Question for Athiests and church bashers

gbee

Mickeroo wrote: »

yes but it's hardly the steam engine now is it.

In some case it was. Religion has fostered and hindered the sciences and art with equal pleasure and disdain.

It's a balance that they took over what could be taught and often supported new initiatives, but then often suppressed them when it looked like it could undermine their dominant and unapproachable position.

The church overall was very generous but to a select few notably, artists, architects, stone masons, scientists ~ but always, nonetheless wanted control of content.

The questions remains, would there have been enough benefactors to advance man so far and so fast ~ the argument is if the Church did not demand full control we might have advanced faster, on the other hand there might not have been the money and we might be say 100 years behind where we are now.

marty1985

Mickeroo wrote: »

I agree that it helped us survive, it filled in the gaps for a long time, gave us a tool with which to understand the world around us, but I feel we've reached a stage in our evoltion where we don't need it anymore. It probably won't go away completely anytime soon though.

I feel like we have resolved our debate then now that we agree.

marty1985

Chuck Stone wrote: »

That's just rubbish really. It's impossible to prove or disprove.

Cats are pretty successful creatures and they are notorious atheists.

LOL, the topic was evolution!

SeanW

I am a very firm agnostic myself, though I disagree with Atheists, I also utterly reject, condemn and despise most/all forms of organised religion, especially the insane and destructive desert dogmas of Abraham, for the dangerous, evil & degrading crocks of superstitious garbage that I believe they are.

However I give people a pass for believing in this garbage for one simple reason - most of them were brainwashed with it as a child.

This is how religion propogates itself - the organisers ensure that it is taught to people when they are the must vulnerable and/or impressionable. Usually, that is when they are children, but on occasion other times can be found.

There are two videos on the topic posters here might find useful - if there are any religious on here I would welcome their rebuttal, though I doubt such a rebuttal would be easy to construct.

Martin J. Willett's instructions on how to chain a creature:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAE2J38eD-U

3 year old Arab girl brainwashed to hate Jews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL0C2QvqIlo

An infant, properly conditioned, can be made to believe any garbage and will probably continue believing it into adulthood. Hence, religion - and the associated sectarianism, ignorance and hatred - survives.

RichieC

marty1985 wrote: »

Fair enough, sorry if it came across as patronising. But it was in response to a comment of "are you taking the piss".

I've spent all my time in this thread arguing how we could not have evolved without religion, a topic well argued in science and sociology, but that you guys don't even want to consider, because it's a great irony, that the religion you want to eradicate, helped us as a species to survive for the social benefits it gave us.

May have eased fears at one stage but to say it was some kind of lynchpin is absolutely shocking. we were hunter gatherers with little language for 150 thousand years.

Chuck Stone

marty1985 wrote: »

LOL, the topic was evolution!

Not quite.

marty1985 wrote: »

I've spent all my time in this thread arguing how we could not have evolved without religion, a topic well argued in science and sociology, but that you guys don't even want to consider, because it's a great irony, that the religion you want to eradicate, helped us as a species to survive for the social benefits it gave us.

Okay to make it clear I'm questioning the validity of the claims you make (in red).

RichieC

Full behavioral modernity is thought to have come about 50 thousand years ago, we've done very little evolving since...

Caulego

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

Some of the most religious people I know are the most educated.

They may be 'educated' in the sense of having learned a lot of facts, but the idea that they can actually override the brainwashing process does not necessarily follow because of it. The higher the level of intelligence the higher the disposition towards rationalising one's delusions and faulted thinking. It's like having a high spec computer versus a low spec one. The high speed one may come up with more solutions more quickly and present them better, but if the original information entered into the system is faulted, it just spews out rubbish in a more impressive format. Take the pope for instance (please, someone, do take him), a man who can speak several languages, holds power etc, but still can't stop thinking that he represents an invisible entity that supposedly created the Universe. His religion supposedly preaches humility, but he speaks for the 'creator' of all that exists? Is that humility?

Also, think of many of the doctors in the Third Reich, who invented and used the most barbaric of medical procedures to try and rationalise and give credence to a completely insane ideology, which was insane from its very outset. In other words - rubbish in, rubbish out, with predictably negative consequences.
All human beings, without exception, are vulnerable, regardless of level of 'education', especially if the education is limited to suit the dominant system of belief, so instinctual fears of death and loss can and often do override any actual potential for reason and logic, traits that we appear to have scant little of in a collectively positive way. Fear is our strongest emotion, and survival our strongest instinct. All of us, without exception, possess these faculties, so therefore the negative outcomes we see all around us must mean that our thinking, both individually and collectively, has been compromised by some false ideas that prey on our need to survive. Religion, therefore, is the set of ideas that is designed to appear to create the idea of security at this base but unreasoning level, as it answers a basic psychological need for comfort, though its precepts are merely based on blind and rote systems of contradictory teachings. That need for security can be manipulated and utilised for all sorts of base purposes, mostly to the detriment of the host believer, who never really knows about how the brainwashing process works in the hands of the manipulators, with them, the confused and submissive 'sheep' getting shorn every time.

The same applies to political regimes that use similar fear-based indoctrination, but as religion is taught to children from a tender age, when they have little or no capacity for reasoning, then the seeds take root and become woven in with the personality of the supposed 'individual', who thinks that they are actually 'special', when in fact they have been bred and trained to be little more than clones that march along to the beat of hymns, myths and pretty stories that have no validity outside of the imagination and rote, unquestioned, dogma. The watchword is “Obey..or something might happen”...and imagination and fear does the rest, producing messed up children who grow up to be messed up adults. Why do you think that the RCc is so resistant to giving up control of the education system, particularly at junior level? Get them young and you get them for life is the idea behind it all; pure evil, but we don't like to see evil for what it is, so we pretend it doesn't exist and ignore its existence, like anything 'uncomfortable' that might disturb our sense of personal and individual 'comfort', with scant regard for the suffering of the less fortunate.

Basically, if the programming that is entered into the mind is mindless and based on incorrect thinking in the first place, then the output will result in like form, which is why today we are reaping what was sown in the minds of our and previous generations' minds over many hundreds of years, sown by evil minds, watered by unreason, and harvested time and time again by evil farmers who pay their drones with nothing but promises that keep them from risking loss of their 'comfort blanket' of false belief. In case you hadn't noticed it yet, it's close to harvest time.

LighterGuy

To be honest,
boards.ie isnt the best place to have a topic about religion. Theres been so many threads with polls asking if the average user believed in religion / a god. Polls were always one sided saying no.


So you cant get a balanced debate on this one here.

Caulego

marty1985 wrote: »

Well, it includes me!

But it doesn't change my beliefs about how religion evolved to help us survive when we were dispersing from Africa, and it doesn't change my belief that it's not going away.

Religion was 'evolved' to mass-manage tribes and groups for the benefit of the few, just like their attendant moneylenders and political supporters, who need each other to survive. What about the people it didn't help to survive, the ones who were burned, raped and slaughtered by the millions, when they dared to question the godmongers and priesthoods? That's the problem with people who place their trust in 'belief', which is the acceptance of ideas without the benefit of fact, as though it is fact, as they only look at it from a single-sided point of view, and not in a wider perspective, which is more reasoned and balanced. This is exactly why it is called 'blind' as it can't see things from any other viewpoint.

Chuck Stone

LighterGuy wrote: »

To be honest,
boards.ie isnt the best place to have a topic about religion. Theres been so many threads with polls asking if the average user believed in religion / a god. Polls were always one sided saying no.

So you cant get a balanced debate on this one here.

Ah sure 'tis grand.

I'm very impressed by some of the folk who contribute on boards tbh - I'd like to be as clear and concise with my thinking as them.

Latchy

LighterGuy wrote: »

To be honest,
boards.ie isnt the best place to have a topic about religion. Theres been so many threads with polls asking if the average user believed in religion / a god. Polls were always one sided saying no.


So you cant get a balanced debate on this one here.

A thread about the Catholic Church was refered to the Christianity forum before getting the lock five minutes ago when it's was just another 'AH / Cathoilc Church thread, pretty much along the lines of all the other recent ones so if that's the case then all Catholic Church threads should be sent there to .

Chuck Stone

Caulego wrote: »

This is exactly why it is called 'blind' as it can't see things from any other viewpoint.

Good post.

This is true. Eventually a theist argument will boil down to 'because God said so'.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

marty1985

RichieC wrote: »

Full behavioral modernity is thought to have come about 50 thousand years ago, we've done very little evolving since...

Archaeologists have established the existence of burial rituals among Neanderthals some 50,000 years ago. This is religion in it's most primitive form, communal rituals to mark things like birth, puberty, adulthood, death.

we could not have evolved without religion

Whether we could or not is actually a bit irrelevant, because we did. We evolved with it. If religious beliefs and behaviors promoted survival and reproduction in our ancestral past, then they must have been favored by natural selection over human evolutionary history. It's Darwinian selection.

helped us as a species to survive for the social benefits it gave us.

It promoted survival and reproduction. It doesn't get anymore fundamental than that.

May have eased fears at one stage but to say it was some kind of lynchpin is absolutely shocking.

Not all religion is the same. I'm talking here about primitive religion - which is universal, but then there is archaic religion, historical religion, early modern religion and modern religion. For primitive societies, religion is a lynchpin. Whether many of these societies survive depends on their cohesiveness and emotional communication with each other - which is expressed through rituals, which are the most basic (and universal) part of religion, and exist even before language.

Religion was 'evolved' to mass-manage tribes and groups for the benefit of the few, just like their attendant moneylenders and political supporters, who need each other to survive.

That's religious behavior, which of course has been manipulated, exploited and abused. But religion isn't something that was tacked on by Kings and Priests to control people. It's something they tried to control because it existed before them.

nozzferrahhtoo

marty1985 wrote: »

For example, Christianity just took from Judaism, and Islam took from Christianity, and now we have new religions from Christianity such as Mormonism which has had outrageous growth, all things considered. In my opinion, Christianity could die away, but religion won't.

Actually it is funny just how many things Christianity took from, and it was a lot more than Judaism. The Christ myth is an amalgamation of quite a few myths that were in circulation at the time. Anton Batey detailed quite a few of them in his debate against Pastor Cook.

I am not sure if anyone has done a book documenting the full evolution of religions to date but it would be a good read.

marty1985 wrote: »

I've spent all my time in this thread arguing how we could not have evolved without religion, a topic well argued in science and sociology, but that you guys don't even want to consider, because it's a great irony, that the religion you want to eradicate, helped us as a species to survive for the social benefits it gave us.

Again however it is important to point out that even if it WAS useful in the past, that says nothing about its usefulness now.

However I still have seen no argument that it was useful in the past nor have I seen you argue that position per se. I have seen you SAY that this is your position for sure, but I am not really seeing the argument for it.

Plus I must reiterate the problem of comparison. Given we have no societies in our evolutionary history ultimately devoid of religion in any meaningful way.... we have no point of comparison on how we would have evolved in it's absence. That is no small problem for your claims.

That we could not have evolved without religion is a claim that I literally can not find any substance for however.

gbee

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

The Christ myth is an amalgamation of quite a few myths that were in circulation at the time. .

Unfortunately, whilst the basis of the many Christ vying for the position of Messiah of the Jews [it being a very well paid job] the reference to the 25th of December is nonsense and anyone remotely interested should know this.

We are talking abut characters who lived prior to the introduction of the Julian Calendar in 45 and later in 1582 the Georgian Calendar was introduced. It only after this time with the Church going through a revival that the 'modern' holy family became to emerge and heretofore uncelebrated Birthday of Christ was conceived and positioned to match pagan midwinter festivals.

No one can know when the other Christ characters were born. But when the Church fixed Christ's official birthday as the 25th of December 00 or 01 ? [that's another debate in itself] then suddenly people use that date which never existed anyway as proof of other prophets.

Other prophets there certainly were, the modern Christ and Holy Family have been made and designed by a committee of men. Christ's wife was demonised and Christ's arch enemy was created.

But Anton has fallen into the trap of association from description, that is in today's parlance why people are reporting Grey Aliens and seeing them everywhere, all because Spielberg put them in a movie.

Now the thing is this, there may be Grey Alien running around willie nillie, but one cannot take the movie as a source.

ray011

Helix wrote: »

atheism tends to come with education, and our parents' and grandparents' generations didnt have the same level of that as we do. nor did they have the kind of exposure to the world that we do. they had religion bet into them in many cases, so you can't really think any less of them for it.

in the years and generations to come we'll see religion having less and less of a place in the civilised world anyway and even our current society will be looked back at with the same kind of shame we look back on the child abuse of previous generations

Oh so people who believe in god are not educated ????????? I would say your parents and grandparents were more educated than you if this really is an opinion of yours.

also people who believe in god are not civilised ? what do you mean by civilised world ? the world will always have bad people that do bad things, child abusers , rapists, gangs .... so what is this civilised world you refer to.


child abuse and a belief in god are completely different things.

people who dont believe in god have been known to abuse children and do terrible things.


you should really know what you mean before you post something.:)

how old are you and did you go to college yourself ?

nozzferrahhtoo

gbee wrote: »

But Anton has fallen into the trap of association from description, that is in today's parlance why people are reporting Grey Aliens and seeing them everywhere, all because Spielberg put them in a movie.

Do you mean Pastor cook has fallen into that trap, not Anton. It is Anton pointing out the errors.

Anton described quite well how all the myths associated with Christ... such as the time of his birth, the execution between two thieves, the dying for our sins, the being born of a virgin, the raising from the dead, even phrases like "I am the way and the light".... and so on.... were all myths and legends that existed at the time already and were already attributed to other people and were just assimilated into the Jesus myth.

Richard Carrier goes further into this here, and how much of the other supposed evidence for the existence of christ does not hold up and in fact quite a few other texts only make sense if Jesus did not exist, such as much of the book of Acts. An interesting talk presented in Carriers usual light tongue in cheek style.

Just like your grey aliens, what Anton and Carrier point out is that People will assign attributes to a target based on attributes they have heard attributed to other targets in the past. So if you hammer into a public that aliens are small, grey and with bubble shaped heads then when they sight aliens that is what they will sight.

Similarly when people go on about a new messiah myth, the target of that myth will take on attributes like being born of a virgin, being ressurected and so on because that is what people expect from such a person.

nozzferrahhtoo

ray011 wrote: »

Oh so people who believe in god are not educated ?????????

That is not what the user said. You are taking him up wrong. Saying atheism tends to come with education is not the same as saying those without atheism are not educated. Just like saying a healthy heart tends to come from playing sport is not the same as saying those who suffer heart failure never played sport.

The important word which you missed is "tend". There are signs that a higher education correlates with increased atheism. That is NOT to say that believers in god are not educated.

The problem is that lack of education or intelligence is only one possible reason that some people think there is a god. There are many possible reasons and each believer can be a result of any one... or any combination of two or more... of those reasons.

ray011 wrote: »

also people who believe in god are not civilised ?

Again this is not what the user said. The user said it would have less and less of a place in the civilized world. Saying something has no place in the civilized world is not the same as saying that a world with that thing is uncivilized... just that it is a civilized world with something in it that is superfluous to requirements.

In short, I would share your disagreement with the user HAD he said that believers were uneducated and uncivilized!! I would agree with you 100% if that was what was being said. It is not what the user is saying however and you have unfortunately misrepresented the post you replied to greatly....

ray011 wrote: »

you should really know what you mean before you post something.:)

... and you should really understand what a person means before you reply to them.

philologos

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Again this is the childish mentality I expect. Quite apparent I was responding to what you stated. Rather than get bogged down by a diversionary tactic you used I explained once again in a clearer manner what most know. You are blinded by a faith. You do so in a very non Christian manner as most of your posts are. Check with what ever preacher you have and I would say think they will tell you cease this consistent adversarial conflict as it not in accordance with the faith you claim to be part of.

I doubt you could give it for lent as you certainly don't know how to turn the other cheek.

I acknowledge that I may have been a little out of line yesterday in my posting style. I don't claim to be perfect, and I don't believe that I am perfect. I have a low threshold for nonsense one could say. You responded to my post by restating your original position and lobbing in the odd ad-hominem. What's the point in that?

I find it ironic that you should be telling me what is a "Christian" manner. However, I'm willing to start afresh without the ad-hominems and without the slurs that I've somehow left my brain behind if you are?

Simply put you didn't actually address the post I gave to you, and to claim that's childish is absurd.

Ghost Buster

Helix wrote: »

atheism tends to come with education, and our parents' and grandparents' generations didnt have the same level of that as we do. nor did they have the kind of exposure to the world that we do. they had religion bet into them in many cases, so you can't really think any less of them for it.

in the years and generations to come we'll see religion having less and less of a place in the civilised world anyway and even our current society will be looked back at with the same kind of shame we look back on the child abuse of previous generations

ray011 wrote: »

Oh so people who believe in god are not educated ????????? I would say your parents and grandparents were more educated than you if this really is an opinion of yours.

also people who believe in god are not civilised ? what do you mean by civilised world ? the world will always have bad people that do bad things, child abusers , rapists, gangs .... so what is this civilised world you refer to.


child abuse and a belief in god are completely different things.

people who dont believe in god have been known to abuse children and do terrible things.


you should really know what you mean before you post something.:)

how old are you and did you go to college yourself ?

Read the two lines in bold and question your ability to comprehend the written word and your own education.

ray011

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

That is not what the user said. You are taking him up wrong. Saying atheism tends to come with education is not the same as saying those without atheism are not educated.

The important word which you missed is "tend". There are signs that a higher education correlates with increased atheism. That is NOT to say that believers in god are not educated.

The problem is that lack of education or intelligence is only one possible reason that some people think there is a god. There are many possible reasons and each believer can be a result of any one... or any combination of two or more... of those reasons.

I know what the user said... he said - "atheism tends to come with education, and our parents' and grandparents' generations didnt have the same level of that as we do."

Therefore from the above statement most normal people would conclude that his parents and grandparents were not that well educated so they believed in god. - therefore ... i can conclude from this that he thinks people who are not well educated tend to be the ones that believe in god (which is rubbish). there are doctors, solicitors, judges, politicians, accountants, lecturers - all sorts of well educated people who believe in god, in fact many in the religious life have doctorates from universitys etc.

so don't tell me what the user said - i'm not a school child - i know what he said or do you think because i believe in god i am not educated enough to know what the user said.

philologos

Helix: If atheism comes with education why are people who go to church more educated than the average in Australia for example?

nozzferrahhtoo

philologos wrote: »

I have a low threshold for nonsense one could say.

Actually I would be more likely to say that you have a low threshold for recognising nonsense when you hear it.

philologos wrote: »

You responded to my post by restating your original position and lobbing in the odd ad-hominem. What's the point in that?

You tell us because that is exactly what you did to me! So if anyone is qualified to answer your own question it is you!

nozzferrahhtoo

ray011 wrote: »

I know what the user said... he said - "atheism tends to come with education, and our parents' and grandparents' generations didnt have the same level of that as we do."

Therefore from the above statement most normal people would conclude that his parents and grandparents were not that well educated so they believed in god. - therefore ... i can conclude from this that he thinks people who are not well educated tend to be the ones that believe in god (which is rubbish).

Yes. Your conclusion IS rubbish.

I repeat there are many reasons why people think there is a god. Emotional ones, wishful thinking ones, simple errors, childhood indoctrination and more.

One of those reasons is "god of the gaps". In other words things they do not understand cause them to think there must be a god to explain them.

What the user is pointing out, and what you are missing, is that each generation has had more of those gaps filled in with knowledge and education that was not available to the generation before. This is not calling previous generations "uneducated" as you want to portray it. It is just recognising that our generation knows more than the ones before it.... which is entirely true and I see no problem with pointing out that fact. Do you?

ray011 wrote: »

there are doctors, solicitors, judges, politicians, accountants, lecturers - all sorts of well educated people who believe in god, in fact many in the religious life have doctorates from universitys etc.

My point exactly. The question is WHY do such people think there is a god. I think you will find their education... or lack of it.... often has nothing to do with it. In fact some scientists of immensely high education have openly admitted things like if all the evidence pointed to a natural, evolved, old earth that they would STILL remain young earth creationists.... showing that intelligence and reasoning is not what is used to think there is a god, so it actually does not matter how intelligent or educated some people are.... or are not.... they will still believe.

ray011 wrote: »

so don't tell me what the user said - i'm not a school child - i know what he said or do you think because i believe in god i am not educated enough to know what the user said.

I do not recall calling you a school child... or suggesting you beleive in god... or that this means you are not educated.... are you sure you are replying to the right person?

I only remember suggesting that you have misinterpreted, or misrepresented, what the user said.

nozzferrahhtoo

philologos wrote: »

Helix: If atheism comes with education why are people who go to church more educated than the average in Australia for example?

Because the user is saying that atheism CAN come with education, not that it is a necessary pre-requisite. Saying that higher education correlates with a higher frequency of atheism is not even CLOSE to saying that higher education means you will be an atheist.

Seachmall

philologos wrote: »

Helix: If atheism comes with education why are people who go to church more educated than the average in Australia for example?

Education and church attendance actually have a positive relationship [on an individual basis], the more educated you are the more likely you are to attend church (presuming you were raised to attend church).

Source [PDF]

On the other hand intelligence and religious beliefs have a negative relationship.

Source [PDF]

However there are a lot of other more influential factors than intelligence that dictate someone's religious beliefs.

philologos

Seachmall: Both seem almost contradictory to me in a sense which is why I would say that it's inconclusive rather than anything else.

Seachmall

philologos wrote: »

Seachmall: Both seem almost contradictory to me in a sense which is why I would say that it's inconclusive rather than anything else.

Not really, education and intelligence aren't necessarily directly related. For many people college is a formality and I think an interest in your course is far more important than your intelligence. I've nothing to back this up but I'd suppose that the majority of people with degrees are of average intelligence, or just above.

The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis is, obviously, only an hypothesis at the moment but it's been gaining a lot of ground in the last few years. It's explained a lot of seemingly contradictory studies and evidence for it is continually building.

nozzferrahhtoo

philologos wrote: »

Seachmall: Both seem almost contradictory to me in a sense which is why I would say that it's inconclusive rather than anything else.

Not contradictory at all if you grant one simple premise.... some people go to church without a belief in god.

A very simple and obvious premise yet it very much clears up any confusion as to why an increased education could correlate with BOTH increased atheism and increased church attendance.

There are other factors worth considering however such as other pressures on people to attend church from social pressures, to career and opportunity pressures (being seen not to go to church may close off some opportunities for example).

In short however, trying to equate belief in god with church attendance is going to continue to lead you to many errors and much confusion.

Addressing the correlation between increased education and increased atheism by referring to church attendance certainly will not clear up anything for you.