IMO Christianity is now and has always been a death cult. IE the promise of a far greater life after death.
Not the same with major eastern religions, which still teach reincarnation.***
In the early days of allowing gentiles, the majority of converts were the powerless.
and marginalised, specifically women and slaves. The concept of an afterlife was not a feature of many religions at that time. If it was mentioned at all it tended to be vague, such as say the notion of hades. (the place where all of the dead dwelled)
Worth remembering that the concept of an eternal hell was invented by the church gradually, over centuries.
***Hinduism is believe to date from between 2300 bce to 1500 bce. Siddartha Gotama, called the Buddha ,was an Indian prince who lived ca 4th to 5th century bce. The religion he founded is based on Hinduism.
Itâs interesting to look at some of the great ideas/ spiritual leaders which were extant around the time of the Buddha, from India, to China ,to Egypt to Greece.
Iâm not sure I agree with your assessment. âCircle of life is genetically programmed bs and every athiest knows itâ. Iâm an atheist and I donât.
The passing on of genes and the subsequent evolution of all living things, that are not already perfectly adapted to their environment, is not thought of as a circle of any kind but as strictly linear. Where do you get the idea that there is any circle of life? More importantly, why do you think it is genetically programmed bullshit? It is not possible to genetically programme an idea into people.
I can tell youâre angry but I donât really understand what it is youâre angry about.
Update. I have read your later explanation and I see where youâre going. But I still think you have it wrong.
Passing on your genes is not really any different than teaching your children and passing on your knowledge. The idea that you live through your children is nothing more than a nice thing to say.
But religion does not codify this idea as an afterlife. For religion, an afterlife means something entirely different.
Unless I have missed your point completely, I see nothing wrong with passing on your genes or your knowledge and continuing the generations is surely better than mankind ending with me and you. This is totally different to religions pretending to know what happens after we die and making up fantasies about heaven and hell.
Wow, good comments. I will get back on the weekend. I think we are We ARE genetically and hormonally programmed to procreate, to love and care for our children; this IS in our genes.
I am not angry, sorry if I came across as such, just trying to get some conversation going.
Circle of life as in the lion king, but you are right, I misunderstood how most people think of the circle of life. I meant it as living through our children and grandchildren - we are gone but they carry on for us while we go to the great beyond.
Society pushes this idea throughout history. Longer life/immortality is usually presented as horrible - frankenstein, dracula, and so on.
OK, I understand now. Thank you. I think itâs your use of âcircleâ that is confusing. As I said before, what you describe is strictly linear, but it is true, we are indeed programmed to procreate. Richard Dawkins explains it very well in his book The Selfish Gene. From the perspective of our genes, we are simply the means they use to keep going.
I donât see long life/immortality as attractive or something to aspire to. It seems probable that we will extended the human lifespan to around 120 years over the next 50 years. The average lifespan on earth has already increased massively over the past 100 years and medical science is only getting more effective. for me, that is as far as I would wish to go.
It wouldnât matter how great your life was, if you lived forever, or even for a couple of hundred years, eventually you would get bored. Boredom is a strange bi-product of our evolved brainâs capacity for abstract thought. As far as we know, animals donât suffer from boredom; they are either too busy trying to stay alive or have limited capacity. But we have evolved to the point where we adapt our environment to suit us, rather than the other way around and so we end up with nothing to do.
Another problem with longer life spans is purely practical. Governments around the word are already facing the problem of an increasing number of people living longer. Until and unless, medical science reaches the point where people are still fit enough to work at 90 or 100, they will be a burden on the state. and even if doctors can keep us fit enough, what work will there be for us to do? With fewer jobs for younger people due to automation, who will employ the elderly? And fewer jobs means taxation will decrease, reducing the funds available to support an ageing population.
Iâm 62 now and I hope to get another 25-30 years but no longer.
âand a chicken is imply an eggâs way of making more eggs.
Slight digression; Although Richard Dawkins is apparently a competent evolutionary biologist, imo he is overrated as a thinker and philosopher.
I read "God Is Not Greatâ and saw Chris Hitchens on YouTube a lot. Pretty good journalist and debater. But not much of a philospher imo. I found âGod Is Not Greatâ ignorant, facile and bigoted.
Iâm not sure Dawkins would ever describe himself as either of those things. He is an excellent scientist and a very good explainer of science. Beyond that I think his opinions outreach his ability to speak of them. For one thing, he looses his cool too easily.
For Hitchens, I would agree with bigoted. He certainly didnât pull his punches. But Iâm not sure about facile or ignorant, unless you mean in the insulting sense, rather than unaware⌠He was extremely well read and had the ability to recall so much of what he had read. I met him twice. The first time very briefly and the second as part of a small group in a hotel bar, talking long into the night over too many drinks. I found him very funny, very easy to talk to and not in least arrogant or self important⌠I think he was an important figure for atheists and paved the way for others who carry on the work. The only area in which we disagreed was politics. He was much too far left for me and Iâm no conservative.
The Hitch was a Marxist when younger, and never fully lost his admiration for Marxist ideologies. Marxism can be appealing in an abstract idealistic way, but sadly it doesnât work.
My own attitude towards communism, and to a lesser extent socialism, is a slightly more cynical one, and youâd think being such a fan of Orwell the Hitch would have been slightly more cynical of these as well. Though Orwell was left wing socialist of course, but having witnessed the catastrophic betrayal of Marxist and socialist ideals by leaders like Stalin, Orwell was less idealistic I think. 1984 is still one of the scariest books Iâve ever read, and animal farm one of the most compellingly cynical comments on humanityâs innate greed and selfishness.
I mean in the insulting sense, specifically what I see in his ignorant and bigoted stance on Islam and Muslims. ( my position on this matter is not a consensus here.)
Have never doubted his intellect, I simply take issue with some things he said/wrote/.
There are only two public intellectuals Iâd like to meet. (1) The late Gore Vidal and (2) Prof. Brian Cox.
Thatâs why we kill the females.
Thatâs why the Paris Churches have pits full of dead babies.
Thatâs why sacrificing the pure blood of a baby in the corner stone of a building will ward off evil and make it last.
HORSESHIT! Programmed my left butt cheek!
Ancient Rome, Japan, Phoenicians, Korea, China, Aboriginal Cultures, American Indians, Ancient Greece, Native Alaskans, All of Islam, American Settlers. ALL PRACTICED FORMS OF INFANTICIDE.
I fully agree about Animal Farm and, like the best fiction, itâs scary because its lesson is so close to real life.
Marxism and its companion communism run against human nature. Iâve forgotten who, but someone once said, that for communism to work, everyone would need the intelligence of George Bernard Shaw, in order to use intellect to overcome natural desires for improved conditions. Precisely as you say, humanities innate greed and selfishness.
âWhen the âhuman natureâ argument is invoked it means âI canât think of any other argument other than Iâm right because thatâs how people areâ. But whereas âitâs only common senseâ is rarely used by anyone much above the level of a radio talk show host, the âhuman natureâ argument carries enough prestige to be used by economists, politicians and even some social scientists.â
âRight from the start, once the human nature argument is invoked, one should point out that no one has managed to prove the existence of an eternal, constant and unchanging âhuman nature.â
âThe human nature argument is about as scientifically defensible as the belief that the Earth is flat or the âtheoryâ that wealth âtrickles downâ from the rich to the poor. It deserves not only to be countered but to be crushed underfoot.â
Communism does not work⌠People agree to work communistically. What we know is that no version of communism has yet worked.
Oh yes, definitely two guests for my fantasy dinner party.
My opinion on Islam is pretty much the same as it is for most religions. That the people are just people and, in the main, want nothing more than to live their lives in peace and prosperity. I know a number of Muslims, who differ i their aherence to the faith, but all are good people who abhor the image that has been cast upon the religion by a handful of crazies.
It is the ideology of Islam which is flawed and that has stemmed from the stark contrasts between verses of peace and verses of violence in the Quran, coupled with the philosophy of martyrdom and the conviction that Islam must be spread and defended by any means necessary. It seems to me that Muslims, like the followers of all religions, have to cherry pick what they want and need from their holy book and its surrounding commentary and dogma, in order to live in the modern world.
I do agree with Hitch when he said that all religions are bad but they are not all bad in the same way at the same time. In the west, we like to believe we are superior and that Christianity, whilst being imperfect, is at least not full of violence, jihad and terrorism, but Christianityâs history is soaked in blood and oppression, itâs just that we have had 600 more years to get past that side of the religion and the Enlightenment to show us another way and to erode the churchâs power.
Yes, that is precisely my point. Communism does not work.
Let me try to defend my argument before you have me hanged, drawn and quartered
When I speak of human nature, I mean the very basics. The desire for shelter, food and to procreate. But also the next level of human nature, built on the basics, a desire to achieve more. A better shelter, more food, ultimately to improve ones life in any number of ways.
For communism to work it is necessary for everyone to work, not for their own individual requirements but for the benefit of all. But humans are individuals, not drones. There will always be some who work more or less than others and there will always be those who want more. In microcosm, this means working hard and being ok with the man next to you getting the same money, food, property as you even when you see him doing as little as possible.
Communism can never work without an authority to ensure either everyone pulls their weight or that no-one speaks out against the inherent injustice of the system. And the inevitable result, the prime example of our nature, is that those in power live better lives, thus negating the communist ideal. All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
