Religion is for the weak.

Here is my opinion. Like it? cool. Hate me for it? funny.

Religion, all religions are based on fear. Based on selfishness.

I am not talking about what the words are written down in the bible. I am talking about religion as a whole, religion itself.

We are scared of death, we are scared that when we die, there is nothing. Scared that when we die our life was in vain. No one waiting with open arms, no one welcoming us "home". We fear death, and that ties into selfishness. We are selfish in beleiving that we are a special creation being watched over and cared for.

People want/need to beleive that each one of us is special, each one of us is better then the monkey swinging in the tree throwing it's fecies at others. But we are not. Our only reason for living is to procreate, to prolong the species. The only thing that seperates us from other living creatures is imagination, imagination granted us religion.

People have a hard time realizing that we are just animals. We will die, no trumpets will sound, no one will come and take you away. You will die. You will be forgotten.

But I guess everyone needs that spark of hope.

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I would describe it as ego failures. [not to make it sound worse than it is though]

People for whom, for whatever reasons, are unable to support an independent autonomous thought process that is emotionally and intellectually satisfactory.

Sometimes it is mostly cultural conditioning. This is the milder form of the neurosis.
It becomes the socially accepted norm to profess a belief in some kind of God.
People taking the energy to state "I don't believe in a God" are set upon by the most vitriolic of believers and often treated with disdain by those who are less passionate about it.

So it becomes simply easy and convenient to profess a belief.

Many of the most ardent supporters of religion are people who are or have been desperate at some point. They arrived at an emotional psychological low point that they had to look outside themselves to cling to any shread of hope.

These are dangerous people. Sort of like the police dealing with a person ready to commit suicide, suicides are about as likely to kill someone else as themselves.

These religious zealots have become lost to themselves. Religious zealots can be equally as dangerous, perhaps more so because they commit acts with group self-reinforcing psychology. In otherwords they collectively fight wars and kill millions of people simply because others don't profess a belief in their particular religious book or cultural values.

I do not attempt to exclude them from humanity, but at the same time these people do try to set themselves up as above humanity.

It can be a psychological/emotional crutch.
Like drugs the social 'pats on the back' and moral support of a church can become addictive.

It is emotional/psychological illness/weakness that causes it.
But because this crutch is so common, possibly even the majority of people use it, that, no one will look at it squarely and call it what it is.

People can also cling to politics as some rescuing panacea, but often people are less so emotionally glued to it. I think we have some biological mechanism that tends to have us believe in some mystical parent figure.
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Originally posted by slank
People for whom, for whatever reasons, are unable to support an independent autonomous thought process that is emotionally and intellectually satisfactory.

You just said that to believe in God makes you a fool. Congratulations. You receive the 1st prize for pretentiousness. Big words and atheism make you better than the those poor "sheep".


[edit on 12-6-2005 by babloyi]

Originally posted by Bane Of Your Existence
Here is my opinion. Like it? cool. Hate me for it? funny.

Religion, all religions are based on fear. Based on selfishness.

I am not talking about what the words are written down in the bible. I am talking about religion as a whole, religion itself.

We are scared of death, we are scared that when we die, there is nothing. Scared that when we die our life was in vain. No one waiting with open arms, no one welcoming us "home". We fear death, and that ties into selfishness. We are selfish in beleiving that we are a special creation being watched over and cared for.

People want/need to beleive that each one of us is special, each one of us is better then the monkey swinging in the tree throwing it's fecies at others. But we are not. Our only reason for living is to procreate, to prolong the species. The only thing that seperates us from other living creatures is imagination, imagination granted us religion.

People have a hard time realizing that we are just animals. We will die, no trumpets will sound, no one will come and take you away. You will die. You will be forgotten.

But I guess everyone needs that spark of hope.

i will give you one million dollars if you go to the middle east and say this and return alive.

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There is nothing intrinsically better about me [or any athiest/agnositc] than anyone else.
Whatever anyone has or is is at the behest of the random universe.

But i do thank you for calling me pretentious.

I will admit a certain animosity for zealots who froth at the mouth about the absoluteness of their religion(s). But it makes clear their emotional dependance on it, wouldn't you agree? Do you think they have something in common with junkies who build their entire worlds around a single aspect of their lives? namely their dependancy.

Now, babloyi, can you come up with rational, intellectual counter arguments for any statements i have made? I am open to them. Otherwise i may suffer under the delusion that my ideas may be correct.
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Originally posted by slank
But i do thank you for calling me pretentious.
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Now, babloyi, can you come up with rational, intellectual counter arguments for any statements i have made? I am open to them. Otherwise i may suffer under the delusion that my ideas may be correct.

Just a little jolt of reality. My post had nothing to do with my religion. It had to do with these so called "intellectuals" who sit up in their ivory towers, passing judgement. Read your 1st post. You had condemned all religious people to stupidity. So many of those people who made the world you know today. Can you actually believe what you said?

[edit on 12-6-2005 by babloyi]

He is just another one of the hate mongers that have so much hate that they sit around on their computer and express their contempt for people who are of different belief.

change from your hate of God, or youll be sorrrrry

if you only knew...

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Termites build wonderful climate control engineering structures. They can survive in deserts that are actually too hot for them.

Ants, hornets and bees all construct hives for living, egg hatcheries and food storage.

Beavers build dams as a protective device to impede access to their quite sturdy homes.

I do have respect for people who survived against tough odds with passion, desperation, clever intelligence, and sometimes with just plain nastiness. I am sure religion and sometimes even religious deception were a part of this survival.

I have some free time and energy now, and won't live forever, is it to terrible a thing to examine an artifact of the human condition before i become dust?

I would probably be worshiping my little fanny off if i had grown up in another time or under other conditions. But i didn't. For at least a microscopic minority of the population I think it is insightful to take an analytical view of religion. It won't really change it. Humanity, collectively speaking, is not IMO an intelligent species.

Mostly when we try to crown ourselves with being intelligent it is for personal ego. But if we never, even when we have the free time & energy, rationally examine any aspects of our lives, then we would be a completely stupid species. Im sure some of the insights into a sharper obsidian blade/spearpoint came while someone relaxed at the end of a day by a fire very long ago. Ego and purpose are almost inseperable quantities.

You seem to be taking this personally, babloyi.
Imagine you are a rational yet curious alien trying to figure out what these humans are about.

If you do it with your own life you may [or may not] be able to improve it, or at least have a good estimation if it is improvable.
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Those are some interesting examples slank, but what are you trying to prove with them? That people can beat insurmountable odds, no matter what's against them? You seem to be forgetting something, though. Some of those people used those "insurmountable odds" (religion, as you call it), and BECAUSE of them, they succeeded.

Nothing wrong with examining what's wrong with humanity. Condemning much of humanity is a little weird, though. I mean, you called religion a form of mild neurosis! This is the same religion, that people who stridently followed, achieved something. Isaac Newton was religious enough to allign himself with "Unitarianism". I don't think he took religion lightly. Most of the arabs in the middle ages, who contributed so much to society were actively religious. Humanity may not be a very intelligent species, but it is the best we got.
I can't look at humanity like some alien, because frankly, I care too much. There is everything good in analysing religion. If we didn't, some might still be stuck worshipping saint bones and collecting pardons. However, what I am trying to point out is that the search for God, or belief in God doesn't make a person somehow "weak-minded".
Heheh...BTW, I have a feeling that most of those discoveries (like the sharper obsedian blade) occured due to active participation than sitting back and thinking. I mean, we didn't have nukes until there was a war that needed them. Hatred- now that's something to condemn to foolishness.

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As for the obsidian blade, it was an interactive process, making blades, use of blades, probably problems with blades, then some campfire tooth picking time with an 'ah hah' I know how i am going to make a better blade.

I like the idea of looking for/creating meaning in life. I just think people might do better looking within more often rather than always looking without.

There are many things i am sure i will never have the ability to change in my life, but by examining my life i can, and believe i have in some ways improved it.

Isn't the reaching out for a spiritual answer a means of improving one's life?
Is it so fantastic a notion that the one who is most likely to be able to produce real gains in one's own life is one's self?

I'm sure many people who are devout believers in some prescriptive religion will find that shocking and heretical.

I don't believe life has any intrinsic meaning. But that frees us up to give it any meaning we choose.

Are we the wiley, intelligent species that stands on its own two feet with nobility and reaches for the stars?
Or are we the superstitious, venal, selfish, grubbers that kill one another for reading/believing in the 'wrong' religious book?

We are some of both. We probably need both.
But with an excess of the later i don't think we will survive.
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The biggest divide you can find between religion is wether they believe GOd is the only one that can save them, or they can save themselves.

So it is really difficult with those two faction to be able to make a blanket stament. Not to metion the idea that people who pratice religion are weak when you look at indiviuals. Especailly the ones that excel. ONe of the biggest reasons Chruchs get a tex exmpt status is taht it has been sceintifically reconized that they improve the area around it, and decrease crime.

Some people think think that admiting to a weakness is a weakness onto itself. While others think admiting a weakness turns it into a strength. For any of us to say either is 100% true would be admitting thier own arrogance.

it is a way of perception. Non-belivers don't want to admit they might be wrong so they metion how believers are like mindles cattle being lead to a slaughterhouse. While the non-belivers can be as free as birds can crap on them when ever they want.

Dehumanization should be the first thing everyone avoids before they start pointing fingers on who is better. I don't know who is. But from my point of veiw I sincerly hope you change. Do you feel the same way and hope that I change? or do you want me to remain a mindless part of a herd?

You are so far from the truth its not even funny.

Seriously, you have no clue.

I do not fear death, and i am a Catholic.

It takes extreme bravery to believe in something that is illogical, so atheism is weak.

God doesnt exist? Bull crap. Here's some logical proof

www.doesgodexist.org...

www.proofgodexists.org...

www.souldevice.org...

www.geocities.com...

What's the meaning of life? The obvious answer is the continuance of life.

Is that all we are though -- persistent sowers of DNA and seekers of "eternal life" via the perpetuation of our seed? Perhaps or perhaps not. Who knows?

What’s so wrong with seeking to give meaning to one's brief period in the Here-And-Now by adopting a philosophy of "reverence for life" as part of a formalized religion that has mnemonic rituals that sanctify life and a cosmology that reminds us of our impending death in order that we might choose to reverence the former without forgetting the fact that one day ... we're all destined to experience the latter as so much worm food?

Are religions convoluted? Isn’t everything to some degree? Are religions given to hypocrisy, sectarianism, and oneupsmanship? What endeavour of mankind isn’t to some degree?

Chill out, take a deep breath, try to make this world a better place and leave a positive legacy in the wake of your existence, says I.

In all seriousness, my life was easy before I became a Christian. I was a Christian basher, an evangelical athiest, if you will. If I found someone who was religious at all, I would see them as intellectually weak, and go enlighten them. Yet, the fools never seemed to buy into my cold, hard logic. However, life was easy, I did what I wanted, when I wanted, and got to see myself as intellectually superior and mentally stronger than all the religious crutch-walkers out there.

Heh.

Then, through an unfortunate series of events, I could no longer continue to honestly say there was no God, and became convinced Jesus Christ was my savior. (Did a little too much research to refute Christians, it seems...) Life just did a 180, and became anything but easy. I wouldn't tell anyone, for a while, that I was a Christian. This was because I knew people would think I was weak and intellectually inferior if I did; after all, I had done the same. I lost a lot of friends upon my conversion because they, "thought I was better than that." My life was turned upside down. The easy route would be to ignore this God that I knew beyond a shadow of doubt existed and continue to continue, reject it, which would be intellectually dishonest of me since I know there is a God, or try to live the life I'd like to be living, for God. It took me 4 years, but I moved from the first option, of hiding it, to living for Christ out loud.

This easy, crutced life has been anything but. I'm sure many of you have seen how some people react to Christians stating their interpretations of the Bible. They're often met, by certain individuals, with name calling, condescending and pretentious comments, and a supposed loss of respect (though in reality that respect never existed). Real life is about 10 times worse. Here, if someone gets in your face, you can back off, wait until you calm down if they really upset you, and respond in a decent manner. In real life, there are some people who hone in on you and just pick, pick, pick until they get bored or get an explosive reaction out of you. Then they make some comment about Christ supporting love, and you seem filled with hate, and they walk away, thinking, I duuno, that they're better than that person they just tweeked to the point of losing self control.

There are many other instances of where my life has gotten a lot harder since I picked up my crutch compared to the days when I was knocking people's crutches from beneath them. However, I have to get to work, so I'll end it there. I'm sure there are other stories people can tell you about how much easier their mental lives have become since they picked up this mental crutch themselves.

There is a short story where the lead character is a special ops dude for the US. He's down in South America on an operation and starts talking to a missionary there. He has complete disrespect for the missionary, and tells him so openly. The missionary listens as this special ops guy is saying Christianity is for those too weak to be accountable for their own decisions; Christianity is for the weak, the cowards in life who can't face it. The missionary just looked at him after he was finished and says, "you came out to this dangerous land. You knew there would be dangers, people and nature would be trying to kill you. You armed yourself with guns, grenades, and years of training to kill. I knew the same things coming here, and I brought a Bible. Which of us is the coward?"

I really liked that

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Jehosephat makes an interesting point, perhaps some people's belief in a God is not a total dependance for every thought, action and reason for being, but more as a supporting entity. It is still a belief in a myth, but at least it allows for some exercise of action and mind.

If Jesus is your savior as you say, doesn't that mean you have a dependancy on that religious belief?

I still contend that religous beliefs are a neurosis and in some extreme cases a psychosis [psychosis - inability to recognize right from wrong].

If you fly a plane into a building in a foreign country, killing thousands of people, because you believe it is against your religion for your own government to allow troops from that foreign nation being stationed there, wouldn't that be a good example of religious psychosis?

If you blow up a clinic, killing doctors, nurses and patients, because you are anti-abortion, isn't that an act of religious psychosis? Oddly enough killing people supposedly in order to protect life? [Does that mean only fetuses are life and adults and children aren't?]

Wouldn't a crusade into the so-called holy land by Christians to conquer it in the name of religion, killing thousands or millions of arabs in the process religious psychosis?

If you due to your religious beliefs want to subvert a nation with ideals of freedom and democracy to dictate your religious constraints on everyone in that nation isn't that religious psychosis?

Isn't religion often a cop-out from taking conscious acknowlegment of the very real results of one's actions?

Religion is often an excuse to commit horrible acts in the name of religion and then feel good about it.

Religion is mostly an excuse to turn your back on your own humanity and everyone elses.

I don't have a problem with a reverance for life. Real life here and now and trying to make & preserve a good place for future life. But that is about the reality we live in and not about some mythology.

I think the real morality is biological abhorance with unnecessary violence.
Secular humanism is what has taken people from the barbarous behaviors most traditional religions prescribe. I realize these religions were founded in rougher more barbarous times, but this is also a clear indication that they are not founded on timeless truths.
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Originally posted by slankI think the real morality is biological abhorance with unnecessary violence.

Or to put it another way ... reverence for life.

hahah...slank, you have a very hopeful opinion of humanity. People don't kill because they are crazy, they kill because it gives them power. They kill because that is what they have been taught. The so called "Bloodlust". It's nothing to do with neurosis, or religion.
The fanatic who flies into a building. The pro-lifer who bombs a hospital. The old world european who wishes to eradicate those "barbarians" and impose his own views of society, the atheist who wishes to "educate" those "ignorant believers". It's not a psychological problem, it's human nature, unfortunately. As long as there is something to hate, those feelings will continue. Even when (or if) religion is fully gone. It gives them a sense of power, of superiority.

But I agree with what you say. People shouldn't stay stagnant and be of the opinion that "Oh, God will save us". God helps those who help themselves.

It's hard to take the original post seriously, if only for one reason.

The post lumps all religions together. And it's screamingly, painfully obvious (or at least..it should be...) that they're not all the same, and have many, many differences in belief and doctrine.

Buddhists do not fear death, for example; There's no "creator" or "being" watching over and waiting "up there" to welcome us to heaven/wherever.

In using such a sweeping generalisation, Bane, you're actually rendering your argument moot, to a great degree.

Now if you want to take each point, or each religion, and give it a reference point, that'd be different.

Perhaps another question might be, why is the religiously inclined person more, or less, selfish than anyone else?

Sure, many turn to religion for their own salvation. But many who find religion actually live their lives with a more altruistic intent - the intent on helping others. Obviously, being selfish in one area doesn't negate being selfless in another.

Proof of God is probably moot here too; you either believe, or you don't. There's as much proof of the non-existance of God, as there is of the existance. To believers, the former is never reliable. The non-believers follow the opposite train of thought. It's moot. It's about faith, not hard scientific evidence.

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I think belief is empowering,
blind religious belief is more so.

This doesn't say it is good or bad, just a statement about how it functions.

For example at times I have felt/believed [religiously for a time] that 911 was a conspiracy, It is amazingly empowering to feel you know something significant that others don't. it's electric, it's explosive, its euphoric.

Belief is emotional and not rational.

In many cases, for long term usefulness, we [think we?] try to attach our beliefs to something real [consistent] over time.

Religions are just one of may places you can root your beliefs.

Real truth is, i think, completely dispassionate and mechanical. It is pure logic.
It is in fact shockingly banal and uncaring.

Science uses consistent results of experimentation as a tool for determining hidden/not-obvious truths.

Religion on the other hand leaps to unknown [unknowable?] beliefs as assumptive truths.

Both are about belief systems.
That means they are both about emotional sustainance.
I think we have a biological emotional need to feel things with our minds.

Beliefs establish our world frame of reference.
I find it almost impossible to imagine a mind able to work without any beliefs what-so-ever. We [in most cases] expect that the Sun will rise tommorrow because experience has always done this. If questions arise about it we seek truths [as we see them] about it to explain it. We can see it as a pile of burning logs in the sky, As a God of firey light, or as a physical phenomenon of merging Hydrogen Atoms producing energy/light.

Now imagine if you will,
You wake up and have colored light falling on your retina in patches and forms, but you manage to evade all [pre-conceived] beliefs/concepts/understandings about them.
That must be incredibly expensive in time and energy [and possibly fatal to survival] to do that each morning.

So evolution has created a way of pocketing certain concepts and ideas such that they are retained. Im quite sure this operates emotionally, on some kind of intensity and/or persistence scale. Ideas are retained because they are emotionally sweet or mellow. They find some balance between importance personally/emotionally and consistency/long-term-persistance. The highest degree of certainty/emotional-intensity about something becomes what i think is religious belief.

IMO the most useful aspect of furvent religious belief is that it forces people who might otherwise be ambivialent about their belief in science to become either [hopefully] more passionate about it or [sadly] reject it.

But that puts one at a very odd place,
Having faith in science.
Science says nothing need be accepted on faith,
The kernels of truth can be discerned from observation of evidence and experimentation.
It makes it hard [but not impossible] to find that final sweetest emotional spot with science that other people do consistently find with religion.

Religious [blind, which can include science] beliefs sort of punch a hole through and into the hive of emotions to find the deep sweet spot of satisfaction.

Do other people think that emotional intensity is useful? Im guessing it can be.
Could that kind of emotional intensity be healthy or unhealthy over the long run? I really have no idea at all about that one.

I love the idea of passionate science, And believe/suspect that is the emotional hook that feeds/sustains and drives scientific persuits onward.

So in my ultimate world, science would never be blind, but it would always be persued with burning, fiery, sparking passion.
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There are many things in life based on fear and/or selfishness. To put someone down to make yourself look better, suicide, not loving someone out of fear of commitment or getting hurt. I could go on forever. Religion is a personal choice and for many, simply a part of them. I think it is perfectly natural as a human to be fearful of life and turn to God, family, friends. If you turn to your parents because you are afraid, how does that differ from turning to your religion? It really doesn't, it is all in what feels right to you. I do not see how religion is selfishness but perhaps you could expand on that. I think with anything in life there are those that take religion for their own agenda and twist it to things that I do not think it was intended for.

In those cases, yes religion has some bad seeds in it but so does about everything in life you encounter. If you think putting God before all is selfish, then that is your opinion and of course you are entitled to it. That statement of God first is a common one but I think has been misintrepreted to mean to heck with everyone else. I believe it means if you do believe in God, then keep him in the center of yourself and everything else will naturally surround you and you them.

There is nothing wrong with believing in God and a religion. It is also not my place to judge someone who does not believe as it is your right. Hopefully you will exercise that right with consideration.