They did a poll in Europe. Choose one: Do you believe in...

a. God
b. a spirit or life force
c. neither

In Estonia, Sweden and the Czech republic more than twice as many people answered that they believed in "a spirit or life force" as answered that they believed in God.

I'm an atheist, but I am "sympathetic" to religion. I live and work in academia, where relgiion gets dumped on a lot - a whole lot.

But, for all the bad religion has supposedly brought on the world that people like to talk about, it is also a force for tremendous good. People donate so much money to charities through their religious organizations, and because of religious beliefs also donate time, effort. And besides, there are a lot of people out there who behave a certain way - a good way - because they believe their religion obligates them to do so.

I don't like people trying to substitute religion for science, etc., and that would upset me greatly if I lived in a community where that was going on, but there is more good than bad to religion, on the whole, IMO.

So some charitable donations offset thousands of years of murder, got it.


/crashburned

Woody wrote:So some charitable donations offset thousands of years of murder, got it.


/crashburned

I think you are being facetious, but I would just add this: let's not pretend that if religion hadn't motivated something like the Crusades, that something else (like simple land grabs) wouldn't have. Wars were the way of the world for thousands of years, curbed only now - and only to a limited degree - by the sheer scope of the damage that can now be caused by a war. If hadn't been over religion, they would have found something else to fight over - land, money, succession to the throne, whatever.

If Jeffrey Dahmer didn't have a hankering for human flesh, he would have found something else to eat.

/Crashburn'd

the biggest reason i hate seeing this arguments is it seems both sides have prepared answers that have been given 100 times

CrashburnAlley wrote:If Jeffrey Dahmer didn't have a hankering for human flesh, he would have found something else to eat.

/Crashburn'd

Oh Crash, it's also possible that religion, like anything else, develops over time. "Christians" 800 years ago were a brutal group, no doubt. But most Christian religions have gotten a lot "better" over the years, certainly non-violent.

There are less violent conflicts (wars or just the systematic torturing and executing of heathens) over religion now than probably at any point in human history.

I mean, Germany and Japan were pretty fuck-ing ruthless back in the first half of the 20th century, right? So should they be disbanded now?

it's like that Asari said in Mass Effect 2

The Dude wrote:the biggest reason i hate seeing this arguments is it seems both sides have prepared answers that have been given 100 times

Dang, I thought I was relatively unique: an atheist with nice things to say about religion.

Here's the thing: if there was a God, he wouldn't have let me forget to save 45 minutes worth of work this morning and then made Windows auto-restart my computer because it "installed a critical update" when i walked away from my desk for 10 minutes this morning.

Woody wrote:Here's the thing: if there was a God, he wouldn't have let me forget to save 45 minutes worth of work this morning and then made Windows auto-restart my computer because it "installed a critical update" when i walked away from my desk for 10 minutes this morning.

Ah, but maybe he is a vengeful God. So the question is: what did you do to piss him off?

Woody wrote:Here's the thing: if there was a God, he wouldn't have let me forget to save 45 minutes worth of work this morning and then made Windows auto-restart my computer because it "installed a critical update" when i walked away from my desk for 10 minutes this morning.

Oh sure, blame God instead of the real culprit. BILL GATES IS THE ANTI-CHRIST!!!

THE REASON I DONT GIVE TO CHARITIES IS CAUSE I DONT BELIEVE IN RELIGION

I've spent a lot of time thinking and writing about freedom of religion. Increasingly, I'm taking more seriously its downside.

One downside is that where people are largely free to choose their own church, they'll go to a church that entertains them, rather than a church that makes them better people.

Here's an NYT op-ed sort of detailing some of this.

I do find this notion of religion common among my presumably fundamentalist students. Their religious lives are largely about self-esteem--feeling good about themselves, seeing themselves as good Christian people. The evangelical notion of salvation, where you don't earn salvation by doing works but receive it as a gift from God clearly plays into this. And it does seem to encourage a passivity--just let God do it seems to be a prevalent attitude. I sometimes want to shake them and say how dare you ask God to do something you could do for yourself. There's no struggle, spiritual or otherwise.

Obviously, I'm not arguing here for an established church. But I'm taking more seriously a claim made by some really conservative Catholics concerning the limitations of religious pluralism. Or maybe this is why Roger Williams had so many problems with his congregations.

i think i've discovered i'm a "secular humanist".

TenuredVulture wrote:I've spent a lot of time thinking and writing about freedom of religion. Increasingly, I'm taking more seriously its downside.

One downside is that where people are largely free to choose their own church, they'll go to a church that entertains them, rather than a church that makes them better people.

I do find this notion of religion common among my presumably fundamentalist students. Their religious lives are largely about self-esteem--feeling good about themselves, seeing themselves as good Christian people. The evangelical notion of salvation, where you don't earn salvation by doing works but receive it as a gift from God clearly plays into this. And it does seem to encourage a passivity--just let God do it seems to be a prevalent attitude. I sometimes want to shake them and say how dare you ask God to do something you could do for yourself. There's no struggle, spiritual or otherwise.

Music to my ears, Paul. Absolutely right.

Salvation by grace and not through works is biblical. Sitting on your ass is not.

CalvinBall wrote:Salvation by grace and not through works is biblical. Sitting on your ass is not.

Sort of. But there's a lot of stuff in scripture about being good by doing good. My point isn't theological anyway. My point is that the emphasis in too many churches, especially fundamentalist and evangelical churches is on the sinfulness of others--homosexuals, liberals, feminists, illegal immigrants and so forth.

Look at the marriage debate--according to the Bible, if you divorce and re-marry (assuming you have sex with your second spouse) you're an adulterer. But that's far less emphasized than homosexuality.

I gotcha. Fundamentalist churches are awful, well because their fundamentals aren't Jesus. The Amish are fundamentalist and I don't know many people who hate them but I know a lot of people who can't stand "fundamentalist" Christians, me included. The problem is these people are whacked out. There really is no defense for their version of Christianity. For whatever reason they have taken the love aspect out of it and turned it in to a thing to make them feel holier than others.