Religion is for cowards and pedophiles of childrens minds

You are more or less debating with a wall, Hoatzin.


(and no, that isn't a compliment noodle.)

 

It's as if you believe religion and god are the only place one can find morality in.

I feel stealing from another person is wrong because it the taking of something that does not belong to me, not because of something written in a book or some imaginary friend telling me it's wrong.

If you are defending religion on the basis that it "scares people straight" you need only take a look into a history book to prove that theory incorrect.

Religion and the belief in the supernatural are not the basis for morality, human intelligence and compassion is.

Religion gives false hope to those ignorant enough to take it literally and retards critical thinking in human beings by saying that reality can be suspended and in your favor if you only live your life a certain way.



Blessed are the cheese makers.

 

I pretty clearly expressed that religion is not required. I merely argued that, if one relies purely on what can be proved, morality is very hard to argue for. For example:

How do you prove that someone owns the thing you want, and thus prove to yourself that you have no right to take it?

The fact is, you learned these morals from somewhere. They have never been proved to you, because they are not provable. The fact that you happen not to have a god telling you to believe this is an irrelevance if you can't tell me why you do believe it. Why is it so much more acceptable for you for someone to lie to you about how stealing is "just wrong" than it is for someone to back it up with a bit of fire and brimstone?

Well fortunately that's not the only basis upon which I'm defending it. I am still on the belief that religion doesn't turn people bad.

So your bugbear with religion is entirely superficial then? It's all about the supernatural, and nothing at all about the actual substance of the belief?

I mean, that would explain a lot, except the length of this thread.

So where do you get your false hope? I mean, your life is as meaningless as theirs, and unlike them you don't have any death cult to tell you that it's all okay. So why are you still with us? What keeps you going?

 

Interesting. So it's just an illusion of total entrenchment that I'm seeing?

Was the existence of property proved to you logically, or did you just accept that it exists? Because you seem very sure that it does exist, and I'd be interested to know why because I've never had it proved to me.

No, I don't.

 

I have had people shout, "Get off my property" when I was a child, it taught me a moral lesson; Don't fuck with other peoples shit unless they allow you to, and if you don't believe it is more theirs than it is yours prove otherwise.

Thus possession was logically taught to me.

And just to clarify when I say "possession" I mean ownership, Nothing to do with ghosts, I don't want to confuse you. :Angel_anim:

 

Ah, so you're a victim of child abuse yourself then? My condolences.

You "understand" that property exists because a man told you that he had property (and that you should get off it) when you were at an impressionable age, and thus you believe it today.

I can see a logic behind that, but only as much logic as I can see in someone threatening to kick your arse if you don't believe in his god. The only "evidence" of property in your story is "man-made" - negative reinforcement (being shouted at) by a perceived authority figure (the scary man) led you to accept something without proof or even reasoned explanation as to what it was or whether it existed. Should you not cast off your foolish belief in property, just as you expect the religious to cast off their own beliefs purely because they cannot be proven?

Again, why is belief in property acceptable to you purely because someone told you it exists once, when belief in a god is not even though probably tons of people have told you that one exists?

 

:rofl::smilielol5:

If you don't believe whatever property is more theirs than it is yours prove otherwise.

If you are unable to do this and choose to take whatever it is anyways you are taking property that does not belong to you.

 

If my god wanted someone dead he would do it himself.

GG noobface.

 

That is no different from someone telling you that you should believe in God unless you can prove He doesn't exist or suffer the consequences. Why can't you grasp this?

You're happy to describe God as a fiction invented by humans to enforce certain moral codes. Why can't you see that concepts of property are also an invention of human beings, and that what you describe as evidence of its existence stems entirely from people's belief in it? If you got your ass kicked for not believing in God, that wouldn't be evidence of God's existence, so if you get your ass kicked for not believing in property, you can't logically claim that that's evidence of property's existence either.

 

If you are saying that YOU don't believe in the concept of personal ownership that's fine.

If you say for instance that a car your friend just bought was your property you are completely entitled to say it was.

You could go about several ways of proving that the property did not belong to him and in fact was yours, and who knows maybe even talk him into giving you the automobile.

Or you two could even share it, the point is that there is a car to have a dispute over.

God's and other deities however do not exist the bad thing is that little fact does not stop people from having disputes over who has the best deity.

 

That's not what I'm saying, nor would it be "fine" if it were, really. I am saying simply that I - and you, whether you're aware of it or not - learned about the concept of property through negative reinforcement, rather than because property was something that could be proven to us. The only reason you or I have to believe that property exists is that someone will (or might) kick our asses if we don't.

The reason this is relevant is that you are declaring the equivalent with regards to religion to be a form of child abuse, whereas it is actually just one of many forms of social conditioning. The only thing that makes it any different from property in your argument is that you happen to dislike it.

It would be glib to say this, but it might be argued that you have a problem with religion because you don't have a religion, but you have no problem with property because you do have property!

But you're not disputing over the car. You're disputing over ownership of the car. And ownership of the car only exists through an interplay of massed and individual societal pressures. It is not tangible or provable. I might wave a receipt in your face and insist that it proves I own the car, but it only proves this if you believe in ownership. If you don't, it's as meaningless to you as a quote from the Koran would be in proving the existence of Allah.

You are, I think, maybe beginning to understand that some things which cannot be proven (or which can easily be proven to be societal/human constructs) do have a value in promoting positive behaviour. I don't know whether it's your stubbornness that prevents you from entertaining the possibility that religion is among these things. I am still waiting on that proof that religion does more harm than good though.

To be honest, I'm seeing less and less reason to regard this a bad thing. You seem to have more of a problem with people debating the topic than with proof or lack of proof. I mean, you've given the impression that, if only you could educate people properly, no-one would ever have to debate anything ever again, as if only the ill-educated "suffer" from subjectivity and opinion. I'd rather people be able to fight over ideas than people be subjected to your brand of "education" in order to maintain "peace" (as in peace and quiet).

 

Ownership/possession: In most civilized countries these are both understood as being laws that were originally created by man to make life easier, to break these laws can be punishable in courts whether it be a jury of your peers a public stoning or something in between.

Religion: Much like LAW was originally made by man to explain what happens after death and how to live there life, many religions have a central figure at there basis who for whatever reason is considered the moral authority.

 

Durkheim would kick your ass over that. He argues that religion (and god) is all about society cohesion, not the individual afterlife. "God is society, writ large". He saw religion as a mechanism that shored up or protected a threatened social order. Durkheim was specifically interested in religion as a communal experience rather than an individual one.

Also, you have to clarify your statement that "many religions have a central figure at their basis who for whatever reason is considered the moral authority". If we take Christianity as one religion (even though it is arguably many different ones), and the same for Islam and Judaism, and Buddhism, then the rest of the religions in the world do not have a central figure (Who is the central figure to Hindus? Who is the Central figure to the Cree, the Ojibway? The Maya? The Austrailian Aboriganies? The Inuit? The Norse Pre-Christians? The Slavic Pre-christians? The Romans? The Greeks?) If we take Christianity as separate religions, then it again doesn't work. Catholicsicm has (of course) Jesus, but also all of the saints (10000+ in total). Ditto for Orthodox. Protestants have, again, Jesus, but also their respective founders, and on a lesser extent than Catholics, the Apostles and other Biblical figures found throughout the scripture. Jesus isn't also considered a "moral authority". Or more properly, Jesus isn't followed because he is "good and moral", but because he is God himself. Muhammad isn't followed because he is "good or moral", but because he received a direct revelation from Allah.

Yeah, you could argue than the monotheistic God is the central moral authority, but god is ficticious, no? so then it would be those darn plethora of priests who would be the moral authority because whatever they say god is like goes, no?

 

Glad you agree?

 

Fact? Just when did it become a fact?
I know you haven't proved it, yet until it is proved most of what you say is baseless and pointless.

 

in this case pushit.... i'm sure i've been raped by upwards of 500 different mormons in my life time

 

The concepts of ownership/possession certainly didn't make the lives of Native Americans easier, now did they? In fact those very concepts tend to make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

 

Yup... reminds me of the Bushmen... had no concept of ownership. They had their own problems, but at least it wasn't about ownership.