Since the all seeing eye has now taken it upon himself to vanquish all humour from the Religion and Philosophy forum, I propose a serious discussion of the above topic - "Is religion funny?"
To state my position up front, I find religion funny. I find the basic premises - God or gods - funny, I find the institutions funny, I find the beliefs funny, I find the sefl-righteousness of many believers funny and the self-importance even more so, I particularly find the rituals funny and any religion that involves special clothing and/or hairstyles really cracks me up.
The whole thing is just so utterly ridiculous.
For instance, we are asked to seriously consider the propostion that a giant invisible fairy runs the entire universe and that he chooses to communicate with the only other intelligent beings in the cosmos (his own children mind you) by way of a 6,000 year-old book that no two people even interpret the same way.
We're asked to debate rationally with people who seriously believe that the only way an all-powerful being could forgive the sins of his own creations was by having a part of himself become human, get nailed to a stick, die and be resurrected in three days and leave a legacy of 2,000 of infighting and schism amongst his supposed flock.
There are people who believe in gods with elephant heads, people who believe in gods that are three-in-one like a celestial detergent, people who believe the earth is god, the moon is god and the sun is god and people who believe they are god.
There are nine billion people in the world (I think) and nine billion flavours of religion, each one different from the next.
Even people of nominally the same religion can't seem to agree on exactly what it is they agree on.
Even people with far bigger and better things to worry about waste their time worrying about their "souls".
We are a race of being that can perform miracles of technology and science and yet still argue with and kill each other over childish superstitions.
It is funny but only because if you didn't laugh you'd have to cry.
Graham
To state my position up front, I find religion funny. I find the basic premises - God or gods - funny, I find the institutions funny, I find the beliefs funny, I find the sefl-righteousness of many believers funny and the self-importance even more so, I particularly find the rituals funny and any religion that involves special clothing and/or hairstyles really cracks me up.
The whole thing is just so utterly ridiculous.
For instance, we are asked to seriously consider the propostion that a giant invisible fairy runs the entire universe and that he chooses to communicate with the only other intelligent beings in the cosmos (his own children mind you) by way of a 6,000 year-old book that no two people even interpret the same way.
We're asked to debate rationally with people who seriously believe that the only way an all-powerful being could forgive the sins of his own creations was by having a part of himself become human, get nailed to a stick, die and be resurrected in three days and leave a legacy of 2,000 of infighting and schism amongst his supposed flock.
There are people who believe in gods with elephant heads, people who believe in gods that are three-in-one like a celestial detergent, people who believe the earth is god, the moon is god and the sun is god and people who believe they are god.
There are nine billion people in the world (I think) and nine billion flavours of religion, each one different from the next.
Even people of nominally the same religion can't seem to agree on exactly what it is they agree on.
Even people with far bigger and better things to worry about waste their time worrying about their "souls".
We are a race of being that can perform miracles of technology and science and yet still argue with and kill each other over childish superstitions.
It is funny but only because if you didn't laugh you'd have to cry.
Graham
