Religion is for cowards and pedophiles of childrens minds

What if everyone was a nazi? Like I said, everyone would get along. What do you think would happen if everyone were a nazi?

 

I was more referring to an all-encompassing philosophy, a path of life. Maybe both sides included Christians among their ranks, but the conflict in essence wasn't about what people on either sides agreed on, it was about about they disagreed on. And that in and of itself proves that there were no totally universal beliefs being held.

If two sides are in a war and are killing each other, something obviously wasn't compatible.

 

People want to be happy and free on there own terms, they don't want to be told they must change they want to find away to be accepted for the way they are.

Now if your a bigot or say women can only be thought of as property because of the religion you are part of that counter balances what the Majority of people want.

The Aztecs(or was it the Mayans) thought a human sacrifice was required to make the sun rise, this is of course nonsense but to them it was real.

Just because some people have "faith" in something and even if they themselves believe it to be true does not mean that it is a fact.

 

Disaster. There is no forgiveness, only competition. One person trying to dominate the other by getting into a position of higher rank by any means necessary. Nazis take away individual rights, so self development other than the development of rank would be the only thing available for a person to rise up. Would you call this peace?

My point being that one philosophy is less disastrous than the other. Cooperation in a shared ideology isn't enough.

A good story to express this is in a Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror (http://www.cbs.com/classics/star_tr...id=qAsds9coGPxMzFjX6ivE0XQ4Ta3eyxJx&play=true) It touches up on a lot of what you say.

 

I feel that all of this is inaccurate. Nazi ideology doesn't undermine the fact that we are still talking about humans. What exact part of the Nazi ideology do you suspect would cause this behavior, because I'm not so sure this would be the case. Remember, there would be no "enemy states" or adversarial neighbors to conquer, because, everyone is a Nazi.

Although this is counter-intuitive, if everyone was a true Nazi, then even those living under the oppression of fascism would agree to the ideals that bind them.

What's interesting to note though, is that the complete world adoption of Nazism would in fact alter what Nazism in essence is. A key concept for the Nazi's was Militarism, and yet, if Nazism was fully integrated by everyone in the world, there would be no need for a military at all. So, the development of rank wouldn't really matter at all.

I think this really just hinges on what you consider disastrous. It's my opinion that total cooperation in a shared ideology is more or less a utopia.

 

To the Nazi's the ends justify the means. If you don't follow certain criteria then you will very well not be recognized as a human. They decide who and who isn't human by the person's qualities. If you aren't human or an inferior in some way, then you are a leech to the state.

Everyone may agree to throw women into an active volcano, and it may create order in some form, but does that make it right? Also, we're dealing with reality here. Certain ideologies lead to disaster by its very nature.

Well, nothing in reality just magically becomes something. Again, they believe that the ends justify the means. In order to achieve their means, they would have to go to war and do whatever that is needed to bring this about. People by nature are rebellious. There will always be people that would fight against their rights violations. In order to have this world, you would need to scare people into following.

Would you call the extermination of 'inferiors' for the 'greater good' a Utopia? I wouldn't. I have an autoimmune disorder. The Utopia that you mention won't have me. Is this ok?

 

Once again, no.

There are philosophies that will not result in a utopia.

Just take the philosophy that: It’s a dog eat dog world, so look out for number one?

Under such a philosophy, war, violence, robbery, rape and abuse would not go way but be an entrenched part of human society.

Hardly what most people would call a utopia but I guess someone who held such a philosophy would consider it a “utopia”, if that’s what you mean.

 

So true!

Just because you have "faith" in and believe that God does not exist does not make it a fact.

 

Being a Nazi is probably one of the more admirable traits for a Nazi, wouldn't you think?

Well, that's the thing, we aren't dealing with reality. This was a hypothetical applied to reality. It came up when OlderWaterBrother declared that if everyone followed Christianity, peace would reign, and this was largely why he believed it to be the one true religion. My contention is that, if everyone followed any identical structured path of life, peace would reign.

But we weren't talking about what would need to happen in order to obtain this world, we were talking about what this world would be like if it already existed.

To a Nazi, not only is it OK, it is also desirable. And in our hypothetical world, everyone is a Nazi, even those with autoimmune disorders. While totally striving for the fascism that their ideology embodies, they would gladly sacrifice themselves if the vast majority of their contemporaries deemed them inferior. We are talking about a greater good mentality here.
I am not a Nazi, and I do not advocate the extermination of anyone. However, this isn't about me. Maybe we would find this type of thinking and action disagreeable, but I guess that's why we aren't Nazis.

 

Yes, that is what I mean.

 

Yup, definitely to a Nazi.

 

Do you not think that wanting to get rid of belief in the supernatural jars at all with the above statement? It seems to make people happy and restriction of any thought - even a "wrong" one - is by definition a restriction of freedom. As I said earlier though, people with a strong religious conviction are, on average, a lot happier than people without one, by themselves and by their peers (before you try any of that "they just THINK they're happy" shit! ).

The thing about society is, it's a trade-off. There are a few ignorant people in the world who don't realise that they trade freedom for safety, or that one person's freedom almost always comes at the expense of someone else's. A sense of moderation is vital to maintaining a society that is anything like stable. That means you don't just work towards giving a group freedom and happiness if it means that everyone else suffers for it.

 

I think he's saying that, despite it being unfeasible to imagine that everyone might share exactly the same interpretation of an ideology, it would work. Even if the ideology was as absurd as "Give all your money to Jim", as long as everyone believed that that was the way things should be, then they'd be happy enough to starve in the streets penniless, because at least they could die knowing that all their money went to Jim.

Sounds absurd, but then you look at common societal motivations - to continue the species, to get your kids set up better than you were, etc. - and I for one wonder why knowing we've achieved those things is any more of a comfort. Yet they ARE our society's beliefs, to the extent that, if someone implies that maybe people should solve overpopulation by having less kids, it will be assumed that they're joking, and if any nation actually puts this into practice, it'll be painted as barbaric for us.

I'm pretty sure that any societal ideology works if everyone believes in it, from Aztec human sacrifice to Nazi eugenics. Nazism would be fine (or at least stable) if everyone accepted that they should have to fight for power, and if all blacks, Jews, gypsies, cripples and homosexuals thought they deserved to die. That's what's required for it to work though, and that's a lot to ask for.

But this is why we end up looking for common ground on which to found a society, rather than just worrying that we can't find one ideology that fits everyone. Set up a "Ten Commandments" or whatever, and leave the minutiae of societal structure up to the populace to figure out amongst themselves, right?

I like the irony of Rudenoodle's "Thou shalt not have freedom of religion" commandment. Pretty sure most religions have just such a commandment. It's been said, even if he doesn't agree, that religion isn't the problem - the problem is religions fighting amongst themselves and others being caught in the crossfire. So it seems to me, eliminating all religion would be as worthwhile as eliminating all but one.

 

If fighting for power was widely accepted in society then certain consequences would follow from it. What I am trying to say is that what we should all cooperate on needs to be something that bares the most fruit. Something that would allow personal freedoms to strives while at the same time not hindering the growth of others. While there could be a world that accepts certain conditions and labels those conditions as a way to bring order and their own form of goodness, it would make better sense if those conditions allowed for the most growth, both societal and individual.

I believe that we are all striving for something bigger than us. Every group of people has a certain goal in mind. But what is strived for is inherent in all people, we just all disagree on how to reach this. One set of conditions will lead us to this end goal better than another.

To put it very simply, our end goal is restricted by our methods of achieving our end goal and this goal can be restricted by its own methods. This is what all of humanity has been trying to achieve but it constantly fails because the way in which it is achieved is inherently flawed because they all leave out incredibly important factors.

I do think that we are slowly working our way up to this 'perfect way' of achieving everything that we'll ever need. It is inherent in all of us, but we take certain states as a form of normality, when in actuality normality is only normal because it is the average, not because it is what is inherent within human nature.

There are certain conditions required to get what we need and I believe those are: 1. Knowledge of the world and of the Self (Empowerment of self). 2. Reverence for Ecology (Empowerment of Nature). and peaceful means of being intolerant of memes that lead to hardships of all kinds (Empowerment against power figures and anything that saps the powers of everything).

Religious institutions do fight amongst each other often, and some fight more than others. But that is exactly what I am getting at, the one religion that should remain is the one that has no inherent flaws. But Dogmas is what corrupts religions most of all, but with Islam, for example, the Dogmas are a deep part of the religion... its hidden away and there is nothing to correct it other than ignoring certain tenets of the belief. With Christianity, most of its issues is with misinterpretation and the dogmas that follows.

Most of what I say comes from my belief that certain moral codes are superior to another -- I also use Plato's forms in much of my thinking because think that it points to something that is true.

Cultures and ways of preserving life may differ from one another, but there seems to be an underlining core which would be required for all the tribes of earth to get along. Certain simple 'infallible' codes that would allow multiple cultures to exist while at the same time prevent conflict. Honesty, Tolerance, Acceptance, Forgiveness. I know that there are multiple interpretations to those words, and it can create confusion, but in order to know what this would really mean is see it live in action and I think Jesus did a good job showing this to us... and I say this as a non-Christian.

 

Well, I wouldn't want the maxim about exchanging freedom to do something for freedom of others to do things to you to get in the way of removing extraneous obstacles. Many times you will be trading one for the other, but I would agree that sometimes, freedom can be adjusted on one side of the equation without affecting the other at all.

If doing something has no impact on anyone, you should be free to do it, for example. This is why I'm not in favour of "educating" people until they believe the "right" thing. Rudenoodle et al would have us believe that believing the Earth is flat is just inherently wrong, bad and unhealthy. But unless you're an airline pilot or a navigator, it's highly unlikely to have any negative effect on your life*.

Personally I'm with Bill Bryson, who said that the great thing about London is its indifference. Thousands of races, creeds and cultures exist side by side without collapsing in the UK capital not because of tolerance, but because of indifference. The subtle difference being that tolerance implies that you're actively doing something noble by not taking a saw to a Muslim and demanding that he give up his religion. Indifference implies that you instinctively know it's never been any of your business.

Atheist like Rudenoodle don't seem to be able to grasp that what other people believe really is none of their business. They feel like they have to have an opinion on how stupid anything anyone thinks is, as if something awful will happen if they don't. This makes them incredibly easy to stereotype and predict. The real beauty of indifference is, it means people don't do what you expect. It means that your local butcher can still be a vegetarian, or that your bank can be run in part by communists. In other words, it prevents the kind of entrenched ideology in our institutions that, ultimately, this thread's OP opposes. Except that of course the thread doesn't oppose that: if just opposes religions with no reason or justification. Received wisdom sucks for joined up thinking.


*They usually then go on to state that maybe you'd be some great scientist that would improve human life immeasurably if you didn't believe in non-science, and that you are thus harming everyone by not realising what they see as your potential. And that's fucking retarded.

 

TBH, this is what I've been arguing, in a way. I think religious belief should be judged on its negative and positive effects, NOT by some arbtirary standard that religion = belief without proof = bad. So if a religion uses God to encourage people to be more forgiving or more charitable, I would have no problem with that. And if someone kills someone, I would have to look very hard at why they went against their religion's tenets before muleheadedly insisting that their God told them to do it.

Rudenoodle believes that any belief in the supernatural is bad. He doesn't care whether it has a positive or negative effect, he just can't stand the thought of the belief (while at the same time having so many entrenched beliefs in the unprovable that it's hilarious).

 

Yup, I completely agree with everything you have said. What is so wrong that someone might hold a belief inside their own heads? As long as it doesn't do what you mention then why should they care? Like you said, if anything it brings about more order, something that Rudenoodle wants. Why go against something that actually helps fulfill your vision of the world? It simply doesn't make sense.


What I realized with many atheists is that they have this deep fear of not being 'grounded in reality', and they believe that if anything isn't supported by solid evidence then their entire brains would melt inside their own skull. When the truth is, belief has nothing to do with the ability in making a huge scientific discovery... if anything, seeing the world as being created can give some scientists an edge because they use the worldview to shape their own hypothesis and look for clues that support it.

The fact many atheists can't accept, and I don't want to generalize here, but... the fact they can't accept is that they completely refuse the notion that they have a BELIEF that no God exists. The only people I would say that have no beliefs are the agnostics, but even they have to believe in some things... just not as much? dunno.

Also, that is what I meant by tolerance, is a form of indifference that you mention, and that means not going on crusades, but rather, simply discussing things with people to see where their thinking could be a tad clumsy.

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I used to be a a hardened atheist and saw myself as the absolute badass of pure logical thinking, but then I realized that I was merely closing off my brain... the very thing that I was fighting against.

 

Well yeah, tolerance is basically wanting a fucking medal for loudly faking indifference

I was trying to illustrate earlier on in this thread (naturally to derision) that day to day life requires a tremendous amount of faith in things that only exist by virtue of mass belief, with the only evidence for them being a long, entrenched history of reaction to them. Language and ownership were my examples. We can prove that these things exist only by observing the propensity of people for believing in them. If everyone stopped believing in them, they could cease to exist probably within a few years. If they were based on fact/logic, fact and logic wouldn't change, and neither would they.

I raised these hoping that an atheist would be able to see that they were only objecting to religion's irrationality because they didn't happen to use religion, and that they personally had entrenched beliefs in language and ownership that allowed them to function. It didn't work.

 

I think some "closing off" is inevitable though. As long as we are aware that we are doing it, it's fine. And that's the real problem I have with the OP. He's so totally unaware of his own concessions to belief, and it severely clouds his judgment.

 

lol, yeah, exactly.

Well, that's true.

Ya, it COULD be working, but I doubt he would admit it. Too damaging to the ego. I know what that is like.

And ya, belief is required in order to function. Although, maybe losing certain beliefs may do us more good? Wouldn't mind the concept of money itself being replaced with simple communal living... but I guess that's for another thread (that would be a case where lack of belief actually stabilizes us)