Why man has become a slave to religion (and how to stop it)

Religion began as a means of explaining the natural world. Man could not explain why the sun rose in the morning, why people got sick, or what held the stars up in the sky. Therefore, they created, out of whole cloth, an explanation for these events, be it Atlas holding up the Earth, rainbows being a sign directly from God, or a belief in reincarnation.

As man progressed, our understanding of the world around us improved and as a result we began to toss aside invalid explanations in favor of the most observable, easiest explanation. This is essentially what Occam's Razor entails. It is not that we are sure that God doesn't make rainbows for us, it is that science has a simpler, easier explanation for it (the refraction of white light into the visible spectrum).

How does this relate to religion? Well, go back to the texts that the 3 major world religions hold as sacred. Each one was written over 1500 years ago. Imagine how limited human knowledge was in comparison to today. It was these supernatural explanations that became established "fact". These "facts" have been passed down for centuries, with hardly anyone taking the time to evaluate critically the claims made by religion. Is it possible for a person to die and resurrect 3 days later? No, but we believe it anyway. Is it possible for a man to build ocean-going vessel that can contain two of every species on earth? No, but we believe in anyway. Is it possible for a prophet to physically ascend directly to heaven? No, but we believe it anyway.

Even after 2000 years, the reason religion has a stranglehold on our lives is because we willingly suspend our critical thinking and logic. We read the pages of the Bible, Torah, or Koran and accept, without questioning, the content of the text. This blind faith causes us to ignore or willfully oppose other explanations that are more concise or demonstrable. According to a poll conducted at the beginning of this year, less than 4 out of 10 Americans accepts the Theory of Evolution as fact. Among churchgoers, only 25% believe in evolution. Given the choice between an empirical examination into the origin of life on Earth versus a Creator imagining everything into existence, evolution offers a more precise, natural explanation for life that does not violate the laws of the Universe, while creation theory has no evidence to back up its claim (other than pointing skeptics to the Bible).

So how can we rid ourselves of our enslavement to Religion? By allowing our children to explore and discover the world on their own. We must stop indoctrinating our children in any religious scheme, not just because it removes religious freedom on the part of the child, but because we are advancing invalidated ideas (such as resurrection, forbidden fruits, and a God-preferred race of people). A child must be able to grow up in a completely secular environment. This will allow the child to find spirituality, if he so chooses, at his own pace and using the most rational logic to obtain that belief.

We have already seen the consequences of a world ruled by Religion: War, genocide, and racism all stem naturally from Religion because religions serve to artificially separate mankind into different groups, each "sure" that his religion's ethos are True (while all others are false). This sense of superiority endows man with contempt for those dissimilar from himself.

Only by removing Religion from our vocabulary can we put everyone back at the same moral and ethical values; that is, every human being is a sentient being capable of a wide range of emotions, and every human has the right and freedom to do whatever they wish, as long as their actions do not harm other humans or cause harm to be done to other humans or themselves. And to think, this obvious truth does not exist in some of our most sacred texts.

argument that those who have faith are deluded, irrational, and stupid. lol.

Here's one back attcha, just for fun. We ARE having fun here at du, aren't we? Even those of us who are stupid, irrational, and deluded. I love my life!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t1gv1zeMkY

I wont call believers stupid, but irrational and deluded, 100% what is rational about belief in a god? What is rational about any religion?

without jumping the Grand Canyon to the conclusion made by most religions.

it's the fact that religion demands that you give up your critical thinking. I do not know t what religion you belong (if any), but do you really believe that a man was granted strength that worked only with long hair, or that if I am really shitty in this life, I may come back as a dung beatle, or that a man can die and rise from the dead three days later? All of these ARE irrational. I do not require a Supreme Being in order to reconcile the meaning of life and the inevitability of death. Life does not have a higher purpose, and THAT is what makes it special.

our "rational" thinking hasn't caught up with the realities of a universe that we really know sooooo very little about. Not to mention a supreme being. We humans can be so arrogant.

Our rational thinking has taken us BEYOND the need for gods to be the explanation of the unexplainable.

I ask you again, since you failed to respond....What is rational about a belief in a god?

"Life does not have a higher purpose, and THAT is what makes it special." Can NOT stop laughing. Not AT you though. Maybe a little.

why did he let bush steal the election, twice, and ruin this country. I was a Catholic but I am becoming an agnostic more and more when I see the people that spout religion and the things they do in religions name.

to live with our choices, and even to suffer or prosper based on the choices of those around us. The view of God you're espousing doesn't leave any room for us learn, fail, learn from that failure, and grow. Yours is a very easy, but very flawed way of dismissing God.

Religious people don't have any other definition for faith. If something is faith, you just accept it, you buy into the argument that supernatural forces and powers are at work, you don't need a rational or scientific or fact-based explanation, and if you can "believe" in the magic, then you have faith, which is better than rational thought to them because it's so much easier and they can shape it to do whatever they want and not let those pesky facts get in the way.

How can you argue that faith is not irrational when that's basically how it is defined?

in anything you can't see, feel, touch, or explain? I know, I know, old worn-out question, but relevant. Having faith in forces or powers or beings beyond our feeble little ability to grasp doesn't bother me at all. I see science and fact bearing out all I believe in, but probably not in my lifetime. And I am so glad that my faith in humanity isn't based on people who have no faith.

People who have faith--in God, in a plan or purpose for this life, in understanding that knowledge and wisdom don't necessarily go hand-in-hand--are happier than those who don't. DU's discussions on religion keep reminding me of that.

Wisdom has two absolute prerequisites:
Knowledge
Intelligence

Faith = / = wisdom, and it never, ever will.

As for people who have faith being "happier than those who don't", your claim doesn't surprise me: Those with faith have no problem at all ignoring what they don't wish to see, therefore they will always be happier than those who are grounded in reality.

You know who else is always happier than most of the rest of us? Deluded people...just sayin'...:shrug:

Wisdom has an attribute that is so much more important than either intelligence or knowledge, and that's the ability to learn and grow from experience. There are many people in this world with little in the way of worldly learning, but endless wisdom.

As to seeing what one wants to see, I think I see much more of that here on du than in any church I've attended. Faith is supported by hope, and is spurred by action--particularly service to others. Faith promotes optimism because there is a recognition that we frail and flawed and arrogant human beings have free choice in our own lives (the consequences of which can benefit or hurt ourselves and others), but we're not behind the wheel. There is purpose, and there will be an outcome. It is not all for nothing. Now, please tell me how my having such faith and hope injures those who do not have such faith or hope? It does not make me superior, or make me think I'm better than anyone else. This is about being accountable for my life and my choices, about leaving this world better when I leave, and hopefully leaving those who know me happier for having shared my life.

I haven't attacked you as feeling superior or injuring those outside of your faith. At least, not yet.

I do, however, take issue with several things you have said here.

1. Wisdom IS more than either knowledge or intelligence, but both of those are required before you can gain wisdom. There is no exception to that rule, and I reject your claim that there are many people with little in the way of 'worldly knowledge, but endless wisdom.' If you have PROOF, however, I will examine it.
2. Faith is not the sole proponent of optimism, and in fact can be a source of a strange disconnected temporary pessimism. For proof of this, sit through any sermon in a Baptist church on how "We are all but Pilgrims in this land."
3. The fact that people with faith claim that they are decidedly "not behind the wheel" is no more or less than an abdication of responsibility.
4. A universe with no God or gods is not 'all for nothing.' It doesn't necessarily lack purpose, and even if it does, why does that matter to us, who are sentient beings capable of so much?
5. Faith and hope are two mutually exclusive concepts, and by your wording you make here the same mistake that many other believers I have talked to make, in that you essentially claim a world without faith is a world without hope. This is simply not true. Hope is merely the desire for a specific future outcome, while faith is belief in things unseen.

Proof of someone without education has wisdom? Huh. You really haven't met a farmer from some little town who has more wisdom--common sense and the ability to see what's really going on--than the Harvard grad you may also know? I run into both of these a lot. I grew up in big cities, and small towns, all over the country. I spent years in DC, and now I'm in a little place in Colorado. Plenty of foolish intellectuals in DC, and plenty of amazingly solid, wise small-towners here. Just my experience.

I do agree that there there's plenty of reason for hope and optimism outside of religion, but I think without the foundation of a plan, a purpose, for who we are and why we're going through all we do, hope and optimism often fly out the window during the really tough times.

What is it that you think sparks hope in those who have no faith in a larger purpose in life? It seems to me that so much becomes relative. I don't disagree that there need not be faith--belief in things unseen--for there to be happiness and hope, and I admire those who experience such. It looks to me--totally personal observation--that such hope and happiness is not as full and free and grounded as it could be. But thank goodness we can discuss such things with civility.

You see, these farmers you speak of DO have worldly knowledge, and the intelligence level to do something with it. My grandfather was one of those farmers you speak of, and the man didn't graduate high school because no one needed to back in his day. That doesn't mean he was unable to find and absorb knowledge, or that he was unable to apply it to his farming and animal training. My grandfather was a wise man. Not a religious man, not a schooled man, just a wise man, because he possessed both knowledge and intelligence, and because he was able to turn them into something more.

Clear as mud?

Knowledge + intelligence + XFactor = Wisdom, where Knowledge can come from many sources, including formal education, trade education, or self-education, or generational guidance.

In answer to your second and third paragraphs, I can't think of a better example to give you as a counter-argument than the movie Dumbo. Watch this beloved children's movie again, and ponder the special meaning of the magic feather.

Edit: clarity

Who left? The religious ARE deluded. Of course if you're one of them, I can see how you wouldn't notice nor understand this.

- After all, you're deluded, so what do you know?

Great post. May I borrow it sometime?

anytime soon? Really doubt that!

Sorry Charlie.

just that it should and needs to.

you're delusional :rofl:

If we raise our children to be open minded and do not force feed them religion, then they are more likely to see the contradiction of Religion for what it is.

to accept it by choice. Don't assume that "freedom from religion" generates happy fulfilled human beings. I stated in a post a month or two ago that we have a big family (nine children--a blended family). Some of them are deeply religious, some are not. We always taught them they were free to accept our religion (Mormonism), or any other, if they chose. But we also taught them that they had an obligation to learn enough about any chosen religion to be conversant and refrain from general stereotypes--since, heaven knows, Mormons are stereotyped to the hilt. My experience has often been that those who make the most broad, silly statements about religion generally know the least about it.

Seriously? Most children grow up believing in Santa Clause, but eventually they come to realize what the whole Santa thing was about. The thing to remember here is that they ACTUALLY BELIEVED SANTA WAS REAL!!! Why? BECAUSE THEIR PARENTS SAID SO. Religion is the same thing, only a whole circus has been set up to perpetuate the myth. Its called brainwashing.....

of children.
Get children to believe in mythical entities when they are young and odds are they will continue to do so when they are older.

i think freedom from religion was the biggest and best gift my parents gave me. i do have spiritual beliefs and practices, but i am so thankful i don't praise jesus every 5 seconds, the way my cousins do :7

1. Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night — Isaac Asimov

2. I don’t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life. — Andrew Carnegie

3. All thinking men are atheists. — Ernest Hemingway

4. Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. — Benjamin Franklin

5. Faith means not wanting to know what is true. — Friedrich Nietzsche

6. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. — George Bernard Shaw

7. Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. — Kurt Vonnegut

"Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

with Buddhism not that far behind. See eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups . Judaism is almost certainly the 6th most common religion.

For people who like to follow the crowd or belong, religion works - which gives us churches full of people who really don't go for the teachings, but for the company. This makes them very vulnerable to the types of things we see with right wing messages brainwashing the masses from the pulpit.

talking about junior high. Huh.

I will certainly give you the social and touchy-feely stuff for a lot of people. My own personal belief is that religion should shake us, make us think harder and deeper, broaden us, and make us kinder, more tolerant, and better human beings than we could be on our own. But that's just me...

going families (geez, I taught Sunday school, ran the youth fellowship and sang in the choir!), no longer attend church - down here in Raleigh, it seems to be mega churches or holy roller flavored churches, and we find more meaning pondering the wonder and miracles of nature, music, and the wonderful things in the world around us. In other words, we see God in many places, but not often in the attendees at local churches!

you have the choice to do that?

And I don't necessarily disagree with that view.

so far, and man, were they happy.

... Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation ... http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

This is not an abstract criticism of religion, nor is it a criticism that comes from some position of imagined superiority to the religious. Marx notices real suffering in a heartless world under soulless conditions, which requires from the oppressed creature both expression and protest: in a vale of tears, the human essence demands realization; it wants consolation and justification; until the human essence finds true reality by abolishing a condition that requires illusions, it will satisfy itself with fantastic and imaginary flowers on the chain it wears

really like the one with the god who threw thunderbolts.

What amazes me when I encounter someone who just cannot resist flaunting how religious and "saved" they are is that they cannot accept other mythology as being valid.

For example, my cousin, the superchristian is always talking to me about being saved, blah blah. So, last time I said that I believed in Zeus as the creator of the world. He acted like I was crazy. Then I asked him what the difference was in his mythology and mine. He did not like that one bit.

I think for many of us the enormity, complexity, and mystery of the universe is almost too much to even CONSIDER, much less understand. So we retreat into comfortable explanations of a god who loves us and cares for us and looks down on us, rather than the one who causes us to have car wrecks that dismember infants, and hurricanes that drown hundreds of people, and crop failures that cause entire civilizations to starve.

Amend the Constitution revoking freedom of religion.

Then take children away from their religious parents.

In defense of his own Franciscan vows of poverty, he took the view that Pope John XXII as a heretic and thus encountered certain difficulties with the Church hierarchy:

... At the convent where he resided in Avignon, Ockham met Bonagratia of Bergamo, a doctor of civil and canon law who was being persecuted for his opposition to John XXII on the problem of Franciscan poverty. On Dec. 1, 1327, the Franciscan general Michael of Cesena arrived in Avignon and stayed at the same convent; he, too, had been summoned by the pope in connection with the dispute over the holding of property. They were at odds over the theoretical problem of whether Christ and his Apostles had owned the goods they used; that is, whether they had renounced all ownership (both private and corporate), the right of property and the right to the use of property. Michael maintained that because Christ and his Apostles had renounced all ownership and all rights to property, the Franciscans were justified in attempting to do the same thing. The relations between John and Michael grew steadily worse, to such an extent that, on May 26, 1328, Michael fled from Avignon accompanied by Bonagratia and William. Ockham, who was already a witness in an appeal secretly drafted by Michael on April 13, publicly endorsed the appeal in September at Pisa, where the three Franciscans were staying under the protection of Emperor Louis IV the Bavarian, who had been excommunicated in 1324 and proclaimed by John XXII to have forfeited all rights to the empire. They followed him to Munich in 1330, and thereafter Ockham wrote fervently against the papacy in defense of both the strict Franciscan notion of poverty and the empire ... http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/424689/William-of-Ockham/5356/Treatise-to-John-XXII

Yawn.

If you think religion demands you give up critical thinking....then you're as big an idiot as fundamentalists.

yours is no better. Religion, or faith, and critical thinking do not go together.

Religion, or faith, requires that you accept certain tenets without any evidence.
Critical thinking, or reason, requires that what you accept is first substantiated, and also that when assumptions are made, they are clearly stated as assumptions made for either simplicity or clarity.

ETA: I find your usage of the word "bigotry" highly hypocritical.

:applause:

Suppose you are in pain, and you go to the doctor and he tells you he can't find anything wrong? Suppose you follow up on his findings with a number of other doctors (some of them specialists), and none of them can find anything wrong? Does your belief in critical thinking force you to conclude that you are not in pain?

When I talk to people who believe in god, most of them tell me that they believe because they experience god; they feel his presence. Is their feeling of god different from your feeling of undiagnosable pain? If so, how?


Also, I would appreciate it if you could go through the steps of critcal thinking that led you to conclude: Only by removing Religion from our vocabulary can we put everyone back at the same moral and ethical values.

Your analogy of undiagnosable pain being no different than a "feeling of God" is flawed.

Both undiagnosable pain and the "feeling of God" start the same:
1 I feel something.
2 I attempt to find evidence for it.
3 I fail in my attempt to find evidence.

But here is where the paths diverge:
Undiagnosable pain: Feeling of God:
4 I continue to search for evidence, 4 I claim to know God, or at
convinced that there must be a source least that there is a God,
for my strange pain. in spite of the lack of evidence.

To put it another way, let's look at the pain example. Pain is evidence that something is happening in my body. Now all I can know for certain is that I have pain, and that means that something is happening, even if that something is a chemical imbalance in my brain causing the illusion of real pain. I cannot assume what the cause of that pain is, nor can I assume that the pain is not real because I cannot find a cause. This evidence is inconclusive, and I can only get so far.

Now let's look at the "feeling of God" example. All I know is that I "feel" that there is something more in the universe, and whatever it is it may have had an impact on my life. But feelings are evidence only of certain types of brain activity, and cannot serve as sole evidence for outside phenomena. Ergo, I can only assume that this feeling has a source, but I cannot infer what that source is, or whether it even exists outside of my own mind. This evidence is also inconclusive, but unfortunately for the believer this evidence is even more inconclusive than the pain example above.

To simplify, just because we can't find the source, doesn't mean God did it.

just because we can't "find" the source doesn't mean God didn't do it. Or isn't there. I guess we just have to wait and see.

But then again, simply being unable to prove the non-existence of something is no good reason to believe in it, especially when the probability factor for that item is so low.

ZombieHorde likes to hit this nail squarely on the head quite frequently. I think the latest had something to do with a toaster turning into a spinal-cord devouring buffalo, but I think he/she might be able to explain it better than I. :hi:

Your answer is, "Yes." That's the point. The answer from any reasonable person has to be yes. When I am in pain,I am in pain. No one can tell me I'm not. And no one else can experience my pain.

You come up with a claimed distinction that is no difference at all. People continue to experience pain even though experts can find no cause. People continue to say they experience god's presence, even though other's don't feel it.

As to your assertion of how the conversation continues with a person who claims to experience god, I can guarantee that you can get a better response than that.

You see, pain is already defined as a sharp discomfort that is usually localized to a specific area of the body. Further, pain is also defined as a nervous system response.

This claim you make that people feel/experience "god's presence" is a jump to a conclusion. People feel something, but whether or not it is god's presence has yet to be determined. What you feel, since it has not been properly defined, could be just about anything. God 'may be a bit of undigested beef,' you never know.

Sorry, but that whole line of reasoning is hogwash. The cause of the pain WILL be found, eventually, and god will have had NOTHING to do with it.

... source of the pain they were in.

But, my question about pain had nothing to do with god. It had to do with the question of whether we accept personal experience over rational analysis. I believe that every reasonable person does accept their own experience. The point is, telling people who experience god that they are not experiencing what they claim is pointless. If the intent is to convince someone, the approach is counter-productive.

"Experience of God" is the conclusion, not the actual phenomenon. Example:

Thousands of years ago the Egyptians created one of the very first primitive batteries. It didn't do much, but it was capable of creating a large enough voltage potential to effect an electrostatic discharge. The Egyptians believed that the shocking sensation of this electrostatic discharge was the touch of the gods.

Fast forward to present day, when a huckster of a preacher was arrested in an airport because he was trying to get his "god machine" through security. It was the same exact idea the Egyptians had millenia ago, and he was using it in third world countries to shock people into believing in the power of his god.

My point here is that none of us can deny our personal experience, but at the same time we must be careful assigning causality to that experience. Just because you felt something, whatever it may be, doesn't necessarily mean that there is a god responsible for that feeling. Unless and until you can provide ANY evidence to support that claim, all you're doing is jumping to a conclusion about what is causing your feeling.

that that is called delusion. Using your pain metaphor, I may not know what causes the pain or any other feeling, but SOMEONE does and can tell me, and no matter what it will NEVER be god. Using god as the source of the unexplainable or to define a personal experience, IMO, is deluded.

You seem to be hung up on me trying to claim that god caused this unexplained pain. That is not at all what I am saying. I am saying that a person who is in pain doesn't suddenly have his pain disappear because a doctor(s) can't explain it. Experience takes precedence over rationality.

When you claim that SOMEONE does know what causes the pain, you are betraying a unjustiifed belief in human knowledge. It is quite possible to have pain that medical science does not know how to explain. We don't know everything; not even everything about the human body.

then I can't say anything against it. Of course there are things we don't know.

But as I said in #48, just because we don't know the true nature of everything or can't prove the non-existence of something, doesn't mean we should believe in things that are incredibly improbable.

...I don't need a religious nor a non-religious savior. I'll call you if I do.

As far as I know there is no such thing as blind faith in Torah as Jewish tradition goes so far as to repudiate those who take scripture at a face value. Torah, which encompasses much more than the 5 first books of the Hebrew Bible is merely a guide to living a Jewish life. If a Jewish person wishes to folow a Jewish life, of course.

Whether I raise my children as Jewish children or not is none of anybody business and it does not mean the child is being indoctrinated. I personally think it is important not to rob them of their heritage. Whether they embrace it or not when they become adults is their option.

I understand that religion can be used as a tool to build walls but generalizing and painting all that is religious with a broad brush sure seems like wall building as well.

then you ARE indoctrinating them. Without an unbiased counter viewpoint that tell the truth, that nothing tangible supports any religion, then you are not doing them any favors.

By raising them Jewish I am not trying to teach or prove anything to be true. Again, Torah in tradition (and, consequently, in religious school) is not taught as something that is provable to be true. Or something that you need an unbiased point of view to counter. That is like saying we need an unbiased counter viewpoint to say "Little Red Riding Hood" is fiction.

When you tell it to your kids, especially if it scares them, do you not tell them that its just a fairy tale and not real? The point is, they do no grow up BELIEVING that little red riding hood was REAL. I, admittedly, do not know a lot about Judaism, but unless your telling your kids that the torah and all your scripture is just a story and not real, well.......

Not our history. At face value, it is our mythology. If that was not the case (I mean, if certain belief was taught instead of teaching Jewish kids what it is to be Jewish) I would not feel comfortable sending my kid to religious school, for example.

And I support that. but what about some of the stories? Like 40 years in the desert? Parting the Red Sea? Etc.?

Just kidding. :-)

I mean, we celebrate Passover every year at our house and Passover is one of the most important holidays since it symbolizes the birth of the Jewish people. Do I believe the exodus story to be true? Not at all. Am I required to believe it is true? Not really. And I don't think archeology is on the side of those who believe it. But the bottom like is that people can believe (or don't believe) as they wish since there is no exodus doctrine.

Does my 6 year old believe the story told at the Passover seder to be true? I hope not and I don't think he does. But it is our story so we share it. It is our holiday so we celebrate it. And kids seem to enjoy it.

I applaud you.

In my mind nothing is impossible.

Religion and church are two different things.

Religion is the things that you hold inside or you that make you you.

Church is what you are suppose to believe.

and want to feel they share this sense of meaning with others, there will be some kind of religion, imo.