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Religion. The root of evil?

Aaaaaatheist 5 Mar 25
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21 comments

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7

No, people can be total shits without religion. Religion does give them cover for being total shits, though.

1of5 Level 8 Mar 25, 2019
6

Let’s break this down mathematically.

X=√ EVIL

E=2.7182...
V=Roman numeral 5
I=Roman numeral 1
L=Roman numeral 50

X=√ 2.7182 x 5 x 1 x 50 = 26.06...

The root of evil is approximately 26.

26, you bastard!!

What's the root of pie? Wiz!

@Aaaaaatheist 33

but that's always my answer to any odd question. And often,right.

@Savage You didn’t show your work though.

@indirect76 You're obviously not a wayseer then,

@Curt3900 Isiah 45:7

5

Human Nature. Religion is just the perfection of controlling people's fear of the unknown and manipulating it for money and control.

Quarm Level 6 Mar 25, 2019

The Cathlics used to pay for early parole out of purgatory?

@Aaaaaatheist The Catholic Church to me is the master of distilling the essence of religion as a controlling force in the service of secular power. The saints were invented to make Catholicism more palatable to the Central and South American natives who worshiped their ancestors.

4

Evil is the root of religion.

4

A tool of evil ~

Varn Level 8 Mar 25, 2019

Catalyst?

@Aaaaaatheist I’ve thought this an adept description:
Religion; To the ignorant, true
To the educated, false
To the rulers, useful

4

No Bible believer could deny it.

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

[biblegateway.com]

Wow!

2

I think that it's more likely that religion is a symptom of evil rather than the root of it. It's like swelling at the site of an injury. The body tries to respond to a problem but the response can, itself, be a problem. Societies have responded to evil by trying to set up a specific set of morals & rules (religion). But this can lead to new problems of evil.
Of course, I don't think this is a whole picture of religion & its place in society but it describes an aspect of the subject.

For the record. I believe that we need a "brand new testament"

2

Perhaps not, but is often used as an excuse to perpetuate evil.

2

Yep.

1

A wholly owned subsidiary of the military-industrial-entertainment complex.

1

Just an tool some people use to justify or ignore or spread it.

MsAl Level 8 Mar 26, 2019
1

Religion is a consequence of a biology evolved to recognize patterns and avoid false negatives even at a cost of false positives.
Once the patterns are structured and have shown to be efficient (of course our god is true, we grew more than the neighbor group and defeated them), it starts to aggregate more and more rules, bureaucracy and become a structured religion/government. That is the best that a monkey with anxiety in its early civilizatory states can do.
Of course as the monkey progress and society became more complex and the problems to deal with changed, those false patterns and the biases starts to hold the progress and to oppress the monkeys that are not in control of it. The society becomes less stable and efficient and is substituted by another one that could adapt and review its false patterns. Like the change in power between Europe and middle east that are dancing and changing who is the power every half millennium or so since the start of their population.

So religion is just a bunch of false (or not verified true at least) patterns that are systematized and with changes of time start to hold society back.
Always keep in mind that our natural state is fighting for survival, sick, in the brink of subnutrition, living in societies of a few dozen recognizable family members. Any improvement over this cames from social organization and until a few centuries ago all this social organization came from religion.

I agree with most of what you say but there is no real evidence that early natural societies resulted in people "fighting for survival, sick, in the brink of subnutrition". Those were, even then, most probably quite rare events, even though they may have been the dramatic events which affected survival and therefore had the greatest effect on evolution.

@Fernapple we could only become society when we passed this natural state, and our capacity to follow patterns and build social relations and rules and culture (knowing that a stone axe is better than your fist is a pattern recognition) iswhat took us out of this hunger condition to society condition.

@Pedrohbds Yes that is all very true, but there is no evidence of regular hunger. Most of the stone age societies contacted in the last century show no signs of regular famine, or more than occasional disease, before contact. While there is a mass of evidence that the main dip in standards of human nutrition occured just after the adoption of agriculture, so much so that the average size of humans went down as a whole, and skeletons begin to show the signs of malnutrition much more frequently after that. Human history is not just a simple ladder of upward progress on all fronts.

@Fernapple Read about it too.
You are right, most of the environments that humans lived could sustain a considerable population with wild variety of plants and animals.
But lets say, disease was common, but we died fast (child death) instead of struggle against it XD

And we were few in numbers because of it, only a few survived. Those who survived were not in bad condition but at the cost of the ones that didn't.

@Pedrohbds Agreed, and as I say I do not dispute your main point, only that as writen your final paragraph gave an impression of factual inaccuracy on that point.

1

Evil, imho, in that it suppresses human sociological advancement and scientific research ,etc, it also purveys ideologies of divisiveness, ethnic vilification, misogyny, hatred towards those who either follow a different system of belief or have no belief what-so-ever, etc,etc.
It also seeks to restrict personal development, personal rights ( the right of a woman to choose what happens to HER body for example), it not only seeks to have influence/control in Legitimate Governments but actually EXERTS control as we are ALL aware.
It has, historically, been the causative factor in more Deaths than the last 2 World Wars put together and still continues to do so unabated.

Thank you!!!! Very well put. I will be showing people your quote in the future. PS I'd also like add that it teaches people NOT change their mind. And NOT learn things that are available be known. Your insight is appreciated!

1

It can be used for good also bad depending on what verse u read . The Bible contradicts itself so much it all comes down to what verse one reads and also how it’s interpreted. Personally I don’t know why people need to read a fictional book to want to do good thangs.

Most people often only 'cherry-pick' their bible readings.
IF one actually reads the verse both before and after the so-called ' good ones' one will more than likely find that those verse ARE not as good as they first seemed.

1

no. just a tool.

g

0

Nah. Gotta put that squarely at the foot of "humans". Of course humans created religion, and it has, in it's many incarnations, certainly committed more than it's fair share of evil.

0

Agreed. Religion is fundamentally an expression of humankind's narcissism. We create God's that love us and support us as we do evil selfish things.

0

I'm glad that a simple question, created such an intelligent conversation! You guys are awesome!!

0

Maybe, maybe not. But it does try to define some of it.

0

Greed beats out anything else, including religion, for that distinction.

0

One of them.

Carin Level 8 Mar 25, 2019
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