is religion for living in the world, ignoring the world, or just for dying?

Thanx, but not a problem, it's not like I've never done the same thing.

Anyway, when you were talking about lying to children, it occurred to me that in a way fiction could be considered lying and was wondering your opinion on the subject

That is why I asked you; would you read fiction to children and if so at what age?

 

Fiction at any age is fine as long as it's not attempted to be passed off as fact.

Read them Clifford the big red dog but don't TELL them it's real.

Religious nonsense in other word's.

That's my opinion.

 

I was reading that children under the age of 4 have no way to distinguish between true and false, even if you tell them, thus it would seem that fiction would be a lie to them even if you told them otherwise.

 

I personally would still see no need to lie to a child even if it was PROVEN to not cause any harm.

 

I guess I need to reword the question.

My question was not; seeing that a child under 4 can not useally tell the difference between true and false is it okay to lie to them?

My question was; if child can not tell the difference between true and false, fiction and nonfiction, then if you read a fiction book to them and no matter how many times you tell them that the book is not true, they are still going to think the book is true. Thus in a way it would seem they have been lied to, so do you think it would better not to read fiction to them before 4 or do you think it doesn't matter what you read to them?

 

I don't think it would matter if it was a fictional story being read to them or just soothing sounds from there parent's.

But I'm not an expert on the human mind so I can not say your statement is true or not.

 

No! Would you lie to protect someone if you didn't care about them?

 

Not trying to invalidate your point, but do you have kids?

 

No, because I realize what a colossal task it would be to raise a child right.

Mainly because I hate lying and not very good at short answer's.

 

In this case, I feel you are being incredibly judgmental of something you don't really know much about. I only have other people's kids very occasionally, but even then, answering questions all day can be incredibly wearing.

Your comment about how you should explain everything to a child no matter how long it takes seemed rather blinkered. You assume, for example, that the parent will know the answer to every question the child asks, or that there's an answer at all.

 

Seems to me someone is having trouble realizing that children are not adults...

 

Yawn, just because I don't have a child of my own does not mean I'm completely naive as to what it would take to raise one.

Do you lie to your children?

 

What is a child?

Some people would still consider you to be a child, does that mean that you are?

 

I don't have children. I lie to my niece all the time but only because it's funny.

How would you go about explaining to a child that she needs to eat her dinner because it will get cold and she won't get anymore that day? I honestly have no idea, so I just tell her that if she doesn't eat it up, bats will eat it. For some reason it works.

And I didn't say that you're completely naive, but I would like your answer to the question I actually asked.

 

Someone who's too young for us to expect them to look after themselves, I guess.

Let's debate whether childhood exists purely because you've said it's never okay to lie to a child and cannot possibly retract that.

 

But do you think she will eventually figure out that there are no bat's?

Probably.

Do you think that one day you will stop telling her that bat's will eat her food?

Probably.

But that's not what religion does, it uses fear to manipulate people and then never tells them its not real.

In fact many go on to state that the REAL fun happens after your dead.

 

I may stop telling her, but I doubt I'll ever tell her that it was a lie. She'll figure it out for herself. Just like with religion.

Maybe you have had a different religious experience from most people I've spoken to, but normally, that's what people do. They decide one day that they've got enough reason to believe that there is no god, and so they believe.

If I need someone to tell me that there's no god, I'll have an incredibly weak grounds for atheism, especially considering that there's no proof that there isn't a god (and thus someone claiming to know that there isn't one would really be lying).

And I don't know that many religions tell people not to live their lives and to wait for death. Christianity certainly doesn't. Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins, after all.

 

Religion as a whole is to massive to take on, you have to pick apart the individual religions and expose how they were man made.

Your right I can't say there is no god based solely on the fact that the "god" in question has never appeared to me.

Does that mean I have to "accept" what others believe to be true when it in my opinion harm's society?

Religion is for fools.

 

Most religious people already know that. Christians aren't taught that God wrote the Bible, after all. They know that it was written by men. They BELIEVE that those men were inspired by God. How are you going to disprove that?

Also, yet again, why is this preferable to simply deploring violence, whether it's committed in the name of religion or not?

No. It just means that you should accept that you don't know certain things and avoid arbitrarily making statements like this:

 

I don't really see any point in arguing over what exactly religion is, as there's so many different forms of beliefs/traditions and doctrines/scripture out there that despite their many sismilarities, they simply have to many differences to impose one word upon them such as "religion" (shit even "them" is to generalizing).

I think what you may be forgetting Rude, is that Spirituality and Religion are often two very different things. Sometimes they work simultaneously in a symbiotic relationship, however not always. Take ancient philosophers for example...essentially they were their times contemporary scientist/"religious" leaders. They considered both to be critical in determining what is, according to what we do "know", yet recognizing that we know so little at the same time. What we base so much of todays reality off of is derived from our knowledge of quantum mechanics (study of the atom), which was originally theorized by Democritus. It wasn't really until the Catholic Church in Europe that popular thought started to take on the opinion that science and spirituality couldn't walk hand in hand (perhaps because it literally proves their "religion" as very improbable) that western thought; being that science highly differed from spirituality was more widely held.

Nowadays people are realizing more and more that science and spirituality must walk hand in hand, because essentially they are one in the same. When we theorize, we are basing our hypothesis on observations that we have made, doing so automates the process of them working together. We "believe" it to be "true"," or as close to "truth" as is possible (ie. most probable). We are still taking "leaps of faith" if you will, simply by labeling and assuming to understand, its just throwing human logic in the equation.