Stephen Fry in Gay bashing shock!

[pap]

The reason there are billions of religious people is because early in human history we didn't understand the world we lived in so came up with answers. The easy answer was to fill gaps in knowledge with "God did it". Those gaps have been closed with science, leaving God with less and less space to occupy as humans understood more about the universe.

 

Many people in the 21st century are still stuck in the Bronze age!

 

Why isn't everyone of the same religion? Using Jesus as your messenger is the action of an inept God. If he really wanted to get his message to everyone there are surely better ways than sacrificing himself... to himself... to forgive himself. That is just bizarre!

 

There have been thousands of recorded religions in human history, not all of them can be right... but they can all be wrong.

 

In is indisputable that mankind has created its own Gods, the religious should ask themselves what makes yours right over all the others?

 

I've got a lot of agreement with your points, MLG - plus there is evidence in holy books themselves that whatever got written down is simply the best guess of the men and women of the time. Genesis describes creation in less than two pages. This is Earth, the Moon, the Sun and anything that lived on Earth. You'd get as much detail if you asked a six year old to have a stab at explaining how we all came to be. The moon, a mystery for centuries, is merely passed off as the light for the night sky. The Qu'ran does a better job thousands of years later. By that time, people are aware that the moon is only reflected light, so contemporary human understanding ends up in a holy book. Going back further and looking at polytheistic pantheons of Greek, Roman and Scandinavia adds even more weight to your argument, and is a lot easier to follow. They basically invented gods for everything that they either didn't understand or didn't fully comprehend.

 

The only big question science can't account for without some kind of cosmic chicken and egg situation is how we got here in the first place. The Big Bang as sole explanation is both spiritually and scientifically unsatisfying. Scientifically, it's fúcked the minute someone asks how the precursor matter (the stuff that blew up and made our universe) came to be. Spiritually, it's akin to entropy. Yes, yes, entropy is wonderful on its own, and I'm sure that many atheists spent time navel-gazing, marvelling at the sheer unlikelihood of them being here in the first place, and have felt rather smug about that. For most people though, it's not very nourishing spiritual fayre, which is why the holy books and the stories within have become so ingrained in our language and culture and phrases like "random" are relatively new.

 

I've said before that I feel atheism is too strong a position for me to take, arrogant even. I find Dawkins' brand in particular just as depressingly evangelical as those inaccurate old books or the wide-eyed acolytes of a modern-day charismatic church. For those reasons, I can't fully commit to the ol' atheism, even though I've no time for organised religion. I agree with Dawkins that we're social animals and we'd have done the co-operative stuff anyway. That is not a tough shout to make. We've found people all over the world who had never heard of Christianity, yet had built civilizations and communities regardless of never hearing the good word of Christ. That said, I can't honestly tell you "there is no God", and neither can Dawkins. None of us have a fcking scooby.

 

The problem with any demolition job on organised religion is that it leaves nothing to replace it with, especially for those that have taken comfort in the belief that a supernatural being is interested and involved in their day-to-day lives. Martin Luther replaced Catholicism with Protestantism, in his own mind and further afield. Islam displaced a number of local and international religions when it was introduced. Believe it or not, the majority religion in Eastern Arabia used to be Nestorian Christianity.

 

I make these points to illustrate what a tough job you have on your hands. Historically, it has usually taken religion to displace religion. Sure, there have always been people who have not been particularly devout, but most of them would probably still have feared going to hell, even if they did a good job of pretending otherwise. The phenomenon of non-belief, or at least not subscribing to any religion whatsoever, is relatively new. Cameron still refers to this country as a Christian country, Dawkins' runs his take on atheism like a religion in its own right and fragments of pre-Islamic faith still exist in the "Islamic World" to this day. MLG vs Irrational Belief, eh? Good luck with that.

 

Until we've something that people can get behind (humanism is still a no-go, judging by the state of the planet), existing religious fables are always going to be a draw and you'll have a tough time saying "nope, it's all shít. The job of life is to work things out for yourself", even though I'd be in agreement with that statement.

[Manuel]

The problem with any demolition job on organised religion is that it leaves nothing to replace it with, especially for those that have taken comfort in the belief that a supernatural being is interested and involved in their day-to-day lives.

They can replace it with their own morality, the morality inherent within us all. Take responsibility for their own lives, talk to others or look to philosophy if they need help. Human society is quite capable of looking after itself without the man-made religious laws putting restrictions on it, denying people their own morality by handing the rules to them in a book and forcing obedience upon them. I'm not saying anything can happen overnight, but with ever increasing education and information I'm hopeful we as people can put all this stupidity behind us.

[aintforever]

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I usually agree with Brand but the problem is here he is right about what we don't know then bangs on about spirituality and one big consciousness as it is fact when in my opinion it is most likely just a trick of the mind.

[Matthew Le God]

I've said before that I feel atheism is too strong a position for me to take, arrogant even. I find Dawkins' brand in particular just as depressingly evangelical as those inaccurate old books or the wide-eyed acolytes of a modern-day charismatic church. For those reasons, I can't fully commit to the ol' atheism, even though I've no time for organised religion. I agree with Dawkins that we're social animals and we'd have done the co-operative stuff anyway. That is not a tough shout to make. We've found people all over the world who had never heard of Christianity, yet had built civilizations and communities regardless of never hearing the good word of Christ. That said, I can't honestly tell you "there is no God", and neither can Dawkins. None of us have a fcking scooby.

 

Richard Dawkins says on a scale of 1 to 7 (with 1 being there definitely is a God and 7 being there definitely isn't) he would be a 6.

 

I can't honestly tell you "there is no God", and neither can Dawkins. None of us have a fcking scooby.

 

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None of us have a fcking scooby.

 

We can in regard to the inconsistencies and provable inaccuracies in religious scripture.

Edited 2 February, 2015 by Matthew Le God