I don’t have a problem with people being religious or non-religious, so long as they aren’t excessively trying to thrust their own ideas upon me. And if following some certain religion makes somebody happy and I don’t see any harm coming of it, then I certainly don’t see any reason for me to try arguing them out of it (especially since I don’t always absolutely know for certain that their religion has things wrong!). So I don’t go around exclaiming incredulously, “How can you possibly have purely faith-based belief in supernatural entities of which there is no proof of their existence or non-existence?!?“. I will pick at what I see as actual false points in a particular religion, especially if it’s something that the other person insists on bringing up (like these people who come here claiming that the Bible says evolution can’t happen, and that therefore evolution doesn’t exist. . .despite both those claims being false).
I’ve seen what happens when people are forced into converting to some religion, and I don’t imagine that making people stop being religious would be any better or actually feasible. Let people decide for themselves, and if you’re worried that somebody in particular is being taken advantage of by some religion you can then decide on an individual case basis what you think would be best for you to do about it.
Nope, can’t agree. It’s just too general, and it’s also far too pat. Though I do appreciate those nice words about Christians!
I’m going to go out on a limb here, Evoti, and say that you don’t really think all faith is good, and you don’t really think all religion is bad, either. You are saying that because you would like to think this is all very simple. But it’s not.
I realize these two words are sharply differentiated in your mind, and apparently they are in FrostBird’s, but that is because you have taken all the positive aspects of religion and spirituality and endowed “faith” with those, and then taken all the negative aspects and piled them into “religion.“ Nothing wrong with that, per se, if it helps you to separate different concepts in your own mind, but since not even close to everybody defines these words the same way you do, and among those who don’t are the folks who write dictionary definitions, it’s not really very helpful for communicating outside your own head, unless you happen to be communicating with somebody who defines these words the same way.
Of course “organized religion,“ which I think is what you really mean by “religion,“ has done bad things and hurt people—including Neo, for example. Every human institution has, and I make no excuses for them. Families have done bad things and hurt people, and so have friends, schools, and city park systems, but that doesn’t mean all families and all friends and all schools and all city parks are bad. Besides, although I have known people who were badly let down by their congregations, I have also known people (and I am talking about actual people who I personally know, not just somebody I’ve read about) who were helped by their congregations—their “organized religion”—and their faith through horrible ordeals: a kid sent to prison, divorce, child abuse, rape, alcoholism, the death of an infant, AIDS…the works. I have been helped by MY congregation through at least two horrible ordeals, and don’t worry, I don’t intend to tell you all about them and use them as an excuse to prosthelytize.
All I am saying is that this whole question of religion and faith is really, really, really complicated, as is almost anything to do with human beings, and you do it and yourself a disservice when you boil it down to “faith = good; religion = bad.“ Some faith is good, some is bad, most is…unqualifiable and unquantifiable, and religion is pretty much the same way. That’s just the way it is.
I realize these two words are sharply differentiated in your mind, and apparently they are in FrostBird’s, but that is because you have taken all the positive aspects of religion and spirituality and endowed “faith” with those, and then taken all the negative aspects and piled them into “religion.”
You read me like an open book, Kathleen
Like most people, I need labels to stick on things in order to differentiate Good from Evil. But the world is an increasingly complicated piece of work, and the more complicated it gets, the more I feel the need for those labels!
So my Moslem friends have Faith, while suicide bombers have Religion… Maybe it’s just semantics, or maybe I have a very simplistic world view. So sue me
Faith is a reason why people refuse to see doctors when they are sick. Religion is a reason why people won’t accept blood transfusions, period. Both are harmful.
The fact that most religions teach that faith/belief is somehow better than reason sort of disgusts me.
Like most people, I need labels to stick on things in order to differentiate Good from Evil. But the world is an increasingly complicated piece of work, and the more complicated it gets, the more I feel the need for those labels!
So my Moslem friends have Faith, while suicide bombers have Religion… Maybe it’s just semantics, or maybe I have a very simplistic world view. So sue me
<3
It would make for some unusual court documents, that’s for sure.
Faith is a reason why people refuse to see doctors when they are sick. Religion is a reason why people won’t accept blood transfusions, period. Both are harmful.
The fact that most religions teach that faith/belief is somehow better than reason sort of disgusts me.
Agreed; Reason is the best approach to most things, and Religion can really twist people’s heads, like the Taliban, the Crusades, the suicides in Jonestown, 9/11, rape victims being stoned to death in Iran, the Waco shoot-out; you name it!
But as for Faith - even though “potentially harmful” (as it can escalate) - I have no personal experience of it, but I have been told that it can be a very personal thing. So as a total ignorant in this department, I feel it’s none of my business to criticize it: I simply wouldn’t know what I was talking about!
Of course, no major human civilization has arisen without religion. It most certainly served a very important place in our evolutionary history, especially before the explicity philosophical development of the idea of “rights”. I don’t think religion is inherently wrong or bad. I just think it’s easily misused and often teaches some dangerous ideas.
The thing I wonder about is whether religion arose independently among separate human groups or if it arose just once very early on and was spread around the globe via contact and migration. I tend to think any solitary human group will create a belief system as part of their attempts to understand the world around them, and that this belief probably started very early in our development into societies. The seeds for a belief system would then have been carried everywhere humans eventually wound up, often bumping into other original beliefs along the way. Things one group believed that seemed to make sense would be incorporated into another group willingly at first, and unwillingly later as such beliefs became more organized and concrete.
