free12thinker

Blu

I have never claimed to be a humanities instructor. I think you did not catch the meaning of the post you are referring to.

Jayhawker Soule

You wrote ...

I see that the reference could be taken two ways, and I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Blu

First of all, I would like to address this one argument I have posted before. I do not deny that Religion is used as a scapegoat. People have been known to use "religion" to justify already present aggressive behaviors. But religion is not the cause of aggressive behaviors. If it was a cause, religion would be the only incredient that creates prejudice, war, ect. Meaning, all religious people would be terrorists (9/11) or people who in general are just filled with hatred.

Religion is therefore not a cause. Religion is a tool used like most tools. People can choose to use religion as a scapegoat to justify their negative behavior or they can use it in a positive way. But still it isn't religion that perpetuates aggressive behavior.

You mentioned many complex occurances in history and have labeled all of them as being caused by religion. You would have to explain this idea better. I will address this later.

It seems that you have taken it out of the hands of the individuals who did horrble things and put them all in a box and labeled the box religion, so it is no longer the responsibility of the individual but of religion as a whole. It seems that religion is constantly critisized because of the small percentage of "religious" people who have decided, because of the culture they were brought up in(poverty, government, history, customs and way of life etc), to become agents of hate.

Let's ask this question: Will there still be war, terrorism, murder, hate crimes, biases, stereotypes, racism, etc if there was no religion? I would say there still would be. It is in the environment and in the genes. It is human behavior.

Leaders of religious groups (because of the current state of our (western) culture, education, and building tolerance of other groups) do not condone terrorism, hate crimes, etc. Real religious people who actually follow the teachings of the Bible inparticular do not condone these negative things as well. If religion caused people to become filled with hatred then we would see terrorists all over the place in fact all Islamic, all Christians etc.would be agents of hate. Do you have any idea how many terrorists and horrible people there would be in the world if religion was the cause of all atrocities? I am talking billions. Obviously, all religious people (who actually follow the teachings of their religion) are not terrorists or filled with hatred so religion could not be a cause.

You have to study the politics, poverty, lack of a government, dictatorships, the presense of a corrupt government, intolerence because of lack of contact with other groups of races or religious groups, illiteracy, abuse, influence of peer groups of like origin.... nature and nurture (environment and genes) in order to find causes of particular nation's problems. Religion can be replicated anywhere but it is the above mentioned items that perpetuate or determine whether or not a nation, a group of people, will be violent or peaceful.

~*~*~*~
Example (on an individual scale)-

A father abuses his son and repeats the Bibilical scripture that basically says "spare the rod and spoil the child." He uses this scripture to justify his abusive behavior. Ignoring other scriptures such as "Fathers, don't aggravate your children. If you do, they will become discouraged and quit trying"

He singles the "spare the rod, spoil the child" scripture out to justify his already present aggressive tendencies because it matches his already present ideals. Well this same abuser was also abused by his father. As a result, he is an alcoholic. He also has low self-esteem, no education, depression, a low paying job, and all the stress created by these items. Would you say that this religion caused him to abuse his son because he used one scripture to try to justify his behavior or does the abuser's behavior appear to have other more complex explanations?

~*~*~*~*~

The focus should not be on religion. The examples you gave to try to prove that religion causes atrocites in the world was very weak. The examples did not prove that religion causes atrocites.

In the case of Hitler, it was obviously the result of a corrupt government and perhaps a little psychopathology on Hitler's part that perpetuated the Holocaust. Also other complex psychological factors had a hand in the Holocaust. So that had nothing to do with religion. The Isreal/Palestine conflict is a fight over land and other such politics. I don't see where religion fits into that one. You also mentioned the dark ages where the Roman Catholic Church was basically the government...obviously it was political and it was because during that time people were very isolated from each other so they had no tolerence of other religious groups.And the lack of a solid government or of justice that perpetuated rampant crime during this era. It was also a time that was filled with disease (Black Plague) and poveryt. They also lacked education.

In the case of sexism, it is culturally based. Sexism is not caused by religion. Intolerence of homosexuals caused culturally based biases and stereotypes and also, the fact that most people who are against homosexuals do not know any homosexuals (friendship... etc). People who are against homosexuals (and who claim to be religious) are also against any people who act in a sexually "immoral" way. Any type of racism, sexism, ageism, is caused by the culture.

I still do not see any of your examples as being caused by religion. 9/11 terrorism was not caused by religion but it was caused by a group of people who believed that Americans are invading their "homelands." These people who were brought up in a culture of WAR obviously could not have any other mindset other than of aggression and of terrorism because they witnessed people being killed as children, they were taught and brainwashed to kill and to hate. Most suicide bombers were brought up in a culture of WAR. In the case of the Al Quida (Taliban), little boys were taken from their homes and basically brainwashed (torture etc) in these "schools" and basically trained to become killers and haters of the Western World. Did religion cause that? I see again that it is a result of a corrupt militia government who oppressed its people. These people were also cut off from the rest of the world (lack of education because information was filtered and propaganda was administered to the people.) They were murdered by soldiers who walked the streets and these future suicide bombers/terrorist witnessed the murder of family members. Was this caused by Islam?

In these oppressive conditions where people are hanged in front of groups of people with guns.... in these oppressive conditions where little boys are brought up to be killers... in these oppressive conditions where education is a rare commodity and poverty is everywhere... what would you expect other than terrorists to come out of these war torn countries? Did religion create the conditions these countries are in? I don't see the correlation between religion and terrorism here either.

Explain to me with proof that religion causes terrorism, stereotypes, racism, sexism, hate, aggression. Give me examples to back up your views and explain how the examples back up your views.

I hope I explained this thoroughly for you. If you have any other questions or if you want me to clarify anything, please ask.

AJ113

OK, but IMO patronisation weakens any argument an individual may make.

Perhaps some clarification may be in order. You maintain that all Christians do not condemn homosexuality. I maintain that if they don't, then they are not Christian. On this basis I leave my statement as it is.

I checked back through my posts and couldn't find anything I said concerning atheists beliefs. Maybe you could show me.

AJ113

There a few fringe factions that are way off the mark in their interpretations. Some have re-written the bible to fit in with their beliefs. In general, the majority of people calling themselves Christian have the same basic beliefs, so I do not regard different Christian denominations as a problem.

Blu

The last thing I posted could also be a response to the post BRIGHID directed at me.

BRIGHID feel free to respond to my last post.

AJ113

Many people will act negatively to a negative stimulus. I think that a person who has just been hit is just as likely to hit back as run away.

Your assertion that these individual exceptions end up destroying themselves or others is not necessairily true. The most that we could say is that they have the potential to do so.

You also appear to making an assumption that most people have the same sensibilities as you. In my experience they do not. How about your experience? What is going on in the world around you at the moment?


Well I think this is pretty near the point I've been trying to make:

If there is a god, then your decision not to believe in him will not make him go away, so it can be argued that your inherent (high) morals will be the result of his presence.

If there is not a God, then in your own words, "How do I know it's not right to kill, rape, steal, assault, etc.....? " This is the question that I would like answered, too. How DO you know? What if your beliefs are wrong, not right?

I know that answers such as "If it benefits society then it is good" have already been given, but that is not good enough for me. Why does it necessairily follow that benefitting society is good? I think there is just as strong a case for "if it benefits me then it is good."

Again, I know that the reply will be something like "It cannot benefit YOU if it is hurting society, because you ARE part of society." But this just does not sit right with me. The argument in principle is fine, but take a look around you. IMO it does not apply to real life. Organised crime, for example.

AJ113

Apologies. You are the victim of a Yorkshire coloquialism. The question was not intended to mean "How do you go about defining "right"?" but "What is your definition of "right"?"

AJ113

The right and wrong was defined by Christ, and is not re-definable by men.