Was reading "The origins of the sex taboo" by Flake and got me thinking about my views on religion..

From a very early age (4-5 years old), I attended church regularly, pretty much every sunday until I was 16. However when I went to church, if I am honest I never went for my belief, it was more for the social side. There was an 'after chruch' group called 'chaos' that all the youths used to attend. There were sweets, games to play and trips to go on. I used to love going on the activity trips when I was 13-16, they were ace! Looking back some of the best times I had was on these trips. There was obviously an amount of church study time, which was compulsory, I think I speak for everyone who went that it was the most boring part of the trips, however not everything is all fun and games. At this point in my life I wasn't really that bothered about girls, I was a lads lad, liked my skateboarding and Down Hill mountain biking and I later found out all the girls in the youth club used to fancy the socks off me because of this. haha (went abit off topic there). I remember I used to ask my youth leader all these really complicated and hard question such as "If there is a god, why is there so much pain?", "Has religion been used as a scape goat in order to declare war on another man's country?" I never really got a satisfactory answer, just more questions!

When I was 16-17 my belief in religion got considerably less, I remember walking to school, not having done my homework and praying that the teacher was ill and I wouldnt get a detention haha! If it came true I would start to think maybe there was a god. But all in all my religious views started to go. But on the whole, I didn't believe in anything. I sorta liked the idea, but my logical brain couldn't make sense of this 'story'.

At the age of 21, Do I still believe in religion? I would like to believe that there is some sort of god, looking over us. However as I have seen things happen, I tend to believe that religion is more of a way to control the masses. As human beings, we have to be able to explain things, Maths is a prime example, it can be used to explain near enough anything and as human beings this is something that we need, we dont like to think, things just happen. When you think of the bigger picture you see that most religions live the more or less the same rules however have there own spin on things and through this they have a leader whether it be the pope or the chruch etc etc. When you think about it, the 10 commandments are a very good basis for one to live there life by! I dont think there are many that would dispute that fact! However I feel that some of the beliefs are out of date. I sometimes think, is there anyway that I would conclusively believe that there was this god? The only way, for me, would be an out of body experience that would give me that signpost in the right direction.

The facts remain that religion cannot be dis proven, as know one has died and come back to life. I believe that the only way to 'live on' so to speak if through the impact that you have on others whilst on the planet and the family that you have.

I know this can be somewhat of a sensitive subject! I dont mean to offend anyone, just express my views and self. I know Dolphin will have some views on the matter and many others will. Please keep this thread clean, I dont want any comments that may cause direct offence to anyone! But by all means express your views and beliefs!


Peace

NO.FX

I agree man.


Religion causes a lot of problems in modern society. Lets take christianity; it encourages prejudice against other religions, it promotes homophobia, it promotes social conservatism and it creates fear. I am aware that list focuses on different sects of christianity. As a history student I have seen so many examples of when the church has inhibited human progress, caused conflicts and generally made existance worse.

I do not believe there is a god or even could logically be one because it would defy fundamental laws of science. I would like there to be an afterlife but I know there isnt and I know I do not have a soul. Without going too deep into my reasoning I believe that humans are biological machines - we are controlled by hormones and though we practice a degree of free will we are still bound by our 'mammalian' and 'repitillian brains' that is to say our emotional and instinctual responces. Pickup clearly shows this, we fear approaching women even though its against all logic and its very difficult to remove this fear.

My main gripes with religion, apart from slowing human progress for millenia and causing so much suffering, is that belief is dogmatised and people are told what to believe. Controlling classes abuse religion and use it for their own means. It is also saddening to think people need religion to tell them what is right and what is wrong when often religion contradicts itself. Lets take homophobia, jesus tought us to love our neighbours yet god went and murdered a load of people for being sodomites - I mean he created them that way so why does he blame them - bit psychotic really. It causes so much ignorance, people use the bible to deduct their moral views as opposed to rationality.


[center]"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death"[/ - Albert EinsteinCENTER]

and finally;

I don't find this offensive at all, why should we not be able to question religion? I don't believe in censoring thought. Religion is a big part of peoples lives and influences there decisions about incredibly important matters so to not question it is dangerous.

Even if you had a out of body experience that doesn't mean there's a god your mind can play tricks on you. The mind works in strange ways, ways which have not been fully explained, the brain sees patterns in things that aren't there.

Isn't God more complex than the universe? So who created god?

Religion has evolved (ironically) with scientific knowledge, the world was once thought to be the centre of the universe but science has shown it's not. Even the Catholic church declared that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith.

Talking of faith, religions are not founded upon or defended by logic, reason, evidence, or science. Instead there is faith, a thing you wouldn’t use consciously for about any other issue.

Religions are supposed to be a source of morality, er no way that's true! Even gods have horrific histories, things no normal person would do but because it's god it becomes an example to follow. How can god be a source of morality when he/they/she/it doesn't follow these moral codes?

God is supernatural but he made us in his image? Supernatural is fundamentally different from us.

Omniscience and free will don't go together, therefore god cannot know what will happen or god has no free will and therefore you don't. Since evil is in the world and ask any religious person they say it's down to free will but this argument means that god is not omnipotent. The existence of evil is not compatible with the existence of an omnipotent god with the ability to desire to eliminate evil.

If God is perfect, God cannot be virtuous; if God is virtuous, God cannot be perfect. One or the other attribute must give way and if theists insist on ascribing both to God, then God is logically impossible.

If I live a sin free life but don't actually believe in god then I don't get into heaven how pathetic is that? That's egotistical fuck that!

There are a ton of religions all can't be true but all can be false.

The way I look at God is like this, I am 99.9% sure that gandalf or the flying spaghetti monster Flying Spaghetti Monster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia do not exist.
There is still going to be a tiny chance they exist but you can never prove they don't but I don't say i'm agnostic about them I say I don't believe in them i'm an Atheist.

For me, it's all too obviously made up. Not only does every single organised religion revolve around natural human primitive intuition, but it also smacks of the most human desire of all (especially that of insecure men) - power. Power over the masses (especially women) is something desired by all the most beta of males, and it is these beta males whom have set the ball rolling with the whole religion thing. Look at Islam - why do you suppose women are forced to wear the hijab - is god really that offended at seeing women's skin, or is it more likely the actions of insecure, beta men?

Look at what Tyler says in the Blueprint. For people to take something as the truth, it has to fit 3 criteria:

1) The person has to be completely sure of their own beliefs and believe they are right
2) That person is in line with their beliefs
3) Other people believe these beliefs

Taking this into account, it's easy to see why the major religions have spread - not only were these criteria satisfied, but if anyone objected, they were threatened with hell and death. Quite a choice, no? Have faith in the idiotic or burn in the fires of hell. During a time of immense superstition and (from a scientific point of view) stupidity, it's hardly a surprise that religion became so big. Once it became so big, of course, the 3 rules above became self-perpetuating. Why are Islam, Christianity and Judaism the biggest religions in the world? See above.

From a personal point of view, and as a scientist, the world makes far too much sense to have been created by a supernatural being. Everything is an extension of the initial conditions for cosmic creation. It only takes a small amount of reading into any of the sciences (biology, maths, chemistry, physics) to realise that the world could not exist in any other way - all the laws of nature are there as a result of nature and are therefore consistent throughout.

One just needs to consider the human body to discount a creator. I've been in the Human Dissecting Room at uni and let me tell you, seeing human bodies, both whole and in bits (lots of bits in some cases) really brings home the whole question of the soul. It makes you realise - the human body is an object, nothing more. I can't really explain the feeling of seeing preserved bodies and body parts, but the body is nought special, just a large system of perfect systems working in the only possible way, dictated by millions of years of evolution. When you die, you rot in the ground and that's it.

Perhaps you could argue religion has come about due to the need to explain the great unknown in the world. We didn't know what the sun was, why we are here, why the body works the way it does, why nature works as it does, and naturally invented a way of explaining it. Now, however, we know how things work. The work of science (ie observation of the natural world and the accumulation of knowledge through evidence) has established how many of the laws of nature work. Maths and physics have explained the universe on a microscopic and macroscopic level, whilst chemistry and biology have explained much of the natural level. I've studied systems of the human body in minute detail and, much to the contrary of what religion would have us believe, it is not magic. It is a chemical reaction, regulated by other, autonomous, chemical reactions. Think that the growth, development and birth of a baby is a miracle? Read an embryology textbook, you'll soon change your mind.

It goes back to the whole thing about Fight Club I think. The truth about life is that we are all animals, placed on Earth to survive and replicate. When we die, we rot in the ground. There is no heaven, no hell, just everlasting unconciousness. We live in a universe that is uncaring whether we live or die in a life of absolutely no significance.

Religion offers a sanctuary for those of too weak a mind to accept this bleak truth. "There's a God and when we die we go to Heaven and live happily ever after. The point of life is to do God's work". Please. It's like something you'd tell children (and, scarily, what a lot of religions do tell children). It's unthinkable to contemplate that life actually has no meaning and no point so we invent one. This itself is fine - if people want to bury their heads in the sand then fine. My gripe is the method by which religion forces itself on others: the indoctrination of children, Jehova's Witnesses and terrorist activity to name but 3.

Like is said in Fight Club - to lose all hope is freedom. Would that people of a religious disposition could wake up to this fact, there would be none of this superstitious nonsense. There is no hope of salvation, of heaven or hell, or of there being a "happy ever after". Accepting this and losing yourself in the oblivion of a pointless existence is the way to be free. Not Jesus, Mohammed or any of the others.

this is an awesome thread! Some really good points of view! I would love for someone who is somewhat religious to contribute there version of events and why they are religious!

Peace

NO.FX

Enter the Dolphin, gosh a lot of posts on religion this weekend - must be the Christmas Spirit. Xxx

I only want to make a few points in the tread as there is a lot here and it would take a long time to discuss and I want to stick to a few key points.

Firstly to our good NO.FX, I am "somewhat religious" but I wasnt always.

I started off as an atheist and began to go "off the rails". I could see I was going down a destructive path and was fortunate to travel and meet people from different cultures for myself and get past a lot of the crap we see on TV. This along with a lot of reflection on God, people and myself and finally reading the Quran led me to become a Muslim about 10 years ago. Im not the best Muslim but thats not the point. Thats my back ground for anyone reading this.

Now, back to this thread.

Very strange statement. Science has had a lot to say about the origins of "MAN", but it is absurd to say that according to the laws of science God doesn’t exist. According to the laws of science it is impossible for a bee to fly given wing span and mass etc. But the bee still flies. The laws of science are our way of understanding what we think we know about the world - until a new theory comes along....

I have personally met many scientists who do believe in God, more Physicists as opposed to Biologists for obvious (political) reasons.

I dislike this statement very much and sums up my problem with Atheism - its hopeless. Speak to anyone who's been in the shit, Im mean really in the shit, like held captive or tortured and got through it, they will say what got them through it is HOPE. It is a very powerful thing that allows man to access a deep part of his soul. These are the things that make us truly human and religion is an important means of accessing them.

My 2p.

Going to the scientific argument, I ask you this question. Do you consider god part of the natural world? If he is, and is thus able to intervene in the natural world, he must, by definition, obey the laws of nature (or "science") which he, by the admission of every faith going, does not.

So he must be supernatural, able to disobey the laws of science. Surely such a being could not operate on the natural plain. Without wanting to get too philosophical (that's the K Dawg's job!), how can a supernatural being intervene on natural events? In order to do so he would, at least in part, have to obey the laws of science.

As for the bee flying, we do in fact know how the bee is able to fly. Physics dictated that its mass was too great for its small wings to enable it to fly. Obviously it can fly. Did the scientific community give up and attribute it to some supernatural being? Of course not. They conducted investigations, made observations and, using evidence rather than superstition, came up with the solution (it's something to do with the bee's flight muscles - insect muscles are superior to ours in virtually every single way).

On to atheism. Yes, it is a hopeless point of view. But does that make it wrong? Should we turn to religion simply because we cannot contemplate the truth? Read my comment about religion being for those of too weak a mind to accept this bleak truth (present company accepted). This is exactly what I mean - just because atheism is unpleasant to behold does not mean that it is wrong.

And as for hope, we may have to agree to disagree here Dolphin. I, for one, went through a period of this realisation before I even saw Fight Club. It was brought on, predictably, by a girl. I was 15 and it was your typical teenage "first love" thing. I knew from the moment I met her. I spent 2 years madly in love with her but unable to get her, sustained by this false mistress of "hope". It hurt. For 2 years I lay awake thinking about her, until one day it came to me. I simply gave up hope of ever being with her. It took a while to accept, but as soon as I did, it was like a storm cloud had lifted. I was free, and it was wonderful. I've not looked back since.

Religion, for me, is too implausible, and too predictable a path of human reasoning and superstition over the ages. Belief in a supernatural power was a natural progression for a caveman to explain the things he could not understand, and to take responsibility for things he did wrong. Supposing Mr Alpha Caveman makes an error that puts the tribe in danger. Ordinarily he would be ostracised and his genes would die out. But Mr Caveman is cunning. He blames the supernatural being, and out of fear of the superbeing (and respect for the alpha caveman) the tribe goes along with it. Admittedly, this is a fairly spurious scenario, but it's easy to see how something like this could propogate into the flood of religious beliefs that came along in history.

We scoff now at the ancient Romans and Greeks for believing in those gods, but at the time, these beliefs were held in highest esteem. No-one dared to contradict them, and everyone was as sure of them as you are of your faith Dolphin. People are prepared to believe in whatever fits the 3 criteria earlier - look at scientology for chrissake. I have a certain level of respect for the bigger world religions, but this one is an absolute joke. It's proof that people will believe anything as long as it fits the 3 rules and offers them hope.

I'm not the sort of person who has a disdain for those of a religious disposition. The majority of religious sorts are perfectly nice people, reasonably well learned and open minded. But then there are others which really fucking piss me off. They are split into 2 camps:

1) People who are almost willfully ignorant of everything we have learned. You know the sorts (found mostly, it seems, in America) - trying to force creationism and Jesus Camp on children in an attempt to drive them away from the evil of science, evolution, altheism, homosexuality, heavy metal music, women...etc.

2) People who force their beliefs on others. I include Richard Dawkins in this. These are the Jehova's Witnesses, Muslim and Christian extremists and missionaries of the world. These people have (as far as I am concerned) absolutely no evidence whatsoever for their belief system, and yet they are coming at me, whose beliefs are based on facts and evidence and hundreds of years of scientific investigation, and judging me. Telling me that my beliefs are wrong. This on its own is irritating enough, but it is these people who get the hump when the tables are turned and their religion is criticised and metaphorically torn apart.
I say I mention Richard Dawkins in this. Here is a man, an atheist, who published the excellent "The God Delusion" and is a big fish in the Atheist Alliance. Fine. My gripe is that he is no better than the god-botherers he attacks. Remember the bus campaign?

"There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and get on with your lives"

The incessant rants on television? The interviewing of clergy with the specific intention of telling them why they are wrong? He's brilliant when it comes to defending atheism. I can't think of anyone better to do this for us. But when he attacks religion, he's no better than the religions who have been judging us all this time.

I'm just grateful, much as I dislike Britain for a number of reasons, that at least it is a place of tolerance for whatever beliefs you want to hold (as long as they're not too extreme).

Ok, rant over. Back to the threads about picking up girls for me!

My responce to god being scientifically impossible debate.
For religion to be correct it would mean our understanding of even the most basic science is incorrect and to be fair, I don't see god building computers whereas science and, it must be said, incresing atheism has lead to more technological progress in 100 years than there's been in 10,000.
Lets take heaven for example. In order to go to heaven or for their to be any form of an afterlife you would need a 'soul' yeah? or at least something that makes you conscious. I propose now the question; what is this soul composed of? It would have to be made of something, that is to say have mass and so this mass would literally have to physically move to heaven, which also must have mass. Also I question the extent to which people are in control of themselves; a person who is an alcoholic would think differently, have a different personality, if they were sober because of the different levels of hormones and the difference in neuro-chemical reactions - where's their soul?

Truths are not relative. What are relative are opinions about truth.
-- Nicolas Gomez Davila

Surely that's a massive point? You don't believe or at least follow the teachings of your religion yet you are defending them, why?

Actually a very valid statement and excellently argued by blanca and flake. Religion evolved before scientific process, it has had to evolve to accommadate science or put it's head in the sand and ignore it.

Religion is not based on logic it was thought up by ancient people.
We don't believe the ancient worlds view on medicine so why should we accept there theories on how the universe was created? It's absurd!

We have no way of validating ancient peoples claims to have seen angels or visions. Now when people have visions we can explain it but due to lack of knowledge in ancient times they just atributed it to A higher being.

The human brain evolved to see things where there was nothing, if you see something in the corner of your eye you may think it's a person but its a bush, yet you could have sworn it was someone. Your brain fills in the blanks, it had to because the one time it doesn't it might be a tiger and bam your dead.

I don't see it as hopelessness, it's freedom from oppressive thoughts.
You can have hope without religion, it's bullshit that religion provides us with morality if so i'd be running around stealing and killing people.

My Grandad was in the navy near the end of WW2 and saw some horrible things that he won't even tell my dad about, he's mentioned things in passing when his guard's down so i've had a glimpse.
Was it hope that got him through? Yes.
Was it religion? No, he's a atheist now.