Alright then, I can respect that, though I can't understand it at all.
It's no real use discussing about each other's personalities and discussion styles over the internet.
Sure you did.
What a second. I never said I didn't have the same opinion as you have on this. You claimed that I used equivocation trying to refute your point. Since I didn't counter your argument I couldn't have abused the ambiguity of the definition of religion.
I gave the opinion that religion does a lot of good, you gave some counters to that.
Sure, but you claimed I wasn't using the same definition of religion as you were. Since I was using my definition of religion independently of your definition of religion, both should have been clear from the context, I do not see any problem.
Of course not, hah. I mean only in the sense of holding the communities together. If someone uses religion to lead people to kill each other that's abuse of faith, I won't blame the tool for it's misuse.
Well, that would be the far tip of the double edged sword. We are talking about tribalism and religion enforcing tribalistic bounds. Look at Afghanistan and Iraq where people live in clans. There is still some debate in the field of antropology about this but many people think that tribalistic societies are more warlike.
It's about segregation, 'us vs them', etc.
I've read of why the Roman Empire persecuted the Christians, when that religion was in its infancy. The ideological differences ran deeper than blind killing. If the Christians believed in a different god than the accepted norm that meant they didn't recognize the divine right of the emperor, or the empire. The larger christianity grew, the more it was a threat to those in power, the more they killed christians. Perhaps the issue of killing isn't so much of religion, as one of power.
Why has religion always been about political power and why has political power always been about religion. The two are intertwined.
I oppose both. Abolish both of them as completely as possible.
For every person who is doing good or evil regardless, there are likely many more who just haven't given their actions much thought. So it's that strengthening motivation that is valuable. If religion can and is meant to tilt people in the direction of doing good, I support it.
For ethical behavior doubt is better than strenghtening. Like you say, people need to put in more thought. Religion prevents this.
The same arguement could be made against any media. Even in the name of science can people be led to destructive behavior, and we arrive to the blurry line between cult and religion (again, semantics).
No, you can't. As far as I know two physicis never killed each other over the charge of an electron. Also, it wouldn't matter. Because in science reality is the way it is. Scientists hope they are proven wrong. Because that means they will gain more understanding about nature.
Ideologies can have the same effect as religion. But if you examine closely you will see that these ideologies are often secular substitutes of religion. Eg, communism.
Yes I agree with all that, once again we're at the issue of semantics, simply put - I don't care that Einstein used the word 'religion', he could have said any of those things, I prefer to call it 'spirituality'. His choice of using the word religion is irrelevent in light of understanding the meaning he was describing, and that meaning is a difficult think to talk about indeed!
If he meant spirituality then he should have used that word. Same goes for you.
Religion for me is about supernatural claims that lack evidence and are often amazing.
I claim it CAN be used for good, and that good is the true intention. I suspect it does this more often than not.
Again, I would like you to tell me how this happens.
What I think is that the ones who started religious movements saw the ills of the world and took action to improve the situation of the poor and downtrodden,
I don't understand this. You have a supernatural idea caused by primitive superstition and then you decide to become compassionate? How does that work?
...the intention was to generally improve human existence (much like science!).
Why is a supernatural idea needed to decide to improve human existence?
Anyway, in practice religion often does the opposite. Look at Christianity in Europe 50-1500. Look at Islam in the arab world 1300+. Look at the pagan religions in Africa preventing the effort to stop HIV/AIDS. I could go on.
They were deep thinkers, they saw the difference between constructive and destructive behaviors, and the causes of those behaviors.
Newton gave up on solving a simple problem because he believed it to be divine and supernatural and thus unsolvable. Many of the leading scientists that were religious did the same.
They also recognized that the people they were trying to help were uneducated and too busy with the daily burdens of survival to reach any useful conclusions on their own, so the people had to be led. The lessons were taught in accessible ways and relied on faith, in order to be effective at all.
Do you really think people are sheep that need to be lead by an Technocracy?
Ironically the same methods can be used to accumulate power, the same power that took advantage of the poor and ignorant which the religion was going against.
Maybe you should read up on the part why Christianity in the end was adopted as religion of the roman empire.
What Einstein describes could acceptably be called religion, but try instead reading it as 'spirituality' if you must. Which could be described as a desire to generally do good, would you agree that there is such a thing as objective goodness? That is also sticky territory.
To 'generally do good' is something religious or spiritual? I consider myself to be a spiritual person and a person that tries to do good. But I don't see the connection between the two.
Also, the philosophical discussion about right and wrong is dominated by secular ideas. You cannot put fourth good religious arguments.
To remain with organized religion, it's the training-wheels analogy I used earlier. Because the poor don't have access to education, they remain ignorant and must be led.
I hope you don't mean this is really benefitial. If you are then I must assume you are just desperately trying to find a justification for religion.
Organized religion uses faith to this end, whether genuine or blind, because it is effective. Unfortunately the flaw leaves it open to abuse.
What is 'genuine faith'? How can faith not be blind?
I would attempt to describe 'spirituality' as a sense of awe at the order of the universe,
Granted. I have this all the time.
..how everything fits together so well to create life on this earth,
Surely our universe is very special. But I don't see how everything fits perfectly together. The universe at large is one big messy place totally hostile to any form of life. We have this one little planet where life has been possible and has produced interesting results.
... one gets a sense of a higher power/force/principle that would enable such harmonious existance.
Calling the processes in the universe 'harmonious existance' is something that can only be based about ignorance of cosmology. Getting a sense of higher power/force/principle is pure non-sequitur.
Even if the unverse was perfectly adapted to bring fourth life existing in harmonious existence then still it would be a pure non-sequitur.
No offence but it sounds like me that the seed of faith has been planted in you.
Really, if you think about it and ignore your blind emotional 'inspirations'. They hold no merit in such a discussion.
Of course, at this point we're into the realm of faith, if science can prove such notions it's a long way off, in the meantime the concept must exist on faith if it's to exist at all.
If something can only exist on blind emotional inspiration then what intellectual value has it? Can't we just conclude that such an idea is almost certainly false?
So, this could also be called seeing a pattern that isn't there, because of it's unprovable faith-based nature, it's pointless to try either way to prove or disprove it.
You are right. Because it is impossible. So you have this idea that came forth from emotional inspiration, so basically pure irrationality and we can't verify if it actually is anything more than that. So what to do with such an idea?
If a false positive leads to good results, the reality of the percieved pattern isn't that important, but it's faith-based nature is unprovable anyways.
The thing is that it doesn't. Having a lot of false positives just prevents having a false negative.
The problem is in trying to prove/disprove, it's a matter of believe/disbelieve. If a belief leads to good, keep it, the results are what matters. If one doesn't have a good understanding of cause and effect, they will have to be told.
Do you really think that religion can work like this? To have a faith means you are beyond trying to figure out if you think it makes you a better person or not. I think the process you describe can never happen.
Faith is a delusion. You must remember this.
Just a simple example. The Aztecs. If they believe they need to sacrifice people to make sure the sun keeps rising at dawn then it doesn't matter if it makes you a better person or not. You need to sacrifice people or else you will all die.
If religion doesn't work that way then it can't trap anyone into it's belief system. Relgion uses circular logic.
My guess is, if one were to take only the commonalities among religions, there would be no BS. Maybe I'm just seeing patterns that aren't there, but I'm more concerned with whether these unprovable beliefs are useful.
Ok, can you make this concrete. Propose your version of religion.
More like how the false belief of man flying eventually led to the reality of airplanes.
Uuh, if god can fly then that means humans can't or even shouldn't. The reason we have planes are birds. The reason we have flying gods is probably because we have birds. Angels do have bird wings? Don't they?
You seem to think that religion kindles the imagination where science is just dry and boring logic. Or at least this is the idea you seem to promote.
Look at all the scientists writing crazy science fiction ideas. It is not forbidden to have crazy ideas according to science. The point is that you don't start to believe that these crazy ideas are true.
It's because of the kooks who believe what is obviously crazy. At least, that's how I read it. Maybe his mistake was attempting to prove the unprovable. In any case, he attributes his earlier successes to his faith, so they lead to some good results.
His imagination lead to succes and his religion to failure. The fact that Einstein claims it was religion doesn't prove it gave good results. And even if it did in the brain of Einstein then it doesn't really mean anything for humanity as a whole.
An interesting thought. Perhaps those who began religions never had intended it to become an organization, but for somebody whose intention is to teach people to live good the desire to reach more people would make sense. Though the organizational aspect may have been a contruct to attain power... If the core message can achieve good results, then it still has that capacity for good.
People honestly believe in their superstitions. I think the point is that people that are in position of power, mostly elderly men, are in the position to pass on their superstition. This is how religion today spreads through the population.
Religion is not for me, but because it's useful to others I support it. Even if it's only a delusion, if it can help people lead contented lives then it's achieving a good result.
Ok, I also support the right of people to have delusions. But I also try to speak for reason and education. But I oppose the right of someone to force their delusion unto children.
People can harm themselves. But they should not be allowed to harm others, especially not children because they have no resistance against this.
Thanks for the link to the video. My connection is pretty slow, I may have to find another computer to watch it. I'll check it out.
You need to watch the video because it makes my main point.
Topic: not another religion topic!