Dawkins is approaching it evolutionarily but then taking a cynical approach for the benefit to serve his ultimate and transparent purpose to criticize anyone who believes in religion. He's also stated the belief is s disease of the mind if his intent wasn't obvious.
The argument doesn't have merit when human evolution has been dependent upon continuously pushing ourselves to new frontiers, not simply being obedient to the current restrictions. He's simply providing unsupported opinion and hoping nobody investigates it too deeply because they are deceived the eloquence of his language.
Those 2 things are not mutually exclusive. Pushing to new frontiers does not preclude obedience of the masses. You make it sound like it's all of the humanity is pushing. It's not. The "pushers" are non average people capable of out of the box thinking. Those are not the majority. They are the ones who create, the rest of us consume and follow. Some of the "pushers" are great at conducting ideas. Those are the leaders capable of bending collective will to their personal needs. Most people ARE obedient followers. Look around - it's painfully obvious.The idea has a lot of merit.
Except the evolved psychological mechanism isn't s belief in religion. Religion is simply the man made practice based on a belief in God. The belief in God, a superstitious concept that there is a force that controls our lives and universe, is the evolved psychological mechanism. Obedience can be used to justify any human congregation to man-made structures like religion. Work -- obedience. School - obedience. Society -- obedience. But that would be a cynical interpretation that ignores the social benefits that could be the greater reason for that grouping of people. God is the evolved psychological mechanism that had a benefit. Religion is a modern construct of people that is not an evolved mechanism in our brain.
i'd rather stick a pair of crochet needles in my eyes then read that. I was born catholic, it never took, and it never gets any more convincing in the telling of it to me over and over and over by people. im a spiritual person believe it or not, and spiritual people dont need religion, and we certainly aren't concerned with forcing our beliefs on others, we're just fine as we are. spirituality is a private experience, religion is a public nuisance. spirituality leads to self knowledge, religion leads to self indulgence at everyone elses expense. there is no compulsion with spirituality, but religion depends on compulsion for its survival. being spiritual is grounded in innocence, religion in guilt, alot of guilt at that too. spirituality embraces life, religion celebrates death. religion had had its chance and it has failed miserably as a whole, it simply has divided the entire world and made sure that wherever you're born on this planet that you are guaranteed to have enemies that hate you for what you've been taught to believe, even if tyou believe nothing, you can be sure someone hates you for it because of their stupid, narrow minded religion.
I'm going to sum up trying to have a conversation with Truth in one short sentence. But Brawndo got electrolytes.
You are missing the point of contention And you seems to be somewhat confused by terminology Religion is a belief (you're correct in underlined-italic). Religion is not a man-made structure (you're incorrect in bolded). Do you notice how you seem to be confused by terminology? I have nothing against religion. It's indeed just belief in something. In itself it's neither good nor bad. The argument is not about religion, but about the institution of church. This is in fact a man-made structure and I believe that it was founded and maintained by power-hungry men for the purpose of using obedient masses' need to follow. In other words, clergy are power-hungry manipulators who use idea of God as the means to achieve and maintain power. Understand that I'm NOT shitting on the religion itself, just on the people who profess to "know better" just so that can use the sheep. BTW, this is not true only of Christianity, or only of religion. Ideas of all sorts were used by few to intoxicate the many for hundreds of years.
At the risk of making this a semantic discussion, religion itself is not a belief. Religion is a cultural system of behaviors and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and societal organisation that relate humanity to what an anthropologist has called "an order of existence". The belief is in the supernatural creator. Religion is how that belief is organized into a system of rules that govern the worship of that supernatural being. The belief in the supernatural being is the evolved psychological mechanism; religion is simply the man-made system in how that belief is practiced.
I'll roll with whatever definition you make so long as we agree that there is difference between religion (e.g. "cultural system") and church (e.g. "management system").
Absolutely. Religion isn't a problem. Poorly practiced and preached religion, due to the management systems of the specific organization, is a problem and does a disservice to religion.
Is it a public nuisance when Church's raise money from their own members to feed, clothe and help support members of the community? That is part of your argument when you make such a declaration. Yes, that certainly sounds like a public nuisance to me.
no that's of course not a public nuisance, you know what im referring to, it's a public nuisance when Pastors and Churhces take money from the poorest of their followers under the guise of offering phony salvation in order to skip out on taxes, buy lear jets and 15 million dollar homes, etc. etc. etc. *-see Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, Pat Robertson, the list goes on and on. Religion is also a huge public nuisance when theocratic encroachment tries to creep its way onto free society, separation of church and state must remain a constant.
You'll get no argument from me that religion is mis-used by some people dishonestly and deliberately and by others because they simply lack critical thinking skills. But I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water.
As far as evolution goes, religion became a survival trait for humans because in the past, folks were banished, tortured or even executed for blasphemy. I do not think evolution is dependent on new frontiers. It happens whether people stay in one environment, or if they explore multiple environments. I totally disagree that actual belief in god itself has any evolutionary psychological benefit today or in the past. Religion as a survival trait is pretty much why the brainwashing affect of religion is so strong and persists to this day. Back then, people took their religion extremely seriously because nobody wants to see their child being executed or made an example of. They passed this behavior to their children, who passed it to their children. Obviously, today it's not as bad as it was in the middle ages but the effect of brainwashing and seriousness of teaching children to believe or else is still a huge part of it. Hey! This thread actually became a real conversation! I like it! Funny how the substance in JetBlue's few recent posts far outweighs the thousands and thousands of paragraphs posted by the OP.
Careful.. You guys are gonna wake up Truth4U2 and we'll get another sermon from the mount as punishment.
He'll spew his useless sermons regardless. At least now you can have an intelligent conversation in the thread ... for a little while
The concept of heaven is just so childish and stupid, I can poke holes in it all night. I'm obviously going to hell because it's clear to me that Christianity is a load of bullshit. My parents however, will be waiting for me in heaven, right? So how does that work for them? They spend a peaceful, joyful eternity, all the while knowing that I'm spending an eternity of conscious, unending torture? Really?? They're going to be just fine with that? My children will be cool with it? My wife? They'll all be joyous and blissful despite my horrible, horrible fate? Anybody with children think they can be happy for a single second, if they knew that their child is being tortured at that very moment? Anybody else see a problem with that? Come on Truth ... Take a shot a rationalizing this one for me.
not to mention the billions of other people around the world, who are worshipping the "wrong God" through no fault of their own but because of being geographically located where they were given the wrong culture and teaching. God "designed" this on purpose because he wants to torture them all for eternity. watch out people! eternity is not to be trifled with, submit , obey, do not question, and you get into the club, if you don't you fry, what a great situation.
