are you an atheist?

the kind of fucked up shit people do outside of religion is going to be limited to putting sardines on pizza, or putting human clothing on animals and taking pictures of them. it's very hard to think of egregious examples that don't have at least some religious flavor to them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein

I guess this could be seen as a variation of putting human clothing on animals, so to speak

"consumerism, wage slavery, paranoia, fear, xenophobia, nationalism, ideology and politics"

i don't think you can magically whisk away religion, but if you could, these things would generally disappear as well.

re: ed gein, death cults count as religions, too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer

not sure how this matches up to putting sardines on a pizza

it's almost tautological that really fucked up shit is going to involve religion

I beg to differ.

Wars are about as fucked up as any shit any human ever does and although they are sometimes started over religious differences, far more often they're started out of greed, pride, or fear. When a nation goes to war, it is normal for them to make passionate declarations about the need for doing it and the causes that justify it, and religion is often invoked in this context, but merely as a smokescreen for greed, pride or fear.

it's very hard to think of egregious examples that don't have at least some religious flavor to them.

This is hugely different from saying that these egregious examples are somehow sanctioned within or motivated by religion. People are enormously capable of rationalizing their motives. Just because their rationalizations drag religion into the conversation does not mean it had any fundamental culpability for them doing what they wanted badly to do and would no doubt have done in any event.

"consumerism, wage slavery, paranoia, fear, xenophobia, nationalism, ideology and politics"

i don't think you can magically whisk away religion, but if you could, these things would generally disappear as well.

??? C'mon.

As a confirmed atheist and materialist, I am not confident that, if religion were swept away tomorrow, that I could convince people who can't even use turn signals to do away with nationalism and consumerism.

Spectrum, what about truth for its own sake? Having fewer false beliefs is intrinsically good, even if it won't help us to avoid death. We can at least try to understand what sort of universe it is that's killing us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_bundy

I suppose being socipathically crazy also counts as a religion

Religion's role in war is overwhelmingly just the tool those at the top use to further their own economical gain, historically.

And as far as what would or wouldn't exist if religion was suddenly whisked away, in my opinion, it would be the endless opposition to scientific discovery, and the collective openness to these discoveries. Without religion, I believe that even the most ignorant people would be less inclined to hold on to ideology regardless, and as a race we would have been much farther along.

i dont think people's stated motivations for the things they do always line up perfectly with the various other determinants of their behavior.

like, it's kinda weird to think they do?

I'll let Spectrum and Atheist fight this one I guess but Nunez's claims are ridiculous

lol Atheist = Aimless

what is greed, pride, or fear but aspects of religion?

i think an example that on first glance doesn't seem religious and just the unfortunate accident of mental illness (the dark knight shootings) would lead a lot of people to be defensive about violent imagery not being responsible for violence, but I do think there is some measure of cause and effect -- there is somethings self-serious and religious about the series that say the schumaker batman probably could not have elicited.

what is greed, pride, or fear but aspects of religion?

lol whut I can't even

maybe you should start by telling us what your definition of "religion" is

what is greed, pride, or fear but aspects of religion?

congratulations on asking the dumbest question ever written on ILX

Some social ills would be eliminated w/o religion

Ok then! Isn't that a good enough reason to have beef w/it?

Pizza is orginally from Naples so I tend to think of putting sardines on pizza as far less blasphematory than putting on fucking pineapple.

hm... i take back what i said about pizza toppings. that shit can escalate to religious warfare pretty easily.

Your line of thinking strikes me as "ok, we can cure your cancer, but you're still gonna have arthritis, IBS, GERD, depression, htn, and gout" "ugh fuck it, don't bother with the cancer cure"

all of humanity's collective irrational behavior being impossible without religion, i stand by though.

Without ignorance. That's surely what you mean.

all of humanity's collective irrational behavior being impossible without religion

have you heard of this guy Stalin. Or Mao maybe. or, I dunno, capitalism.

stalin, mao, capitalism could all easily be deities in some neil gaiman story.

If anything, religion is an effect of humanity's collective irrational behavior, not a cause.

I think I became an atheist so young because all of the traditions I encountered seemed very likely to portray a God made in our image rather than the other way around, because there seemed to be a lot of special pleading and bad faith arguments and because the glaring hypocrisy was the only thing that interrupted the tedium of going to church.

The first step to solving a problem is a correct understanding of the problem. I think philip still needs some work on this step before he succeeds in solving all our problems.

The moral argument for religion is either faintly patronizing or irrelevant. If William James had his way, we'd be religious to be happier or better ppl, and that's fine, but it has nothing to do with real faith.

it's a problem to be managed. it's not a solvable problem. and in your heart of hearts would you want it to be solved problem? without religion there'd be no disneyland, and most people prefer nolan's batman to camp.

Your line of thinking strikes me as "ok, we can cure your cancer, but you're still gonna have arthritis, IBS, GERD, depression, htn, and gout" "ugh fuck it, don't bother with the cancer cure"

I see what you're saying here, but I don't think that's an accurate parallel ... religion as manifestation of inherent human nature and how that nature is "modular" (can use different tools to accomplish same/similar ends), vs. the linear progression of science.

Say with science, pharm companies cure illnesses with their medicines ... great! Then marketing comes along, prescibes ineffective/dangerous medicine to people, and these people die ... lives ended, families shattered when science meets human motivation and imperfection. It seems like science has killed more US citizens for ill/misguided motives in recent years than religion has within our borders (pharmaceuticals, industrials, manufacturing, energy technology, etc.).

ack! my last post sounds too condescending. still think it is true, but really, I just mean, really. Shape up, aimless.

social utilitarian atheists are maddening, its so obviously a replacement of one ideology w another/reaction formation, the need for hope is exactly the same as christians' but the vision is even more impoverished and boring if that's possible. *barfs*

xp phil D. kind of otm, the best religions are at least aware of what runs deep in the psyche and are kind of ambivalent about it. rationality evangelists are like... but statistics and the science industry, the great hope of humanity! i am going to tell myself these lies in order to ignore what constitutes real exploitation and brutality!

"Then marketing comes along,"

just because snake oil salesmen and faith healers have dressed themselves up as big pharma doesn't mean they are no longer of the cloth.

the negative aspects of religion stem from tribalism, us vs them thinking (not a coincident that the most virulent strains/perversions of religion today are located in areas of the globe where tribalism is also strong). symptom vs cause like Phil D said.

i think tribalism is a good thing inasmuch as its opposite is alienation, is it possible to imagine a global kinship? *sings imagine*

us vs them thinking requires a unifying divine mandate to sustain itself. religion isn't a symptom, it is fuel.

so chimps require unifying divine mandate to fuel their us vs them thinking?

ape shall not kill ape

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGMuIyBK5P4

religion isn't a symptom, it is fuel.

it's both

The Island of Dr. Krauthammer -- "the law is this: One God Good, No Gods Bad"

I think if you see religion as primarily or only an "immunitary" function that separates the saved from the damned, us from them, etc then yeah you're gonna lie a lot of problems at the feet of religion. (but oh the irony of "it's those religious people's fault!") i happen to see those immunitary functions at work in any number of discourses though.

however, the explicit creeds of Christianity, for instance, say pretty much the opposite. but that's not even the point. the point that these kinds of argument against religion seem to be blind to or willfully ignorant of how heterogeneous religious belief can be. as a social system, it actually provides one of the very few means of thinking against the "rationally administered" or technocratic/capitalist/consumerist society after the collapse of marxism.

I guess I am an agnostic, I mean I don't think you go anywhere when you die. As a child, I used to worry about heaven too much, like how boring it might be. But I still go to church and study the Bible because I ...get something out of it. I think American society is increasingly anti-religious. A lot of people go to church for the social benefits, what they truly believe I don't know. I don't like the cynicism of it.

I wish reincarnation were so. My grandmother was Catholic and believed in it.

stalin, mao, capitalism could all easily be deities in some neil gaiman story.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, September 24, 2012 11:31 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a problem to be managed. it's not a solvable problem. and in your heart of hearts would you want it to be solved problem? without religion there'd be no disneyland, and most people prefer nolan's batman to camp.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, September 24, 2012 11:35 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just because snake oil salesmen and faith healers have dressed themselves up as big pharma doesn't mean they are no longer of the cloth.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, September 24, 2012 11:40 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

v high quality work here. gaiman, nolan, big pharma, really tying it all together.

'maybe you should start by telling us what your definition of "religion" is'

I compare most things to Abrahamic religions and see if they match up fairly closely. Even under these narrow parameters, things like Maoism, Stalinism, and Capitalism totally qualify, and the fact that adherents to one sect are persecuted by members of another shouldn't be surprising.

Of course the presence of Christians, say, in North Korea, are on balance probably a good thing, but if an NGO had the finesse to do so, it might be worth spending effort to moderate their influence even at this stage.

i'm guess I'm technically agnostic because it's not really possible at this point to prove that gods don't exist. if there actually was something like that that existed, i honestly think that the most likely scenario is that the god or gods are totally indifferent.

but religion will always exist and will always be popular because people are understandably frightened about death, and the thought that your atoms gradually disperse back into the universe is not satisfying. the only way that oill ever change is if humanity figured out how to sustain "life" indefinitely (say, by creating a copy of a person's brain/memories onto a chip or whatever that then "lives" virtually thereafter, or whatever post-singularity sci-fi splooge that you want to substitute in).

things like Maoism, Stalinism, and Capitalism totally qualify

you are insane

of course god exists, look around you, look at all he's done

You seem to be overlooking buddhism, hinduism, sihkism, animism, jainism, shintoism, ba'hai, or zoroastrianism in your definition of religion. As for Abrahamic religions, how closely do unitarian universalism or quakerism match up with your conception of Abrahamic religions?