Religion is nothing more than a cult to control naive, brainwashed people into believing all the ridiculous garbage in the bible.
Well, I think itâd be fallacious to say that all religion is evil or all religions are evil.
Yes, there is violence, evil and whatnot deeply rooted within religion, but I think it has to be admitted that some people are able to benefit from it. Whether this is psychologically by filling all gaps with God and the certainty of eternal heaven and endless life, all of this can increase your serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitter levels. And then, pray and the disease will be gone, the problems will be gone etc.
Religion makes life easy, according to me. You do a crime, youâll be forgiven if you seek forgiveness. But yes, the evil side of the religion cannot be ignored. My ex religion, for example, can be described as having an extremely good and an extremely evil side. Both contradict each other. God is described in Islam as someone All-Loving, the Unconditional Friend, the All-Merciful but then at the same time as Someone Who Hurts, and a dangerously vengeful entity who is capable of throwing you in hellfire for eternity.
The latter can severely damage your brain by increasing cortisol production and regular anxiety and depression. A child who grows up fearing hellfire and sins is bound to try to do his best to avoid all of it. But in doing that, he may become an extremist and end up exploding himself in the public to gain martyrdom.
According to me, religion contains both good and bad. If you followed everything of it, youâll end up killing yourself or ruining your life completely. If you follow it partially, youâll end up as a liberal believer and youâll believe in God, love Him, chill in life, and do all kinds of stuff. Youâll satisfy your conscious by seeking forgiveness and with the certainty that all believers of your religion will ultimately end up in heaven, even if some have to be briefly cleansed in hell for their sins before enjoying eternal paradise.
The presence of contradicting verses in holy books is what drives me to conclude that religion may be both evil and good. But this is because religion evolves. When Islam started out, it was extremely forgiving and such a peaceful religion. But then as soon as Muhammad gained power and more following, he ordered killings of all those who opposed him, waged wars and introduced verses which ordered all Muslims to kill disbelievers wherever they saw them.
I can neither call religion all good, nor all evil. It is a fucked up combination of both.
Black swan fallacy I think.
Only one religion needs to be shown not to be evil to invalidate your claim. I think your claim is unfalsifiable
As a serious claim, itâs a fatuous generalisation. If only because the Abrahamic faiths are only three religions of thousands around the world. A couple of major religions (Buddhism and Hinduism) do not even have a formal canon.
It is my position that such universal behaviour has a purpose. IE it meets important human needs. It is we atheists who are in the minority, with about 14 million of us world wide. There are estimated to be over 30,000 religions world wide.
There is a strong correlation between religion, poverty and ignorance. As societies becomes more affluent they become more secular, no longer needing religion, and church memberships/attendance drop dramatically. EG in: Australia, New Zealand, all of the Scandinavian countries, UK, much of the US, although the US is a special case. It has a group of poor states such as say Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas which retain a high level of quite primitive literal religiosity.
All religions have enormous potential to be used for evil, and most of them have been at one time or another.
Thatâs about as far as Iâd go toward agreeing with you.
Opinions are like assholes, we all have them and they all stink. Thanks for hanging yours out the window,
What is âEvil.â
What constitutes a âReligion?â
What if a person only believes the non-ridiculous stuff in the Bible?
Um, Are we making the assertion that âAll religions are cults?â The word âcultâ as I understand it, has a definition that clearly sets it into its own sub category of religiosity apart from what most people call religion.
What if religion is a business? Does that mean it is something more than a cult to control the naive.?
Are we having an influx of Angry Atheists spouting off with inane assertions lately?
I thought this was a group for atheists not christians,
Iâm not angry at all. If youâre going to talk about religion or cults, then save it for church.
The debate section is open to Christians, and others.
No matter where I go I canât get rid of this religious bullcrap.
This âgroupâ? This website is a community for atheists but theists can also join and debate.
I donât understand you. Who here is Christian?
This an open forum. Anyone who obeys the rules is welcome
Well, your posts give a pretty good imitation of a half baked angry atheistâŚ
Not sure what you mean by that. Have you some how formed the mistaken impression that you may tell others what they may post?
Right now, we have two I think. Usually easy to spot by the content of their posts. We also get the odd Muslim⌠Also easy to spot.
Obviously you are under the mistaken delusion that you can just assert inane bullshit without ever being challenged and that qualifies you as an atheist. Itâs one thing to not believe in a deity and quite another to sound like a blathering idiot while doing so.
Demonstrate every religion on the planet is a cult.
Demonstrate every god ever mentioned does not exist and that there is no possibility of anything futuristic that could pose as a god.
Distinguish between a religion and a cult for us while you are at it.
You have asserted that this thing called evil exists or that some things, ie religion, are evil, Please give a description of the word as you are applying it to the world around you. How do you know something is âevil.â How do you tell âevilâ from ânon-evil.â
No one has to be a theist to recognize blathering ignorance posing as factual opinion.
Yair all that evil garbage, like donât kill or murder, donât steal, donât tell lies, donât judge othersâŚwell, of course its all evil shit borrowed from other codes of living predating the bible by thousands of years, but then apparently copying isnât evil but then thereâs my favourite bit of evil, donât go bearing false witness against others.
*Sigh.
âŚand donât forget the woo-wooers
Most religions are trash. Like Christianity for example. Most Christians cannot think for their selves without quoting scripture. Christians break their own rules and consist mostly of hypocrites who point the finger. Atheistâs have better ethics than most religious people who follows the bible.
A religious person needs the 10 Commandments not to kill. They have to be told by a priest or their bible to help their neighbor. They must be lectured by a priest to do just about anything. A Christian believes in fairy tales, gods, and bringing back the dead. Atheists believes in things that are actually real.
Atheists are good people. We donât have to be told these things every Sunday. We donât need a book or need to be told by the village idiot on what we have to do with our lives. We just know what to do with our lives. Weâre normal people. We donât go out and preach that youâre going to hell or never never land for trying to live your life.
Enough Generalizations in that to float your boat?
Wouldnât it be a sad thing if religious people actually âNEEDEDâ the ten commandments not to kill. Isnât it possible that they donât like killing and they just use the ten commandments as their excuse for not doing so, as they have thought no more deeply than that which they have heard from the pulpit?
We all do the Christian bashing thing at times⌠What you are going to find on this site, perhaps a bit different than some of the other Atheist sites, is that people here are more interested in FACTS, and substantiated claims. There is a heavy reliance on logical fallacies and rationality and it tends to be applied equally across the board. (To statements made by the Atheists on the site as well as the Theists.)
Your comment touches upon the idea of an internal vs. external locus of control. Many of the theists report an external locus of control, as reliance on âwhat god says, what Jesus would do, or what the Bible says.â To some degree, this is true.
At the same time, they are using their own internal barometer, to wade through the mess, we call the bible, and make choices regarding which verses to hold dear and which to discard. This is an internal process.
As a skeptic atheist would use facts, logic and reason to support a position that is held internally, a theist holding an internal position of say⌠be kind to others⌠will use scripture, bible quotes, and religious dogma or faith, as the âfactsâ that support their position. It is still an internally held belief system but it is supported with the mythos of Christology.
Is anyone really externally controlled by a few words in a book? Do the words have that kind of power over people? There might be. When I consider the fact that the words carry with them the threat of eternal damnation, eternal torture, and the threat of Hell. I can see how someone might actually be swayed by external sources. Probably not the 10 commandments though.
Anyway, just a thought on your post.
Perhaps another way to look at it:
Without exception, every religion has been invented by human beings.
Also without exception, every religion reflects the society which invents it and the people who practice it. Unsurprisingly, religions tend to evolve and even fade away as societies evolve.
EG : YHWH began as an ancient Israelite Storm/war god with a wife called Asherath. From there he became the unmarried cunt YHWH of the Torah .At that time, the Israelites were still an illiterate tribe of nomadic bronze age goat herders. Their lives were especially nasty and brutish and short. Over time, things improved and YHWH became the only god and creator of the universe. That would have been around the time Israelites stopped stoning people for adultery, selling their daughters into slavery, or killing recalcitrant children.***
There are simple, pragmatic reason for religions, which are virtually universal. This also my position: That human behaviour common in large groups especially, always has at least one purpose. It meets important human needs. Religions help people face the fear of death. They can provide the illusions of meaning and control in life. Religions can provide a sense of community. Even today, such community membership can be a matter of life or death .
IMO organised religion is also essentially parasitic. It thrives wherever there is poverty an ignorance. IMO that is why that for Christianity the biggest increases in numbers, is found in impoverished areas such as South America and parts of Africa.
As societies become affluent, there tends to be a decrease in religiosity. Human beings still have at least some of the same needs. They tend to be met through different world views. EG from secular humanism.
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*** Mosaic law consists of 613 commandments (mitzvah) not just ten. They are known collectively as the mitzvot and can be found in the Torah. (the first five books of the Old Testament)
Below is link to all 613. Have glance through it, and see how different life was then vs now.
My mother and father, and their parents were good people. Honest, sincere, and hard-working people who devoted their efforts in raising their families and serving their community.
Ah, the cri de coeur of the angry adolescent. Also a favourite of mine and my friends when I was about 17, against âthe oldsâ (my mother was 38 at the time)
Took me a long time to realise that hypocrisy is part of the human condition. If most people told the truth most of the time, society would cease to function.
Iâm with Cog; my devout Catholic parents were good honest people who did the best they could. Of course they were not perfect. Name one human being who is, or was. I canât remember ever meeting a person I thought was even on the same planet as completely good.
Although Iâve met some real dead cunts in my life, so far havenât met a person I thought completely bad or evil
About 20 years ago, my best friend in the world shared an observation with me. That older people are a lot more accepting of each other than young people. Iâve found that to be generally true.
One of the more obvious ones is group/crowd control. Much easier if people to be controlled can be coaxed into voluntarily following a set of arbitrary rules, under fear of being smitten or being condemned to an afterlife in agony.