Many cases against religion and superstition

I'll open with a few quotes, these by the great Richard Dawkins:

No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.

...it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world

Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?

It's been suggested that if the supernaturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science.

...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.

Add yours!

Great author.

God will get you for that!

I know who I'm reading next...

The more you think, the less religion makes sense. The more humanity matures over the course of history, the less influence religion has. You don't have to make a case against religion, the problem solves itself.

I hope the stories will always be around though, as stories. As well as the architecture and art.


On the subject of the supernatural in general, you should read this guy's website. If you haven't already.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world

Amen to that.
If there's one thing I've noticed it's that a lot of you guys are computer programmers and you don't believe in religion. I figure it's because you guys deal with logic and structure so much that you can identify bad logic very easily. The problem is that humans have an uncanny ability to shatter logic. I think that's because people can go and believe whatever they want to and it doesn't cause any problems since they're never confronted with the fact that it doesn't add up. When you're trying to compile a program on the other hand . . .

Most religious people (particularly Catholics and Christians) are pretty much brainwashed as a child with a constant onslaught of religious material provided by their parents and church. I'm an atheist because of the insufficient proof that an all-powerful God exists. And anyway, if he really does exist, why would he be so intolerant of other religious, and require us to worship and pray to him daily. I mean come on, he's (apparently) omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent. Which brings me to my next point. Again, if he's so omnibenevolent, and love us so much, why does he allow things like disease happen. And if he loves us so much, why would he allow us to burn in hell for eternity? Also, if he's omnipotent and omniscient, that means our lives are technically planned out, because he already knows everything that's going to happen, which means there's no free will, which means there's no good or evil, which means there's no heaven or hell. Besides, it's funny to see people get flustered when they ask "prove that God doesn't exist", and I say "how can I disprove something that doesn't exist". :D

If people ask you to prove that God didn't create us all, then you, in return, should ask them to prove that the Tooth Fairy didn't create us all.

Should shut them up for a while.

And here's something funny: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

Nikanoru said:

If people ask you to prove that God didn't create us all, then you, in return, should ask them to prove that the Tooth Fairy didn't create us all.

Should shut them up for a while.

I've tried it, and while it does shut them up for a while, what good is that? They just go right back to their routine within hours.

A few hours should be enough time to make your escape. :p

Fredrik said:

And here's something funny: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

I saw that. Sheer genius.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

Wait, am I reading this wrong. To me it looks like it's saying that religion teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. I think a major function of religion is to pacify people's insecurities about the unknown by making up absurd explanations that can't be debunked. The thing I love about agnosticism is that I can be comfortable knowing that we really know nothing (and can't know anything) about the universe.

"Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation." - Bertand Russell (mathematician, philosopher, agnostic)

I don't think its fair to insult religion. There's a reason humans have religion, and have had religion for a VERY long time (evidence shows cavemen even had some burial rituals and stuff). Humans are a species different than many on the earth. We have very strong reasoning skills, and understand whats around us. However with this, comes the fact that when faced with something we dont understand, we dont enjoy it. We are used to understanding, but there are a lot of things in this Universe that we dont, and probably never will understand. Our minds simply aren't powerful enough, and yet this stuff still exists. Since we can reason and think, it bothers us when there is something that we can't answer. That is where religion comes in. It tells us that we don't know everything, but there is a higher being that does. It calms us to know this, that we are not alone and that while we may not understand something, it is understood. We have purpose, reason, and love. The fact is we cant understand some things. Tell me someone who can picture the Universe before its existance, or nothing, literally nothing. Not a black void not a white void, those are something based on light and color, but nothing. You cant and no one can. Same with time, can we see time? No, we have many theories but it is hard to picture and our theories only go so far. We simply can't understand that kind of stuff, and it does bother you. Thats probably why the majority of you tried to picture "nothing" for at least 30 seconds a few sentences ago ;) It bothers you that you cant understand it. And that is why religion is not a bad thing. Also, I personally believe in God. I honestly don't think there is any other explanation, for some things. I think what you guys are doing is mixing up religion with certain religions that exist. And the problems with those isnt religion, its what people have made of it.

Why bother with cases against religion, when nothing beats religion itself, which gnaws at its own entrails merely by practice?

The delusions of superstition reside in the context of the subject in a situation of vulnerable futility and cannot be replaced by arguments from a reasoned critique.

Reason, which is the fragile child of transient observation and is encased in the same cask that religion shrouds in alternate hope.

Religion, which is by nature materially circumstantial, just like birth, reason, poverty, insanity, hunger, injustice, disease, and death.

The first rule of medicine is that "Prevention is better than cure." Prevention, which is speculative and uncertain under circumstantial existence.

It is clear we are passing mortal transient beings and that we are aware that on uttering "God" we always sin as we grasp for an eternity which we can merely contrast with time to pospone it till the day we die, which strides toward us every instant without a pause.

All is particularly uncertain and thus always belief an inevitable lie, and only timely existence is true, which is never the same.

It's not a question of not knowing, it's a question of making shit up, passing it off as total truth and then putting it to practice. It's at its worst when it's hurting people. Witch hunts anyone? Or take a look at circumcision for a present day example.

It's like having a mathematical formula where X is unknown. I'm going to tell you that X is a clown. Just because it feels right.

Nothing you can do to disprove it, if you can't solve the formula. That's what the mysteries of the universe are, an unsolved equation. But the bit about the clown was sorta silly.

See where I'm going?

Why can't we argue both sides? You can argue that religion is false with out going against it, look at Jung.

I'm an atheist because of the insufficient proof that an all-powerful God exists.

But by this logic I could also say that I believe because there is insufficient proof against the existence of (a) God(s).

And anyway, if he really does exist, why would he be so intolerant of other religious, and require us to worship and pray to him daily.

The most obvious answer would probably be; He's testing our faith. IIRC, the sabbath was made for rest and worship the other days are for work. But there are also theories that God is a parasite living off belief or souls... dunno how that works though.

I mean come on, he's (apparently) omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent.

And Holy! Which probably means that his opinions are also 100% right or he is invincible.

Again, if he's so omnibenevolent, and love us so much, why does he allow things like disease happen.

Ah the problem of evil. Well the answer is that he is either all-loving and weak, so he can't rid us of it. Or he is spiteful and all-powerful, and choses to keep evil. Do not forget that he is a vengeful/jealous God and even admits it in the Bible. Honest and open chap, God. I'd say he is the spiteful all-mighty, a kid with a world encompassing magnifying glass.

our lives are technically planned out, because he already knows everything that's going to happen, which means there's no free will,

First of all lets get rid of the silly Judaic model since he is either 'nice pete' or a 'mean bastard.' Now is God, timeless or eternal. If he is eternal he is not all knowing and his Old Testiment work was splendid guessing. If he is timeless then he knows all, we have freewill but he can see the past and future as if watching a river from source to mouth from a mountain top.

Of course whether God exists or not we do not have total freewill anyway.

Sorry for unloading on you but I owe it to my RE teacher, and the hopelessness she felt when I stumbled into the Exam hall with a hangover muttering about walls closing in.... (which got me my C).

Anyway more from the Dawkmiester;

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

I can't be bothered with Freud but some of his stuff seems valid. I enjoy it when Christians argue that Freud studied sick people's heads so his stuff doesn't apply to them.

Oh and as far as circucision is concerned it is for cleanliness, not religion.

Nikanoru said:
It's not a question of not knowing, it's a question of making shit up, passing it off as total truth and then putting it to practice.

What is this, a moral critique of religion?

Right there you're already mistaken; religion is always finely interwoven in the fabric of our actions; all the patches and formulas are part of the equation and inherently in the context. Your concept of religion and its function already suffers from what you say this is not about (not knowing.) Knowing is all about not knowing, and the more you avoid the inevitability of unknowing, the more deluded you are, believing things. Thus reducing things that form part of existence into certain categories or formulations, like saying religion is "making shit up." For that matter science is making shit up too, and you can also use it to cause harm, even spontaneously brutal destruction. We made up the wheel, we made up the Internet.

When you accuse religion of being bullshit or being "made up" your interaction with religion becomes opaque, and you can't do anything in relation to it.

Contrarily, religion works its ways through all sorts of relations that are right there before us; it is in its own way as coherent as anything else. But if we treat it superficially explaining it and defining it, we fail to see its workings, which are in the pratice itself, in every way it is practiced, as crazy as those may seem at first glance.

Of course, religion is dynamic and forms part of a sea of relations, so like any actions of men, cannot be simply categorized but instead must be related to.

Religion is concretely there, and you are no better than a dogmatic looney if you fall into the very nature of the game you try to neutralize.

It's like they say; argue with fools and you become one.

insertwackynamehere said:

I don't think its fair to insult religion.

It does the hard work on its own.

There's a reason humans have religion, and have had religion for a VERY long time (evidence shows cavemen even had some burial rituals and stuff).

We have religion because in prehistoric time deities offered a good explanation for events in nature. Eventually far better explanations were found, but the religious explanations have stuck because religious traditions discourage critical thinking.

Humans are a species different than many on the earth. We have very strong reasoning skills, and understand whats around us. However with this, comes the fact that when faced with something we dont understand, we dont enjoy it.

The difference between you and a scientist is that when the scientist stumbles upon something he can't understand, he finds it fascinating and tries to figure it out.

We are used to understanding, but there are a lot of things in this Universe that we dont, and probably never will understand. Our minds simply aren't powerful enough, and yet this stuff still exists. Since we can reason and think, it bothers us when there is something that we can't answer. That is where religion comes in.

And so it is better to come up an arbitrary answer (to take Nikanoru's example, a clown)?

(It may be that religion provides surrogate answers to questions that will never be possible to answer objectively. But it also comes with the risk of providing erroneous answers to problems that can be solved objectively, for example which way the planets orbit and how life developed. Most people use clearly erroneous religious explanations even for problems far more simplistic than these.)

It tells us that we don't know everything, but there is a higher being that does. It calms us to know this, that we are not alone and that while we may not understand something, it is understood.

How is it comforting that something understands everything? Would it calm us equally to say that that coffee mug over there on the table knows everything?

Indeed, "understanding" is just an aspect of how the human brain models the external world. The concept of a higher being that must "understand" (alternatively "have designed", "have had a purpose for" -- all the same) the universe is as arbitrary and anthropocentric as that of the same higher being having the appearance of an old bearded man.

We have purpose, reason, and love.

These are the only good arguments in favor of religion. Yet, all of them can be obtained without it. And that way you avoid the bad side effects.

Tell me someone who can picture the Universe before its existance, or nothing, literally nothing. Not a black void not a white void, those are something based on light and color, but nothing. You cant and no one can.

Speaking of something happening "before" the universe is entirely pointless because ordering of time coordinates is only defined within a spacetime. This apparent paradox results from misuse of language.

Now, it may well be impossible to imagine nothingness, but how does this make God exist? Does trying to imagine a square circle make God exist, or force us to believe in God so as to evade the agony resulting from our failure?

Same with time, can we see time? No, we have many theories but it is hard to picture and our theories only go so far. We simply can't understand that kind of stuff, and it does bother you.

Certainly we can understand what time is. Our language may be unfit for describing it, but I would say that all adult humans have a solid, intuitive understanding of time. The human intellect does more than picture things visually. And the fact that something is hard to picture doesn't make it impossible.

In fact, general relativity offers an explanation of time that can be expressed with human language, although we know that this description is incomplete. But I see no fundamental reason why we couldn't come up with a more complete description, disregarding religious thinking that makes us assume problems to be unsurmountable and ignore them.

Thats probably why the majority of you tried to picture "nothing" for at least 30 seconds a few sentences ago ;) It bothers you that you cant understand it.

No it doesn't.

And that is why religion is not a bad thing. Also, I personally believe in God. I honestly don't think there is any other explanation, for some things.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster can be used to explain everything. Does that make it a good thing?

Interesting thread with many good points.

I know that next time I look at this thread it'll be 3 pages long because Job is going to show up and spout his stuff all over the place ;)

Fredrik said:
We have religion because in prehistoric time deities offered a good explanation for events in nature. Eventually far better explanations were found, but the religious explanations have stuck because religious traditions discourage critical thinking.

Sort of... note that the intellectual means of the scientist and the means of some bloke who doesn't know the moon from the stars are very far appart and not just because some myths and dogmas are getting in the way; the poor man's mind picks up what it cans as he develops, and what he can get has a lot to do with the physico-political conditions he's working under. The mental system of this "uneducated" man goes along with his conditions (that I'm quite arbitrarily (and dangerously) dividing into mental and economic to ease our discussion here.) The "religion" of that man may seem crazy these days, but it has all to do with the way he relates. And it might seem strange cosmologically or philosophically, but not that odd in relation to the person's development and immediate relations (I'm sure you can easily see parental and humanoid characteristics in behavior that's relatively distanced from the more scientifically enlightened sort.)

And so it is better to come up an arbitrary answer (to take Nikanoru's example, a clown)?

That's what can hardly be reduced to a mere conscious choice, and has a lot to do with the day to day environment of the individual. Consciousness is fully attuned to ones non-fixed context and cannot be severed from it.

(It may be that religion provides surrogate answers to questions that will never be possible to answer objectively. But it also comes with the risk of providing erroneous answers to problems that can be solved objectively, for example which way the planets orbit and how life developed. Most people use clearly erroneous religious explanations even for problems far more simplistic than these.)

The biggest conflict comes when a whole behavior system is attacked when this happens; and then those attuned to this system of sorts react negatively to what would appear to be a simple critique, but which is being made to something that it knotted semi-consciously to a lot of different relations and conceptions.

How is it comforting that something understands everything? Would it calm us equally to say that that coffee mug over there on the table knows everything?

Heh, in effect that all-knowing is the extremity of ignorance, the equivalent of death. We wish to be in touch with the all-known, when in truth it is in questioning the known that we manage to intelligently relate to our circumstances.

Indeed, "understanding" is just an aspect of how the human brain models the external world. The concept of a higher being that must "understand" (alternatively "have designed", "have had a purpose for" -- all the same) the universe is as arbitrary and anthropocentric as that of the same higher being having the appearance of an old bearded man.

Note through, one must be careful when criticising that insanity of ours; it's related to the way we see the world and intimately to the way we relate to each other. And when we are rash against this insanity we often lose track of real factors.

Now, it may well be impossible to imagine nothingness, but how does this make God exist? Does trying to imagine a square circle make God exist, or force us to believe in God so as to evade the agony resulting from our failure?

Indeed, the question of nothingness has made me says this in a previous occasion:

People here are talking about nothing and things, and everything... but really, what is nothing? Why talk about or imply something that isn't anything? Nothingness isn't, there is no such thing; that's the whole point of the term. In relation to anything, nothing is not. Apparently here people are saying that God is justified as a fill-in for this "nothing." But really, why take the place of something that isn't? That'd be quite sad... poor God if the first argument for his existence is to take the place of nothing.

Just don't worry about nothing, because it has nothing to do with anything.

I believe this has been posted before (perhaps even by myself), but it's almost mandatory to bring it up in discussions of this nature. Be sure to read all three documents. Entertaining stuff. Richard Dawkins is actually referenced in the second document.

http://www.nutters.org/docs/monkeys
http://www.nutters.org/docs/more-monkeys
http://www.nutters.org/docs/wise-monkeys

Dittohead said:

Interesting thread with many good points.

I know that next time I look at this thread it'll be 3 pages long because Job is going to show up and spout his stuff all over the place ;)

Eh, whatever. I don't really think it's worth debating. I'm willing to accept the "square circle" as existing and that works for me just fine.

Heh, saw this at another site.

16 Reasons Why God Never Received Tenure at the University
Author Unknown

1. He had only one major publication
2. And it was in Hebrew
3. And it had no references
4. And it was not published in a refereed journal
5. And some even doubted that He wrote it Himself.
6. It may be true that He created the world, but what has He done since then?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a very rough time trying to replicate His results.
9. He never applied to the Ethics Board for permission to use human subjects.
10. When one experiment went awry, He tried to cover it up by drowning the subjects.
11. When subjects did not behave as predicted, He often punished them, or just deleted them from the sample.
12. He rarely came to class: He just told students to read the book.
13. He has his son teach the class.
14. He expelled His first two students for learning too much.
15. Although there were only ten requirements, most students failed His tests.
16. His office hours were infrequent, and usually held on a mountain top."

myk said:

What is this, a moral critique of religion?

Depends. I'm stating a fact, that many forms of religion are just that, grabbing stuff out of thin air and then governing one's own life and that of others with it. Make of that what you will.

Right there you're already mistaken; religion is always finely interwoven in the fabric of our actions; all the patches and formulas are part of the equation and inherently in the context. Your concept of religion and its function already suffers from what you say this is not about (not knowing.)

I'm not sure you're really reading this right, maybe I was just too vague, but I wasn't talking about the concept of religion but its qualms. Ignorance is one thing, however being fully aware of one's own inability to grasp the full reality of things, yet pretending to know the facts and use this so called knowledge to solve real-world problems and influence others just makes no sense, logically. Then again, the same goes for a lot of things that humans do. Like war. But we're learning.

Knowing is all about not knowing, and the more you avoid the inevitability of unknowing, the more deluded you are, believing things.

Hold on just one second there. Filling in the blanks with deities whose existence is inherently unprovable is just that, wouldn't you say?

Thus reducing things that form part of existence into certain categories or formulations, like saying religion is "making shit up." For that matter science is making shit up too, and you can also use it to cause harm, even spontaneously brutal destruction. We made up the wheel, we made up the Internet.

I don't know what you're saying here. Are you implying that a natural phenomenon like the revolvement of a physical body causing its displacement, which is undeniably factual, being observed, documented and put to use in the "wheel" is actually the same thing as saying "hey, when I die I know I'm going to go to hell/heaven even though nobody has ever lived to tell me about it"?

Nobody made up the fusion bomb, that shit was present in the sun long before people discovered it.

I don't know if I should explain to you the difference between letting one's views be formed by reality, or forming reality according to one's views. You seem smart enough to grasp it.

That's what science is, if there's nothing to know, it will know nothing. It will, however, never abandon the possibility of someday knowing.

Religion seems to make this distinction arbitrarily. What there is to know seems to have absolutely no bearing on what it chooses to know or not know.

When you accuse religion of being bullshit or being "made up" your interaction with religion becomes opaque, and you can't do anything in relation to it.

Nope, I can't actually do anything with religion, you're right there. I'll bring up the Tooth Fairy again. If somebody told me she was the forefather of all things this would baffle me. It does make for a nice bedtime story though.

Contrarily, religion works its ways through all sorts of relations that are right there before us; it is in its own way as coherent as anything else. But if we treat it superficially explaining it and defining it, we fail to see its workings, which are in the pratice itself, in every way it is practiced, as crazy as those may seem at first glance.

Of course, religion is dynamic and forms part of a sea of relations, so like any actions of men, cannot be simply categorized but instead must be related to.

Religion is concretely there, and you are no better than a dogmatic looney if you fall into the very nature of the game you try to neutralize.

Again, I'm not sure what you're on about. All that sounds like you're probably looking at just one definition of it. Religion takes all kinds of forms. But I assume this thread is all about the kind of religion that seeks to create a reality of its own, replacing the one that is observed by means of rational thought.

It's like they say; argue with fools and you become one.

Aaaaand I hope you're not calling me a fool. You want to fisticuffs? Hmm? *punches air*

Arguments about religion are pointless. It's neverending. It's pretty obvious that this country(U.S.)is pretty much anti-religion. Maybe not ANTI religion, but the social scene and entertainment outlets pretty much downplay the whole idea of god. I for one don't know many people at all who really believe in god. I get the feeling that people view church goers and believers as weak. Ah fuck it, problems only arise when believers try to push their beliefs on others. This is why jehovah witness' have such a bad reputation. To each his own if you ask me.

Yes, I long to see a day when Christians are no longer persecuted. Dare I say it, there may be a day when we see a Christian... president?

</jonstewart>

And when it comes to trying to figure out the world, and trying to figure out life, don't. Don't even try. You'll just drive yourself fucking mad. Live and let live. Life is to short to try and fuckin challenge everything. That's what's wrong with the world, peole trying to push their beliefs on others. That goes for both sides of the fence, in all situations. God damn, if this was only a dictatorship, life would be so simple!!!!

Ahhh...nothing like being in the DW minority. A programmer who believes in God, doesn't like organized religion, and doesn't want to fight with people about God and/or Jesus.

DC