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Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Is religion good for us? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
I see the "crutch for the weak" and "intellectually lazy" canards have been dropped all ready. I will retract that. It serves no good purpose. It is an expression of anger. But faith is irrational. If one chooses this path for themselves that is up to them. The problem for me comes when it seeps out into their relations with others.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
Here's the thing: that warm fuzzy feeling is actually good for people to have. It is good way to stave off several debilitating psychological problems from stress, to depression, to reaction adjustment. Personal faith is valuable and its benefits can be seen. I was careful to single out organized religion as opposed to personal faith. Are they inseparable?
I see religion as a problem when it rejects every other religion and cannot live in harmony with the out groups. I agree.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
Does a life saved in a charity hospital cancel out a life lost in a religious war? No it doesnt. Just because I save you from being hit by a bus doesnt mean I can throw the next guy under it.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
The problem with your list, is that it's not at all clear that any of them are examples of organised religion causing a problem. Let's have a look
quote:-the Israel/Palestine conflict -the sunni/shia conflict -India/Pakistan conflict The key thing here is just the notion of different identities. Yes, in these cases those identities are tied to religions, but this is in no sense essential to create these conflicts I am not saying religion is the only cause but if we could magically remove religion from these conflicts what would be the basis for the conflict. Israel/Palestine is convoluted no doubt. The problem may be that we look for differences instead of similarities.
Even though opposition to scientific research such as this often comes from religious groups, Luddism also crops up outside organised religion. Consider the attitude of many green groups to things like GM-food. They stem from the same revulsion of man meddling in things he should not wot of, but these arguments can come without any religious terms from people who wouldn't consider themselves religious.
And this is the point I'm trying to make, I think. Your beef isn't with organised religion at all. It's with human irrationality and illiberal ideologies which are present all over the place, with and without organised religion. You're mistaking causes, I think. I agree. Notwithstanding, religion is a major contributor to the suppression of knowledge.
but I don't see any religion in the drug war You may be right. Most of the people I hear defending the war on drugs have a sense of moral superiority. I suspect that it is mostly based on economics. Nobody wants everyone to stop taking drugs. They just want you to take their drugs. So I will concede that the drug war/policy is not religiously based. I will maintain that without a religious input it would be a different thing altogether.
You're mistaking causes, I think. What would you put on the list?
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
The major negative of religion is actually not on your list at all - in fact your list consists only of symptoms of the on real problem: religion does not significantly change, because it is not at its core a rational approach to determinign the real state of the Universe. That is well said and I agree. That is religions greatest problem. The fact that it is so slow to adapt. But are symptoms not evidence of the affliction? Part of my reason for the OP was to identify the benefits of organized religion. As Stile said, take the good and leave the bad. I also wanted to discriminate between religions effect in the past and the present. What do we see now and what should we do about it?
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
But let's be clear that "getting rid of religion" is not a solution to the problem. In fact, it's a very large part of the very large problem that created the mess in the first place. You made a bunch of good points and I agree with you. I am not suggesting that we be rid of religion. That is most likely an impossibility. I am suggesting that by identifying the places where it does harm we can work towards mitigating that harm.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
How about getting rid of religious fundamentalism, in all forms? That seems to be where the real problem lies. It shows up most there but the cancer is much deeper. I agree with the idea that the greatest problem with religion is that it is not a viable means of knowing the world. All the myriad problems stem from this.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
So can we populate the list? What belongs on it? What should be removed? What goes on the list for the positive effects of religion? Is it still my list against the warm fuzzy feeling?
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
The phrase "getting rid of" has some scary connotations. Yes it does but surely there is a point where tolerance reaches an end.
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ringo Member (Idle past 411 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Dogmafood writes:
So how do you measure good vs. evil if not by body count? ringo writes:
No it doesnt. Just because I save you from being hit by a bus doesnt mean I can throw the next guy under it. Does a life saved in a charity hospital cancel out a life lost in a religious war? Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.
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ringo Member (Idle past 411 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Dogmafood writes:
At that point, does the end justify the means? ringo writes:
Yes it does but surely there is a point where tolerance reaches an end. The phrase "getting rid of" has some scary connotations. This comes back to my original question: How do you measure good vs. evil? How evil can you be in "getting rid of" another evil? It seems to me that getting rid of things (people) is the problem, not the solution. Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 348 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
So how do you measure good vs. evil if not by body count? I see what you mean. If I am a policeman who has done a lifetime of good deeds and then I murder someone. My lifetime of good deeds may help reduce the sentence but I am still guilty of murder. If I am a serial killer who saves someones life I still deserve prison. I would say that it takes alot of good to equal a little bad. At least that is what a court would say.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2105 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
This comes back to my original question: How do you measure good vs. evil? How evil can you be in "getting rid of" another evil? If someone wants to cut my head off I won't stop to consider the good/evil problem. I'll take it for granted that they're evil. Close enough for my purposes anyway. Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4032 Joined: Member Rating: 9.2
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So can we populate the list? What belongs on it? What should be removed? What goes on the list for the positive effects of religion? Is it still my list against the warm fuzzy feeling? The list exists as an oversimplification. It's rather like trying to analyze the individual adaptations of an organism as "good" or "bad" - what are we comparing it to? For example, one of the primary effects of religious indoctrination today is the propagation of moral instruction. Now, you or I would argue that the moral instruction offered by religious dogma is less than optimal, it's not the best possible system, but it is better than no moral instruction at all. On top of that, it's extremely varied - the ethics I learned from my parents as a young Presbyterian would be different from the ethics taught by, say, Fred Phelps, and we'd call them both "religious." I'd rather have someone learn "love thy neighbor" from religious indoctrination, even at the risk of possibly including some of the nonsense (not all Christians buy the whole "homosexuality is an abomination" thing, for example), than have that person receive no early moral instruction at all, or to have outright negative moral instruction. It could possibly be argued that an innate sense of empathy could serve the same goal while bypassing the possibility of the potential negative side effects, but I'm not sure that's really the case.
Ideally, I'd like to see children taught from a relatively young age about various systems of ethics, and how to rationally decide which course of action is the best possible in any circumstance under each system - as well as exposing the flaws inherent in some systems, such as Authoritarianism. Do you see what I mean? You can;t wrap this one up and say "religion does all of this bad stuff in exchange for some warm fuzzies." It does serve some objectively positive functions - it's simply the case that for the most part those positive functions tend to be not quite as good as other possible solutions. And that's without even touching the fact that there are thousands of extant religions, each of which occupies its own space on the benefit/harm spectrum for each individual topic that's up for consideration. Because religious thought exemplifies a method of thinking that is significantly inferior to more rational approaches, I think it;'s perfectly fair to say that religion is less than optimal and carries a high risk of very significant pitfalls. But I feel very uncomfortable labeling all religion as "evil" and thus lumping theocratic mass-murdering terrorists in with some Wiccan lady from New York who does little more than pray privately over some multicolored candles. Neither may be optimal, both may be irrational, but one is most certainly evil while the other is much closer to harmless.
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ringo Member (Idle past 411 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Coyote writes:
Most religions don't have cutting off your head as a major tenet, so you're not adding much to the discussion. ringo writes:
If someone wants to cut my head off I won't stop to consider the good/evil problem. This comes back to my original question: How do you measure good vs. evil? How evil can you be in "getting rid of" another evil? I'll take it for granted that they're evil. Close enough for my purposes anyway. What about fundamentalists who oppose gay marriage? How to you propose to "get rid of" them? Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.
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