The Glade 4.0

Thanks for demonstrating point 3, the devolution into fallacy.

See, the problem is that you want to ignore "people did it" while disallowing any positive impacts as originating from religion. This unwillingness to consider historical facts and context demonstrate severe bias. Given the severity of your insistence, that implies emotional context.

What's particularly hilarious, albeit disappointing, is that this reaction is similar to most atheists when they reject religion, and that it ultimately undermines your point.



In addition, I note you've opted not to address the scientific advances made by the wholly religious cultures of the Greeks and Romans.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I don't disallow positive impacts. I have already stated that religion was a naturally selected evolutionary social construct that, at one point, definitely provided some advantage to the human species. Its effect in more recent millennia is grossly net-negative, however.

As for the Greeks and Romans, I haven't given it much thought. I suspect their treatment of their gods as fables and storie -- fluid, without dogma, certainly would not have limited advancement the way the closed dogma of other systems did, but it still provided superstitious explanations that would have inhibited investigation. The big difference is they didn't block out challenges to this. I suspect it was the polytheistic nature of their religions preventing the formation of a single dogmatic definition of right and wrong. They also didn't have an authoritative church meddling in the affairs of people. The Philosopher (in their time, a word synonymous with scientist) held more sway than the priest.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Actually, there were a considerable number of Greek mathematicians who were executed for heresy for espousing the belief that that the square root of two was an irrational number, due to the association of numbers with gods. An irrational number would not have had an associated god, therefore the very idea of their existence constituted blasphemy.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Ha.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

http://www.amazon.com/God-Created-Integers-Mathematical-Breakthroughs/dp/B001FA23KE

It's in the chapter on Pythagoras, because the Pythagorean Theorem was integral (tee hee, I'm so punny) to both the initial persecution and heresy burnings, and the formal adoption of irrational numbers into the core of mathematics that occurred later on after everything was ironed out.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Which has not been demonstrated except through Bare Assertion. It should be noted I'm not denying the negatives you're claiming. I'm pointing out that you have exclusively presented negative arguments, which it should be further noted are qualitative not quantitative. Indeed, the net impact may itself be unknowable.



I'd disagree with the idea that they were "without dogma," but let's consider that a given. For the Romans during the Imperial times, at the very least, priests may have had more power than you are aware of. One of Caesar's primary requisites for office was his allegedly divine ancestry.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Those negatives really don't need to be explained further, we've done it to death in other threads. They're obvious, and each would have pages on it. I'll summarize a few:

Religion causes additonal wars. - Dawkins explains the reasoning as "by generating certainty." You know you're right, they know they're right, and god told you both. Regardless, nobody can legitimately deny the number of wars that religion has played a factor in. Those wars may not have been wholely fought for religious reasons, but without religion, many would not have been enabled.

Oppression of {insert group here} - Religious rationale has been used to hold women subject to men for thousands of years, in almost all major religions. Religions have been used as rational to subjugate other races and cultures, or even eradicate them, simply because they are different. Can these things happen without religion? Absolutely. But that's not a relevant argument. Murder can happen without street gangs, either, but that doesn't mean street gangs don't cause violence.

Religion inhibits scientific advancement. - Even today, religious objections prevent or slow research into areas that some faiths find morally objectionable (stem cell research, as a simple example. Khross will say that this doesn't count because stem cell research hasn't been productive... but first of all, even if this is true, maybe it hasn't been productive because we haven't been doing enough of it, and secondly, even a negative dead-end result is progress, which we also haven't had.) More insidious than this, however, is the loss of so many potential brilliant minds to superstitious nonsense. How many potential Einsteins or Hawkings have we lost to creationism or the like? I suppose we won't ever know the full extent, but even one brilliant mind lost can set us back millennia.

Psychological Trauma. In particular, in regard to sexuality, but it extends further than that. Religion has turned humanity into a serious bunch of neurotic freaks. (See Sex & God, by Darrel Ray).

Religion causes us to waste resources. - The churches are a parasitic middleman that eat people's time and resources, that could be spent on more productive things.

What does religion give in return?

Moral standards? I'd argue that many of those moral standards are a negative, but even so, this implies that religious morals are somehow superior to areligious ones. The idea that you need God to tell you what the right thing to do is is, frankly, insulting. If you'd be a murdering animal without faith, you have bigger problems.

Charity. Yeah, except the strings attached. Mother Teresa was no saint (see Penn & Teller)...she did incalculable harm to India, with few real benefits at all. Furthermore, the amount of money given out by churches in secular charity (No you don't get to count missionary work as real charity - the people didn't need your religion) is very very small in relation to the amount of resources they consume. Had that money gone through secular Charitable foundations which are far more efficient, far more would be accomplished.

What about a sense of belonging, comfort? Religion doesn't provide anything there that secular organizations can't do and do better. Furthermore, what's the point of comfort that is based on a lie? "Ignorance is bliss?"

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

So your stance, effectively, is that any contradictory statement is irrelevant? That doesn't seem conducive to discussion to me.

No, my stance is that it is not a contradictory statement. Just because other things can cause a problem does not mean that one identified cause should not be addressed. I am discounting "Tu quoque" argument before someone makes it. Religion causes (X). Other things can also cause (X). That doesn't give religion a free pass for causing (X), it's still an issue, and no less of one. It's just joined some bad company.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I'm not asking you to explain them. I'm point out that it's all entirely qualitative statements, which the rest of this post demonstrates.

You're using subjective factors and qualitative factors to make a quantitative statement about "net impact." You can't really cross that threshold with certainty.

You can state what you believe though, and that's the whole element of the atheist's position on this issue I personally find hlarious. It comes down to belief.

Net impact of religion is probably unknowable. I'm not sure why that's a hard concept to agree wtih, except that it undermines your case.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

The net impact of religion is pretty clearly visible. None of those things is subjective. They're binary, "true or false" overriding issues that reduce human scientific advancement and adaptability for survival; if even one were true, would damn religion pretty badly. But they all are. Meanwhile, none of the positives significantly increase those things.

I missed a pretty big positive I hadn't thought of:

Religion, despite all the knowledge and art it has destroyed, has also been responsible for comissioning and preserving so very much of it. I'd love to get into the vatican libraries someday and see what treasures they hide there that have never been shown to the world. But regardless, that one is actually helpful to human advancement in ways that the others are not.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Unfortunately, though, all you can present as evidence that religion causes any of those things is opinion, well-educated opinion that I would often agree with, but nevertheless opinion.

At any rate, most "religious" wars can be explained with other causes aside from religion. You can also, likewise, explain the oppression of groups with factors aside from religion. Religion, also, was the primary source of education and learning in Europe in medieval times.

As wasting resources goes, you'll have to define what a waste of resources is, as well as what you consider to be productive. I doubt you can find a satisfactory definition for either, but in all fairness, I'm a semi-agnostic nihilist, so proving the worth of anything to me is a little difficult.

Your argument about religion and morals rings false given the above statement. Just because other things can, in fact, teach morals, doesn't mean you can ignore the positive relationship that religion has to morals for the majority of people who follow some form of religious teaching.

In reference to sex and religion, you seem to have a particular bone to pick in that area, which is its own discussion. The attachment of puritanical views on sex and religion is primarily a New World phenomenon, and therefore, can be attached more to North American culture than purely to religion.

But where it comes to traumatizing others, I would condemn the people who do such things and refute the statements which would say such things, but I wouldn't condemn an entire religion because some fanatic has seen fit traumatize others with its teachings.

I generally agree with you on charity, and refuse to donate to religious charities particularly for the reason that it goes toward some conversion effort.

If another human being finds solace and comfort in the church, then who are you to attempt to take that away from them? They are, in no way, harming you or society in any fashion by hosting a bake sale and meeting with their pastor when going through troubling times. It is relatively easy to ignore the normal, reasonably healthy people who are helped in countless small ways by religion and focus on the atrocities committed in the name of the same religion, but that doesn't mean that those small benefits didn't happen. Likewise, I'm sure you've not found the same sort of peace and community in religion that others have, I haven't found it either. But just because I don't find it there doesn't mean others can't, or shouldn't be able to.

As for myself, I choose to view religion the way I view almost everything: There is a lot of good, and a lot of bad, and I take exception with anyone trying to characterize the discussion as though only one or the other exists. Fanatical devotion to the condemnation of religion is as healthy and useful to society as fanatical devotion to a religion, and the persecution of the religious is no different than any persecution perpetrated by religion.

From another standpoint, there's a sort of saying in poker: When someone acts weak, they're strong, when they act strong, they're weak. The more you bluster about the negatives of religion, the more it comes across, at least to me, that you're trying to convince yourself more than anyone else. One would suppose that if it's so obvious to you that religion is so awful, it should be that obvious to everyone. To me, it's obvious that isn't the case, and therefore, the matter cannot be as simple as you want it to be.

So, you're just going to stick with Bare Assertion.

Fair enough, there are plenty of fallacious arguments in any religious debate, but you shouldn't continue to harp on the religious side's ability to use reason when you're ignoring it yourself.

Everything you listed is both subjective and NOT "true or false."

Using the example of religious institutions being "more wasteful" than secular authority: this a qualitative statement, and this not "true or false" but subject to variations of degree. Furthermore, you've failed to substantiate the claim through any metric.

That said, I'm not trying to get into the nitty gritty details and down into the weeds. Instead, I'm just trying to show you that your argument, as with any atheists, requires qualitative and subjective belief to support it. Not quantitative and objective facts.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

You don't need statistics or numbers to prove something. If you watch a car drive past, you can state with a fact that the car runs. Nothing I've stated can be argued with anything that doesn't amount to "Black is white."






Of course they have additional causes, but without religion, they would never have happened.



Church donations first go to church activity - clergy, churches, missionary work, conversions. Real charity work is a sideline for the church. They are in the business, first, of making more believers.



Without religion, there is less war, less oppression. Religion isn't the sole cause of these things, but a significant contributing factor.
Without religion, people still have just as strong a morality as they do with it - and furthermore, it's better focused. No more are they worried about who is doing what with which body part, but on things that actually matter.



Not at all. The villification of sex is something that existed in ancient Israel, and continued throughout europe. It happens in Hinduism (yes, the same religion that gave us the Kama Sutra), and even Buddhism. I linked Sex & God in another thread, I really recommend reading it.



Except it has been integral to these religions teachings for thousands of years.



I didn't say that was harming society. I said it was of dubious benefit. I understand, most of these people are "not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."



Seeing and experiencing what religion does... I do not understand this. Religion is basically just authoritarian rule-making based on imaginary fables. I think there can only be benefit from pushing back the veil and exposing it, helping people think rationally. I feel the same way about superstitions in general, the concept that Keynesian economics is a sustainable system, environmental alarmism, union entitlement, and the idea that a government "nanny state" can make people better. People need to know. I know the vast majority of people will still fall back on their fictional crutches, but reading or listening to well-spoken people like Stephen Fry, Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, and so many others eventually helped me completely drop the idea that there's any evidence for God or merit to religion. Even though some of their arguments are flawed, the totality of them have an undeniable truth to a rational thinker. And I keep reading. I keep watching debates. I keep looking for the religious counterarguments that ring true when viewed through a critical and rational eye. Long ago I begged the world to prove God's existence to me. A decade later, I'm convinced that, while God can never be disproven, nobody has ever shown a shred of empirical evidence for their own religious beliefs. It's all pixies in my garden. And the more people learn to think like that, the better off they -- and the world around them -- will be. Perhaps someday someone will prove the existence of a creator-being in a rational, logical, scientific way. At this point, those who have trained themselves to let their rational mind rule their thought process will accept it, or any other concept that is supported by logic. The same cannot be said for today's faithful.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

So, are you saying, that it is possible, that all money collected through church coffers is used for the promotion of secular charitable work unrelated to religion?

I doubt any church would agree with this statement.

The counter, that "some money collected through church coffers is used in ways that do not promote secular charitable work" automatically means it is more wasteful. All the money that goes to a dedicated secular charity is used to help further their charitable cause. (This doesn't touch on efficiency after the fact, but merely the purpose that such funds are used for. Assuming the efficiency of both organizations is equally good or bad... let's say 50%. The charitable organization might lose 50% of its donations to efficiency issues, but the church only earmarks, say 20%? --Is that too small? Too generous?-- to secular charitable causes, then loses 50% of the remainder to efficiency.)

It very well is a binary thing. If you point to the good charity work the church has done, all you need to do is think how much more would have been done if every cent of every dollar donated was used for such charity, rather than merely a portion of it. The church isn't an enabler of charity, it's a middleman taking its cut.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

No, I'm not. And I'm pretty sure you recognize that.



Your premise is flawed, because "waste" is a subjective term. Sort like, say, calling a politician "crooked" is subjective. If you were to say, instead, that religious institutions gave less to non-religious charities than secular institutions give to non-religious charities, as a proportion of gross revenue... that would be objective, and provable (on a case by case basis, although probably too hard to measure in aggregate). How much gets "diverted" to "religious" causes really doesn't matter, the impact of a donated dollar matters.

If the religious institute were to "divert" less but operate more with less overhead, they could very well be less "wasteful."

The point is: you're chosing (whether voluntarily or through involuntary bias I can't say and wouldn't presume) to use subjective phrasing and standards to judge these matters. That's flawed, and lacks logic and reason.



Again, this is a flawed premise. Every entity, religious, secular, or governmental (which could be a mix of the two former) is a "middleman taking it's cut." The only potential direct charity is for you to go give your time and/or income to an individual in need. Human civilization, however, makes it hard to the identification and matching process to occur between those who have and those who have not. Therefore, "middlemen" arise.


You seem to think I have a problem with some of your conclusions. I might or might not, but my problem is more with how you got there.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

No, you're attacking the semantics, rather than the argument. For example,



...is the same thing as saying it's "more wasteful when used to make charitable donations." You just don't like the terminology being used.

I also do not think that "calling a politician crooked is subjective." If you can point out corruption or dishonesty, then he's "crooked." As a consequence, the vast majority of them are easily shown to be crooked (dishonesty to the public/voters), and i suspect those that can't just haven't been caught. It's a "crooked" business.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Correct, I do not. Specifically because it's subjective.



Incorrect. I can legally call a politician crooked. Doing so would not be slanderous, specifically because it is subjective. If I were to say that a politician is a "Liar" or "On the take" or some other provable (or disprovable) fact, that would be objective.


Look, words have meanings. Wasteful is an overly broad appellation subject to qualitative factors and personal definitions. If you want to get into actual debates about logical outcomes and analytics to get to (your phrase) "net impact", you have to get into objective phraseology and word use.

Period. That's how logical and rhetorical debate work. And despite what people think, is why semantics are important. The semantic discussion sets up the actual debate itself. This is why contracts, laws, and any framework for a debate or true logical discuss initially sets up a framework for definitions, phrasing, and context.


Again, the problem may or may not be your conclusions, I'm not arguing that. What I'm arguing is that your method to arrive there is flawed.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

One term is not "subjective" and the other "objective" when they both mean the same thing. The worst you can say is that one is more precise than the other.

Which might matter, if this were a formal debate. This, however, is a conversation. And your semantical arguments come up petty. "He's didn't get 'all wet. That's subjective. He was sprinkled with 1523 milliliters of dihydrogen monoxide."

Your statement and mine are the same thing. You just phrased it differently, but we said the same thing.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Not really. They just undermine your argument to the extent that you cannot successfully retort.

And the "this is just a conversation" argument is pretty weak, considering you're attempting to use your "ultimate" logic and reason to verbally attack any religious person on the planet. Usually, if I'm going to verbally attack someone, I'd like to be on solid footing.

Perhaps, instead, you shouldn't relay on hasty generalizations and bare assertions?

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Most religious dogma has survival at its core. When you strip religious dogma of any spiritual encumbrance, the various social, moral, and behavioral rules present center around long term survivability for the community that established such dogma.

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The rules center around long term survivability of the religion, not the community.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

If the community doesn't survive, the religion doesn't either, now, does it?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not necessarily. God killed the entire planet sans Noah and Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. came out fine.

There are elements of both to be sure. The 10 Commandments is a good example. Roughly half are devoted to preserving the religion and half are devoted to preserving the society of the time.