Posted by Saddletank on 06.17.2014, 02:18 PM:
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller
You know saddle, I'm starting to think that you have a personal vendetta against religion. The way you argue gives of such an impression.
Correct. I've been outside religion looking in, then inside religion looking out, now I'm outside again. My experiences have caused me to develope a strong and certain belief that organised religion is bad in all manner of ways.
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller Having faith in a religion does not equal understanding a religion. I can have faith in my math teacher, but that doesn't make me a math genius. Likewise, one having a certain religious faith does not necessarily mean he/she knows that own religion well.
I don't understand how you think I don't understand religion. What you said above is the argument I've been using in this thread for a long while against Saviour. I have been in my time a strongly committed evangelical Christian. How am I not supposed to understand religion?
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller Your analogies are inaccurate from the get-go. You NEED to read a physics book to understand physics. You NEED to read a math book to understand math. You do NOT understand either just by observing physicists and mathematicians.
I disagree. You can learn maths and physics from a good teacher. You do NOT need to read books. I was taught maths by a teacher stood at the front of class and telling me about calculations by writing on a blackboard. I have never read a single book about maths.
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller Saviour is right; you can't understand Islam without reading the Quran, no more than you can understand Christianity without reading the Bible.
We will just have to disagree here, but at least my experience proves you wrong: I knew enough about Christianity to decide I wanted to become a Christian before I had even looked inside the bible.
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller And if you are thinking of refuting this, think about it for a moment: how many different sects of Christianity are there in the world? If you claim that you can understand a religion just based on how the followers act, then which facet of Christianity would you be looking at?
A person can be a Protestant Christian without bothering about understanding Mormons, Quakers, Roman Catholics, Russian and Greek Orthodox, etc, etc, because Christianity (and this is a key part of my argument) is broken up into dozens of different beliefs, just as Islam is broken up into more than one principal beleif (Sunni, Shia for example). What you are saying isn't really valid because each Christian sect/belief system thinks it is right and all the others are wrong.
This is one of my main arguments against organised religion. If there's a God who wants to give his true word to humankind, why are there so many different religions all claiming they know the truth? They cannot all be right. In fact all but one of them must be wrong. Where does that leave us? With the knowledge that religion is deluding millions, possibly billions of beleivers. Where is the value of organised religion in that?
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller Would you really understand everything about Christianity from observing someone who is a Christian only in name but does not practise it?
Of course not. I have met several examples of such people, 'social christians' if you will, and I wouldn't consider them true Christians. In fact it bothers me that there were a large number of such people in the church community I used to attend. Their presence was one of the factors that drove me away from religion.
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller If you "observe" only the outliers who kill or lie in the name of religion, would that really tell you about a religion?
Did the Holy Inquisitors of Spain and Portugal know they were right? Did the Crusaders know they were right? Did the Englishmen who burned Joanne d'Arc at the stake know they were right? Did the men who flew the jets into the World Trade Centre know they were right? Yes, they all did.
Your point is largely irrelevant as the people who lie and do evil, do it in the name of their faith, and thus religion becomes twisted by evil men into a tool to do evil. This is the key element of my argument against religion as I've made clear all along.
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller And if you talk about the heads of religion, think about it: aren't priests or imaams humans too? They make mistakes, don't they? Or are you seriously saying that every one of their mistakes is because their religion say so, instead of their own lapse in intelligence?
It depends what those 'mistakes' are. If its a Christian priest like Fred Phelps who rants and raves bigotry against gays using the bible to pour hate on them, then that is still a fault of religion because such evil people twist and abuse religion into acts of hate. If its a north London imam who preaches hate and whose sermons cause young men to put bombs in their backpacks and go onto the London underground to blow up trains and kill innocent people then, yes, religion is directly and specifically to blame, because twisted wicked men used it to do evil. If nutcases like Fred Phelps and those North London Imams are teaching the religion they think is true, then religion is at fault for providing corrupt men with a means to spread their hate. Its not the men who are at fault, but religion itself. Without religion such men would have no audience.
This has been my entire point throughout this thread. Nothing you are saying here is denting what I'm saying.
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller Religion is exclusive of the people who practise it; I've said it before and I say it again, and my view isn't held by only me. Two billion Christians in the world does not equate to two billion hard-core believers, as you yourself should know. Likewise, not every muslim understands or even follow Islam in their daily life.
We have gone over this argument before and proven your viewpoint to be false. Religion cannot exist without those who have faith to beleive in it. Religion is belief in god, or a god, or a pantheon of gods, whatever the faithful choose to beleive. Without that act of belief their cannot be religion. Lets not keep stepping backwards in the discussion.
We know from social statistics of groups and organisations that any group of people will consist of ~90% sheep and ~10% leaders. It's the leaders who end up as the Fred Phelpses, the Inquisitors, the hijackers of passenger airliners and the suicide bombers. If religion only consisted of the 90% sheep it would be less of an issue (I'd still have issues with it but that's beside the point). Its the 10% of fundamentalist nutcases that cause so much pain, terror and misery on this planet. They've been doing it for millennia. It needs to stop.
When people like Saviour even deny that 9/11 was a religiously motivated act I simply despair at anyone ever progressing a meaningful dialogue with religious people.
quote: Originally posted by Roarkiller Humans will cause grief regardless of faith. They will do so in the name of religion, and they will do so in the name of atheism, and they will do so in the name of science or logic or whatever else. It's called making an excuse to justify oneself.
Can you name a significant incident where people have caused grief in the name of atheism or science? Atheism is a non-belief, a completely harmless thing,m a belief in the total absence of something. I also don't know where any scientist or cause promoted by science has significantly - and intentionally - done harm.
Regarding your closing remarks about human nature and other sources of suffering in the world - I have already gone over this ground previously and I'm becoming tired of making these same points over and over as though you are just not reading what I'm writing. I'm not denying that there is wickedness and suffering in this world that has nothing to do with religion - but in this discussion I am talking about religion and the additional suffering it causes and has caused and the barrier to scientific and moral progress it puts up to reduce suffering and harmonius co-operation in the world.
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