So the premise is fatally flawed with tribalism resulting. And we know what happens from there.

Tribalism seems to be a necessary aspect of being human.

If you look through history and the staggering amount of violence and numbers of senseless deaths due to conversion, to gods, to religion....it doesn't quite deliver the intended goods.

And division, whether political, or religious, or linguistic, or color, or class based, can be exploited by leaders.

Patriotism leads millions to kill for country.

But each person is not always at war, so difference of opinion does not inevitably lead to violence.

Using reason means rejecting fairy tales like religious nonsense. And all religions are nothing but nonsense.

That reveals much about you, and nothing about theists.

If you think you aren’t there’s a good chance you’re wrong.

Bargle

The wise man checks the facts.

and a wiser woman knows that as well.

Oh, well...I'll keep trying.

because your response indicates the same to me.

LOL pitifully few ppl actually do that to my knowledge

I like people of faith. But I don’t believe any organized religion.

One can have faith while avoiding organized or group expressions of that faith.

What you chose to paste into your op is obvious nonsense.

It avoids making any actual argument, thus saving time.

If my faith leads me to kill people and call it "beautiful" then who can say it is not? And what difference does it make anyway, since my God told me to do it?

If you've got it all figured out, great, you don't need faith. But if someone's life, for example, is moving into unknown territory (new job, new relationship, addiction recovery, loss of someone you love and depended upon dearly, loss of your home, layoff, ... ), what or why do they continue to try, why do they decide to go forward, why hope for a better future or at least that it's worth it to go on? Faith it's going to be okay? There may be other words to describe it, but it's faith in something even if not expressed as "God".

Just because the word is abused up and down and made into a caricature, or just because it doesn't always work out, that doesn't mean faith is invalid or wrong or stupid. It's a real and tangible internal experience, as far as I'm concerned, and very essential to living as a human being.

just doing something new is equivalent to belief in God, then both faith and God become meaningless words and there must be more precise terms you can use for such a real and tangible experience.

And also is irrelevant to the OP article.

3hotdogs made the ascertain that faith requires one to believe in contradictory things and things that are not true. I disagreed and don't see faith as requiring that at all. My examples were an attempt to point at what I think are circumstances that faith plays a central role naturally (but certainly not the only ones). No requirement to believe in contradictions or things one knows to not be true. I don't find a better word than "faith" to describe it but others are free to use whatever words they choose. So if that's a non sequitur to you and you see it as irrelevant, well, ok. I didn't think I was that off topic. Point noted.

leads one to be a better person. You are talking about some sort of feeling that allows people to get up in the morning and doesn't seem to have any particular cognitive content. You are calling it "faith" but I would call it "being alive." But I don't think being alive is an act of faith, unless you need it to be. But not everyone needs that.

What was said was that people can and do use their faith to deal with stressful situations.

He said it was "essential," which is not the same as "can and do use" it. People can and do use lots of things for lots of reasons. But why is faith essential, especially when he says you can substitute other words for it, so that your "whatever" doesn't even have to be in God.

It just sounds like an amorphous mess to me, so it's hard to know what to do with it. Personally, I don't believe have a thing called "faith" or anything really resembling it. I certainly don't think everything is going to be okay.

Ergo, I'm a believer.

and get uglier all the time. Does this mean they don't have faith, since the author claims faith leads one to act in a beautiful way?

that is faith. You must believe in many contradictory things while pretending there are no contradictions. That takes a lot of energy.

And when I think of all the horrors perpetrated in the name of religion, your statement that affirming the basic belief that there is a God causes one to act in a beautiful way is laughable.

It's true many horrible things are done and justified in the name of religion. But that makes what those people are doing wrong, not faith itself. Same can be said about affirming for oneself that there is a God, I've seen it and experienced it that it can make one "act in a beautiful way". For me, I keep coming back to the same argument here... just because others abuse it and do stupid shit in the name of their religion or God, doesn't mean that faith or belief in God are wrong and inherently harmful. On the contrary, they are powerful concepts that can be used for great good or great evil and everything in between. Attempting to operate out of beliefs that are contradictory is obviously doomed to fail..that's been my experience, at least. But live and learn, as they say. These ideas don't have to stay static...nor can they.

Just look at the many times the Bible says things that are totally contradictory. Or encouraging the murder of one's children. There are just so many that if you want your memory refreshed, the internet will help.

And again, to say, that bad things that are done in the name of faith are a reflection on the people who do those things, not the faith, is itself in direct contradiction to all of the statements about how beautiful faith is, or, as the OP said, affirming one's belief in
God causes one to act in a beautiful way simply isn't true.

If Christianity doesn't work for you, so be it. I don't identify as one either. But the tools of the trade, so to speak, are not just Christian ideas. Faith, belief in a god or gods (or higher power, or blind random chance) , writings that range from the sublime to the repugnant, are all concepts laid out before us humans to do with what we will. I'd say, and I think you'd agree, that we humans have made some demonstrably poor choices with them. But that doesn't negate the good people do out of their faith and in the name of their religion. I don't throw away my hammer and saw because I made something with it that fell apart and I can't deny faith or belief because I see them as integral to the human experience. If you have a negative reaction to those words, as it appears you do, who am I or anyone to try and force you to accept them. I assume you have good reason for thinking and feeling the way you do. My observation is that these concepts still play a role in everyone regardless of awareness or understanding and we are free to come to our own understanding of them. And in my opinion, that's all anyone *can* do. Even towing the orthodox line, it's still personal.

You still get a lot of people who do terrible things in the name of their god and their religion. So to make blanket statements, as in the OP, that religion is simply a force for good, is simply wrong.

The tools comparison doesn't work, sorry. Even if you pointed out that you don't throw out your hammer and saw just because some people use those things to murder people, which would be a better analogy, tools are themselves neutral and can be used for good or evil. The problem with the defenders of religion is that they just want to brush the evil uses of religion under the rug, as if those are simply aberrations that aren't very important. Au contraire. The consistency with which religion is used to oppress, exclude, enslave, murder, and so on is pretty depressing and is hardly an aberration.

But I'll stand by my tool and project analogy. Religion is a tool that can be used to for both good and evil, from providing a framework for people to reach out and help each other in times of need, to providing people a sense of community out of which to build meaningful lives and relationships, to subtle manipulations and abuses of trust and position, to mob destruction of people and places as you've well illustrated.

You may try to stamp out religion in total because of the shit people do with it, but it's not going to go away and I think that's because it's built into our very nature - the urge to share values and rituals with "our people" (tribe, club, community, business, school, etc), it won't be stamped out by those who disagree. Mao, Pol, Joseph, and many others in the name of the state...they have tried and failed; the Christians themselves tried to wipe out the pagans, yet they still survive to this day. I get the message (loud and clear) many here believe that the practice of religion is a weakness but I don't feel that it is weakness to join with others in community and ritual practices. It's powerful and full of potential. And yes it is misused and abused in some of most horrific ways imaginable...that can't be understated in these times. But it can and is used for good as well. It's our choice what we do with it. And if criticizing it, mocking it, rejecting it and stamping it under foot frees one from the cultural brainwashing we are immersed in, fine. Whatever it takes as long as it doesn't injure others. But at the end of the day we are still left with our essential selves which I think contains the archetype (to coin a jungian term) out of which religion arises in culture after culture after culture. It's fundamental to the human experience.

One last thing about the op. I didn't get the impression that he is saying "religion is simply a force for good". Using the word "simply" I think is, well... an over-simplification. I can't speak for Guy but that wasn't how I interpreted it.

I'd clarify that to say it's a tool that lends itself to both good and evil actions. But worse, it lends credibility to the idea that there is a justification for actions that is outside our realm of understanding. That's where the real evil stuff comes from - and it's a direct result of religion.

What human concept cannot be used to justify both good and evil?

But what I'm fascinated by here is your clear acknowledgment that religion is a simple human concept just like any other, with nothing to distinguish it from things like, say, racism or sexism. No divine meaning behind it whatsoever. Welcome to the atheist club, g.

At any rate, at least you acknowledge that religion is a simple human concept with no supernatural realities behind it at all. That's great.

Pacifism is a human concept that cannot be used to justify evil.

And I agree.

There are plenty of human concepts that cannot be used to support evil.

And now you will post that false claim again. Thanks so much!

Reciprocity. If universally applied, it cannot justify evil.
Empathy is another.

Do you want me to continue to list such things?

Engineering. Agriculture. Time. Thermodynamics. Teletubbies. Omelets. Rubik's cube. Twister.

I suppose I could go on and on here.

Or just blithely dismiss as not being relevant, more likely.

So what is your solution to the problem of humans doing terrible things for a variety of reasons?

something is. Unfortunately, religionists do that all the time, saying things like "affirming one's belief in
God causes one to act in a beautiful way" with no qualifiers.

If those who promoted religion would openly acknowledge how often religion is used to oppress, kill, maim, and so on, then I'd be okay. But nope. Instead we get nonsense like "affirming one's belief in God causes one to act in a beautiful way."

Sorry. Not buying it.

And, following your response:

If those who promoted PATRIOTISM would openly acknowledge how often PATRIOTISM is used to oppress, kill, maim, and so on, then I'd be okay. But nope. Instead we get nonsense like "affirming one's belief in COUNTRY causes one to act in a beautiful way."

Interesting.

We discuss religion here. Patriotism is another topic altogether.

Not to mention there’s really no way to know whether the “great good” someone does is because of religion or in spite of it.

Meanwhile there’s all sorts of profit and power motives for using religion for nefarious purposes and good reasons to believe religion was the tool used that made it happen.

Organized religion is inherently corruptible. People have been proving this throughout recorded history and undoubtedly before. They will also continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

There's plenty of ugly stuff in various faiths that many people act on. From "not suffering a witch to live" to executing homosexuals to shunning one's family. No "abuse" of a faith is necessary when it contains such hideous edicts right in the foundational documents.

Plenty of believers put little to no work into their faith, and they do just fine.

Thank you.

You contradicted YOURself. Do you, or do you not, know how every "person of faith" arrives at their conclusions?

Answer yes or no. Or you can try to smear me again, if you recognized that you humiliated yourself again.

But I suppose that would make me a literalist.

It's part of his standard tactic of dehumanizing, demonizing, and/or de-legitimizing those who disagree with him.

You're a literalist, you're part of a choir, you've convinced yourself, etc., etc.

how someone else would.

"So, I began to study theology again — from scratch. Who was God? Why is His existence necessary? Who were the prophets? Did God have to send them, or was it a mercy from God that He did?"

Resetting would mean looking at the world, and deciding what the reality is. That might, at some stage, involved deciding there is just one god, but we see no attempt at questioning that. He held on to his pre-existing ideas of faith, and tried to justify them.

It is thus an article written by someone about themselves, but with very little self-awareness. Pretty useless.

Winds up at the exact same place in a different vehicle.

Close mindedness does that for you.

After rebooting, i was an atheist. How about that? I actually changed. The author of the article at your link didn't change at all, but ended up in the same place as before.

A reset is a fresh start. That's what we do when we push that little reset button that requires a paper clip to activate. It restores the equipment to its original status, without the additions that have been made.

The original factory setting for humans is atheism. One must learn religion. It is an add-on program. I simply didn't install religion the second time. It was just slowing everything down and hogging all of the memory.

You posited an analogy. There's your answer.

Revival might be more accurate.

A reset should wipe everything clean, letting you avoid old programming that doesn't work.

Not wanting to hijack Guy's thread, I have started a new one:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1218301240