The Truth about Religion

[Csonicgo]

Bring Deism back.

[dew]

magicsofa said:

I'm sure many of you have seen Zeitgeist. If not, you should. They have a pretty convincing story that essentially says that Christianity and many other religions have very concrete astrological roots...essentially the bearded man in the sky is just a disguised version of sun worship.

well, duh. they moved their patron's birthday to winter solstice. however all that crap was redacted by the church over the time in order to hijack pagan traditions and help with the christianization process in europe. it's not like jesus christ really is meant to be another apollo or whatever sun avatar the local tribe worships, that just eased the transition of faith for the peasants once the church convinced their feudal lord he should join their clan.

also zeitgeist is retarded, you should read foucault's pendulum for the _real_ story behind it all. some pretty shocking truths, i have to say. also valis, it's like... woah!

[gggmork]

Hmm, I might have to take the reading recommendation of someone who's so good at Word Bubbles.

Also I think dawkins is awesome and the selfish gene is one of the best books I've ever read, before he became more popular as an atheist with the god delusion and internet videos. He's an excellent teacher and seems like a respectable honorable person, quite the opposite of a troll. The atheist community that grew around him is somewhat 'religious' in nature though and full of about as many asshats as any other large group of humans. I think that 'raising consciousness' and spamming memes of his own to combat religious memes was sort of his hacker social experiment; he did after all coin and study the concept of replicating brain memes/ideas as a sort of analogy to genes, replicating for their own fitness. The 3 things dawkins thought would make a replicator more successful were longevity, fecundity, and fidelity. A 'holy book' is sort of a primitive replicating 'memetic organism', mostly in minds but also in books that can be read by minds, because the medium of writing as a book with printing press is high on all 3 (longevity, fecundity, fidelity) relative to spoken word. Computer software replicates too but its interesting that its desire to be useful mostly just selects 'true' things that work, rather than random misinformation like a holy book.
It would take quite a lot of leverage to attempt to remove something he probably viewed as a sort of self serving, self replicating dangerous brain parasite so intertwined in culture that has been persecuting galileo, mutilating genitals, stoning women, and just generally propagating misinformation like 'water dousing' or something etc for so long but he gave a serious shot at raising consciousness about it with some success.

[D_GARG]

my point of view:

Christianity has as mentioned; raped and killed far too many other ways of thinking and belifes, had all the goody stuff runned over by all the bullshit that the extra authors for the bible, the bible wasnt written by ONE man (or womman) but SEVERAL, the Koran has that same problem.
Too many witch burnings and other punishments against "heresy". Islam suffers from the added so called Fatwa, which means you can add religous thoughts which can be negative or positive, but as we all know: the more cheffs the worse soup, this includes original ideas which are affected by greed for power, money, political positions, war, dominion, wrath and revenges and so on are doomed to cause disasters.


religion is after all the cornerstones of or "civilizations" but all that was about how to behave and how to use words instead of violence, and glofify knowledge, understanding, peace and tollerence of peoples differences.

but after all the shit it can provide in different ways in time in different circumstances and all the abusement of the power of written words (and that reaches all the way in to today not only in religion but also in poiltics and dirty companies with idiots leading its components) so with all that I can respect people and whats important for them, but I cant alone respect destructive religiousness, its nothing for me

dont do things in gods name, it loses track faster that you can say
tripping balls

[40oz]

D_GARG said:

tripping balls

The best alternative to religion.

[gggmork]

"the goody stuff runned over by all the bullshit that the extra authors for the bible"

heh heh,
Bible Abraham begat Isaac who used geico to save 15% or more on car insurance; and Isaac begat Jacob who also saved 15% or more with geico car insurance.

Surely geico is in a meeting planning how to do that right now, likely involving some sort of amway-esque pyramid scheme to virally spread them and plans to triple land fill sizes with their junk mail.

[Sharessa]

magicsofa said:

I'm sure many of you have seen Zeitgeist. If not, you should. They have a pretty convincing story that essentially says that Christianity and many other religions have very concrete astrological roots...essentially the bearded man in the sky is just a disguised version of sun worship.

Yep. Christianity has a lot of parallels with the cult of Sol Invictus, which was really popular in the late Roman period. The Unconquerable Sun's birthday was the winter solstice, which was on the 25th of December at the time, since the days just got brighter at that point on. Every year he would die and be resurrected again. Also look into the Greek cult of Herakles (ascension to heaven), the Oriental cult of Mithras, and the Egyptian cult of Osiris (resurrection) to find the origins of Christianity.

[myk]

Enjay said:
Although Dawkins has done a lot to raise the debate and put a certain point of view across, to me watching him often seems like watching someone speaking with the same level of religious fervour as the people he tries to denounce.

His disheveled, sweaty approach kind of makes him look less self-assured than many religious people. I'm sure it's because his own science-related upbringing makes him doubt about his procedures. He's a closet-believer. He's obsessed with the more freaky religious people because he's somewhat like them. Much like when religious zealots hate gays.

The belief that reason is superior to other human mechanisms is a fallacy. Zealots are mainly unfortunate or unwell. Their responses are natural to their situation. You can't argue that away. People who don't have the fortune or power to utilize rational capital will find other ways to organize themselves and find strength in what they do. It's a matter of happenstance, not merely ideas. It's an important political issue. When dealing with people with strange and deeply rooted beliefs, the key is dealing with practical circumstances in life that generate our stances, not to attack their isolated ideas without an honest understanding of their experiences. Otherwise, you get little more than reverse psychology, when these people notice that their genuine concers are not read in their "nonsense".

[fraggle]

Danarchy said:

Also look into the Greek cult of Herakles (ascension to heaven), the Oriental cult of Mithras, and the Egyptian cult of Osiris (resurrection) to find the origins of Christianity.

I'm an atheist but this is utterly untrue. This nonsense about Christianity being derived from beliefs in Mithras or Osiris is a pack of lies, perpetuated by an Internet conspiracy theorist film called "Zeitgeist". If you do some basic research you'll find that there isn't any factual basis to its claims about religion - it's almost entirely made up. Go and read the Wikipedia pages about Mithras or Osiris, you'll find that the mythical stories about them have almost nothing in common with the Christian ones.

I don't know about Sol Invictus but a December 25th date isn't very surprising. There isn't any reliable source for thinking that Jesus was born on that date; we only celebrate it as Christmas because of tradition - the Romans renamed pagan celebrations to Christian ones after Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman empire.

I'm sure many of you have seen Zeitgeist. If not, you should. They have a pretty convincing story that essentially says that Christianity and many other religions have very concrete astrological roots...essentially the bearded man in the sky is just a disguised version of sun worship.

What, you mean the part where it compares the word "sun" and the word "son"? You seriously found that part convincing? That was so obviously, transparently bullshit that I was lost for words when I saw it. In case it isn't obvious: the words "sun" and "son" only sound the same in English - not in any other language. English as a language didn't even exist back when Christianity started.

That whole section about religion was, essentially, completely fabricated, and the film as a whole is dishonest and intentionally misleading. If you want another example, look at the section with JFK speaking, then go and read the unabridged transcript of the speech that the film is quoting from. They took a recording of him talking about the dangers of communism, cut up different sentences and then put them together to make it sound like he was talking about some kind of secret cabal manipulating everything from behind the scenes.

Really, don't take for granted anything you saw in that film because chances are it probably isn't true.

[magicsofa]

fraggle said:

I'm an atheist but this is utterly untrue. This nonsense about Christianity being derived from beliefs in Mithras or Osiris is a pack of lies, perpetuated by an Internet conspiracy theorist film called "Zeitgeist".

I don't know much about Mithras, Osiris, etc. I just think it's an interesting notion that religious beliefs might have roots in worship of real things. Maybe Christians should re-think where their bible came from (even if it was just to take over paganism) and then they wouldn't have to argue with people about blind faith :P

[fraggle]

magicsofa said:

I don't know much about Mithras, Osiris, etc. I just think it's an interesting notion that religious beliefs might have roots in worship of real things. Maybe Christians should re-think where their bible came from (even if it was just to take over paganism) and then they wouldn't have to argue with people about blind faith :P

I'd certainly agree that Christians should look at the historical evidence for the Bible, because personally I wouldn't consider it a reliable historical source for the events it describes.

However, what Zeitgeist does, which is to spread outright lies about Christianity to attempt to discredit it, is something I can never encourage.

[magicsofa]

fraggle said:

However, what Zeitgeist does, which is to spread outright lies about Christianity to attempt to discredit it, is something I can never encourage.

Yeah, I can see your point - when I saw the sections on 9/11 and the world bank I was like "okay, that's enough"

[Sharessa]

fraggle said:

I'm an atheist but this is utterly untrue. This nonsense about Christianity being derived from beliefs in Mithras or Osiris is a pack of lies, perpetuated by an Internet conspiracy theorist film called "Zeitgeist". If you do some basic research you'll find that there isn't any factual basis to its claims about religion - it's almost entirely made up. Go and read the Wikipedia pages about Mithras or Osiris, you'll find that the mythical stories about them have almost nothing in common with the Christian ones.

I don't know about Sol Invictus but a December 25th date isn't very surprising. There isn't any reliable source for thinking that Jesus was born on that date; we only celebrate it as Christmas because of tradition - the Romans renamed pagan celebrations to Christian ones after Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman empire.

I've never seen Zeitgeist, and don't really know what it is about. I got the Mithras bit from a segment on QI that I watched. There are certain thematic parallels with Herakles and Osiris with the mythology of Jesus. Such parallels are in many western religions though, which goes back to the theory that they were all descended from the same pantheon. The same sorts of gods keep showing up in all the Pantheons, and it is theorized that the Jewish god of the Bible (YWH) is from an older Semetic pantheon and is the sky-god equivalent of Zeus, Jupiter, or Odin (though similarities between Jupiter and the Christian god were probably put there or expanded upon by the early Catholic church to convert Roman citizens. Long story short, the fact that these mythological parallels exist makes one thing that Jesus was less of a real man, and more of a myth.

I know the December 25th birth date was put there by the early Catholics, and not something from before, but I'm saying a lot of myths about Christianity and Jesus do come from the Romans and the various cults and religions in their empire. A lot of stuff that Christians believe isn't even in the Bible.

[kristus]

fraggle said:

I'm an atheist but this is utterly untrue. This nonsense about Christianity being derived from beliefs in Mithras or Osiris is a pack of lies, perpetuated by an Internet conspiracy theorist film called "Zeitgeist". If you do some basic research you'll find that there isn't any factual basis to its claims about religion - it's almost entirely made up. Go and read the Wikipedia pages about Mithras or Osiris, you'll find that the mythical stories about them have almost nothing in common with the Christian ones.

Yeah this is the first I ever hear of this.

On another place it was explained that the christian/judean god was created from the war god of the babylonian culture.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Evid3nc3#p/u/2/MlnnWbkMlbg

I'm not sure that is true either though, but I found the arguments convincing and the guy seem well read on the subject.

I saw an documentary called "the bibles buried secrets" that examined the origins and history of the jewish religion and the old testament. It didn't quite mention the same things. Though maybe they just focused on different things. I dunno. I can recommend the documentary for anyone interested though. They seem to have taken a very open minded and thorough look at the history and archeological evidence.

[myk]

magicsofa said:
I just think it's an interesting notion that religious beliefs might have roots in worship of real things.

Worship is an act in itself, and that's the real thing. I'm not an expert on the history of religion, but I wouldn't discount links between religions spanning related cultures, but the roots we can connect are mainly previous practices. Thus there may well be links between Egyptian and Christian worship, but not because that shows they worshiped something "real". Whatever that means, because generally in religion there's a distinction between the sacred and the natural. If something is supernatural, is it real? What's more real than nature? And when people have theories saying the natural world is "illusion" it's mainly a contrast with something else, which is "above reality". In that case "reality" and "illusion" refer to the same thing but with a different attitude or take.