[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;50396766]its wrong for someone to have enjoyed singing hymns in school?
[editline]26th May 2016[/editline]
i'm kind of hoping for a resurgence in spiritualistic ideas divorced from any religions, people just generally doing things to help their spiritual health such as meditation and contemplation of death[/QUOTE]
I am working on something of the like. If interested let me know and I will share.
For starters, religion is all about the inner world. All things subjective. Intuition and emotions and dreams.
Compare a few other religions, it bare bones about using the imagination and symbolism to gain knowledge and mastery of the thyself. This is something atheists are not exactly talking about.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;50397851]this is a genuinely jovial environment for a religious discussion on the internet by comparison to the typical faire.[/QUOTE]Even Facepunch of a few years ago was a far more raucous and vicious debating environment. As far as I can recall, anyway.
[QUOTE=ph:lxyz;50409458]The oldest religion on this planet is secretive, generally unknown, controls all major religions, and is in the process of using the media and war to eliminate them. Don't think for one minute however, that they themselves don't have a replacement for the existing mainstream religions. Just ask Al Gore what that religion might be.[/QUOTE]u wot m8?
I recently started going to church after a period of fedora-level militant atheism and frankly it's been very valuable to me. It might not be for everyone. It doesn't matter.
But to denounce religion as being a totally irrelevant and stupid is not worthy of the apparently rational and scientific minds that atheists have. It isn't good or bad that the religious are now outnumbered, it just is.
[QUOTE=Dr. Ethan Asia;50413391]I recently started going to church after a period of fedora-level militant atheism and frankly it's been very valuable to me. It might not be for everyone. It doesn't matter.
But to denounce religion as being a totally irrelevant and stupid is not worthy of the apparently rational and scientific minds that atheists have. It isn't good or bad that the religious are now outnumbered, it just is.[/QUOTE]
To me it is very simple. Superstition is inherently negative, less superstitious people is a positive.
[QUOTE=IrishBandit;50414165]To me it is very simple. Superstition is inherently negative, less superstitious people is a positive.[/QUOTE]
But why is it inherently negative? I can only see that people who believe in a religion (or are generally superstitious) might be more likely to ignore scientific or medical advice - but there's no ground whatever for thinking its inherent. The volume of the religious who are doctors or scientists prove that.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;50397725]if people don't need spirituality, then why the enduring persistence of religion?
religion isn't even in decline at all, it's just transforming into different forms or moving to other places.[/QUOTE]
The spread and persistence of religion has very little to do with spirituality, I think.
Religion is a social virus. That is a negatively loaded word, but it's the best I can think of to describe it.
Every major religion is self-propagating. Every major religion has, in some form or another, a "built in" reason to convert to the religion, convert others to the religion, and never convert to another religion.
In Abrahamic religions, the main reason is hell. If you are not part of the religion, you will go to hell.
If you don't want to go to hell, you have to convert.
Thus, everyone who can be convinced that they will go to hell if they aren't part of the religion will have a very strong reason to convert.
Everyone who is part of the religion will also have a powerful reason to convert or kill those who are not of the religion. Convert them so that they can be saved from hell, or kill them so that they do not doom others, essentially insulating the religion against others.
And of course, to abandon the religion would be to doom yourself to hell, and all parents will do their best to instill their religion into their children because not doing so would be dooming them to hell.
In the modern day, a lot of this is no longer quite applicable. Actually I'd say at least Christianity barely exists anymore outside of maybe Africa. At least in the increasingly secular western world, the majority of Christians do not exactly believe in "their" religion anymore.
They are Christian only because it is their family tradition. They celebrate some of the more popular holidays, tell their children some of the most popular christian stories along with many more decidedly non-christian ones, and conveniently ignore any part of it that does not fit into their modern lives. Most likely they've never read the Bible, in many cases they don't even believe god exists, despite considering themselves Christian.
It's pure tradition at this point, although with some notable exceptions who still genuinely believe. If society keeps growing as it has for the last many years, then eventually both true believers and traditionalists will die out, but as they are ingrained so deeply in our cultures and traditions it will take a while.
Personally I find that religion has some valuable teachings, but the practices of each religion I find absolutely fucking stupid. Like God damn I hated the forced masses at school and the stupid singing and sitting on the gym floor listening to preaching. I was even baptised but that shits meaningless to me. It's the values and standards that religions teach that makes them valuable.
But that's the only aspect of religion I find valuable. Praising some supposed higher power, commandments, rules of life that must be followed or you go to Hell? What the fuck? Let's not forget that religions can bring out the worst in some people...hell check out the gay bashers who went as far as saying 'God hates Fags.' That's silly.
But these days now there are so many aspects of religion that can easily turn people off, just as much as it can bring them in, and I guess that's what's happening. More and more people are being turned off of religion.
[QUOTE=Dr. Ethan Asia;50414828]But why is it inherently negative? I can only see that people who believe in a religion (or are generally superstitious) might be more likely to ignore scientific or medical advice - but there's no ground whatever for thinking its inherent. The volume of the religious who are doctors or scientists prove that.[/QUOTE]
All superstition is bullshit, and believing in bullshit is not a good thing. You make decisions based on your beliefs, so you make decisions based on bullshit. You vote based on bullshit. You teach your kids bullshit. Belief in bullshit doesn't preclude you being educated or knowledgeable in whatever field (see Ben Carson).
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