Goliath

Infinity Lover,

I disagree. There are things that to me are so repugnant, so terrible, so reprehensible, that hatred of them is totally justified: Religion is at the top of that list.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Infinity Lover

Hating hatred is also hatred. Piling hatred on top of hatred only leads to more hatred. It's counterproductive.

Goliath

Infinity Lover,

Untrue. I hate a very few select things, but hatred has not consumed my life. The hatred has been contained to that very small list of things. You are therefore demonstrably wrong.

How so?

Sincerely,

Goliath

Amos

So contrary to your postition humans do not have the need for a mythology but the mytholgy has the need for human loyalty because it alone is real and human life is just the illusion created by it. It this was not true a civilization could not fall as a result of religious neglect.

All you logicians, don't you find this a nitfy twist and don't you see how essence(the creator) precedes existence (the created) in this argument?

Dr Rick

Perhaps the tendency towards religiousity evolved by creating bonds amongst people that otherwise would not work together. Religion gets unrelated people to cooperate which may have provided a survival advantage over those that do not. Such a selective advantage could be propagated genetically through heritable brain traits (ie a more active temporal lobe which seems to be associated with increased religiousity) or socially (ie those tribes and civilizations that incorporated religion had stronger bonds and so were more successful than those that did not). In other words, maybe the human mind and/or cultures evolved to believe in gods, which gave early humans an evolutionary advantage.

Rick

Dr Rick

Amie, this are public fora. If you wish to keep a conversation private, please use the vBB PM feature or email.

Thanks, Rick

LordMoneyG

Yes, ironically, religion may be an evolutionary trait.

It may also one that, with further evolution, will later be "phased out."

As mankind evolved, and was able to find meaning in and the ability to manipulate certain things (growing crops, fire, etc), it was also faced with many things that it could not explain. Unnerving for a species, I assume, when it finds that it has the abillity to master some things and not others (success of crops, natural disasters, etc). So, as an evolutionary "defense mechanism," I suppose, mankind came to attribute these unexplainable events to god, or gods. Better for a species to come up with some explanation rather than collectively throw up their arms in defeat.

But, as evidenced by the members of this board, as mankind evolves, so too does it no longer need the safety of a religion. While we may not be able to control the weather, we also know that it is caused by atmospheric conditions, not the whim of a deity. It won't be until we can successfully explain the most puzzling of nature's mysteries (including those things that Christian's refer to as "miracles") that we as a species can truly "evolve past" the notion of a religion - Or, at least, the type of religion that Theists cling to.

Amie

Dr. Rick
I never said anything about keeping a conversation private, not once. I was explaining to Goliath that my comment was not a general comment applying to everyone, Goliath thought it was. I look forward to you telling all of the posters on this board who say specific things to specific people to "take it to the PM system"

happyboy thanks, of course I forgive. I do have a question though you saying you are "disgusted with humanity" do you feel this way due to religious issues alone?

Amos

Dr. Rick, you seem to think that religion is a social club and you should get that protestant image out of your head because you might agree that with the recent religious surge in N. America many people find (for good reason) that N. America is going to hell at the same time but at an even faster rate.

My postion is that if man is created in the image of God and humans are needed to procreate man it would follow that humans procreate God after their own image and this means that humans are God to the same extent they know themselves as God. This knowledge, or desire for knowledge and understanding, is the reason for the activity of the temporal lobe and this is prompted by the eternal lobe wherein we are God, or at least, wherein we are the continuity of God insofar as we can be the continuity of God. Education and lymbic orientation would indeed diminish our perception of this stimulus and it is therefore true that the faculty of reason is the enemy of 'God' (shall we say)?

God is not a four letter word and should not be shunned for its own sake. Rather, we should redirect our thoughts about the concept God see if we can find a solution in the consolation of philosophy.

happyboy

amie, the prime reason i am disgusted with the vast majority of people is because of the "salad bar" mentality believers take with their faiths: they pick and choose the scriptures/surras/suttras/what-have-you that they agree with, and ignore the rest.

amie, honey, i am NOT trying to start a flame war, but your religion has some very narrow-minded and ugly things to say about women. it aggravates me to no end seeing women preachers on TV, when their very holy text that they claim to cherish and revere states that a woman should not speak in church.

salab bar-ism is the world's biggest and fastest growing faith. my acidic comments on this site are the result of this salad bar-ism. i see believers who blatantly ignore large sections of their holy books, and i realize they'd be horrified if they knew what those holy books really said.

maybe i'm overly idealistic about non-belief. maybe my grudge isn't so much with believers as it is with organized belief. i have no problem with the idea of a God or other divine being/energy/what-have-you. truth be told, i'm half-convinced that something divine could very well exist.

but in my mind, such a divine being would be restrained by physical laws, and would not have to run away every time science reared its ugly head. such a divine being would not wilt under the light of science and reason. such a divine being would have nothing to lose by evolution being proven true, or a few billions-years-old universe.

i CANNOT believe in any established religion, nor can i ever believe in any religion yet to come down the road. religions are invented by men and women with mortal ambitions and mortal insight. a true god, should such a being exist, would be beyond ANY human ability to comprehend or communicate with.

perhaps there are no gods. perhaps there's one. perhaps there's many. but we will never know, amie. not in THIS life, at least. and it offends me to my very core that people would be so arrogant as to claim otherwise.

happyboy