Dawkins: "Religion is no moral compass" - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Explosions;42340985]Can you explain how you are reaching this conclusion? Worshiping a mailbox isn't sinister and [B]vile like religion.[/B][/QUOTE] Like those vile christians, amiright? or all those fucking jews, get a load of those dicks lmao. It's not a matter of accepting belief its a matter of accepting people. I feel you don't accept people BECAUSE of their belief, which is kind of naive. Jews themselves are fine, so is religion. Doesn't mean I accept the belief or embrace it, but I'm not going to get all defensive and opinionated about "How people that believe in it are wrong".

[QUOTE=MrJazzy;42341196]Not if those people know how to think.[/QUOTE] If they knew how to think they wouldn't be there. [QUOTE=ilikecorn;42341201]Ok, have fun with that. Question: where'd you buy your tin foil hat? And does it REALLY protect you from aliens, or are they more of a fashion statement?[/QUOTE] What the fuck are you doing?

[QUOTE=Thlis;42341215]To be honest there is a sinister aspect to it. How many of those people chose to be [x] vs were raised into it without any choice of other beliefs? That is possible with atheism but less likely.[/QUOTE] It is definitely sinister in a way, but it's waaay overstated. Even then, what are you gonna do about it? Ban religion? [editline]29th September 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Explosions;42341227]If they knew how to think they wouldn't be there.[/QUOTE] Einstein was religious, he didn't know how to think? Newton was religious, he didn't know how to think? In fact there are still many religious scientists today.

[QUOTE=J!NX;42341223]Like those vile christians, amiright? or all those fucking jews, get a load of those dicks lmao. It's not a matter of accepting belief its a matter of accepting people. I feel you don't accept people BECAUSE of their belief, which is kind of naive.[/QUOTE] I never mentioned accepting or rejecting people. I am talking about beliefs. Most people have no ability to choose whether or not they will believe in a religion because they are made to do so when they are children, and there is no choice in the matter. I would never criticize a person for believing in religion if they were raised in it. And yeah, genital mutilation of babies is pretty disgusting, but that's just me.

Nobody choses their own beliefs, if you believe in God you can't just choose to become an atheist, you need to be fed evidence and arguments and you have to be influenced. The same goes for vice versa.

[QUOTE=MrJazzy;42341229]Einstein was religious, he didn't know how to think? Newton was religious, he didn't know how to think? In fact there are still many religious scientists today.[/QUOTE] Einstein was not religious, and its funny you mention Newton because it was his religious beliefs that stopped scientific progress for about a century. He simply gave up and said "must be god" when he ran into a tough problem about gravity in the solar system. A guy 100 years later figured out the problem doing math that Newton was completely capable of doing. His belief in god stifled his scientific research. it has done so for centuries.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;42341242]What do you mean, its just as likely. "Dad where do we go when we die?" "A hole in the ground son". You influence your children in almost every way until they get older.[/QUOTE] Usually that doesn't involve going to a giant temple every week around older people that believe in [x] because they were raised that way. At least "A hole in the ground" is a provable answer.

[QUOTE=Explosions;42341248]I never mentioned accepting or rejecting people. I am talking about beliefs. Most people have no ability to choose whether or not they will believe in a religion because they are made to do so when they are children, and there is no choice in the matter. I would never criticize a person for believing in religion if they were raised in it. And yeah, genital mutilation of babies is pretty disgusting, but that's just me.[/QUOTE] oh good I mistook you for saying something worse. and circumcision is something anyone can be against, really, even the ones who have a religion that uses it. Religion has its ups and downs, as does everything. For many, religion is a very positive thing.

[QUOTE=J!NX;42341280]oh good I mistook you for saying something worse. and circumcision is something anyone can be against, really, even the ones who have a religion that uses it. Religion has its ups and downs, as does everything.[/QUOTE] There are no "ups" to religion which could not be attributed to innate human goodness.

[QUOTE=Explosions;42341268]Einstein was not religious, and its funny you mention Newton because it was his religious beliefs that stopped scientific progress for about a century. He simply gave up and said "must be god" when he ran into a tough problem about gravity in the solar system. A guy 100 years later figured out the problem doing math that Newton was completely capable of doing. His belief in god stifled his scientific research. it has done so for centuries.[/QUOTE] Newton didn't stop because of his belief in god, he stopped because he encountered a problem he would need much later technology to solve and then said it was god.

[QUOTE=MrJazzy;42341314]Newton didn't stop because of his belief in god, he stopped because he encountered a problem he would need computers to solve and then said it was god.[/QUOTE] Shit, I told myself I was done responding to you, then I did it anyway. Fuck! I guess I deserved to be punished by reading such a shitty post.

[QUOTE=Blind Lulu;42341487]I swear the euphoric tips fedora neckbeard athiest bandwagon has gotten more annoying than any anti-religion circlejerk. I'm gonna be a part of the slightly less annoying better than both of those groups circlejerk.[/QUOTE] *tips fedora*

you know what I hate ? this new fad of self-loathing atheists.

[QUOTE=Blind Lulu;42341487]I swear the euphoric tips fedora neckbeard athiest bandwagon has gotten more annoying than any anti-religion circlejerk.[/QUOTE] The funny thing is it's essentially doing the exact same thing. It's just blind "I am better than you" smugness.

"The Bible mentions stoning people to death, so taking your morals from the Bible means you should stone people to death." Yeah, sure, good job there, Dawkins. I definitely never learned violence and inhibition of progress, and I definitely did learn kindness, compassion, faith and trust, empathy, and forgiveness.

[QUOTE=c:;42341563]"The Bible mentions stoning people to death, so taking your morals from the Bible means you should stone people to death." Yeah, sure, good job there, Dawkins. I definitely never learned violence and inhibition of progress, and I definitely did learn kindness, compassion, faith and trust, empathy, and forgiveness.[/QUOTE] what book were you reading [editline]28th September 2013[/editline] Also, why do you need a book to tell you to be kind, compassionate, and empathetic? Do you need the threat of hellfire to do good things? Why do you need someone to tell you to do these things?

[QUOTE=c:;42341563]"The Bible mentions stoning people to death, so taking your morals from the Bible means you should stone people to death." Yeah, sure, good job there, Dawkins. I definitely never learned violence and inhibition of progress, and I definitely did learn kindness, compassion, faith and trust, empathy, and forgiveness.[/QUOTE] I am not really sure where you are going with that. I mean that is one of the moral guidelines stated in the bible so what exactly is wrong with the statement [quote]"The Bible mentions stoning people to death, so taking your morals from the Bible means you should stone people to death." [/quote] in terms of a literal interpretation. The bible also has god commit global infanticide, and states that disobedient children should be put to death.

tbh the kind of things that dawkins is saying and advocating only work in a world where we have a sophisticated understanding of how many processes work how do you get someone from the middle ages not to commit rape or murder someone? you can try saying "it's natural to not be a douche" but it's far more effective to say "if you rape and murder you get sent to a nasty place where satan makes you his buttbuddy" because the understanding we had of the universe back then was a lot rougher. that's like... religion in general. getting people to act a certain way because not doing so has punishments whether it be a worse afterlife, being reincarnated into a lower lifeform, whatever. the problem starts when religions get people to act in ways that causes harm to others, and thats the only time you should have problem with someone's religion.

I thik the reason for why I'm not hostile toward religion is probably cause I grew up in a protestant country :v:

[QUOTE=PSI Guy;42341607]tbh the kind of things that dawkins is saying and advocating only work in a world where we have a sophisticated understanding of how many processes work how do you get someone from the middle ages not to commit rape or murder someone? you can try saying "it's natural to not be a douche" but it's far more effective to say "if you rape and murder you get sent to a nasty place where satan makes you his buttbuddy" because the understanding we had of the universe back then was a lot rougher. that's like... religion in general. getting people to act a certain way because not doing so has punishments whether it be a worse afterlife, being reincarnated into a lower lifeform, whatever. the problem starts when religions get people to act in ways that causes harm to others, and thats the only time you should have problem with someone's religion.[/QUOTE] People like you are the worst kind. You advocate for the abuse of the uneducated and tricking them into believing there is a totalitarian dictatorship in the sky which judges you and watches you at all times of the day and even after death. It is shameful and disgusting.

[QUOTE=Explosions;42341622]People like you are the worst kind. You advocate for the abuse of the uneducated and tricking them into believing there is a totalitarian dictatorship in the sky which judges you and watches you at all times of the day and even after death. It is shameful and disgusting.[/QUOTE] lol what

[QUOTE=PSI Guy;42341607]tbh the kind of things that dawkins is saying and advocating only work in a world where we have a sophisticated understanding of how many processes work how do you get someone from the middle ages not to commit rape or murder someone? you can try saying "it's natural to not be a douche" but it's far more effective to say "if you rape and murder you get sent to a nasty place where satan makes you his buttbuddy" because the understanding we had of the universe back then was a lot rougher. that's like... religion in general. getting people to act a certain way because not doing so has punishments whether it be a worse afterlife, being reincarnated into a lower lifeform, whatever. the problem starts when religions get people to act in ways that causes harm to others, and thats the only time you should have problem with someone's religion.[/QUOTE] lmao except that never worked as evidenced by history rape and murder has been a thing since before the bible, and by all accounts was probably more of a thing after the bible too! Sorry I reject the notion that people needed to be religiously indoctrinated to act morally or agree to a social contract. Social contracts have been the basis of human groups since well before Jerusalem, some of it is just logical outcome, i.e don't kill me because I can help you and if you kill me someone from my tribe will probably take a fuckin stone to your head too More likely, getting people to obey a religious texts with rigid views of how they should conduct themselves and live their lives make it very easy to shape and manipulate a large population of people.

[QUOTE=PSI Guy;42341653]lol what[/QUOTE] "How do you get someone from the middle ages not to commit rape or murder someone?" Lie to them!!! That's what you're saying. And the lie you're advocating for is a terrible one.

[QUOTE=Explosions;42341691]"How do you get someone from the middle ages not to commit rape or murder someone?" Lie to them!!! That's what you're saying. And the lie you're advocating for is a terrible one.[/QUOTE] Is it necessarily lying to them if its a faith-based belief? I don't think it follows that your standards of modern thought are entirely applicable to a middle-age context without it being completely anachronistic.

[QUOTE=Lonestriper;42341784]Is it necessarily lying to them if its a faith-based belief? I don't think it follows that your standards of modern thought are entirely applicable to a middle-age context without it being completely anachronistic.[/QUOTE] He was insinuating that religion was a method of fooling the uneducated masses into obeying.

That certainly would be applying motives to religion which aren't necessarily true then.

I forgot I was arguing in favor of Christianity on Facepunch. My bad.

[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;42342035]If you need religion to teach you rights and wrong, you're probably doing the right things for the wrong reason. It's better to do the right thing because you know it's right, than to do it because you'll go to some hell otherwise.[/QUOTE] I think in a lot of cases people have a moral compass already. They pick and choose sections from the Bible (or Qur'an, Hebrew Bible, etc.) to 'interpret' in a way they agree with. How do you do that without a moral compass of your own that is already separate from the texts and teachings of your religion?

[QUOTE=c:;42341930]I forgot I was arguing in favor of Christianity on Facepunch. My bad.[/QUOTE] No one said you can't argue. In fact you're more than welcome to try. Problem is this debate has been going on for centuries now, and the only thing that has been proven is that many of the things attributed to god(s) don't actually need god(s) to happen. Put another way: the religious argument hasn't gotten any more convincing as time went on, but the atheist one has. Even then, you'd be mistaking yourself if you think you're the underdog, considering atheists are still vastly outnumbered on this planet. [QUOTE=MrJazzy;42341045]There is no militant atheism, well there is probably in some amounts, but let me give you an example of one of the most horrible things to ever have occured in our history which occured on scientific beliefs and not religious beliefs: The holocaust.[/QUOTE] Hahaha oh wow... but seriously if you want to discuss that you should know the Christian church was part of that decision. Not that it would matter, the Jews, gays, gypsys, and others were just political scapegoats. It's not like the Holocaust is the one and only time genocide happened, and it's not even the only time that people have used scapegoats (in the form of a religious or cultural group) to further their own goals. "Holy" wars, imperialism, slavery... all were supported by religion, but even I will admit that the real driver for nearly all human disasters has been greed. As much as I would like to place the blame on religion for the world's ills, religion is just the tool used to justify the status quo. [QUOTE=Ganerumo;42340424]That's implying every single religious person in the world actually just takes the whole scripture as truth and never question it, which is not true. Just like how some people accept science as essentially a dogma and others constantly question it, a lot of religious folk constantly question and reflect on their own religion, that's why we have theologists and philosophers. See the current pope. The religious people who blindly follow their book and never think twice about what they are doing are the same creationist dipshits who still believe literally in the genesis.[/QUOTE] The problem with this is that if you can disregard some parts of the book, why can't you disregard the others? The book went from being 100% correct to only 50%? How do we know which ones are right and which are wrong? Who is making those decisions in the first place? I can't imagine that it's God, or we'd likely know about it. [QUOTE=evilweazel;42340732]Nice to see FP has matured on the subject of religion, honestly. A short few years ago it was more or less the spitting image of r/atheism. :v:[/QUOTE] Yeah, I've been around a lot longer than you have. I don't recall FP ever being r/atheism. Maybe I missed something? I don't think so, because I am of the most unpopular opinion that religion is a fucking joke and should be banned due to the harm it causes. Only a handful of other people on FP have ever agreed with me. Most find my position quite extreme. Please stop the FP hivemind shit, you honestly couldn't be more wrong. [QUOTE=ilikecorn;42341003]Honestly militant atheism is just as bad as militant religion. It's all fine and dandy to have one's own beliefs, and what does it matter as long as it's not affecting you?[/QUOTE] Militant Christians have killed doctors for performing medical procedures they disagree with. Militant Muslims have blown themselves (and others) up in the name of their god. Militant atheists think religion is retarded and argue with people on the internet. If you can't see why these things are not even close to being comparable, you should call your internet company immediately and get yourself disconnected because apparently, disagreeing with someone on the internet is as bad as murder. [QUOTE=PSI Guy;42341607]tbh the kind of things that dawkins is saying and advocating only work in a world where we have a sophisticated understanding of how many processes work how do you get someone from the middle ages not to commit rape or murder someone? you can try saying "it's natural to not be a douche" but it's far more effective to say "if you rape and murder you get sent to a nasty place where satan makes you his buttbuddy" because the understanding we had of the universe back then was a lot rougher. that's like... religion in general. getting people to act a certain way because not doing so has punishments whether it be a worse afterlife, being reincarnated into a lower lifeform, whatever. the problem starts when religions get people to act in ways that causes harm to others, and thats the only time you should have problem with someone's religion.[/QUOTE] Your entire argument is based on the assumption that humans are naturally bad and would do bad things to each other unless they believed a God was babysitting them. There are many, many studies showing the exact opposite: that humans are generally good and prefer to support each other, so long as they don't feel like they're being taken advantage of. In fact there was a very cool experiment with algorithms in an iterative prisoner's dilemma (a common topic in philosophy). [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoners.27_dilemma"]Read this[/URL] to understand why it's not only logical, but to see why evolution likely made us this way.

[QUOTE=Lonestriper;42341784]Is it necessarily lying to them if its a faith-based belief? I don't think it follows that your standards of modern thought are entirely applicable to a middle-age context without it being completely anachronistic.[/QUOTE] What are you even saying Listen, I don't know how to break this to you guys, but people in the middle age weren't neanderthals, human intelligence hasn't dramatically improved since then. They thought and operated the same as we do now. The only difference is now you are born into a society that has a largely educated population, and one where the exchange of information is mostly free. People dont just go around raping and murdering each-other if they aren't told not to, if that were the case we would have never survived out of the paleolithic era. So again this idea that a religious document (and people seem to gloss over the fact that the early iterations of these texts advocated inhumane and oppressive beliefs against certain peoples and behaviors) is needed to tell people how to behave in a society is ridiculous. The basic "moral tenants" of the bible can be boiled down to this: dont steal - dont murder - dont rape - dont betray Are you seriously going to sit there and suggest that humans couldnt have possibly thought of this shit themselves without a fucking fairy tale book (one that advocates slavery, racism, homophobia, etc under specific circumstances while we're at it) telling them to so? Those are basic logical outcomes of living in a social group for fucks sake. Dont steal because you will probably get beaten, killed or out cast Dont murder because you will probably get beaten, killed or out cast Dont rape because you will probably get beaten, killed or out cast In what world is this hard to understand and you need to be weaved elaborate fairy tales to be a productive member of your society [editline]29th September 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=ilikecorn;42341003]Honestly militant atheism is just as bad as militant religion. It's all fine and dandy to have one's own beliefs, and what does it matter as long as it's not affecting you?[/QUOTE] yeah because militant atheists are killing people in the name of their beliefs oh wait