Thoughts?

------All personal thoughts below-------

Personally, I think he has good intentions but he's too willing to claim religion is what provides good things, or to believe that atheists are automatically absent of anything spiritual or unknowing.

For a few examples:

1. Religion and Practices

Granted, the majority of cultural practices have roots in Religion. But what exactly do they give/provide? A sense of belonging and community, which is something you could get anywhere people gather for a common interest such as say Conventions.

If you like something like Choir? Then go out and sing with a singing club, or sing for Christmas. Christmas never was a Christian holiday anyways to begin with.

2. Religion and Education through Repetition

He's right in that Repetition does help Education, there is no arguing that. However, Religion rather than get this right abuses it. It does not simply repeat a lesson to help you remember, it repeats it to the point you must address as outright fact. And during this it never allows questioning, this effectively turns off one brain. The day you are taught to stop asking questions is they day you basically have stopped learning to think, but simply to obey.

There are better ways to repeat it, asking questions to the class and see if they remember the answer, in-class study sessions in a sense. You could relate similar topics where the previous info pops up again, it relates so you're more likely to recall and remember it. You do not need to simply repeat the same fact over and over again like Religion does in order to teach effectively.

P.S Exceptional cases like Autism Therapy not withstanding, but that mostly falls under practice. Repeat the action (or lack of action ex: stimming) enough times. If anyone ever tried therapy by just preaching the same sentence to a child multiple times they'd get no where. Plus therapy comes with physical rewards as reinforcement, religion has none of that.

3. Religion and Spirituality/Something bigger than us

Ok, during my time as a Christian (16-17 years) I never once had a spiritual moment. Nothing that ever reached out to me and made me go "Wow, this is amazing". Blind obedience? Yes, because I was raised to treat it as fact, but nothing that astonished me or influenced my life in a positive way.

But I get those kinds of "Wow" moments constantly when I do something such as watch Carl Sagan's or Neil Tysons Cosmos series. In fact that show is undoubtedly the most spiritual thing I've had in my life.

And anyone whose seen that show knows fully well what I mean, especially when it comes to something bigger than yourself. Living in a world where our own Galaxy alone has more suns than people? Each Galaxy supporting their own planets. And then the Universe as we know it contains more Galaxies than people even? That REALLY get's in perspective how small we are.

But at the same time, when we go back and look at evolution and how we evolved we also realize how special, unique and skilled we are. And our great potential for good or evil. We're not simply taught something like "we're sin and nothing compared to this divine being" removing any self-confidence a person has.

We get the sense of something far bigger than ourselves, but we do so still feeling well and happy with ourselves, rather than depressed and hateful of ourselves.

4. Religion allows you to go "I don't know"

*Facepalm*

Ok... That is what exactly is done by Religion. It claims to know everything, repeats it as fact and hates any questioning. Science is very humble in admitting we don't know things, and seeks to do studies and research to find the answer rather than sit back pretending to know all the answers.

Now, due to the method of science we sure have learned a lot. But there is infinitely more than we don't know. But just because we don't know something doesn't mean we automatically fill in the blank with God, it mean's we admit to not knowing it and then set out to find the answer.

5. Categorize Art

The art wanders away from Religion a bit. But the general idea still seems to be that categorizing art into sections or themes gives us more meaning. I disagree, I think it becomes more effective in persuading of certain idea's. But it does not allow us to look at it and think, to truly explore, ask questions and reflect if we are to already know the answer. And as a result spark engagement and discussion.

I mean for a very recent example in Media let's look at the movie Frozen. Some people see it as a movie about being yourself, others see it as coming out of the closest (LGBT specific or otherwise), some see it as woman empowerment. And a lot of intelligent and thought provoking discussion has come out of that. Where if the say the movie simply went "Oh no, the message we meant was ______" then all that discussion would just die.

6. Travel & Pilgrimages

This I think just really depends on the individuals kind of travel. But having barely traveled myself my input here is limited. But basically you got those who book a hotel, relax for a week and go home. Those who look at some landmarks, get some expensive souviners and go home.

But then you got those who fully embrace themselves, take in all the culture, do as the Romans do, takes long walks along preserved areas of nature, absorb the design, artwork and music of the country in question. I think this is the kind of travel he refers too, but this is not religion specific.

It's just simply something more outgoing and active people tend to do, cause others are just more comfortable in luxury, simply seeing a few attractions or just not doing much. Now, I think you're missing out on a lot of your vacation if you do that, but this is not a case of needing Religion or religious practices to enhance your trip. It's simply having the energy and initiative to go "I want to go see ______ and do _______ today!" and doing it.

7. Sermons VS Lecture's

The idea being more talks should be given on how to live your life than giving information. The issue is that everyone has different idea's on how to live, how to do things. If you simply have more Sermons you'll get even more pointless arguments over differences rather than constructive debates. Also, if you're simply told how to live rather than being taught information then you're going to learn not to think as much. You'll fine one charismatic and charming person, they'll say some words on how to live. You get washed up and invested into it, and now are just listening to them with little question. But if you were given the information, we can reason it out for yourself, think about it. This expands your mind, opens you to multiple paths, allows you absorb even more info, and perhaps even find a flaw/hole in what you're being taught and actually improve it in the long run.

8. Learning Morality

Now to clarify he was not saying "You need Religion to be moral".

What he was saying was that if you go a school and ask someone how to live or be moral they really don't have an answer for you. School's are not equipped for those things, but Religion is. One of it's main purposes is to teach morality to people.

Now that clarification is out of the way, it still goes back to the main flaw of you needed Religion to be moral. If you needed to believe in a God and be scared of hell to decide that raping, theft and murder are not good things to do... Then you're morality is terrifying. I would not want to be near anyone whose only reason for not murdering or raping someone is their Religion. Granted, schools should have some focus on teaching children in means other than academic. If school is honestly meant to prepare them for life, it should prepare them in all aspects, not just morality. But this change in the school system is not by any means 'borrowing from religion'.

Let's be honest, most atheists (or even religious people who don't believe in _______ god) posses basic human morality. The other religions having it prove that _______ God is not needed to be moral. The atheists prove that Religion is not needed to be moral.

I am just gonna leave this here:

If any Religious person is reading this, please answer this question:
If you found out your God didn't exist, would you now go out raping and murdering people? If not then you just proved that you don't need Religion to be a moral human being.

Of course (waiting for someone to show up and shout about how you're more likely to rape and murder because god said so -- that'll be my cue to leave). Since this thread exists and it's sort of an opportune moment, and it's been bugging me..... What does atheism do to serve the betterment of immoral people? What I mean is, if you go to a catholic confession, the priest listens to what you did and gives you advice (I think, never been), and then tells you how to pay your penance and be forgiven. If you drink too much, the church is capable of saying 'Hey buddy, you're drinking too much and we're going to help you get over that.' The depiction presented in the media, at least, is that when the atheist hero encounters a piece of shit, you're supposed to shrug and say 'Well he's a piece of shit,' and leave him to his devices. I don't actually know the answer to the question and I'm not trying to lead you anywhere with it, just asking..... What does atheism do for the piece of shit? I know it's super for decent people.

I think the implication is that an atheist would go through secular channels, such as informal counseling, organizations like AA and Al-Anon (just for examples), and if the need is severe, clinical therapy. Or, depending on the people the atheist knows, they might even point the needy person towards pastoral counselors, gurus or other combined spiritual and mental-health mentors. It all comes down to their individual experience.

(Just for reference, my grandfather is a devout Christian of the pastoral counselor variety, very knowledgeable about Psychology, of course, who has worked his whole life helping people in a secular manner, even though his background is religious. They aren't mutually exclusive.)

I get so tired of this trite old "RELIGION HATEZ QUESTIONS!" mantra

Because it simply isn't true. "Who/what/where/when" questions are asked all the time in my church and readily answered. Why/how questions are answered to a point, but just like everything else it eventually goes to "I don't know/that is how it is".

Talk to any 5 year old for long enough and you will end up saying those things under an unending torrent of "Why"s

"Why was I named Timmy?"
"Because we named you Timothy"
"Why?"
"It was your Grandfather's name"
"Why?"
"Because his parents named him Timothy"
"Why?"

And so on, and so on.

So Boerd said
I get so tired of this trite old "RELIGION HATEZ QUESTIONS!" mantraBecause it simply isn't true. "Who/what/where/when" questions are asked all the time in my church and readily answered. Why/how questions are answered to a point, but just like everything else it eventually goes to "I don't know/that is how it is".Talk to any 5 year old for long enough and you will end up saying those things under an unending torrent of "Why"s"Why was I named Timmy?""Because we named you Timothy""Why?""It was your Grandfather's name""Why?""Because his parents named him Timothy""Why?"And so on, and so on.

how dare you challenge the assumption?! It's almost like you're questioning perceptions, and we can't have that in an enlightened scientific community. I brand you a heretic and categorically reject your argument.

mdk said
how dare you challenge the assumption?! It's almost like you're questioning perceptions, and we can't have that in an enlightened scientific community. I brand you a heretic and categorically reject your argument.

:/ This helps nothing, mdk. If it's a joke, it's not funny, and otherwise, mocking the scientific community for skepticism is like mocking Vatican city for being populated by Catholics. The interplay between experimentation and skepticism is science, and without it we'd believe even more stupid shit about ourselves and the universe than we do now.

If you found out your God didn't exist, would you now go out raping and murdering people? If not then you just proved that you don't need Religion to be a moral human being.

I plead the Fifth.

As a point of general information, when I refer to "Science" in a religion debate, I don't mean what we typically call science. I mean the Holy Apostolic Ecumenical Church of Science, populated with all sorts of people who have generally rejected religion and replaced it with any number of causes, like anti-GMO, anti-"toxins", the evil of gluten, juice-cleanses, etc.

Ask a Catholic priest how he feels about people who are in favor of gay marriage. Ask one of the people I described how they feel about people who are against it. Compare their hatred of the other side.

If you found out your God didn't exist, would you now go out raping and murdering people? If not then you just proved that you don't need Religion to be a moral human being.

The question is biased to begin with, because it says nothing of the history of "you".

Here's a better one: If, in your life, there were no authority figures or peers of any sort who exposed you to the idea that certain actions harm others and that those actions are therefore bad, would you, as a rational adult, be able to assign that negative quality to those actions on your own?

To put it much more simply: is morality inherent, or learned from others, who in turn learned it from those before (EDIT: or even a mix of both?!)? And that has been discussed, experimented on and argued about for goodly while.

As a corollary, if a person lived in a social vaccuum for their entire life, meaning without contact from any other person, creature or object that they could form a sentimental bond with, and was at some point thrust suddenly into modern society, how many of our social interactions would they be able to instinctively adopt? Would they be a vegetable, would they be so disconnected they cannot even learn the fundaments of language? Would they have developed personal morality?

EDIT:

So Boerd said
As a point of general information, when I refer to "Science" in a religion debate, I don't mean what we typically call science. I mean the Holy Apostolic Ecumenical Church of Science, populated with all sorts of people who have generally rejected religion and replaced it with any number of causes, like anti-GMO, anti-"toxins", the evil of gluten, juice-cleanses, etc.

Ask a Catholic priest how he feels about people who are in favor of gay marriage. Ask one of the people I described how they feel about people who are against it. Compare their hatred of the other side.

What it sounds like you're talking about, Boerd, is "people being assholes". :) And that transcends all faiths and traditions.

EDIT 2: I'm not standing up for assholes who see such causes as reasons to hate and scorn, being generally against both things, BUT gay marriage is a bad example. Equality is pretty inalienable (unless you forfeit it by committing provable crimes), and because LGBTQ people have not inherently done anything to harm others, there is no reason to restrict the benefits of the legal process of marriage to said people. The Catholic Priest in this situation doesn't have to officiate for them if he doesn't want to (and should not be scorned and decried for such a choice), but if he actively campaigns for those benefits to be kept out of the hands of that group, he is actively being harmful...

I didn't ask you to compare the justice of their causes, a thread unto itself, I asked you to compare their mutual hatred. You can disagree with someone, even fervently, and not hate them.

So Boerd said
I didn't ask you to compare the justice of their causes, a thread unto itself, I asked you to compare their mutual hatred. You can disagree with someone, even fervently, and not hate them.

And my response was the simple "those people are assholes". You get them under every flag, in every place, following every creed. Some people are just not going to approach arguments and disagreements with mutual respect...

EDIT: That isn't the point, though. Those people are the exception, not the rule. You get a few sour grapes in every bunch, but the VAST majority of supporters and detractors of the VAST majority of issues don't hate each other at all, and are reasonable human beings.

Imperfectionist said
:/ This helps nothing, mdk. If it's a joke, it's not funny, and otherwise, mocking the scientific community for skepticism is like mocking Vatican city for being populated by Catholics. The interplay between experimentation and skepticism science, and without it we'd believe even more stupid shit about ourselves and the universe than we do now.

I'm mocking the 'scientific community' for its flagrantly contradictory attitudes in the debate. Seems I've struck a chord.

Alright, I think I understand... Um, give me an example of some of these contradictory attitudes, and I'll see what I can do to (perhaps) defend them.

Imperfectionist said
Alright, I think I understand... Um, give me an example of some of these contradictory attitudes, and I'll see what I can do to (perhaps) defend them.

Global Warming is the obvious choice. Actual billions of dollars spent squashing actual documentation to the contrary. The heathens are marked and shamed. Point being, this sort of behavior is considered totally okay as long as it's coming from 'the scientific community' instead of 'the church.' This is exactly the climate that produced the spanish inquisition, but we're just pretending that it's going to turn out swell this time around. Silly.

(note that in this example I'm pointing to the actual scientific community, but more generally I'm talking about the 'scientific community' that you have to put in quotation marks)

Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser. To be perfectly honest, I can't defend anything about any of that. For one, none of it is about the scientific community. Not directly, at least. It's 100% about the public policy of the United States.

In fact, the third link is to a political activism blog financed by a liberal think tank... x.x I can't think of anything less scientific. To construe that as a representation of scientists "marking and shaming" people who do not agree with them is... misguided. The problem here is not the scientific community, but the political community. And seriously, fuck those people. (And, events like the onset of the Spanish Inquisition were obviously not theological in nature either, but entirely political. Politics is truly the death of all that is holy, moral and just. Again, fuck. Those. People.)

It is definitely an interesting point, though, how fervently non-scientists will hold on to views presented to them in an unbiased, scientific manner... :( And how much scorn scientists get when they make mistakes. I don't know much about climate change, I don't know much about geology, but what I do know is that no experimentation is perfect, and any scientist or researcher or what have you will tell you the same. They get the best results they can based on the best equipment they are able to use and the best conditions they are able to experiment in... What pundits and activists do with that information afterwards can be regrettable, but that was the best information they had at the time. It's about progress, about learning from past mistakes, about not allowing paranoia and alarmism to color our perceptions of scientific research, and about always refining and gaining new techniques for learning about the world around us.

Eventually, and that is the keyword, we will be able to know without a shadow of a doubt how everything works, but we're a ways away from that kind of understanding, so for now we have to make due, and strive to get there.

Now then, what other examples do you have?

it's not just the politicians. But enough climate change -- fine. Here's a study that concluded hurricanes are deadly because of sexism. There's been science done to quantify the quality of artwork using pigeons. Really -- science is perfectly capable of being just as assheaded and pointless as any religious exercise. We need to collectively stop treating 'SCIENCE' as some sacred practice of holy men, because it isn't.

I think all that first link does is validate what I said in my last post. Nothing is perfect, scientists are human, they do the best they can with what they've got, they can make mistakes, yada yada yada... The only reason this is news is because of the politics of the people on either side of the argument, including the scientists. Without that politics, they would have no reason to falsify such things. And, it's entirely possible that they did nothing wrong. We don't know. These kinds of problems with the system get worked out over time. I'm not saying that there aren't individuals who are bad scientists, I'm saying that their failings are not the failings of the scientific community as a whole.

Your generalizations, basically, are what I take issue with.

As for the hurricanes... Well, this is how science works. In that same Time article, there was a link to this dissenting article. And, this fact is proof that we don't treat scientists as "holy", we treat them with respect when they deserve it and ignore their findings when they don't. Until there is dissention and/or corraboration, people can believe whatever they want, but over time, the truth becomes apparent. I agree that science in the political ring is maimed, drawn, quartered, burned at the stake and maimed some more, but I honestly don't know what to do about that. The information gained through scientific inquiry has to be available, and in the U.S. we have the freedom of speech, which means we can use that information however we like, even if it is later proved to be false.

Once again, everyone does the best they can with what they have, but people are flawed, and that leads to flawed research. Flawed research is examined, and (generally) exposed as flawed research, and if there is no convincing rebuttal, we all move on. If there is a convincing rebuttal, the research is re-examined, and its flaws may become less or more apparent. Eventually, either it is considered flawed, it is considered significant, or it is simply considered irrelevant.

MDK, Religion is part of the human psyche. You quash it where it is, it will pop up somewhere else.

Global Warming is more popular than other, more credible threats because it reads like a religion.

Original, uncorrupted paradise earth.
The Devil (big oil)
Man's corrupting influence.
Apocalyptic eschatology.
We must repent and respect Mother Earth! We have made her angry! (People blame everything from earthquakes to autism on Global Waeming)
Messiah (Obama. Remember the deafening applause when he said that his election was the day the oceans stop rising)

:( You make it sound like a disease, Boerd. Was that your intention?

Also, those things are only from a single faith... Christianity =/= religion. The Abrahamic faiths =/= religion. It's bigger than that.