Ye Religion Thread

[QwazyWabbit]

what a terrible fucking drawing....the fucking guy doesn't have an undershirt on up top....but has one at the waist.....what are you fucking 7............

That's a wife-beater tee. Sleeveless, deep neck.

[The Dreaming Dragon]

An intriguing retrospective on the life of Martin Luther ....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXzubuENjHk

[The Dreaming Dragon]

The last post was an April Fool's joke...but this isn't!

http://videosift.com/video/King-of-the-Dead-Jesus-Christ-Saves-Mankind-from-zombies

[quadz]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/may/08/church-burning-deepens-tumult-of-egypt-transition/

CAIRO — Relations between Egypt's Muslims and Christians degenerated to a new low Sunday after riots overnight left 12 people dead and a church burned, adding to the disorder of the country's post-revolution transition to democracy.
...
The bloodshed began Saturday around sundown when word spread around the neighborhood that a Christian woman who married a Muslim had been abducted and was being kept in the Virgin Mary Church against her will.
...
The report of the kidnapping, which was never confirmed by local religious figures, sent a large mob of Muslims toward the church. Christians created a human barricade around the building and clashes erupted. Gunfire sounded across the neighborhood, and witnesses said people on rooftops were firing into the crowd.

The two sides accused each other of firing first.

Crowds of hundreds of Muslims from the neighborhood lobbed firebombs at homes, shops and the church. Residents say Christians were hiding inside. Muslims chanted: "With our blood and soul, we defend you, Islam."
....
TV images showed both sides furiously throwing stones, including one Christian who held a large wooden cross in one hand while flinging rocks with the other.
...
Tensions have been building for the past year as Salafis protested the alleged abduction by the Coptic Church of a priest's wife, Camilla Shehata. The Salafis claim she converted to Islam to escape an unhappy marriage - a phenomenon they maintain is common.

Because divorce is banned in the Coptic Church, with rare exceptions such as conversion, some Christian women resort to conversion to Islam or another Christian denomination to get out of a marriage.

Shehata's case was even used by Iraq's branch of al-Qaida as a justification for an attack on a Baghdad church that killed 68 people and other threats by the group against Christians.

On Saturday just before the violence erupted in Imbaba, Shehata appeared with her husband and child on a Christian TV station broadcast from outside of Egypt and asserted that she was still a Christian and had never converted.

Yeah...

Keep up the great work, religion!

[Acer]

Gee okay, thanks quadz, now I see that religion is bad. Not the stone throwing hotheads but religion itself.

Where's that hammer... 

[quadz]

Gee okay, thanks quadz, now I see that religion is bad.

That's good. You've taken your first step into a more rational world.

 

Not the stone throwing hotheads but religion itself.

For what you're implying to be true, it would have to be the case that beliefs don't have consequences for our actions.

But that would be untrue: beliefs do directly affect our actions.

Imagine for a moment an electrical fire has just started in your closet.  Are you jumping out of your seat right now?  ...No, since you don't believe any such fire really exists.

Now imagine the alternate scenario in which you genuinely hold the belief that such a fire is burning right now in your closet.  Without a doubt you would be springing to action to take decisive and concrete measures based on this belief.

Further, if it turns out you were mistaken, and upon opening the closet you are relieved to find no fire existed after all, this does not change the fact of how you (or anyone would have) acted while you were in posession of the belief.


As for religious beliefs, the best one can possibly say about their effect on behavior, is that when people are prompted to act based on such beliefs, sometimes they are inspired to do good things, and sometimes they are inspired to do evil things.

But it goes further than that, as Steven Weinberg puts it: "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."


If you're going to argue that the events enumerated in my CAIRO post above are neither motivated nor negatively influenced by specific religious beliefs, then you're welcome to try - but all your work is still ahead of you.


Regards,

quadz

[quadz]

Not the stone throwing hotheads but religion itself.

For what you're implying to be true, it would have to be the case that beliefs don't have consequences for our actions.

But that would be untrue: beliefs do directly affect our actions.

Coincidentally a relevant link was forwarded to me this evening, further highlighting the concrete effects of belief:

http://www.examiner.com/atheism-in-los-angeles/only-10-more-shopping-days-till-the-apocalypse

Are you rapture-ready? According to Christian media millionaire Harold Camping and his followers, the Day of Judgement is coming on May 21, 2011 (around 6 pm) and perhaps 200 million Christians will be lifted bodily up to Heaven. Those left behind will suffer torment and terror for another 5 months until the world itself ends on October 21st.

...

Camping and some of his followers have been paying for hundreds of billboards all over the country ... that announce the impending doom. And why not? Money, if they're right, isn't going to mean anything soon. Others have left jobs, marriages and families to join the hundreds of caravans criss-crossing the country to spread the word.

Some cases in point...
 
Brian Haubert, a single, 33-year old actuary, told NPR how Camping's revelations have changed his life:
 
"I no longer think about 401(k)s and retirement," he says. "I'm not stressed about losing my job, which a lot of other people are in this economy. I'm just a lot less stressed, and in a way I'm more carefree."
 
He's tried to warn his friends and family — they think he's crazy. And that saddens him.
 
"Oh, it's very hard," he says. "I worry about friends and family and loved ones. But I guess more recently, I'm just really looking forward to it."
 
His friend, Kevin Brown, does his witnessing without the company of his wife and children, none of whom believe as he does:
 
"God says, 'Do you love husband or wife over me? Do you love son or daughter over me?' There is a test. There is a trial here that the believers are going through. It's a fiery trial."

As May 21 nears, Brown says he feels as if he's on a "roller coaster." What if he is raptured but his family is left behind?
 
"I'm crying over my loved ones one minute; I'm elated the next minute," he says. "It's all over the place."
 
At a flea market in Jacksonville, Florida, a 15-year old believer tells how she has no friends her age because "they all comment on my Facebook and say that I'm crazy." It's hard for a kid to deal with that, she says, but tells the interviewer that "to be Elect (the Elect are those who will be raptured) is a very, very blessed thing."
 
Many of "the Elect" have no fall-back plan in case the Rapture doesn't come to pass on May 21st. Joel Martinez and his wife Adrienne have a 2-year old daughter and another baby is due in June, but they're not worried. Both have quit their jobs and are living on savings while they study the Bible and hand out leaflets.
 
"You know, you think about retirement and stuff like that," he says. "What's the point of having some money just sitting there?"
 
"We budgeted everything so that, on May 21, we won't have anything left," Adrienne adds. (via NPR)

Keep up the great work, religion!

[[BTF]Sigma]

http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/

[Acer]

To what degree beliefs directly affect our actions largely depends on our deep-rooted character and the situation. You can't just put the blame on the belief itself. I feel sorry for those people who seem to have lost touch with reality and who would even resort to harming non-believers. You won't hear me say that religion doesn't affect one's actions and thoughts to a certain extent (if it doesn't then you can't call yourself religious) but the extremity of them largely depends on the person, not the belief itself.
When people grow up with videogames I'm sure there will be some people who experience them on a much deeper level than the majority of gamers. When a person who was in posession of games goes out to do crazy things you can't just say "keep up the great work, videogames" as if the personality doesn't have anything to do with one's actions.
Take your imaginary scenario of closet fires. I would say if there was absolutely no possibility at all that electrical closet fires could ever exist then it wouldn't make much sense to imagine that such thing has just started in my closet. But as long as we still don't know everything there is to know about these alleged electrical closet fires that people have been talking about for ages then it's not unwise to keep the possibility in the back of your mind. But how exactly I would be springing to action and which measures based on my belief I would take still depend on my character and the situation.
Some people genuinely believe in demons, while I believe that one can drive his mind crazy and make fears as real as anything else. If noboby would ever tell their children scary stories and not ever speak of a boogieman, of ghosts and demons, I'm sure young people will still develop their fear of the dark and adults their fascination of the occult.
I'm sorry to say but I'm beginning to notice a rather fanatic, almost unpleasant side of you the soon as the subject religion comes up. Why the loathing, what has made you so anti-religion? Always highlighting the most outrageous examples or pulling out quotes and cartoons that show how weak minded people get manipulated. What do you get out of trying to make all religious people feel like they're being blithering fools? Because that's how you come across.
"If you're going to argue..."  No thanks man I'll pass, that wouldn't bring us anywhere. Like I once said here, I can't really argue on this subject with you, who lets it shine through in his writing that he feels he's the more rational person just because he has chosen not to believe. Don't forget that a lot of your views also came from other people before you. The only reason I felt the need to respond was not that I'm in the mood to debate these things but that I'm getting tired of always biting my tongue when again and again I see you jump on any opportunity to offend any form of religion. What is it good for? The stone throwers already make a fool of themselves, there's really no need to spread that kind of "news" around and try to make it look like their ill behaviour is synonym for religion. It isn't.

[Arm0r]

Acer, if you don't mind me asking, are you religious and if so what religion?

[quadz]

Acer,

Thanks for your reply.

I'm sorry to say but I'm beginning to notice a rather fanatic, almost unpleasant side of you the soon as the subject religion comes up. Why the loathing, what has made you so anti-religion? Always highlighting the most outrageous examples or pulling out quotes and cartoons that show how weak minded people get manipulated. What do you get out of trying to make all religious people feel like they're being blithering fools? Because that's how you come across.

I admit to having become increasingly frustrated over time with each new news story detailing the next obscenity perpetrated at the behest of, and in the service of individual religious belief.

Adding to this frustration is the seemingly widespread phenomenon of religious moderates--who by definition don't themselves believe the more extreme edicts in their holy books--who frequently appear unable to grapple with the fact that vast swaths of the world's population really do claim to believe the extreme statements in their holy books, and indeed do act in the manner one would expect of someone who really believes such things.

Daniel Dennett explores this discrepancy between fundamentalist belief, and what he terms moderate belief in belief in his 2007 book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

To what degree beliefs directly affect our actions largely depends on our deep-rooted character and the situation. You can't just put the blame on the belief itself.

I think the reverse is more likely: character and culture and education filter the set of beliefs one is capable of accepting as true.  (We don't get to consciously choose beliefs arbitrarily.  Try believing the earth is flat.)

Consider the history of witch trials.  Individuals who were the pillars of morality in their communities used to take Exodus 22:18 literally: "Suffer not a witch to live."

And while our western culture has progressed to where most of us now automatically reject Exodus 22:18 as incompatible with reality, today we have Christian pastors in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, South Africa, etc. conducting Biblically-authorized witch hunts.  Real witch hunts, with real consequences to the accused women and children.

This not something that can be swept aside by claiming that such beliefs are held only by a few "weak minded people [who] get manipulated."  Our own witch hunting ancestors weren't likely weak-minded; but they did believe things on bad evidence.

As of 2010, polling indicates some Four in 10 Americans Believe in Strict Creationism: the belief that God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago!  And three of the mainstream presidential candidates in 2007 specifically indicated a disbelief in evolution.

Similar numbers cite religion and specific Bible verses as the reason they believe homosexuality is a sin.

Yet these are beliefs based on scripture that has precisely the same claim to represent reality as does Exodus 22:18.

When people grow up with videogames I'm sure there will be some people who experience them on a much deeper level than the majority of gamers. When a person who was in posession of games goes out to do crazy things you can't just say "keep up the great work, videogames" as if the personality doesn't have anything to do with one's actions.

This analogy suffers from a category mistake: Video games don't claim to represent reality as revealed by the creator of the universe, any more than do the works of Shakespeare.

The stone throwers already make a fool of themselves, there's really no need to spread that kind of "news" around and try to make it look like their ill behaviour is synonym for religion. It isn't.

I'm arguing their behavior is the result of specific beliefs.

Note that the neurology of belief is now being studied scientifically.

So far, based on the result of research involving fMRI brain scans on groups of believers and nonbelievers, it is looking like the same brain regions are involved in belief or disbelief of propositions, whether these propositions are religious or non-religious in content.

That is, different brain regions are involved in belief compared to disbelief; but it doesn't matter whether the proposition in question is "Mary was a virgin who gave birth to the true son of God", or, "JFK was assassinated in Dallas", or "two times eight plus one is seventeen."  The way our brains process questions of belief/disbelief, whether religious or non-religious, is so far appearing to be functionally identical.

If nothing else, this should serve to emphasize that we shouldn't just seek good reasons to support our non-religious beliefs, we should seek good reasons for all of what we believe.

And "the Bible says so" is not a good reason to believe "there are witches among us who need to be killed", any more than it is a good reason to believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago, or that gays are sinners.

Don't forget that a lot of your views also came from other people before you.

I do try to be somewhat meticulous about citing sources to back up my claims.

If you feel I've overlooked any citations, I'd be grateful if you would point it out, and I'll correct my post.


Regards,

quadz

[|iR|Focalor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt9MP70ODNw

[Arm0r]

 

[The Dreaming Dragon]

This is almost Religious. You can almost interpret the resounding profundity of its symbolic connotations.  Almost dwell in its signifigance,ponder its presumptions,explore hidden messages within it,and what reflects within ourselves from it. Almost.

But it's ....Just......Too.........Much.

Fun,en'nit?
       

[Jesus Christ]

http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/

Yes, it's true, we do not allow pets up here. We tried it once, but they pooed all over the streets paved with gold. It took 7 hosts of angels armed with toothbrushes to scrub the doo doo out of the cracks between the gold bricks. Never again, we said.

Regards,