by dawg 66 Replies latest jw friends
No they're not, the study showed that 90% of the Japanese didn't believe in God.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: Never confuse belief on God with Religiosity!
BTS
I know you are Challenging... but look at some of these comments...
Dawg, the church I used to go to in Grand Rapids flies a rainbow flag outside. They don't tell you what to do or try to make you feel bad about God or yourself. That's one reason the Episcopal Church isn't growing in huge leaps and bounds. They are not evangelical either. You can't paint all religions with the same broad brush.
While I agree with you completly that education, non-religion and less violence all go hand in hand, I realize that getting a majority of people to see this is just about impossible. The world is not ready.
But, if we don't blow ourselves up first, we will get there. Not in our lifetime, but we'll get there. We have too, it's the logical consequence of learning more about the universe and about human kind.
In time, people will see and accept that religions are based on myths that have divided mankind since it's begining, and they will learn more and more about the fabric of the universe. They will realize man created the notion of god and see it for what it is. But not now, not today.
changeling :)
Flying, I can paint all religions with this one factor, they harm society by telling adherents that it's OK to drop logic... Societies that do not do this (drop logic and just believe) fare better as the results of this study shows.
Does your religion teach that you must believe that Christ died for you to go to heaven?
Does the Church you go to tell you that you must have faith that this is true?
What is the basis of that faith? Is it logical?
My guess is no it isn't...As a matter of fact, I know it isn't. therefore they are harming you and the society you live in by telling you to just have faith that such a crazy story is true. Societies that have less of this influence fare better, the study shows this is true... did you even read the study?
My comments on homosexual hating sheepherders stands... just because your church isn't homophobic doesn't mean that the men that wrote the Bible didn't hate homosexuals.
Faith causes dissension because it has absolutely no logic backing it...you don't see Japan arguing about God like you see this country doing.. you don't hear the prime minister of Japan telling voters what church he goes to, there is no conflict about this matter because it freaking doesn't matter in the first place. It shouldn't in this country just the same.
Dear guest: you are confusing communism with atheism. While yes, most communists are atheist, the ideology that made communism so brutal was not the lack of belief in god. It was because they felt their way, their country, their govenment was better and had to be imposed on others.
Here is the crux of the matter: religion AND nationalism are the bain of mankind. As long as people believe their god or their country is better than someone else's, there will be those who want to impose their beliefs or type of govenrment on others. This is the root of war.
changeling :)
Thank you Challenging for saying what I wanted to say, the religious always get the two mixed up... Believing in a political philosophy that used force isn't what I want either... i believe that both institutions will be eliminated one day by those of us that are pragmatic and non-violent.
by John Lennon
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as oneImagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
Ignoring the "explanations" that the link in the OP provides (none of which are proven), the list fails to account for something very important; the effect of population age on violence. Countries with youthful populations have high crime rates. It so happens that the more secular nations are also older. Japan for example, has one of the oldest (if not the oldest) populations in the world. It faces a demographic crisis. It also has a low crime rate. Europe has similar problems, but it copes by importing a large amount of younger immigrants from more vigorous (and more religious) societies. It happens that the areas where these immigrants live tend to be the areas with high crime.
The study ignores also the effect of abortion rates on crime rates. If you abort your next generation, you are also reducing the future amount of males in the violent age groups (teens through 30). We have seen a similar effect in the US over the last 30 years. The countries that have lower amounts of reported violence commit more of their violence legally in utero.
Violent crime is related more, far more, to demographics than it is to religious belief. This belies Dawg's propaganda. How many 65 year olds do you see in prison for murder, rape or violent robberies? They are nearly all young men.
BTS
I also found this statement interesting... "Convinced that only the Bible offers "truth", they lose their intellectual curiosity and their ability to reason. Their priority becomes not the world they live in but themselves".
Losing intellectual curiosity, that I see among the religious I talk to everyday.
Yep! All us Cristans r a bunch of boobs.
| John Philoponus | late 6th Century | Aristotle's early Christian critic | |
| Hugh of St. Victor | c. 1096-1141 | theologian of science | |
| Robert Grosseteste | c. 1168-1253 | reform-minded bishop-scientist | |
| Roger Bacon | c. 1220-1292 | Doctor Mirabiles | |
| Dietrich von Frieberg | c. 1250-c. 1310 | the priest who solved the mystery of the rainbow | |
| Thomas Bradwardine | c. 1290-1349 | student of motion | |
| Nicole Oresme | c. 1320-1382 | inventor of scientific graphic techniques | |
| Nicholas of Cusa | 1401-1464 | grappler with infinity | |
| Georgias Agricola | 1495-1555 | founder of metallurgy | |
| Johannes Kepler | 1571-1630 | discoverer of the laws of planetary motion | |
| Johannes Baptista van Helmont | 1579-1644 | founder of pneumatic chemistry and chemical physiology | |
| Francesco Maria Grimaldi | 1618-1663 | discoverer of the diffraction of light | Catholic |
| Blaise Pascal | 1623-1662 | mathematical prodigy and universal genius | |
| Robert Boyle | 1627-1691 | founder of modern chemistry | |
| John Ray | 1627-1705 | cataloger of British flora and fauna | Calvinist (denomination?) |
| Isaac Barrow | 1630-1677 | Newton's teacher | |
| Antonie van Leeuwenhoek | 1632-1723 | discoverer of bacteria | |
| Niels Seno | 1638-1686 | founder of geology | |
| James Bradley | 1693-1762 | discoverer of the aberration of starlight | |
| Ewald Georg von Kleist | c. 1700-1748 | inventor of the Leyden jar | |
| Carolus Linnaeus | 1707-1778 | classifer of all living things | |
| Leonhard Euler | 1707-1783 | the prolific mathematician | |
| John Dalton | 1766-1844 | founder of modern atomic theory | |
| Thomas Young | 1773-1829 | first to conduct a double-slit experiment with light | |
| David Brewster | 1781-1868 | researcher of polarized light | |
| William Buckland | 1784-1856 | geologist of the Noahic flood | |
| Adem Sedgwick | 1785-1873 | geologist of the Cambrian | |
| Augustin-Jean Fresnel | 1788-1827 | the physicist of light waves | |
| Augustin Louis Cauchy | 1789-1857 | soulwinning mathematician | |
| Michael Faraday | 1791-1867 | giant of electrical research | |
| John Frederick William Herschel | 1792-1871 | cataloger of the Southern skies | |
| Matthew Fontaine Maury | 1806-1873 | pathfinder of the seas | |
| Philip Henry Gosse | 1810-1888 | popular naturalist | |
| Asa Gray | 1810-1888 | influential botanist | |
| James Dwight Dana | 1813-1895 | systematizer of minerology | |
| George Boole | 1815-1864 | discoverer of pure mathematics | |
| James Prescott Joule | 1818-1889 | originator of Joule's Law | |
| John Couch Adams | 1819-1892 | codiscoverer of Neptune | |
| George Gabriel Stokes | 1819-1903 | theorist of fluorescence | |
| Gregor Mendel | 1822-1884 | pioneer in genetics | |
| William Thomson, Lord Kelvin | 1824-1907 | physicist of thermodynammics | |
| Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann | 1829-1907 | the non-Euclidean geometer behind relativity theory | |
| James Clerk Maxwell | 1831-1879 | father of modern physics | |
| Edward William Morley | 1838-1923 | Michelson's partner in measuring the speed of light | |
| Pierre-Maurice-Marie Duhem | 1861-1923 | the physicist who recovered the science of the Middle Ages | |
| Georges Lemaitre | 1894-1966 | the prist who showed us the universe is expanding | |
| George Washington Carver | c. 1864-1943 | pioneer in chemurgy | |
| Arthur Stanley Eddington | 1882-1944 | the astronomer who ruled stellar theory |
