I'm all for religion. Just not organized religion, because that's just bullshit. The entire world would be a much, much better place if everyone worshiped their own God in their own home, without trying to push their beliefs on others.
And, of course, they should be forbidden from organizing into groups or societies based around their shared beliefs, then?
Is that what you are saying?
Because, while the actions of many religious institutions are often highly dubious, the origin of such institutions is almost universally "a group of like-minded believers come together as a community of common causes and values".
Unless you expressly forbid by law the idea of like-minded believers in common values coming together and creating institutionalized organizations based around their beliefs and cultural values, then it is something that is going to continue to happen.
This sort of idea isn't exclusive to religion, either. People come together and form organizations, with their own politics and deviations and splintering, for pretty much every conceivable thing that more than two people could have in common.
So saying "organized" religion is the problem is absurd, because it suggests that possessing a religious community by its very nature is a deplorable act and is responsible for the abuses of power and influence many religious institutions around the world are guilty of.
Oh, come on, Pony. What the heck, man? I think every single person posting in this thread knows full well that Christianity doesn't just assemble in churches, hear mass, and go home. If they did just that, I'd be thrilled. What pisses me off is them being involved in politics (what the FUCK?) and trying to change (and to an extent, succeeding in changing) global policies.
He's right, he's just taking the argument to logical end, that by this definition, any group of people getting together and trying to change their surroundings could be considered organized, and that's not automatically a bad thing.
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Ahh watch this devolve into a "religion is idiotic BS, SCIENCE FTW!!!" thread.
Yes, religion has nothing to teach us and no value whatsoever. Every religious person in the United States voted for George W. Bush and wants to establish a theocracy. Religion is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about shit in the sky, Jesus wasn't a real person, etc. etc.
And, of course, they should be forbidden from organizing into groups or societies based around their shared beliefs, then?
Is that what you are saying?
I didn't see that and I hope you don't go down that route.
Painting critics of religion as "intolerant"—as if we want to outlaw religion—is annoying as hell.
If a person is saying that "organized" religion is bad and that "personal" religion is good, and that the world would be a better place if people didn't have "organized" religion, essentially creates a logical follow-through based on demonstrably consistent human behavior.
Humans like subcultures, societies, organizations, etc. We do it for our hobbies, our political views, our ethnic groups, and even our genders or sexual orientations.
It's just a part of human nature.
It's like saying the problem with political parties is that they are political parties. Why, if they were just a bunch of single politicians with their own viewpoints, things would be much better!
It's an absurd notion.
As long as people have religion, "organized" religion will continue to exist unless you specifically take action to prevent it from doing so. In which case it will still do so, but will simply not do so publicly.
So, making a statement to the effect of "religion would be okay if there was no organized religion" is absurd. It runs contrary to how we, as humans, think.
Now, if there was no religion, period, that's a different subject entirely.
However, whether or not that is a positive thing to aspire to and whether that's even within the realm of possibility is a completely different argument.
One that, as a religious person, it should be pretty clear which side I am on.
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
Hey, thanks. You made my point clearer than I could have, thanks to the lack of caffeine in my house. I meant control when I said manipulation. Woops.
Kudos.
Pony, what the fuck, man? I have no problem with organized religion, I have a problem with what passes today as organized religion. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Go to mass, listen, talk to people in the congregation, have a Q&A session with the pastor. I would be very happy if you did that. But when you go out there, recruit a couple thousand people with the promise that their soul will go to Hell if they don't help rid the Earth of pagans, and the proceed to slaughter/mutilate/burn at the stake/stone/exorcise/threaten with physical abuse said pagans, I have a problem with your religion.
As a side note I find this to be one of the most despicably creepy church ideals I have ever come across, and is a siginificant part of their temple rituals. I have half a mind to put in my will that I shall never be baptized into the Mormon church dead or alive, as if that would stop them though.
What I do is baptize all dead Mormons into Satan's Church of Outer Darkness.
I would have to say that Buddhism is probably the only religion I can really say I find agreement with because of it's emphasis on the improvement of one's self without convenient excuse and a more general sense of spirituality.
See, Buddhism has shit too. Samurai trained in Buddhism to learn how to detach so they could kill people better. The Dalai Lama seems like a nice man and all, but Tibet is actually kind of fucked up; it's basically a feudal society reliant on a quasi-dynastic priesthood (dynastic in that the priests get to choose their successors).
And the philosophy of Buddhism also has problems, though I'm admittingly not as familiar with it as Abrahamic stuff. But detachment from the world is not, actually, a good philosophy.
True, at least for me, it only applies in extremely generic terms and only because it coincides somewhat with how I've come to view existence spiritually. But I certainly wouldn't call it the perfect answer. Really what all religions strive to get across (much like these forums) is "don't be a dick", they just use different concepts in getting you to follow that rule. It's when they overstep that and pursue beyond that line that we start running into trouble.
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
Yet another quote so bludgeoned by abuse that it's become essentially meaningless.
You do realize that that line is prefaced by the line that "Religion is the spirit of a spiritless society"?
Also, religion is not exclusively a form of social control. It is a facet of society like any other. Society is like an organism, with all aspects thereof, from the kinship system to governance to inheritance practices to trade organization - functioning to maintain internal stability. Religion is one "organ" of this body. It's not a force of social control any more or less than the police or the governmental system in place or even how families are organized.
As a side note I find this to be one of the most despicably creepy church ideals I have ever come across, and is a siginificant part of their temple rituals. I have half a mind to put in my will that I shall never be baptized into the Mormon church dead or alive, as if that would stop them though.
What I do is baptize all dead Mormons into Satan's Church of Outer Darkness.
I have to ask, was that intentional? Outer darkness is often how mormons refer to hell, so I chuckled at that.
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
This statement is factually incorrect and demonstrably false.
Just thought I'd make you aware of this.
It shows a shocking ignorance of how religions operate outside of the Abrahamic framework you are obviously familiar with.
Speaking as a Lutheran, we're mostly responsible for drinking a lot of really great beer.
Edit:
Also thought I'd mention that my hermeneutics are more in line with Karl Barth as opposed to Reinhold Neibuhr (the face of modern protestantism). I don't believe the church has any right to impose its ethics on any non-member. This policy extends even to abortion and homosexuality. I also don't evangelize (unless of course somebody tells me they want to talk about it).
If a person is saying that "organized" religion is bad and that "personal" religion is good, and that the world would be a better place if people didn't have "organized" religion, essentially creates a logical follow-through based on demonstrably consistent human behavior.
It absolutely does not, Pony. That's an incredibly disingenuous argument to make.
I think Democrats are good and Republicans are bad. The "logical follow through" for me is not to outlaw the Republican party. That's fucking stupid, and hearing religion defenders whine about how atheists want to outlaw religion is every bit as annoying as hearing conservatives whine about how Democrats want to send them to FEMA re-education camps. Just stop.
If you look at the previous numbers on religion from PEW, you'll see that the rate of unaffiliated in 18-29 was 22%.
They break that down even further into athiest, agnostic, secular unaffiliated, and religious unaffiliated. The atheist, agnostic and secular unaffiliated makes up for 67% of the unafficiated category. Thus ~15% of 18-29 year olds are not really religious while ~7% might be able to be swayed by Putnam's ideas on new churches.
I would like to see the breakdown of the new numbers that are showing 30-40% unaffiliated. I would think that this is a statistical anomaly since PEW's last set of data is from 2007. Also PEW's poll had a sample size of 6,939 for 18-29 year olds and 1,533 for the subset of unaffiliateds. The overall sample size of all age groups etc was ~35k.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Speaking as a Lutheran, we're mostly responsible for drinking a lot of really great beer.
Edit:
Also thought I'd mention that my hermeneutics are more in line with Karl Barth as opposed to Reinhold Neibuhr (the face of modern protestantism). I don't believe the church has any right to impose its ethics on any non-member. This policy extends even to abortion and homosexuality. I also don't evangelize (unless of course somebody tells me they want to talk about it).
:^:
EDIT: I was originally just :^:ing your beer comment but the rest is :^: too.
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
This statement is factually incorrect and demonstrably false.
Just thought I'd make you aware of this.
It shows a shocking ignorance of how religions operate outside of the Abrahamic framework you are obviously familiar with.
Well, the statement can be true, and certainly has been in some instances, but yeah you can't just universally apply it.
Also, wasn't the russian orthodoxy an incredibly powerful entity in Marx's time?
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
This statement is factually incorrect and demonstrably false.
Just thought I'd make you aware of this.
It shows a shocking ignorance of how religions operate outside of the Abrahamic framework you are obviously familiar with.
Most non-Abrahamic religions also do that.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
This statement is factually incorrect and demonstrably false.
Just thought I'd make you aware of this.
It shows a shocking ignorance of how religions operate outside of the Abrahamic framework you are obviously familiar with.
Well, the statement can be true, and certainly has been in some instances, but yeah you can't just universally apply it.
Also, wasn't the russian orthodoxy an incredibly powerful entity in Marx's time?
The Russian Orthodoxy was always an extremely powerful entity in Russia. Shit, they outlawed clocks as "tools of Satan" at one point.
postinonthenets on
Solitude sometimes is best society, and short retirement urges sweet return
Really what all religions strive to get across (much like these forums) is "don't be a dick", they just use different concepts in getting you to follow that rule.
That's quite a stretch.
I mean, the Bible orders genocide and commands you to kill apostates. At the very least, you have to admit it's a rather mixed message.
I think people interpret religions as embodying "don't be a dick" because they're used to cherry-picking morals from their religions that coincide with modern, socially-acceptable morals—one of which is tolerance.
I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent.
Man, that Jesus character was all about keeping the status quo. Glad he didn't cause a ruckus or anything.
Seriously guys, is it possible to actually talk about what kind of effect it'll have on society this has without this turning into a bash religion thread? I think it would be interesting to talk about what kind of changes will happen (as was brought up earlier in this thread) if people gather around more specific interests (sports, video games, etc.) as opposed to the more spacially localized church down the street.
Does this cause communities to be come more disconnected since it will be more and more common that you won't be "forced" to see your neighbors once a week on Sunday?
Will this make society more isolated?
I think we can make some interesting discussion over questions like these.
chrono_traveller on
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
Really what all religions strive to get across (much like these forums) is "don't be a dick", they just use different concepts in getting you to follow that rule.
That's quite a stretch.
I mean, the Bible orders genocide and commands you to kill apostates. At the very least, you have to admit it's a rather mixed message.
I think people interpret religions as embodying "don't be a dick" because they're used to cherry-picking morals from their religions that coincide with modern, socially-acceptable morals—one of which is tolerance.
I find it absolutely hilarious that you accuse people of "cherry-picking" the "don't be a dick" message whilst cherry-picking yourself.
Also thought I'd mention that my hermeneutics are more in line with Karl Barth as opposed to Reinhold Neibuhr (the face of modern protestantism). I don't believe the church has any right to impose its ethics on any non-member. This policy extends even to abortion and homosexuality. I also don't evangelize (unless of course somebody tells me they want to talk about it).
If you look at the previous numbers on religion from PEW, you'll see that the rate of unaffiliated in 18-29 was 22%.
They break that down even further into athiest, agnostic, secular unaffiliated, and religious unaffiliated. The atheist, agnostic and secular unaffiliated makes up for 67% of the unafficiated category. Thus ~15% of 18-29 year olds are not really religious while ~7% might be able to be swayed by Putnam's ideas on new churches.
I would like to see the breakdown of the new numbers that are showing 30-40% unaffiliated. I would think that this is a statistical anomaly since PEW's last set of data is from 2007. Also PEW's poll had a sample size of 6,939 for 18-29 year olds and 1,533 for the subset of unaffiliateds. The overall sample size of all age groups etc was ~35k.
Hey guys how about we wait until we get some REAL numbers from the study before we start screaming about this massive new development?
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
Something tells me you haven't actually read Marx.
Really what all religions strive to get across (much like these forums) is "don't be a dick", they just use different concepts in getting you to follow that rule.
That's quite a stretch.
I mean, the Bible orders genocide and commands you to kill apostates. At the very least, you have to admit it's a rather mixed message.
I think people interpret religions as embodying "don't be a dick" because they're used to cherry-picking morals from their religions that coincide with modern, socially-acceptable morals—one of which is tolerance.
I find it absolutely hilarious that you accuse people of "cherry-picking" the "don't be a dick" message whilst cherry-picking yourself.
When people want to say "most" religions, and then make some kind of highly negative and extremely context-sensitive statement that is generally limited to the operation of Abrahamic religions and most notably, Christianity, that's fine.
Terms like "most", or "in general", or "some" are abstract measurements than can basically be used to mean exactly what and how the person using them means.
If someone says something to the effect of "many religions use the threat of a punitive afterlife as a method of influencing and controlling the behavior or its adherents"
I have no problem with that. It's a factually true statement that applies very often!
However, once you start saying all religion or any now you are saying things which are provably untrue and intentionally misleading.
So, I'll continue to bust people's chops for doing that shit since it's extremely irritating and grinds any meaningful discussion to a halt.
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
This statement is factually incorrect and demonstrably false.
Just thought I'd make you aware of this.
It shows a shocking ignorance of how religions operate outside of the Abrahamic framework you are obviously familiar with.
Oh, I am sorry I should have said: Do as I say or be reincarnated as a dung beetle? Or do as I say or spend an eternity in Hades. I was using the line as a simile for all religion, I figure a religious guy like you would get that.
Somebody is going to hell....
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Really what all religions strive to get across (much like these forums) is "don't be a dick", they just use different concepts in getting you to follow that rule.
That's quite a stretch.
I mean, the Bible orders genocide and commands you to kill apostates. At the very least, you have to admit it's a rather mixed message.
I think people interpret religions as embodying "don't be a dick" because they're used to cherry-picking morals from their religions that coincide with modern, socially-acceptable morals—one of which is tolerance.
You might be interested to learn that there are four religious hermeneutical strategies, and only one of them is Scripture.
1. Scripture
2. Tradition
3. Reason
4. Experience
Just because some Christians choose to eschew the last two doesn't mean all of us do.
Really what all religions strive to get across (much like these forums) is "don't be a dick", they just use different concepts in getting you to follow that rule.
That's quite a stretch.
I mean, the Bible orders genocide and commands you to kill apostates. At the very least, you have to admit it's a rather mixed message.
I think people interpret religions as embodying "don't be a dick" because they're used to cherry-picking morals from their religions that coincide with modern, socially-acceptable morals—one of which is tolerance.
Well, you can look at the bible generally as a guide for life, or you can look at it specifically as god's message to man. If you do look at it the latter way though, I argue that logically you have to take into account what was going on in the time it was written to give context. I'm not expert but a lot of the old testament style rules and codes were based on trying to get the tribe to survive its hellish existence.
Yes, I agree it's a stretch, but I also happen to look at bibles as wholly made by man, and hence certainly flawed, you should not read them literally.
Really what all religions strive to get across (much like these forums) is "don't be a dick", they just use different concepts in getting you to follow that rule.
That's quite a stretch.
I mean, the Bible orders genocide and commands you to kill apostates. At the very least, you have to admit it's a rather mixed message.
I think people interpret religions as embodying "don't be a dick" because they're used to cherry-picking morals from their religions that coincide with modern, socially-acceptable morals—one of which is tolerance.
You do realize that the vast majority of Christians and Catholics subscribe to religious sects that do not say that the Bible is the literal truth nor that you have to accept everything in there. That is not hypocrisy - the Bible was written by many different people over a long period of time.
And have you even read the New Testament or anything about early Christianity?
American animosity towards Christianity as somehow the worst religion ever or the stick by which all other organized religions should be measured is both hilarious and sad.
Seriously, if people had a better understanding of how Hinduism is actually practiced in a lot of India...
I think it largely is because in the US, Christianity and its followers are what we have to deal with, are the ones mucking around in government trying to get their beliefs passed as laws, or prevent things which go against their beliefs from getting passed, etc. Yes, Hinduism and Islam both involve a whole lot of shitty practices, discrimination, mistreatment of people, etc...but that largely doesn't affect the lives of Americans, so we don't focus on it.
Oh certainly, I totally get why it happens.
It's just that it points to such obvious self-centered thinking that a person who is, in effect, trying to decry ignorance and dogmatic thinking is only giving a shit about things that affect them and they see on a daily basis.
I think this behavior can also be partially attributed to the fact that talking about problems with foreign cultures or religions can sometimes be mistaken for xenophobia. For example, if I was to start up a conversation with people at work about some of the horrible things that have been done in the name of Islam, there'd probably be one or two people who'd label me as some right-wing nut who wants to turn the Middle East into a parking lot. It's simply easier to talk about the problems in our own backyards.
On this note, there's actually a semi-popular historical theory that, socially speaking, the Islamic world always precedes the Christian by between a half century to a century and a half, with one of the favorite examples being that the Renaissance was in full swing in Al-Andalus and Baghdad before even the first glimmers showed up in Europe. This does not bear well on what we can expect the Christian right to satart shitting out (we can already see a bit in South America and the dustup in Kenya).
Also thought I'd mention that my hermeneutics are more in line with Karl Barth as opposed to Reinhold Neibuhr (the face of modern protestantism). I don't believe the church has any right to impose its ethics on any non-member. This policy extends even to abortion and homosexuality. I also don't evangelize (unless of course somebody tells me they want to talk about it).
Oh, I am sorry I should have said: Do as I say or be reincarnated as a dung beetle? Or do as I say or spend an eternity in Hades. I was using the line as a simile for all religion, I figure a religious guy like you would get that.
Somebody is going to hell....
Just because you only see "religion" as a series of commands to either obey or disobey doesn't mean that's reality. There's an experiential and mental side to religion which you have apparently chosen to ignore entirely.
Not to mention religions which deliberately invert the power structure, or attempt to expose the hypocrisies in the given power structure, or exist in any other relationship with larger society other than a symbiotic one.
Really what all religions strive to get across (much like these forums) is "don't be a dick", they just use different concepts in getting you to follow that rule.
That's quite a stretch.
I mean, the Bible orders genocide and commands you to kill apostates. At the very least, you have to admit it's a rather mixed message.
I think people interpret religions as embodying "don't be a dick" because they're used to cherry-picking morals from their religions that coincide with modern, socially-acceptable morals—one of which is tolerance.
You do realize that the vast majority of Christians and Catholics subscribe to religious sects that do not say that the Bible is the literal truth nor that you have to accept everything in there. That is not hypocrisy - the Bible was written by many different people over a long period of time.
And have you even read the New Testament or anything about early Christianity?
I've read the part that says that belief, rather than actions, is all that matters, so you can kill as many non-believing babies and break as many laws as you want as long as you have faith in Christ.
Religion is a form of social control. I cannot stress this enough. All religion is about keeping the status quo and discretiting dissent. Any religion basicly threatens it parishoners into obeying the rules. Its always do this or your imortal soul is in peril!!!1!. Wich may work on Ignorant peasants, but will have a hard time working on anyone else.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
This statement is factually incorrect and demonstrably false.
Just thought I'd make you aware of this.
It shows a shocking ignorance of how religions operate outside of the Abrahamic framework you are obviously familiar with.
Oh, I am sorry I should have said: Do as I say or be reincarnated as a dung beetle? Or do as I say or spend an eternity in Hades. I was using the line as a simile for all religion, I figure a religious guy like you would get that.
Somebody is going to hell....
More talking out your ass on subject matter you clearly lack knowledge in!
Outstanding!
Listen, if you want to make demonstrably untrue and factually incorrect statements and try to tout them as true just because you believe in them, you can be my guest.
Just remember it doesn't make you any different than dudes who believe fossils are Satan testing humanity
Yeah, I don't know shit about him, I have always wondered though if part of the reason communism so reviled religion was to neuter the power of the church in Russia, hence that question about him.
Also thought I'd mention that my hermeneutics are more in line with Karl Barth as opposed to Reinhold Neibuhr (the face of modern protestantism). I don't believe the church has any right to impose its ethics on any non-member. This policy extends even to abortion and homosexuality. I also don't evangelize (unless of course somebody tells me they want to talk about it).
I want to talk about it.
What are you? Chicken?
More like skeptical.
I think it's interesting that you make a distinction between religious and non-religious ethics like that.
Posts
He's right, he's just taking the argument to logical end, that by this definition, any group of people getting together and trying to change their surroundings could be considered organized, and that's not automatically a bad thing.
So does everybody champ, but here's a shocking tweest, some of those beliefs are fucked up.
Marx's was wrong about pretty much everything, but he was right on this one: Religion is the Opiate of the masses.
Amen.
Yes, religion has nothing to teach us and no value whatsoever. Every religious person in the United States voted for George W. Bush and wants to establish a theocracy. Religion is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about shit in the sky, Jesus wasn't a real person, etc. etc.
This is true. And all relative.
If a person is saying that "organized" religion is bad and that "personal" religion is good, and that the world would be a better place if people didn't have "organized" religion, essentially creates a logical follow-through based on demonstrably consistent human behavior.
Humans like subcultures, societies, organizations, etc. We do it for our hobbies, our political views, our ethnic groups, and even our genders or sexual orientations.
It's just a part of human nature.
It's like saying the problem with political parties is that they are political parties. Why, if they were just a bunch of single politicians with their own viewpoints, things would be much better!
It's an absurd notion.
As long as people have religion, "organized" religion will continue to exist unless you specifically take action to prevent it from doing so. In which case it will still do so, but will simply not do so publicly.
So, making a statement to the effect of "religion would be okay if there was no organized religion" is absurd. It runs contrary to how we, as humans, think.
Now, if there was no religion, period, that's a different subject entirely.
However, whether or not that is a positive thing to aspire to and whether that's even within the realm of possibility is a completely different argument.
One that, as a religious person, it should be pretty clear which side I am on.
Hey, thanks. You made my point clearer than I could have, thanks to the lack of caffeine in my house. I meant control when I said manipulation. Woops.
Kudos.
Pony, what the fuck, man? I have no problem with organized religion, I have a problem with what passes today as organized religion. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Go to mass, listen, talk to people in the congregation, have a Q&A session with the pastor. I would be very happy if you did that. But when you go out there, recruit a couple thousand people with the promise that their soul will go to Hell if they don't help rid the Earth of pagans, and the proceed to slaughter/mutilate/burn at the stake/stone/exorcise/threaten with physical abuse said pagans, I have a problem with your religion.
Get it now?
True, at least for me, it only applies in extremely generic terms and only because it coincides somewhat with how I've come to view existence spiritually. But I certainly wouldn't call it the perfect answer. Really what all religions strive to get across (much like these forums) is "don't be a dick", they just use different concepts in getting you to follow that rule. It's when they overstep that and pursue beyond that line that we start running into trouble.
You do realize that that line is prefaced by the line that "Religion is the spirit of a spiritless society"?
Also, religion is not exclusively a form of social control. It is a facet of society like any other. Society is like an organism, with all aspects thereof, from the kinship system to governance to inheritance practices to trade organization - functioning to maintain internal stability. Religion is one "organ" of this body. It's not a force of social control any more or less than the police or the governmental system in place or even how families are organized.
I have to ask, was that intentional? Outer darkness is often how mormons refer to hell, so I chuckled at that.
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This statement is factually incorrect and demonstrably false.
Just thought I'd make you aware of this.
It shows a shocking ignorance of how religions operate outside of the Abrahamic framework you are obviously familiar with.
Speaking as a Lutheran, we're mostly responsible for drinking a lot of really great beer.
Edit:
Also thought I'd mention that my hermeneutics are more in line with Karl Barth as opposed to Reinhold Neibuhr (the face of modern protestantism). I don't believe the church has any right to impose its ethics on any non-member. This policy extends even to abortion and homosexuality. I also don't evangelize (unless of course somebody tells me they want to talk about it).
I think Democrats are good and Republicans are bad. The "logical follow through" for me is not to outlaw the Republican party. That's fucking stupid, and hearing religion defenders whine about how atheists want to outlaw religion is every bit as annoying as hearing conservatives whine about how Democrats want to send them to FEMA re-education camps. Just stop.
They break that down even further into athiest, agnostic, secular unaffiliated, and religious unaffiliated. The atheist, agnostic and secular unaffiliated makes up for 67% of the unafficiated category. Thus ~15% of 18-29 year olds are not really religious while ~7% might be able to be swayed by Putnam's ideas on new churches.
I would like to see the breakdown of the new numbers that are showing 30-40% unaffiliated. I would think that this is a statistical anomaly since PEW's last set of data is from 2007. Also PEW's poll had a sample size of 6,939 for 18-29 year olds and 1,533 for the subset of unaffiliateds. The overall sample size of all age groups etc was ~35k.
You're deliberately trying to re-assert the context of what I am saying to act outraged at a point I'm not even making.
Good luck with that.
EDIT: I was originally just :^:ing your beer comment but the rest is :^: too.
Well, the statement can be true, and certainly has been in some instances, but yeah you can't just universally apply it.
Also, wasn't the russian orthodoxy an incredibly powerful entity in Marx's time?
Most non-Abrahamic religions also do that.
The Russian Orthodoxy was always an extremely powerful entity in Russia. Shit, they outlawed clocks as "tools of Satan" at one point.
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I mean, the Bible orders genocide and commands you to kill apostates. At the very least, you have to admit it's a rather mixed message.
I think people interpret religions as embodying "don't be a dick" because they're used to cherry-picking morals from their religions that coincide with modern, socially-acceptable morals—one of which is tolerance.
Man, that Jesus character was all about keeping the status quo. Glad he didn't cause a ruckus or anything.
Seriously guys, is it possible to actually talk about what kind of effect it'll have on society this has without this turning into a bash religion thread? I think it would be interesting to talk about what kind of changes will happen (as was brought up earlier in this thread) if people gather around more specific interests (sports, video games, etc.) as opposed to the more spacially localized church down the street.
Does this cause communities to be come more disconnected since it will be more and more common that you won't be "forced" to see your neighbors once a week on Sunday?
Will this make society more isolated?
I think we can make some interesting discussion over questions like these.
I find it absolutely hilarious that you accuse people of "cherry-picking" the "don't be a dick" message whilst cherry-picking yourself.
Bravo.
Hey guys how about we wait until we get some REAL numbers from the study before we start screaming about this massive new development?
Something tells me you haven't actually read Marx.
Terms like "most", or "in general", or "some" are abstract measurements than can basically be used to mean exactly what and how the person using them means.
If someone says something to the effect of "many religions use the threat of a punitive afterlife as a method of influencing and controlling the behavior or its adherents"
I have no problem with that. It's a factually true statement that applies very often!
However, once you start saying all religion or any now you are saying things which are provably untrue and intentionally misleading.
So, I'll continue to bust people's chops for doing that shit since it's extremely irritating and grinds any meaningful discussion to a halt.
Oh, I am sorry I should have said: Do as I say or be reincarnated as a dung beetle? Or do as I say or spend an eternity in Hades. I was using the line as a simile for all religion, I figure a religious guy like you would get that.
Somebody is going to hell....
You might be interested to learn that there are four religious hermeneutical strategies, and only one of them is Scripture.
1. Scripture
2. Tradition
3. Reason
4. Experience
Just because some Christians choose to eschew the last two doesn't mean all of us do.
Well, you can look at the bible generally as a guide for life, or you can look at it specifically as god's message to man. If you do look at it the latter way though, I argue that logically you have to take into account what was going on in the time it was written to give context. I'm not expert but a lot of the old testament style rules and codes were based on trying to get the tribe to survive its hellish existence.
Yes, I agree it's a stretch, but I also happen to look at bibles as wholly made by man, and hence certainly flawed, you should not read them literally.
You do realize that the vast majority of Christians and Catholics subscribe to religious sects that do not say that the Bible is the literal truth nor that you have to accept everything in there. That is not hypocrisy - the Bible was written by many different people over a long period of time.
And have you even read the New Testament or anything about early Christianity?
On this note, there's actually a semi-popular historical theory that, socially speaking, the Islamic world always precedes the Christian by between a half century to a century and a half, with one of the favorite examples being that the Renaissance was in full swing in Al-Andalus and Baghdad before even the first glimmers showed up in Europe. This does not bear well on what we can expect the Christian right to satart shitting out (we can already see a bit in South America and the dustup in Kenya).
Not to mention religions which deliberately invert the power structure, or attempt to expose the hypocrisies in the given power structure, or exist in any other relationship with larger society other than a symbiotic one.
I've read the part that says that belief, rather than actions, is all that matters, so you can kill as many non-believing babies and break as many laws as you want as long as you have faith in Christ.
More talking out your ass on subject matter you clearly lack knowledge in!
Outstanding!
Listen, if you want to make demonstrably untrue and factually incorrect statements and try to tout them as true just because you believe in them, you can be my guest.
Just remember it doesn't make you any different than dudes who believe fossils are Satan testing humanity
Yeah, I don't know shit about him, I have always wondered though if part of the reason communism so reviled religion was to neuter the power of the church in Russia, hence that question about him.
I think it's interesting that you make a distinction between religious and non-religious ethics like that.