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Atheists who don't hate religion

Delvo said:
No, you don't. History makes it quite clear which one is religion's true nature and which one is a disguise: when it has the power, it does what it really wants, and when it doesn't, it pretends to play along with whatever does have the power, to wait until it can get back in power and back to doing what it really wants again.
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That is not unique to religion. In fact, I'd say that it's pretty much universal. Politicans to it too. So do children in a schoolyard. So do chimpanzees.
 
JaysonR said:
It is ridiculous to assume religion will ever be absent, given our current neurology.
We literally have to change human neurological profile to remove religion from happening.

Honestly, the only way I know of to forcibly stop the human brain from having the potential to appreciate and create religion (as well as, yes, be capable of being manipulated by religion, and self-help gurus, and politicians, and etc...) is to perform a prefrontal lobotomy and separate the amygdala from the temporal lobe.
Honestly; that doesn't really make very functioning humans which are better than not doing that, so I'm a bit hesitant on prescribing mass lobotomies.

It is best to stick to legal contests and legislation; to join those movements which you support against motions or movements in which you oppose in a endless succession of social law.
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Yes, much like certain viruses that are incurable and people are deliberately infected with it from childhood.

Yes the legal system is probably our only hope for now.... but even that is being chipped at incessantly and insidiously.... I wonder how long it will stay uninfected?

Education is of major importance. It is like an immunization against viruses. Just like we inoculate children against many viruses we ought to vaccinate them against religions. Just like we use a weakened organism to build an immunity we should use an educational program that exposes religious lies and preposterousness.

I personally think that rather than not teaching religions, we should in fact teach them in high schools with emphasis on pointing out all the ridiculous stuff in them. We should have a curriculum that shows how unscientific religions are and how nasty they have been throughout history and how they came about.

For instance I doubt any children would maintain respect through adulthood for the Anglican Church if they were informed how it was formed by a horny despotic King just so that he can divorce the wives he no longer wanted so as to marry new ones and to give him the right to behead anyone he did not like.

I doubt many children would maintain respect through adulthood for a religion that has all the sordid and bloody stories of racism and genocide and incest and pimping and adultery and despotism that are in the bible.

I think that not mentioning anything about religions until well after they have already been thoroughly infected is very much like not vaccinating them against say polio.

When a child grows up a little s/he realizes the Santa lie. I think at this age they should also, progressively through the education system, be informed about the religious lies.

So yes we should teach the controversy by pointing out that the iPads and Playstations they enjoy so much would have never been possible had we been still under control of the religious lies.

I think that a curriculum should be designed and be taught as a subject starting at a certain age. The syllabus should concentrate on pointing out all the ridiculous and the unscientific and the immoral in all religions as well as the history of their influence and their atrocities and how they were created.

I think children at a certain age are capable of understanding such stuff and we owe it to them to vaccinate them so as to enable them to make better informed decisions in their adult lives.

But I could be wrong….
 
arthwollipot said:
That is not unique to religion. In fact, I'd say that it's pretty much universal. Politicans to it too. So do children in a schoolyard. So do chimpanzees.
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D.A.: Ladies and gentlemen of the Parole Board this man murdered thousands of people you should not fall for the ruse that he is now a reformed man. The moment you let him out he will murder again. Think of all his past victims don't they deserve justice? What about his future victims, can you live with the possibility that he most likely will kill according to his established character which he wrote down in his own diary?

Defense: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Parole Board, Ted Bundy was a murderer too and so was Pol Pot and he murdered a lot more than my client.
 
JaysonR said:
It is ridiculous to assume religion will ever be absent, given our current neurology.
We literally have to change human neurological profile to remove religion from happening.

Honestly, the only way I know of to forcibly stop the human brain from having the potential to appreciate and create religion (as well as, yes, be capable of being manipulated by religion, and self-help gurus, and politicians, and etc...) is to perform a prefrontal lobotomy and separate the amygdala from the temporal lobe.
Honestly; that doesn't really make very functioning humans which are better than not doing that, so I'm a bit hesitant on prescribing mass lobotomies.

It is best to stick to legal contests and legislation; to join those movements which you support against motions or movements in which you oppose in a endless succession of social law.
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Don’t be so tremendous, please. There is less impacting methods to change the human behaviour. Humanity has changed a lot of cultural behaviours without have to tearing to pieces the brain. Cannibalism, for example. You disregard the cultural influences on the brain that are empirically demonstrated. Many people in Western cultures (and others) are atheist or agnostic without any lobotomy.
 
Leumas said:
D.A.: Ladies and gentlemen of the Parole Board this man murdered thousands of people you should not fall for the ruse that he is now a reformed man. The moment you let him out he will murder again. Think of all his past victims don't they deserve justice? What about his future victims, can you live with the possibility that he most likely will kill according to his established character which he wrote down in his own diary?

Defense: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Parole Board, Ted Bundy was a murderer too and so was Pol Pot and he murdered a lot more than my client.
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I'm not sure who you intended to respond to here, but it certainly doesn't appear to have been me.
 
Jerrymander said:
In the cases of 1 and 6: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_determinism
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Maybe. But religion has always been at the forefront of efforts to reinforce those notions.

The fact is, while those reasons may come from somewhere (like all ideas in fiction, someone had to come up with them), there always seemed to be a lack of GOOD, palatable reasons to give for enforcing and reinforcing them, without falling back on "because God said so." Just like for most inequality ideas, really.

And I'm not just talking about modern times. You don't see philosophers able to come up with palatable reasons for why one should reverse the somewhat increasing rights and roles of women in the Roman Empire, but Christians can just dig up a letter from a prophet (Paul) that says women should shut the hell up and be second class. Whether that part is genuine or forged is secondary. It did its part just fine.

Or when in the renaissance some people think women should stop getting abortions (yeah, apparently it's not that new a thing), they don't write some treatises on why it's biologically wrong to abort a pregnancy. They just go for 'those who do it are witches, in the employ of Satan.'

But one could say the usual: 'Ah, that doesn't count! That was some bad people back then, and they weren't even True Scotsmen... err... True Christians!"

Well, that continues to this day. If one were to start ranting about how women are biologically predetermined to be baby mills, or argue that it's just because of biology that one doesn't give any women a promotion, everyone would call that person a bigot. But if one does it in the name of God and of what Paul said, they might call one a Cardinal.

Or imagine anyone arguing on secular and biology grounds why a woman doesn't have control over her own body once pawned off in marriage. One would be called a moron, because there is no known neural path for that absurdity. But go for "because God said so", and one might be called a Reverend.
 
JaysonR said:
The struggle, as always, belongs in law - how does the society wish to regulate this enterprise and relatedsocial behaviors?
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Problem. Religion has too much influence over the law to be effectively regulated by it in many, many countries. And I'm not just talking theocracies.
 
JaysonR said:
It is ridiculous to assume religion will ever be absent, given our current neurology.
We literally have to change human neurological profile to remove religion from happening.

Honestly, the only way I know of to forcibly stop the human brain from having the potential to appreciate and create religion (as well as, yes, be capable of being manipulated by religion, and self-help gurus, and politicians, and etc...) is to perform a prefrontal lobotomy and separate the amygdala from the temporal lobe.
Honestly; that doesn't really make very functioning humans which are better than not doing that, so I'm a bit hesitant on prescribing mass lobotomies.

It is best to stick to legal contests and legislation; to join those movements which you support against motions or movements in which you oppose in a endless succession of social law.
Click to expand...

Yes, well, there are a lot of things that we'll always have around. Racism for example. Even if we'll one day have a ST-like federation and starfleet, and have green Orions, and blue Andorians, and orange Ferengi, running around, I bet some people will still feel a need to spell "black" with an N.

But... so what? I don't see any relevance for the simple question of whether it's justified to "hate" religion or not.
 
JaysonR said:
It is ridiculous to assume religion will ever be absent, given our current neurology.
We literally have to change human neurological profile to remove religion from happening.

Honestly, the only way I know of to forcibly stop the human brain from having the potential to appreciate and create religion (as well as, yes, be capable of being manipulated by religion, and self-help gurus, and politicians, and etc...) is to perform a prefrontal lobotomy and separate the amygdala from the temporal lobe.
Honestly; that doesn't really make very functioning humans which are better than not doing that, so I'm a bit hesitant on prescribing mass lobotomies.

It is best to stick to legal contests and legislation; to join those movements which you support against motions or movements in which you oppose in a endless succession of social law.
Click to expand...
I was never religious, raised in a household that wasn't church-going.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
Problem. Religion has too much influence over the law to be effectively regulated by it in many, many countries. And I'm not just talking theocracies.
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So does politics and greed. Great, go fight the good fight.
Even try to wipe out religion if you like.
But nothing will change due to our shear population and neurology.

Don't stop trying, though; that is as equally definitive of our kin.
 
Yeah the whole "Oh you'll never get rid of X" is pretty much the definition of defeatist.
 
Again, I'm not saying to stop trying to fix the world, go for it.
But our neurology is rather hard wired to heavily interact between the amygdala and temporal lobe.
As long as this is the case we will imbue analysis.
As long as we do that, we will create emotional and irrational attachments to relationships we make up to have with reality.
As long as that can happen, we will have the potential for religion.

So we cannot remove religion, but do go for it as in the process of trying, folks will keep religion in check.
 
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JaysonR said:
Again, I'm not saying to stop trying to fix the world, go for it.
But our neurology is rather hard wired to heavily interact between the amygdala and temporal lobe.
As long as this is the case we will imbue analysis.
As long as we do that, we will create emotional and irrational attachments to relationships we make up to have with reality.
As long as that can happen, we will have the potential for religion.

So we cannot remove religion, but do go for it as in the process of trying, folks will keep religion in check.
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Bah, religion is injected, not endemic.
 
Gawdzilla said:
Bah, religion is injected, not endemic.
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I have to agree. I was raised without faith and I cannot imagine how I'd have to deform my brain to (truly) believe religious mumbo jumbo.

Well, if there was social pressure on all sides, I might adopt the appearance of belief to get by, but that's no more than a sham.
 
Donn said:
I have to agree. I was raised without faith and I cannot imagine how I'd have to deform my brain to (truly) believe religious mumbo jumbo.

Well, if there was social pressure on all sides, I might adopt the appearance of belief to get by, but that's no more than a sham.
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No more so than many people. Most of the people I've met in my life are religious when necessary, and the rest of the time they're just people.
 
Well, that continues to this day. If one were to start ranting about how women are biologically predetermined to be baby mills, or argue that it's just because of biology that one doesn't give any women a promotion, everyone would call that person a bigot. But if one does it in the name of God and of what Paul said, they might call one a Cardinal.
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I've seen the opposite. If a non-religious person tries to explain inequalities between the sexes based on "men and women are different its all natural", it's accepted by the internets. But when a religious person says the same thing, people jump on it "OMG see how sexist the religion is!"
 
People have the potential to come up with a lot of things. People also have the potential to realize when an idea is silly, and let go.

About half of all children have or had an imaginary friend. (Which makes me feel shafted by the universe. I didn't get one;)) But you don't see many adults talking about what their imaginary friend wants them to do, or worse yet, wants YOU to do. Nor insisting they address their imaginary friend before every meal.

That's just as much neurology in action. In fact, it's some of the same circuits involved in religion. Yet people are perfectly able to let go of that.
 
Jerrymander said:
I've seen the opposite. If a non-religious person tries to explain inequalities between the sexes based on "men and women are different its all natural", it's accepted by the internets. But when a religious person says the same thing, people jump on it "OMG see how sexist the religion is!"
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Depends on which boards you read, I suppose. There are a few where sexism runs rampant, and even a few sites outright dedicated to hating women. I don't see it much accepted anywhere else.
 
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