are you of the opinion... (page 2)

Frannie Banannie

Yes! Everytime someone honks their horn when they pass a bumper sticker that says "Honk if you love Jesus," some redneck is bound to climb out of the pickup with the bumper sticker and whup their butt!!

skinnyboy

your so right Frannie, I work in a car smash repairers, and biggest arsehole customers are the ones with teh little fishes on the back of the cars, or the Jesus Saves stickers!

jgnat

Polarized thinking results in irreconcilable conflicts. I've met animal rights activists who are polarized. I don't think ALL religions promote polarization.

JamesThomas

Whenever our beliefs separate us from others, there opens an arena in which the mind can righteously rationalize harming or killing others.

Religion often breeds disunity and so violence; especially when the image of our "Most High" commits mass murder and destruction. The smaller our idea of a god, the larger the sphere of perceived evil and the more there is to hate and make holy war with.

Personally, I think religion, generally speaking, sucks.

j

tetrapod.sapien

i think it's magical thinking, in an arrogant manner, which causes these conflicts.

it's not religion per se, but more that religion is often used as a convenient label for humans just being themselves. lonely, mentally discontinuous, arrogant humans.

a couple of dawkins quotes that i like in this regard, are the following, in order:

My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a "they" as opposed to a "we" can be identified at all.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Devil's Chaplain (2004)

To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.
-- Richard Dawkins, "Religion's Misguided Missiles" (September 15, 2001)

and i agree. and, evanesence, that last quote was for you. you list buddhism and hinduism as examples of religions that are peaceful, and yet you leave the grotesque history of your own abrahamic religion out of the picture altogether.

did you know that you can be an atheist and still meditate using buddhist techniques?

did you know that there is a sect of hinduism that is for atheists?

try pulling that off with the catholic church, and see where you get.

the monotheistic religions, and all their binary thinking about the universe, and our place in it, are really quite dangerous. think about it people:

the witnoids are a montheistic abrahamic faith. you came out of it. that's why you're here. ALL RELIGIONS START AS CULTS. give the WTS a couple of hundred years, and they'll be a religion too! and remember how retarded they were? remember all the pain that they cause even thouogh they don't go to war? are you suffering right now because of them? well, you can thank abraham for that! TO SAY THAT THEY ARE NOT TRUE XIANS, IS JUST AS ARROGANT AS THEM SAYING THAT YOU ARE NOT A TRUE XIAN. don't use that argument on me. it's old and tired.

in the end, people may not go to war over their religions, but the mentally discontinuous belief that they are right, and better than other homo sapiens, is what will play a roll in whatever retarded war they play a part in. where do they learn this? why, they learn it from their religious parents and culture as children!

the US is loathe to admit publicly that 98% of their soldiers fighting islamic terrorists are actually some type of xian. the islamic fundies, however, do see this as a holy war. if they see it as a holy war, and such a large precentage of who they are fighting are from another abrahamic mono-faith, then it is a holy war.

i leave you with Bob Dylan:

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.
...
When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

TS

I quit!

People who don't like religion tend to blame everything wrong in the world on it. Ask yourself would the world be a better place if everyone thought like Joseph Stalin or the Red Chinese. People don't need religion to cause trouble but they do use it as a convenient excuse for their evil behavior sometimes.

garybuss

People using religion as a tool have caused stress and strife in my life. I have no problem with religion per se. I have my problems with people who have used religion and other excuses to abuse me and people important to me.

jgnat

Very true, Gary. When I talk to my evangelist friends, I explain that the bible is used as a "punishing stick" in the Watchtower society. Ever seen a kid wince at a wooden spoon or a belt? You know what was tool was used!

are you of the opinion...

Share this