictionary is interpreted to mean "fitting in every way". I think art is found in everything, for instance mathematics fits abstracts thought into ordered patterns with abstract symbology, science produces technology which in greek means "the work of an artisian". Religion was initially a process of trying to fit ourself with the meaning of the universe.
The problem is that eventually it became structured into a dogma to preserve a status quo. Religion became a structured tool used to preserve a ruling dynasty, art became used to create awe of religion in the minds of citzens, science was used to create weapons to preserve the society.
Dogma, science, and even sometimes our mode of speach, stresses the separation between objects and their independence rather than with pure process and activity. As the universe is in movement any static concept fails to appreciate a true assimilation of the without within.
I think however that the spirit of religion, the inner procedure of uniting process, space, matter, time and even consciousness into something meaningful is very important and will always have a place.
Does this make sense?(reply to this comment) |
| | From conan
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 12:33
(Agree/Disagree?)
Religion is an institution which is in effect, an object. If religion were an art, I may tend to agree with this. While religion has clearly inspired some of the greatest art in humans short history, religion itself is a process dedicated to the worship of an object, which the secular amongst us would agree is an imaginary object at best. I'm not sure which early religions hovered around the assimilation of 'external instances within oneself to create meaning' but as far as my limited research and study have shown, religion was always about getting help from the unseen and unknown or to explain phenomenon like the sun rising and setting each day. The Greek or Hellenistic civilization was renowned for its beauty and art, not its religion. They actually had no word for 'religion' which is perhaps why they prospered and flourished in the things of art as well as in fields like philosophy and medicine. Their myths of warring gods usually reflected the warring factions around them in a sort of reverse reflection to show the diversity of their gods and their followers. Their was no 'way' to worship and no code of 'beliefs' to adhere to. The gods existed to them and they worshiped them according to their beliefs, not a societal thing. Zeus was feared in one city and beloved in another. Artemis was a virgin huntress in one city and the goddess of fertility in another.
Also, their gods were believed to commonly mingle in their midst and to have children with mortals (see Hercules or Olympic winners who received kudos which would often parlay its way into a generalship because the gods held them in favor to enable them to win). As there was no structure to their religion, there was no chance of a schism or policy shift of the gods. You worshiped how you saw fit and were free to ignore a god in favor of another. It was quite possibly the first nation or empire which had true 'religious tolerance' without favoritism.
The Native Americans worshiped much like the early religions of Asia Minor and the fertile crescent did: worship of nature, the rain, the sun, the hawk. To this day the Cherokee claim that the Black Hills in South Dakota and Wyoming are sacred according to their beliefs and were (this part is accurate) seized illegally without their proper compensation and defaced (see Mount Rushmore). Theirs was a simple religion based on their necessities, not a hierarchy. The holy-men were advisers to the tribal chiefs, not policy makers. They made their decisions for hunting or travel or war, and then sought their gods' blessings, not the other way around like the 'holy wars' in Europe and the Middle East.
What you are referring to as the original or pure religion sounds to me like a meditative philosophy and not a religion. Religion is most commonly defined as "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs". I agree that the 'procedure of uniting process, space, matter, time and consciousness into something meaningful' can be a religious experience on a personal level, but the minute it becomes a way of life and a strictly ritualized set of observances, it becomes a form of control and an attempt to govern ones fellow humans, and ultimately a poison. (reply to this comment) |
| | From JohnnieWalker
Friday, June 22, 2007, 12:20
(Agree/Disagree?)
Yes, it does. And I don't disagree with that idea at all.
However, I think "religion" is too loaded of a word, as it has come to imply tradition, obligation and elitism rather than beauty and individual artistic expression.
It is those aspects of it I refer to above and which I believe to be archaic, not the expression itself.
Unfortunately, at the moment, I can't think of an alternative term or phrase.(reply to this comment) |
| | | | | From conan
Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 12:03
(Agree/Disagree?)
I'm not sure your accurate in your sweeping assumptions. Actually, I'm sure you're not. The atrocities you address, while horrific in their own right don't have the added stench of 'righteousness' attached to their hideous deeds. The struggle for communism in the former Soviet Union and in China were actually religious uprisings originally, to overthrow corrupt Christian governments in cooperation with corrupt western governments. And of course, Hitler was a devout Christian and you had to be a Christian, preferable a Catholic, to be a member of the Nazi party. You also had to prove that you had no Jew in your blood for at least four generations. This horrific racist policy was based on the erroneous translation of the passage in the Bible where the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin asked for the blood of Jesus to be on their heads, and the heads of their descendants for all time. You could argue this point as not being a religious one, but you'd ultimately be wrong. It wasn't until years after WW11 that the Catholic Church acknowledged that it was 'SOME Jews' instead of 'THE Jews' who killed Jesus.
Chiang Kai-Shek was also a religious man who had the backing of the western Christian governments while ruling China with an iron fist. It was because of his corruption and untoward policy making that began the communist revolution to try and demand more equality and a better standard of life that didn't cater entirely to making foreign nations wealthy at the abuse of the Chinese population. And of course Lenin began his revolution in Russia to depose a tyrannical Christian czar who was also the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and therefore infallible in the eyes of the religious inside the borders of his domain. His oppression of the peasants who worshiped him and his subsequent massacre were to bring about a freedom of religious oppression and a less totalitarian state where the people were all equals as opposed to serf and slave. Obviously, the way it turned out was fundamentally different than what had been intended by the one-time revolutionaries. Power corrupts, and their power became their religion. Stalin was going to be a priest. He was trained in religious seminaries and it was his religious upbringing that emboldened him to be the genocidal maniac he was.
The evil regimes and atrocities they carried out were not religious, but they were a direct result of religion poisoning the system of government and life of an entire population to the point that communism seemed to the populous to be a better alternative by far until the corruption of power decayed the ideals of socialism far beyond their base 'beliefs'.(reply to this comment) |
| | from J_P
Friday, June 22, 2007 - 01:53
(Agree/Disagree?)
Let me post the first paragraph of Sam Harris: The End of Faith...
I have no less dislike for any one religion or the other at their core, and while the conclusion is particular to a single religion, it embodies the essense of all the is wrong with any religion, IMO.
The young man boards the bus as it leaves the terminal. He wears an overcoat. Beneath his overcoat, he is wearing a bomb. His pockets are filled with nails, ball bearings, and rat poison. The bus is crowded and headed for the heart of the city. The young man takes his seat beside a middle-aged couple. He will wait for the bus to reach its next stop. The couple at his side appears to be shopping for a new refrigerator. The woman has decided on a model, but her husband worries that it will be too expensive. He indicates another one in a brochure that lies open on her lap. The next stop comes into view. The bus doors swing. The woman observes that the model her husband has selected will not fit in the space underneath their cabinets. New passengers have taken the last remaining seats and begun gathering in the aisle. The bus is now full. The young man smiles. With the press of a button he destroys himself, the couple at his side, and twenty others on the bus. The nails, ball bearings, and rat poison ensure further casualties on the street and in the surrounding cars. All has gone according to plan.
The young man’s parents soon learn of his fate. Although saddened to have lost a son, they feel tremendous pride at his accomplishment. They know that he has gone to heaven and prepared the way for them to follow. He has also sent his victims to hell for eternity. It is a double victory. The neighbors find the event a great cause for celebration and honor the young man’s parents by giving them gifts of food and money.
These are the facts. This is all we know for certain about the young man. Is there anything else that we can infer about him on the basis of his behavior? Was he popular in school? Was he rich or was he poor? Was he of low or high intelligence? His actions leave no clue at all. Did he have a college education? Did he have a bright future as a mechanical engineer? His behavior is simply mute on questions of this sort, and hundreds like them.
Why is it so easy, then, so trivially easy-you-could-almost-bet-your-life-on-it easy—to guess the young man’s religion?
(reply to this comment)
| | | | from madly
Wednesday, June 20, 2007 - 23:39
(Agree/Disagree?)
Fuck Yeah!!
(reply to this comment)
| from SeanSwede
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 - 14:32
(Agree/Disagree?)
Thumbs up from me!
(reply to this comment)
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