why's that? Religion has always been the most effective tool in teaching large groups of young people morals, respect for others property, lives, dignity.

If there was no religion everyone would believe in whatever they wanted, and would do whatever they wanted, That's anarchy.
We'd go back to living in caves eating raw meat.

Nonsense. Prison inmates are more likely to be religious than highly educated people.

"morals, respect for others property, lives, dignity." ... why does this require religion ? Prisons are full of religious people.

"why do morals require religion" that's a good question, I would say because religion teaches love for god and respect for his creations, sanctity of life. This is the traditional view all Protestants, Jews, Catholics in their faith. So Western religious people are taught to respect all creation. And the rest of the morals taught are based on this. But if there is no god taught then what's the reason to respect creation? Who gets to decide what is moral?

In the 20th century we saw how that turned out with the Bolsheviks and their material dialectical world view. 20 million slavs starved to death. And the Soviet Block came never progressed.

As for Prison Inmates being religious, of course they are religious! They are in trouble, most everyone is religious when they are in trouble.

Any more questions? :)

And all of that is working out smashingly for Western Civilization, isn't it?

Pull your head out and look around you.

All religious beliefs seem pretty stupid once enough time has passed. For example:

“The sun god Ra had sexual intercourse with himself so he could spit out of his mouth the god Shu, god of air, and the goddess of moisture, Tefnut.”

That seems pretty stupid, right? But somehow: “An immortal God had a son with a mortal mother, and that son needed to be murdered in order for us to go to heaven, and we must accept him or be forever dammed” is still accepted by hundreds of millions of people.

There are plenty of beliefs every bit as crazy as anything in Mormonism.

Some people thrive according to the social environment they choose. If they choose a group of loving people who are respectful of others (and their property), I'd count that as beneficial to society. My examples would be Mennonites I have associated with, both in Toledo and Seattle.


Then consider Mormons; there are distinct types/categories of Mormon people, the TBMs who follow authorities, regardless of any reasonable - rational sense of ethics or morality. Next is 'good people' who just happen to be Mormons (because of birth or marriage, etc.). There are many in between.

We easily observe that many Mormons live a very legalistic form of life, I'm not sure that calling it 'religious' is accurate.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2019 11:06AM by GNPE.

in b 4 ~ psalm 14 ~

I wouldn't say "stupid." I would say that all religious/God beliefs are equally irrational. That is to say, not founded upon reason or evidence.

HH =)

Stupid is as stupid does.

How do you explain hardcore Atheists who end up deeply religious? Crazy AND stupid, or something else?

please tell us about these "hardcore Atheists" who became religious.

my cousin says that he is religiously atheist

i just made that up cause i liked the way it sounded

Devoutly atheist works for me, although recent events have me pondering a return to a belief in a higher moderator...

This we got to hear EOD!
We all really do look up to your wisdom and wit here on the board :)

Damn it!

That was it, that was the sum total of my wit and wisdom! I got nothing else...

... Maybe after Labor Day ...

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion." – Arthur C. Clarke

“Belief achieved in the absence of facts is faith. Belief IN SPITE of facts is delusion. Ignoring facts is willful ignorance.” ??

Evidence should always trumps faith. Faith is not a virtue when it can lead people to believe all kinds of things, some good some bad.

The truth, whatever it may reveal itself to be, when supported by the evidence will always trump belief. Religions are to dogmatic to truly be "Truth" oriented. They make good social clubs as they attract people and generally encourage the good in them.

All that being said, I am agnostic as truth can be stranger than fiction and the jury is still out. I don't believe in any god as taught in organized religion.

The Open Minded Skeptic.

Beliefs don't bother me, actions (or inactions) do.

Actually, believing that something can come from nothing, and that pure, unguided random chance was the sole driving force behind the massive amount of intricate processes and information required to create, sustain, and duplicate living organisms is one of the most outrageous propositions embraced by otherwise intelligent people.

In my opinion the conceit that human knowledge can understand the origins of existence seems to me to be the height of calling us intelligent beings without qualification.

Intelligent humans who think they know or can know certain things that are possibly unknowable seems to show something lacking.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2019 02:08PM by Elder Berry.

This is why statements like the topic of this thread are silly. To make the affirmative statement “there is no god” is as much a statement of faith as the opposite. Classic atheism is a lack of belief, not a competing belief.

Right on!!!

Jacko Mo Mo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> n/t

Believe?

I am really new to this but one thing has really stood out. Since I have actually been done with the LDS church, nothing has really changed for me as far as "Moral" behavior is concerned. I haven't started cheating on my spouse, become a raging alcoholic or a criminal.

I spent a lot of years owing my morality to my religion. I can't say that it wasn't an influence but it certainly isn't now.

I'm not sure I buy into atheism either though. Saying you KNOW that there is no God is just as silly as saying you KNOW there is one. I don't know either way.

So according to this assertion, Einstein was stupid, despite winning a Nobel Prize and figuring out relativity, since he believed in God.
Francis Collins, who also won a Nobel Prize for mapping the human genome, also stupid because he believes in God, is religious.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2019 09:17AM by schrodingerscat.

Personally, I think calling genius Nobel Prize winners, "stupid" because they believe in any kind of god, is the definition of stupid,

Everyone has some stupid beliefs and some smart beliefs.
The original post seems like it would need a lot of qualifiers.

I don't think it is stupid to believe in God depending on the rationale and definition, but making a claim of definitive knowledge of a god either way is problematic.

that we cannot know everything - through even rational scientific dissection.

Consider the electromagnetic spectrum: we "see" an infinitesimally thin slice of it, the vast majority undetectable to the human being.

Consider the human experience: a scientist could write tomes on what honey tastes like to one uninitiated, but never come close to the simple immediate act of actually tasting - the point here that even rational thinking (of which words and numerals are the concrete representation) have a definite limitation.

Einstein, in his belief of god, may have merely been acknowledging there is yet something that cannot, with the limited tools at our disposal, be known.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's ". . . what is essential is invisible to the eye . . ."

troll alert...


Picking fights..........

so you all are saying you were stupid then?