Is it time to pass religion? Is it holding us back now?

[Steeplerot]

Originally posted by: raildogg
sonz, people like you will never understand religion or how religious think. It is way to difficult for you to grasp the idea. But religion is all about trust and faith.

From someone who considers fox news fair and balanced that is scary.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I think that too many people in this thread are over-generalizing. There isn't anything wrong iwth religion per se, and I say that as a professing atheist.

The problem (IMHO, of course) is rather the widespread lack of self-trust that finds an easy home for expression in our particular contemporary religions. People do not trust their own beings, and in doing so they build a deep mistrust of the world and the others within it.

The mistrust is a consequence of the large gap that exists between people's ideals and reality. Mistrusting their worlds, then, religious people seek to find something they feel they CAN trust. They invent a being that embodies the superlatives of their ideals: omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, everlasting. This being symbolizes the ideal relaities they can subjectively conceive but that they fail to observe in their present moment. "Why aren't things better?" they asked themselves. To answer this question, people projected their ideals onto God -- a being said to be distinct from this world -- and then deprecated their immediate realities for failing to match those very ideals.

Not realizing that God is a symbolization of human beliefs, then, unconscionable distortions often occur. These we observe in exaggerated fashion with religious extremists. Obviously, any God worthy of the moniker would not desire the deaths of all non-Muslims, or non-Protestants, or non-whites, or homosexuals. Those that believe such things are blind to the fact that their perception of "God's will" is merely a projection of their own ideals onto an imaginatively objectified concept.

Ironically, it is again the peoples's own mistrust of themselves that makes it so difficult for them to realize the facts. Dogma can provide an all-too-comfortable operational framework wherein very little need be left up to the individual. He can then feel safe to act when he is confident in his adherence to dogma. Of course, inherent in the dogma is usually the dogmatic belief that the self is sinful, depraved, and helpless but for the grace of God -- hence the necessity of adherence to dogma. What a vicious spiral!

All of this is to say that it isn't religion per se that is the culprit. It is the fact that people trust dogmas over the voices of their own being. It is the fact that people have been taught to look upon their own bodies and minds with suspicion. Many people think that, left to its natural inclinations, mankind would destroy civilization and wipe itself out of existence. But what created humanity and human civilization if not its natrual inclinations?

Yeah, yeah... Goddidit. Right. Grow up. Those stories were useful when our species was in its infancy, but the time for children's tales is gone now. It is time to proclaim what is truly our birthright: self-trust and self-responsibility.

/steps off soapbox

 

[SMOGZINN]

Originally posted by: albatross

Pulled from a conversation between albatross and Cerb:

Originally posted by: albatross
any particular purpose you might define doesn`t add meaning,in the true sense of the word.if there is no god,why should man "challenge to advance, clearly needs introspection, and exploration of his/her own consciousness"?why is this a purpose more than breathing? there is no hierarchy of goals,everything is arbitrary.why should man explore his own biology?

I can not see how a god makes any of these things have meaning. Your argument leads to no meaning in life no matter if there is a god or not.
1. If there is no god nothing has meaning because it will all end someday.
2. If there is a god only that which is spiritual will survive, and everything else will have had no meaning.


you are putting words in my mouth.

No I am extrapolating from your argument. You do not have to actually say something for it to be implicit in your argument.
Number 1 and 2 seem to be the premises that your argument is based on, accepting those premises I find conclusions A, B, and C to be true.

The only thing that god actually cares about (in standard Christian dogma) is that you worship him.

never said that.

No you did not say that, this is a corollary to premise 2.
After writing it out, I find that this corollary is not even nessacary, feel free to ignore it.

These are conclusions A, B, and C that I refer to in this post.
A) Therefore there is no reason to "challenge to advance, clearly needs introspection, and exploration of his/her own consciousness."
B) Man should not explore his own biology, as that could possible lead to a loss of faith, and lost time to worship.
C) There actually is no reason to even go on breathing, as the sooner that you stop that habit the sooner you can be out of the reach of temptation.

These are all logical conclusions from your premises.

The logic is as follows:

You stated that since the universe will end there can be no meaning to life with out a god.

Originally posted by: albatross
as far as we know only the spirit can defeat entropy.we are immortal souls, or we are dust.

and

Originally posted by: albatross
but all the wonderfull things in this world will turn to dust one day.even if humanity is to colonize the whole universe,the universe wil disappear one day.
so i think we will live for all eternity or the world is ashes,imho.

and

Originally posted by: albatross
i`m talking about long term.
without transcendence we are just evolutionary accidents and sooner or later we will disappear(as a human species).

and that the only things that can actually give meaning to life is spiritual.

Originally posted by: albatross
this world can only be justified by something outside of it,namely god.

Your argument:
Anything that ends can have no meaning.
The only thing that wil not end is spiritual.
Ergo, anything that is not spiritual has no meaning.
My conclusion:
Therefore conclusions A, B, and C must be true.