In defense of religion -- the stupidity of militant atheism

Doug

Active Member
May 23, 2005
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England
Man is, biologically, just another species of chimpanzee, lacking fur but possessing a brain which is unique among animals.

He is marked by, among other things, the capacity, frequently used, to make war upon his fellow man, often with great cruelty. Historically, his natural form of social organization is hierarchical, with those at the bottom living a barely-human existence to support those at the top. This social order is defended, when threatened, with the same ferocity and cruelty shown in war.

It also seems to be a ubiquitous feature of humanity to believe in a transcendent order that exists above and beyond mundane material reality.

We can frame many explanations for this desire to believe -- belief in a happy afterlife is consolation for an unhappy present one; a projection onto nature of human will; an explanation for frightening events which are not understood, but whose authors hopefully can be propitiated through magic rituals; the cry for a heart in a heartless world.

Whatever our explanation, humans seem to have a powerful yearning for the sacred. Conscious atheism is conspicuously rare in human history.

However, unless this is organized and given form, it remains at the level of mere superstition: astrology and lucky rabbits' feet and alternative medicine.

Organized religion gives form and coherence to the religious impulse. Often, but not always, it infuses it with rules which help social cohesion, including ethics. Most of the great religions seek, in principle, to modify the pure egoism of their followers, by, for example, some form of the Golden Rule. Often organized charity is part of religion.

Of course, organized religion, which has so often had a powerful hold on men's minds, has also been harnessed for far different things than charitable acts.

Organized religions often become purely tribal religions, and in that capacity justify the acts of savagery of one tribe against another.

And organized religions have been particularly bestial when trying to suppress close competitors -- Gibbon pointed out that the Christians themselves killed far more of their fellow Christians than the Roman persecutors ever did.

Religion is modified by, and adapts to, the society it is in. Thus the Christianity of the 2nd Century AD was a far different thing from the Christianity of the 12 Century, which was in turn far different from Christianity in the 21st Century. Except for the word "Christian" and some formal allegiance to certain rituals and writings, they are entirely different religions.

Modern Christianity, by and large, is very much a product of the Enlightenment -- which, in fact, it helped bring about. An open atheist can live next door to and work with a devout Christian, and fear not. Someone can even proclaim himself a Satan-worshipper and a witch, and all he will receive from most Christians is a bemused shrug.

Of course, where organized Christianity still exists, some of its adherents are active in politics, and try to use their religious organizations to further political aims which are congruent with their religion, as they see it.

Thus fundamentalist Protestants agitate against the right to abortion (although not against the right to divorce, even though divorce except in cases of infidelity is specifically condemned in the New Testament).

And the liberal National Council of Churches enjoins us all to move towards a mild form of socialism, as well as calling for an armed invasion of an oppressive Muslim-run state in Africa.

Note that these forms of political intervention are well within the spectrum of the secular politics of their peers. At best/worst, the fundamentalists would take us back to the 1950s -- not back to the Middle Ages. And the liberal Christians would turn us into Scandanavian social democrats -- not laborers in the Gulag.

All of these churches teach their followers tolerance and civilized behavior in practice. All of them accept the norms of the Enlightenment, and in general respect the rule of law.

Militant atheists, like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, get very worked up about them, and go on at great length about the rather improbable things which are part of their formal belief system, things which defy the laws of physics.

And of course it easy to laugh at people who literally believe in Adam and Eve, and the like. But the essence of modern religion is not, by and large, an insistence on the literal truth of events that happened, if they did, and in any event were recorded, in the distant past.

Rather, religion represents a faith in the existence of a transcendent order.

Now no one can prove that such an order exists. And yet atheists -- or at least philosophical materialists -- evince a belief in something which is, at present at least, miraculous.

Materialists believe that human beings -- like everything else -- are collections of atoms.

Now one atom cannot experience the color red, get angry, or feel a sense of awe. Nor can two atoms. Nor three. But no one can explain how it is, following the laws of mathematics and physics, that the umpty-jillion atoms making up you who are now reading this, can do all these things. No one can explain consciousness, and the sense of identity, and free will. They remain miracles, but believed in by the most ardent atheist.

The atheist knows consciousness and free will exist, even if he cannot begin to explain them. He has faith, but not blind faith. He experiences their reality every day. (There are people who deny that they have free will, and who believe that, with respect to consciousness, once you have explained assemblies of neurons firing, you have explained everything. In the extreme case, these unfortunate people are called autists. In the normal case, they are called sophomore philosophy majors.)

Now the intelligent believer just extends this mode of thinking to the things unseen.

We may decline to join him. But we need not sneer at him.

In any case, atheists also make a much more serious error: they assume that because they are decent people -- and most militant atheists are just as kind and trustworthy as your average Christian, Jew or Muslim -- that if atheism spreads, that everyone will be kind and decent too.

In other words, atheists deny the social utility of organized religion, even in its post-Enlightenment form.

They may be right, but ... I would invite any American atheist who yearns to see the average workingclass American lose all his religious belief, to visit the United Kingdom, where religion among the average people has faded away. Not only do the lower ranks of British society have no interest in religion, they are also the beneficiaries of a good deal of the kind of welfare-state ministrations which have taken the place of personal and religiously-organized charity.

The British proletariat may not have the consolations of religion, but they have free health care, free education, and a wealth of "benefits" which allow anyone who does not feel like working, to avoid doing so. (You will have to persuade a doctor to sign a form testifying that you cannot work -- few doctors will refuse a robustly-made request.)

So, no God, and the welfare state.

And the result -- a lot of proletarian Dawkins, espousing ethical culture?

Come see for yourself. I will pick you up at the airport, and take you to a nearby public housing estate, where you may meet your fellow natural atheists. (Not that they would know that word, or very many others.) Just walk around, and see what we have created here, where religion has vanished, and hierarchy and discipline and authority have been exposed as the tools of the ruling class. (Not after dark!) Don't take anything valuable with you. It will be an eye-opening experience.

Is there a transcendent reality, beyond this material universe? I don't know. Probably not, although given the enormous mystery of consciousness in all its aspects I am reluctant to profess a simple physical materialism. (And I would certainly not lightly sneer at the beliefs of men who are far more intelligent than I am.)

The great chronicler of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire said that in pre-Christian Rome there were many religions, and that they were for the philosophers equally false; for the masses, equally true; and for the magistrates, equally useful.

He was a cynic. But he was on to something.
 
You were doing so well at the beginning, and then it all began to fall apart...

Rather, religion represents a faith in the existence of a transcendent order.

Now no one can prove that such an order exists. And yet atheists -- or at least philosophical materialists -- evince a belief in something which is, at present at least, miraculous.

Why exactly is it miraculous for something to happen which we don't have an explanation for? We don't know why consciousness exists, but how does that make it a miracle?

Materialists believe that human beings -- like everything else -- are collections of atoms.

Now one atom cannot experience the color red, get angry, or feel a sense of awe. Nor can two atoms. Nor three. But no one can explain how it is, following the laws of mathematics and physics, that the umpty-jillion atoms making up you who are now reading this, can do all these things. No one can explain consciousness, and the sense of identity, and free will. They remain miracles, but believed in by the most ardent atheist.

Err I think we can explain some of those things. We do know how light spectrums work, and we do have a decent amount of information on emotions. And of course atheists would believe we can see the color red. This should not be surprising to you.

The atheist knows consciousness and free will exist, even if he cannot begin to explain them. He has faith, but not blind faith. He experiences their reality every day. (There are people who deny that they have free will, and who believe that, with respect to consciousness, once you have explained assemblies of neurons firing, you have explained everything. In the extreme case, these unfortunate people are called autists. In the normal case, they are called sophomore philosophy majors.)

Quite arrogant of you to just assume one side of a philosophical problem that has been argued about for quite some time now. In fact the more we learn about free will, the more reason there is to believe it does NOT exist. Our decisions are influenced greatly by all sorts of absurd things (temperature, what side things are on, if we just found a dime or not...). But regardless of that, even if we assume they are true it doesn't really show anything.

Now the intelligent believer just extends this mode of thinking to the things unseen.

We may decline to join him. But we need not sneer at him.

Consciousness and Free Will are "things unseen". Religion/God are things we have very little evidence for. If we, as you wish to do, assume that Consciousness and Free Will exist, then they are true by that assumption...we know they are true. This is not the same as God. Hence we are not just extending a mode of thinking...rather we are reaching MUCH farther than our evidence permits us to rationally d

In other words, atheists deny the social utility of organized religion, even in its post-Enlightenment form.

I do hope you mean militant atheists when you say atheists.

They may be right, but ... I would invite any American atheist who yearns to see the average workingclass American lose all his religious belief, to visit the United Kingdom, where religion among the average people has faded away. Not only do the lower ranks of British society have no interest in religion, they are also the beneficiaries of a good deal of the kind of welfare-state ministrations which have taken the place of personal and religiously-organized charity.

The British proletariat may not have the consolations of religion, but they have free health care, free education, and a wealth of "benefits" which allow anyone who does not feel like working, to avoid doing so. (You will have to persuade a doctor to sign a form testifying that you cannot work -- few doctors will refuse a robustly-made request.)

So, no God, and the welfare state.

And the result -- a lot of proletarian Dawkins, espousing ethical culture?

Come see for yourself. I will pick you up at the airport, and take you to a nearby public housing estate, where you may meet your fellow natural atheists. (Not that they would know that word, or very many others.) Just walk around, and see what we have created here, where religion has vanished, and hierarchy and discipline and authority have been exposed as the tools of the ruling class. (Not after dark!) Don't take anything valuable with you. It will be an eye-opening experience.

Come to the poor public housing parts of the US. Despite the fact that Americans are, generally, highly religious its not exactly much better here.
 
Larkinn: A good reply. You get to the heart of the matter. I think I shall wait to see what other people have to say (if anything) before replying.

(Except to say, yes, you are right: I meant "militant atheists", the kind who would be happy if, one Sunday, all of the people in all of the churches of America stood up and said, "Hey ... there isn't any God. There isn't any heaven or hell. I won't be punished or rewarded in an afterlife, and nothing that I do now, or fail to do, is being recorded and judged, except possibly by the police. So, so long as I don't get caught ... I am on my own! It's up to me how to behave!" And then they withdraw their children from Sunday School. It's that sort of atheist I am aiming at, not atheists in general, of which I am one.)
 
Diuretic, Snowman: I don't understand your comments. Or rather, I do not see how they are relevant to my original post. Perhaps you would care to expand on them.

To briefly recapitulate, I made two points:

(1) Religion can serve a socially-useful function. There is no atheist equivalent. This is so, regardless of whether Eve ate an apple in the Garden of Eden. And this is especially true of post-Enlightenment Christianity and Judaism. Atheists have often charged religion with being merely a tool of the ruling class to encourage the ruled to submit quietly to the status quo, and no doubt it has played that role. But it has played other roles too, especially today, in encouraging behavior of which atheists, even Marxists, would approve.

(2) Our utter inability to explain the phenomenon of consciousness in materialist terms should at least make atheists humble. (I could have added that the astonishing discoveries which resulted from our exploration of the purely physical world of sub-atomic particles in the 20th Century should reinforce that humility.)

I made my original post because it seemed to me that some of the "discussion" of religion in this sub-forum was, not to put too fine a point on it, puerile.

These two claims, it seems to me, should be good starting points for an intelligent argument among adults, believers and non-believers alike.

Larkinn has made a good start in that spirit. He has defended the materialist world-view as entirely adequate to explain our subjective experiences, and he has challenged the idea that religion can play a positive role in shaping people's behavior towards conforming with civilized norms. And he has provided a counter-example to back his claim.

Wouldn't anyone else like to comment?
 
Now no one can prove that such an order exists. And yet atheists -- or at least philosophical materialists -- evince a belief in something which is, at present at least, miraculous.

Materialists believe that human beings -- like everything else -- are collections of atoms.

Now one atom cannot experience the color red, get angry, or feel a sense of awe. Nor can two atoms. Nor three. But no one can explain how it is, following the laws of mathematics and physics, that the umpty-jillion atoms making up you who are now reading this, can do all these things. No one can explain consciousness, and the sense of identity, and free will. They remain miracles, but believed in by the most ardent atheist.

The atheist knows consciousness and free will exist, even if he cannot begin to explain them. He has faith, but not blind faith. He experiences their reality every day. (There are people who deny that they have free will, and who believe that, with respect to consciousness, once you have explained assemblies of neurons firing, you have explained everything. In the extreme case, these unfortunate people are called autists. In the normal case, they are called sophomore philosophy majors.)

Now the intelligent believer just extends this mode of thinking to the things unseen.

Doug - why would someone who is a non-believer enter a discussion when you have told non-believers what they "believe".
 
I stopped reading shortly after the chimpanzee bit to scroll down the post checking on the length, saw it was novella, decided it was most likely to be long winded tripe, made a conscious decision not to read any more of it but still managed to reach the possibly irrational, though I prefer to think, instinctive but nontheless correct conclusion that you are a buffoon.

I am an athiest by the way:eusa_whistle:


:rofl:
 
Doug - why would someone who is a non-believer enter a discussion when you have told non-believers what they "believe".

You mean like certain Non-believers tell believers what they believe because some very small segment of their group thinks it? Remind me again how every Christian in America and else where believes the world is 6000 years old. Several of your buddies make the claim every time they attack as evidence of some great failure on the part of Christians.

Or the one where all American Christians want to destroy science and the teaching of Darwin.
 
Of course, some here will find the ideas presented too difficult to deal with, and/or of little interest.

There is a wide distribution of knowledge, attention spans, and IQs in the general population. I certainly must remain silent in many discussions, some of which I probably could not even understand if I wanted to, my facility with Clifford algebras and tensor calculus being non-existent. We can choose what to talk about, and certainly de gustibus non disputandem est.

But for anyone who is able to read a few hundred consecutive words, some of which are multi-syllabic, and who cares to challenge my arguments, please do.

For instance, I think Diuretic is a non-believer who does not fit my description of materialists. He may be a non-materialist non-believer, or may subscribe to some more sophisticated form of materialism than I have described. (The question of consciousness has been debated for centuries, as the mind-body problem, and free will -- and many attempts have been made to explain conscious phenomena while holding onto a matter-is-all-there-is metaphysics.)

In which case, here is an opportunity to expound his own beliefs.

I have frequently counter-attacked liberals and Lefties who start posts with "Conservatives believe in ..." and then follow it with some false statement about conservatives. It's a great opportunity to refute error.
 
You mean like certain Non-believers tell believers what they believe because some very small segment of their group thinks it? Remind me again how every Christian in America and else where believes the world is 6000 years old. Several of your buddies make the claim every time they attack as evidence of some great failure on the part of Christians.

Or the one where all American Christians want to destroy science and the teaching of Darwin.

If someone make a claim like that, take them on. Generalisations are stupid....think about it :rofl:
 
I don't have beliefs Doug, I have doubts and tentative opinions. Now if that sounds wishy-washy, trust me it's not. I try to keep an open mind but I'm not always successful. However I'm a stubborn bastard and sometimes that can be a good thing, such as in being stubborn about completely closing my mind to alternatives.
 
I won't argue about the difference between a "belief" and an "opinion", tentatively-held or not.

If you are aware of the fact that no one can explain how an assembly of atoms can experience the color red, or feel a surge of love for another assembly of atoms, then we are in the same camp. And it is not the camp of the militant materialists.

If you think that it might not be such a good idea if tens of millions of people, people who in their daily lives do not experience the comforts of the Oxford Common Room where Richard Dawkins hangs out, to lose their faith in a transcendent order where decent behavior is part of the rules, and to withdraw from weekly meetings where they are exhorted to love their neighbor and to help the less fortunate ... then we are in the same camp.

What I do know is this: I live in a country where, every week or so, I read in the paper about how a group of teenagers who were amusing themselves smashing up car windows, and who were interrupted by someone who objected to this, turned and kicked and stomped him to death. Or where one child was knifed or shot to death by another. And I would be willing to bet my house that in 99% of those cases, the kickers and stompers and shooters and stabbers were not church-goers. (And I know, by the way, Christopher Hitchens' response to this. I am a huge admirer of Hitch, but boy is he wrong here.)
 
I won't argue about the difference between a "belief" and an "opinion", tentatively-held or not.

It's only a question of degree Doug.


Doug: said:
If you are aware of the fact that no one can explain how an assembly of atoms can experience the color red, or feel a surge of love for another assembly of atoms, then we are in the same camp. And it is not the camp of the militant materialists.

I can't explain how a bunch of atoms, being insensate, can "experience" anything. But then I could be simply not understanding your point (I've got form for it).

Doug: said:
If you think that it might not be such a good idea if tens of millions of people, people who in their daily lives do not experience the comforts of the Oxford Common Room where Richard Dawkins hangs out, to lose their faith in a transcendent order where decent behavior is part of the rules, and to withdraw from weekly meetings where they are exhorted to love their neighbor and to help the less fortunate ... then we are in the same camp.

As a sooky humanist I only want the best for any of us.

Doug: said:
What I do know is this: I live in a country where, every week or so, I read in the paper about how a group of teenagers who were amusing themselves smashing up car windows, and who were interrupted by someone who objected to this, turned and kicked and stomped him to death. Or where one child was knifed or shot to death by another. And I would be willing to bet my house that in 99% of those cases, the kickers and stompers and shooters and stabbers were not church-goers. (And I know, by the way, Christopher Hitchens' response to this. I am a huge admirer of Hitch, but boy is he wrong here.)

Sadly it's the same here, just with only 21 million of us as against 300 million in your country (assuming it's the US) it gets back to my opening point. It's just a question of degree.
 
No, I live in the UK, where the welfare state and let-the-government-take-care-of-me mentality and Political Correctness are very strong, and where religion and patriotism are dead. Applied secular liberalism, in power. I see the results daily.
 
No, I live in the UK, where the welfare state and let-the-government-take-care-of-me mentality and Political Correctness are very strong, and where religion and patriotism are dead. Applied secular liberalism, in power. I see the results daily.

Okay, 52 million (or thereabouts). So what caused the supposed malaise in the UK? I can see in your response that there are some ideas but are you blaming the Welfare State? Crumbs after WWII the Attlee Government had to do something to bring the country back up from its uppers, there was no Marshall Plan for Britain, just a huge war debt.

Is it a lack of religion you think? I'm not so sure. Religion has been a huge cause of social problems in Britain over the years (and I'll start with the Druids and their human sacrifice practices - bit tongue in cheek but what the heck).

Political correctness? Is it really to blame? Hey I know it's a bit ridiculous at times, especially with some of the nuttier London councils but even Red Ken seem to have gone a bit beige.

No patriotism? Thatcher gave you the Falklands War, she got a khaki election and the Union Flag was everywhere (I was the in the UK in autumn in 1982, not quite VE Day but there was a lot of John Bull chest thumping). But at least it was patriotism and not the sort of Moseley/Colin Jordan BNP nationalism that can be so destructive.

So, what do you think?
 
Secularist killed more people in the 21st century then religious people

mussolini, hitler, stalin, pol pot, just to name a few.

over 100 million people killed by secularists.

Man is, biologically, just another species of chimpanzee, lacking fur but possessing a brain which is unique among animals.

He is marked by, among other things, the capacity, frequently used, to make war upon his fellow man, often with great cruelty. Historically, his natural form of social organization is hierarchical, with those at the bottom living a barely-human existence to support those at the top. This social order is defended, when threatened, with the same ferocity and cruelty shown in war.

It also seems to be a ubiquitous feature of humanity to believe in a transcendent order that exists above and beyond mundane material reality.

We can frame many explanations for this desire to believe -- belief in a happy afterlife is consolation for an unhappy present one; a projection onto nature of human will; an explanation for frightening events which are not understood, but whose authors hopefully can be propitiated through magic rituals; the cry for a heart in a heartless world.

Whatever our explanation, humans seem to have a powerful yearning for the sacred. Conscious atheism is conspicuously rare in human history.

However, unless this is organized and given form, it remains at the level of mere superstition: astrology and lucky rabbits' feet and alternative medicine.

Organized religion gives form and coherence to the religious impulse. Often, but not always, it infuses it with rules which help social cohesion, including ethics. Most of the great religions seek, in principle, to modify the pure egoism of their followers, by, for example, some form of the Golden Rule. Often organized charity is part of religion.

Of course, organized religion, which has so often had a powerful hold on men's minds, has also been harnessed for far different things than charitable acts.

Organized religions often become purely tribal religions, and in that capacity justify the acts of savagery of one tribe against another.

And organized religions have been particularly bestial when trying to suppress close competitors -- Gibbon pointed out that the Christians themselves killed far more of their fellow Christians than the Roman persecutors ever did.

Religion is modified by, and adapts to, the society it is in. Thus the Christianity of the 2nd Century AD was a far different thing from the Christianity of the 12 Century, which was in turn far different from Christianity in the 21st Century. Except for the word "Christian" and some formal allegiance to certain rituals and writings, they are entirely different religions.

Modern Christianity, by and large, is very much a product of the Enlightenment -- which, in fact, it helped bring about. An open atheist can live next door to and work with a devout Christian, and fear not. Someone can even proclaim himself a Satan-worshipper and a witch, and all he will receive from most Christians is a bemused shrug.

Of course, where organized Christianity still exists, some of its adherents are active in politics, and try to use their religious organizations to further political aims which are congruent with their religion, as they see it.

Thus fundamentalist Protestants agitate against the right to abortion (although not against the right to divorce, even though divorce except in cases of infidelity is specifically condemned in the New Testament).

And the liberal National Council of Churches enjoins us all to move towards a mild form of socialism, as well as calling for an armed invasion of an oppressive Muslim-run state in Africa.

Note that these forms of political intervention are well within the spectrum of the secular politics of their peers. At best/worst, the fundamentalists would take us back to the 1950s -- not back to the Middle Ages. And the liberal Christians would turn us into Scandanavian social democrats -- not laborers in the Gulag.

All of these churches teach their followers tolerance and civilized behavior in practice. All of them accept the norms of the Enlightenment, and in general respect the rule of law.

Militant atheists, like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, get very worked up about them, and go on at great length about the rather improbable things which are part of their formal belief system, things which defy the laws of physics.

And of course it easy to laugh at people who literally believe in Adam and Eve, and the like. But the essence of modern religion is not, by and large, an insistence on the literal truth of events that happened, if they did, and in any event were recorded, in the distant past.

Rather, religion represents a faith in the existence of a transcendent order.

Now no one can prove that such an order exists. And yet atheists -- or at least philosophical materialists -- evince a belief in something which is, at present at least, miraculous.

Materialists believe that human beings -- like everything else -- are collections of atoms.

Now one atom cannot experience the color red, get angry, or feel a sense of awe. Nor can two atoms. Nor three. But no one can explain how it is, following the laws of mathematics and physics, that the umpty-jillion atoms making up you who are now reading this, can do all these things. No one can explain consciousness, and the sense of identity, and free will. They remain miracles, but believed in by the most ardent atheist.

The atheist knows consciousness and free will exist, even if he cannot begin to explain them. He has faith, but not blind faith. He experiences their reality every day. (There are people who deny that they have free will, and who believe that, with respect to consciousness, once you have explained assemblies of neurons firing, you have explained everything. In the extreme case, these unfortunate people are called autists. In the normal case, they are called sophomore philosophy majors.)

Now the intelligent believer just extends this mode of thinking to the things unseen.

We may decline to join him. But we need not sneer at him.

In any case, atheists also make a much more serious error: they assume that because they are decent people -- and most militant atheists are just as kind and trustworthy as your average Christian, Jew or Muslim -- that if atheism spreads, that everyone will be kind and decent too.

In other words, atheists deny the social utility of organized religion, even in its post-Enlightenment form.

They may be right, but ... I would invite any American atheist who yearns to see the average workingclass American lose all his religious belief, to visit the United Kingdom, where religion among the average people has faded away. Not only do the lower ranks of British society have no interest in religion, they are also the beneficiaries of a good deal of the kind of welfare-state ministrations which have taken the place of personal and religiously-organized charity.

The British proletariat may not have the consolations of religion, but they have free health care, free education, and a wealth of "benefits" which allow anyone who does not feel like working, to avoid doing so. (You will have to persuade a doctor to sign a form testifying that you cannot work -- few doctors will refuse a robustly-made request.)

So, no God, and the welfare state.

And the result -- a lot of proletarian Dawkins, espousing ethical culture?

Come see for yourself. I will pick you up at the airport, and take you to a nearby public housing estate, where you may meet your fellow natural atheists. (Not that they would know that word, or very many others.) Just walk around, and see what we have created here, where religion has vanished, and hierarchy and discipline and authority have been exposed as the tools of the ruling class. (Not after dark!) Don't take anything valuable with you. It will be an eye-opening experience.

Is there a transcendent reality, beyond this material universe? I don't know. Probably not, although given the enormous mystery of consciousness in all its aspects I am reluctant to profess a simple physical materialism. (And I would certainly not lightly sneer at the beliefs of men who are far more intelligent than I am.)

The great chronicler of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire said that in pre-Christian Rome there were many religions, and that they were for the philosophers equally false; for the masses, equally true; and for the magistrates, equally useful.

He was a cynic. But he was on to something.
 
To paraphrase....."secularism doesn't kill people, people kill people". Humans, when engaged in war, mass slaughter, genocide and refusing to pay parking tickets, will use any excuse they can to avoid responsibility and to motivate supporters. Religion has been useful but I'm yet to meet the religion that demanded war, mass slaughter, genocide and refusing to pay parking tickets.

And if you get pinched for illegal parking at the Vatican City you'd better pay up....or you're in big trouble! :badgrin:
 
To paraphrase....."secularism doesn't kill people, people kill people". Humans, when engaged in war, mass slaughter, genocide and refusing to pay parking tickets, will use any excuse they can to avoid responsibility and to motivate supporters. Religion has been useful but I'm yet to meet the religion that demanded war, mass slaughter, genocide and refusing to pay parking tickets.

And if you get pinched for illegal parking at the Vatican City you'd better pay up....or you're in big trouble! :badgrin:

Well while I absolutely agree with the sentiment... The Pope ordered Crusades hundreds of years ago, clearly religion condoning and DEMANDING a war. And Muslim's demanded Jihads against countries and peoples hundreds of years ago also ( I do not include the terrorist jihads of today in this).

And in India Hindu's and Sikhs had wars inspired by if not ordered by religion.
 
Humans, I think, have used religion to justify profane activities, but, as you've pointed out, they've also conducted profane activities to extend religious influence. Either way I think they've perverted their religion. But then I have to admit to much ignorance in this area, I'm just working through this from my own knowledge and theology is obviously not a strong point.
 

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