QUESTION Everything I Like about Religion I Learned from an Atheist - TheHumanist.com
I love Barbara Ehrenreich, one of her books is on my nightstand now. Excellent author. In this article she says:
A couple dozen people committing suicide in preparation for boarding the mother ship somewhere is a cult, while a hundred million people bowing down before a flesh-hating, elderly celibate is considered a world-class religion. A half-dozen Trotskyists meeting over coffee is considered a sect, while a few million gun-toting, Armageddon-ready Baptists is referred to as the Republican Party.
And she goes on: And that is the philosophical basis of my own social activism. God, if there is one, has never shown a great interest in stopping wars, ending patriarchy, feeding the hungry, curing the sick, or so many other urgent tasks, which is why we have to do those things ourselves. If there isn’t a god to care for us then we have to care for each other.
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The last sentence of this post “If there isn’t a god to care for us then we have to care for each other”, fired that old supernatural neuro pathway in my brain. Isn’t that a reason why a causal scentient entity would want to remain unrevealed? The purpose being to develop our own capacity toward empathy for each other. On the other hand, and based on the harshness of the “test”, such supernatural entity could use a little empathy itself.
Markus
Level 7
Mar 28, 2018
1
Is it not ironic that fundamentalists imagine that without god we will all become utterly depraved, when the actual response is the realization that "if it is to be, it's up to me"? Or yet more deeply: "If it is not up to the heavenly wuss, it's up to us"? If community and the common cause of our humanity is all we have, then it is more precious, more to be protected, more to be nurtured.
mordant
Level 8
Mar 25, 2018
1
My response to fundies is "you need the promise of reward in heaven and/or the threat of eternal damnation in hell to NOT be a murderer, rapist, thief. I am not because I believe they are just part of what it is to be a decent human being. So who's depraved, again?"
Not all, many wars have been fought over religious to prove an inane point. The ridiculous thought that people are going to be forced into something they do not believe in. The best example I can think of is the pope forcing Jewish people onto being Catholic, then supporting Hitler and Mussolini in WWII.
azzow2
Level 9
Mar 25, 2018
2
@azzow2 For me the jury is out on whether wars that appear to be fought primarily over religious ideology, are really just using religion to cloak the real, more Machiavellian reasons. And also, on whether in the absence of religion, cynical manipulators would not find some other leverage / purchase to gain their desired ends, and the relative effectiveness of those alternate means.
The situation is murky and deniable enough that arguing with theists that theism is the cause of most war tends to go nowhere, as it's just not a cleanly "provable" assertion; arguably, it's not a falsifiable hypothesis, at least with the current datasets we have to work with.
Intuitively it seems to me that there'd be less tribalism and therefore less war without religion, but the question remains: is tribalism largely religion-caused, or is religion simply a common expression of an innate tribalism? I tend to lean toward the latter, frankly.
Everything I learned about religion was not for all the years brought up in Ireland. The land of Saints and Scholars as it was called. Well forget the Saints bit. My learning on religion started when I retired and realised the lies I had been told over the years, the lies my Dear Parents and Grand Parents had also been told, buy that wonderful institution called the Church. Lieing, thieving, perverted bastards. How dare they call us the flock, the sheep being controlled by a Shepard. Religion is another name for big business and crowd control, nothing else. James
Leon
Level 5
Mar 25, 2018
4
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