Your views on religion?
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Visited by: 158 users
Original post
Posted by Zealot644, 24.01.2012 - 06:03
I'm young, so maybe I dont know shit. Either way, here's a stupid kids thoughts ^^
I am interested in opinions on having a religion, not having a religion, detesting religions, etc from metal listeners points of view.
To keep it brief:
Things I like about religions:
-Set of rules or philosophies to live by which we adapted into modern society.
This can give people rules to live by that are generally enjoyed by people.
-Amazing historical works and definitely amazing stories.
Not much to say here besides the obvious. I would like to say they are great works of "fiction" but that would mean I would have to openly deny any gods or the likes. Take in what you would like from that.
-Can help people feel like they have a purpose during and after life.
Live your life and die? Or live your life and then go to a so called dream world? Which sounds more appealing ^^? Not to mention we are afraid of death as it is one of our great 'unknowns'
Things I dislike about religions:
-Fanaticism (Including trying to force religions upon others)
Brainwashing, obsession, whatever. I feel the number of people who take it too seriously is far too high - I consider those in this category to be weak minded.
-Wars (Directly related to fanaticism)
Same as above. Weak mindedness.
-Intolerance (Related to the previous two. Basically, the nonacceptance of any religions but one's own)
-Hypocritical at times
-Ignorance of modern day science.
Many years ago when religion and god was 'law' we were okay with that. Our knowledge of the universe was relatively limited and there were many great wonders to us, very much like today. Back then we decided "I dont understand this. I shall call it god." but with today's knowledge of many different things I dont think it is entirely acceptable to stand behind that same shroud of "Oh, it must be god" when we have scientists who are working very hard at making the universe around us make sense and to unlock its true potential for the human race (As destructive and stupid as we can be).
-People still thinking that without books such as the Bible or the Koran we wouldnt have society today in relation to morales, values, laws, etc
To me, saying that humanity is incapable of doing anything on our own without dusty old books written by nomadic desert tribes thousands of years ago is quite simply insulting.
My viewpoints on the matter?
I will try and keep this as unbiased as possible, but that is prettymuch impossible with an opinion. Anyways, I feel that religion is good and bad in many ways I have already described. My personal view on whether a person should or shouldnt believe in religion comes down to a couple of considerations which I feel are of utmost importance.
-There has been absolutely zero legitimate proof that an all mighty being(s) exists that created the world and universe as we know it.
-Scientists are finding some absolutely amazing secrets within the universe around us. Despite this, we haven't even scratched the surface of everything out there nor have we been able to prove that there wasn't some sort of being that created everything as we know it.
-As we have learned, intricate things REQUIRE intelligent design.
-If we were intelligently designed by something, what made it, and it, and it...
-The concept of suddenly 'existing' or even the concept of 'existence' is still far beyond us.
-We still cannot describe the 'human condition' of conciousness with any clarity.
TL;DR - Personally I think that you are a fool to either:
A)Believe entirely in religion without ever questioning the existence of a celestial being who nobody has ever been able to prove exists.
B)Believe entirely against religion when it has not been disproven by any legitimate means.
IMO a person should be:
C) Undecided, In between, both, etc. You may enjoy aspects of religion and believing in the purpose that it gives you for various things in life, pray to god, etc, but you do not mindlessly follow. And, as a modern and intelligent human, you should question an age old belief that has no completely legitimate proof of its existence but keep in mind that there is no legitimate proof of its non-existence.
Anyways, this has been on my mind a lot recently and I figured here might be an okay spot to discuss it and put out my thoughts on the internet. I'm sure with what I wrote I stepped on a few toes (apologies) and I hope if I did, you come in and debate it. The dawn of the internet is one of mankind's greatest triumphs and should be used to its full potential to advance the human race through the absolute complete sharing of knowledge and opinions. Things that are discussed now could lead to all that much of a better future for your children and mankind.
| Troy Killjoy perfunctionist Staff Posts: 21306  |
(Carried over from the Islam thread.) Written by deadone on 01.07.2014 at 08:20 Figured this would be a better place for the discussion at hand.
---- "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
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| Enteroctopus Posts: 155  |
There are two opposing forces in religion that I think inevitably must be in constant conflict, which is what keeps these faiths "alive," as opposed to ancient Egyptian religion which is just archeaological or whatever (no longer evolving, and no one outside of Nile really is interested in it very much, lol). Those two forces are: Purity, as in maintaining the traditions and teachings, keeping the religions consistent over time. This is necessary for many reasons, but the most important is probably so Christianity doesn't turn into Billy Bobianity and some guy saying he is Jesus telling everyone to go kill everybody else. Wait? That actually happens, but only on a small scale. A governing body like The Roman Catholic Church has systemic problems, obviously, but they tend to be the same types of problems today as always. Corruption, sure. Fighting with other religions (turf battles I would say). What it probably won't do is devolve into some type of other thing that is totally unpredictable. It's the same flawed beast varying only slightly over the decades, with the occasional Great Schism or Vatican 2. Practicality as in taking what is useful and kind of conveniently ignoring the rest. Most Catholics I know are very practical in their practice. They go to church, pray and all of that, but birth control? Catholics take some birth control! This is important because something like the RCC just cannot evolve quickly enough to keep up with reality. The problem here is people start sort of doing whatever they want, and where do you draw the line? "Thou shalt not kill? HA!" If you start picking and choosing the parts you want to follow then at some point you have people pushing extremes and bad things can happen because they aren't listening to the authorities enough, and you lose consistency and it really does devolve into some weird, secular chaos. A religion that is too traditional is static. It dies because eventually consistency becomes obsolescence (as in Egyptian religion, like Ra and Osiris). A religion that is too all over the place turns into a cult and grows so rapidly its like a cancer. Or maybe I'm just full of shit. Probably.  Edit: I got thinking about Islam after I typed this, and I think what we are looking at there is the religion itself is at a different phase of evolution than Christianity. Christians have realized, for example, that there are gay people around (well, 98% of them have, anyway). By and large, I think, a greater proportion of the Islamic world is more conservative in terms of accepting all of these things, so they tend to freak out in ways that Christians did maybe 300-400 years ago. You have secular Muslims who are pretty much chill with everything, drink alcohol, eat at Wendy's, but they aren't getting all the headlines. Unfortunately for them, and the rest of us, you have a large number of these violent idiots like ISIS/L doing a bunch of stupid shit because they take some extremist ultra-conservative view of it. I bet if we could look at a crystal ball a hundred years from now the proportion of psycho idiot ISIS/L types would be a lot smaller, basically a fringe like the 700 Club and everyone would simply laugh at them. I hope that's the case, anyway. I also feel like resource-based economies are volatile and tend towards polarization (power concentrated in a few people at the top). He who has the oil tends to treat everyone like shit, so life is pretty miserable in those places. Even in the US oil is a destructive force, I think. US is diversified, though. We have Tech, for example. What else does Saudi Arabia do? It's a damn desert. Not only is Islam younger and more conservative, its population is concentrated in basically worthless areas where a handful of people sit on all the wealth. That's a problem.
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| Fulcrum Posts: 63  |
Its something that was needed before globalization occurred and absolutely harming human advancement in today's age. Without it, we may not exist today but with it - we may not exist tomorrow.
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| Metren Dreadrealm Posts: 1331  |
I'm just going to quote Christopher Hitchens and say that the metaphysical claims of religions are untrue. There is nothing that in my opinion even hints at the existence of god or gods or anything supernatural for that matter. There is no evidence for and tons of evidence against creationism of all types. I am also going to quote Richard Dawkins and say that the universe indeed looks exactly like what we'd expect if there was no design or purpose behind it. I also dislike religion for its almost supernatural (see what I did there?) ability to twist things around. I don't see how I as an atheist can be seen as arrogant for accepting that there is no higher purpose to my life given by a superior being and that the universe really doesn't care about me, but how some religious people feel they are humble for believing that they are the crowning achievement of a creator and that the universe exists just so they could exist within it. Religion has also (more so in the past) highjacked the concepts of morality and spirituality, which is both wrong and ironic, as the holy books of major religions have little to do with either one. Why should someone, who has fixed beliefs that are often based on poor reasoning and evidence or no reasoning and evidence at all be considered "spiritual", while a skeptical-minded person, who rejects religious claims, but is open to all new evidence be considered non-spiritual? Why should someone, who is willing to accept a human sacrifice to absolve their sins or the responsibility for their unethical actions be seen as more moral than someone, who doesn't accept "Jesus Christ as their personal savior"? My second major reason for disliking religion is the fact that it can and has and still does make people justify or even participate in actions that should be morally unacceptable to a sentient social species, who have evolved a concept morality. Most people probably view the old testament in the light of "that's the best they could come up with at the time", but I've also known people who justify the slaughter of entire nations, sometimes down to the last infant, that the bible describes. According to the holy book, some virgin girls were also kept as sex slaves. Would an otherwise ethical and moral person even dream for one second of attempting to justify genocide of that kind were they not religiously motivated to do so? I guess that's it really. I dislike religion because it teaches falsehoods, twists wisdom into foolishness and foolishness into wisdom, moral behavior into immoral behavior and vice versa and it preys on people's primal fears to enslave them with false promises and exaggerated claims. I absolutely do not hate your average moderate religious person however and I will always defend a person's right to freedom of religion, so long as that freedom doesn't infringe upon other people's human rights. What's truly sad about all this to me is that life doesn't have to be meaningless, if all religions are false and there is no higher being and set purpose. Doesn't the freedom that comes with taking the responsibility to act, feel and think for ourselves actually offer a more beautiful way of life? The universe doesn't care if we live or die, but we do and we are a part of the universe, we are a small part of the cosmos that has evolved to understand (at least to some level) itself and the rest of reality. If we accept reality as it is and don't allow comforting (or not so comforting) falsehoods to distract us, then we have a better chance at improving all of our lives. There is beauty in the world, there is kindness and there is always hope too, I'd argue. No human being is all-powerful or completely free to do whatever, we have a canvas of limited size in front of us and the supply of colors isn't endless, but our minds and hands have quite a lot of freedom to choose what to paint and in what style, there is no bigger hand forcing us to all paint the same picture, unless we allow religious convictions to become that hand.
---- My one-man project's Bandcamp with free downloads: https://dreadrealm.bandcamp.com/
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