Someone tried to kill me tonight

[SloopJonB]

No-one said that religion never provides any positive functions, only that it doesn't provide any answers - which it doesn't.

They are two different things.

Wishin' and Hopin' doesn't provide answers, only good feelings.

 

[Ed Lada]

Sure.

Scientists can't do much in the way of research if the peasants smash in their windows and set fire to the lab.

We need to "believe in" getting along, to some extent. Whether that's based on a belief in some Diety or that all humans should be considered as equals, it's faith. You can't prove a durn thing one way or the other, except that it's a lot nicer to work together and be secure and well fed than to starve in the bushes alone.

-DSK

Well I would stipulate that getting along because it is a good and obvious thing to do is more palatable than the idea that I better get along with my fellow humans,  because otherwise some imaginary fairy will smite me or even torment me for eternity.  I don't see where faith enters that equation.  Getting along is demonstrably a better way to live for everyone concerned.  Almost anything that can be attributed to some deity can be better attributed to some more plausible cause, if only that historic observation has shown that similar circumstances produce similar human behaviors across many cultures.  Occam's razor would suggest that almost any answer is more believable than "It was God's will."

I don't mind or care about peoples religious beliefs.  What I do mind is when these people try to tell me any as yet unproven idea has to be accepted as faith. Just because we don't know the answer yet, doesn't mean there isn't a reasonable answer out there.  It wasn't very long ago that people thought many illnesses were caused by 'vapors'.  Even today, Pat Robertson firmly believes AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuals, although science has shown it is merely an unthinking virus.

 

[Ease the sheet.]

You're all stupid. Religion is belief, nothing more, nothing less. Just because your beliefs are different to most mainstream religions doesn't make you non religious.

 

[Ed Lada]

You're all stupid. Religion is belief, nothing more, nothing less. Just because your beliefs are different to most mainstream religions doesn't make you non religious.

You are pretty stupid to make a pronouncement like that.  

 

[Ease the sheet.]

You are pretty stupid to make a pronouncement like that.  

Yet you continue to smoke while knowing that it kills......

 

[SloopJonB]

Yet you continue to smoke while knowing that it CAN kill......

Corrected.

 

[Ease the sheet.]

Seems cigarette packets will only be relinquished from cold, dead hands...

 

[Bent Sailor]

"Getting along" is a tribal instinct. It evolves in all pack/herd style creatures because it increases their capability of surviving to breed.

Religion just codified and restricts it for the purposes of control by the elders of said tribe. Like it does the other instincts of sexual attraction, pack/herd dominance, etc.

Philosophy, with or without a religious bent, comes to some interesting and useful conclusions... but they are no more valid than the uninteresting and unuseful ones. 

 

[Ease the sheet.]

So individuals can't have their own religion?

 

[Battlecheese]

I believe humans would have invented music for one reason or another.  We all have a diaphragm, lungs, vocal chords and a tongue.  Probably Thag's wife was humming to herself while ironing the bearskins, independent of the elders singing to the spirits.  As far as religion maintaining order and cohesion in society, I would insert the word coercive as well.  Nothing to get people to behave than threatening them with the fires of hell.  Look at Asian cultures which have a very different view,.  Buddha was a man, not a god, he just happened to attain enlightenment.  Asian cultures believe in getting along, not under threat of punishment but because it is obviously the correct, polite thing to do when you live with others.  They haven't done any worse than the Christians have.   

Nor any better, it is worth noting. 

 

[Ed Lada]

Seems cigarette packets will only be relinquished from cold, dead hands...

Good thing I don't own a gun or things could get out of hand.

 

[mad]

Religion answers nothing.

It just provides a crutch for people who are unable to simply accept the unknowable.

Religious faith is merely wishful thinking.

Unicorn tears and fairy dust. Vol 1

 

[frenchie]

You really need to find out what happened in cities across the us over the last 5 years. You're ignorance is not my problem. 

They don't want to be treated like white people, they want special privileges. They want to not be held accountable for their actions. And they're getting it.

Dunno WTF you're on about...  my city's violent crime level's down (again) this year.  Lowest murder rate in 45 years or so.

 

[Raz'r]

Sure.

Scientists can't do much in the way of research if the peasants smash in their windows and set fire to the lab.

We need to "believe in" getting along, to some extent. Whether that's based on a belief in some Diety or that all humans should be considered as equals, it's faith. You can't prove a durn thing one way or the other, except that it's a lot nicer to work together and be secure and well fed than to starve in the bushes alone.

-DSK

I disagree. Science has shown fairly clearly where "getting along" comes from. It ain't faith. It's evolution.  (we're a social species after all, we'd die without the tribe. So, those who developed ways to thrive in a tribe survived and had babies, those who didn't, died)

So why faith? turns out our brains are pretty adept at passing on stories. Faith of various flavors are just memes that have taken over their hosts.

 

[Raz'r]

No, because it does.

Yahweh may or may not have spoken from a burning bush, but the Judea-Christian code of ethics was (and to some extent still is) a way of getting people to get along so you can have a successful community of human beings working cooperatively. We have some better ideas now, "better" in the sense that they lead to a wider range of cooperation and a higher level of inter-cooperation.

You can attribute some correct answers to "religion" even if any religion you can point to is actually a bunch of superstitious hooey. This is the difference between a rational objective approach and religious "thought". Religious types want to argue about whether Democrats are morally inferior to Republicans, or what color to paint Ronald MacDonald's nose on their carved idols. The rational observer can see the positive functions that religion can (and often does) serve in human society even if the she sees that the religion itself is mind-control pick-your-pocket bullshit.

-DSK

those codes of conduct were around long before the tribes of Israel wrote them down....